I quit drinking five and a half years ago.

My husband didn’t.

“I’m done,” I said on January 19, 2020, barely surviving what would become my very last hangover. The shame hadn’t fully landed yet; the memory of nursing my baby in a blackout was still a blur, but it hovered like a storm cloud. Heavy. Inevitable. It pressed down on me, whispering: This is the last time.

I didn’t make a pros-and-cons list. I didn’t Google “am I an alcoholic?” I didn’t even weigh the possibility of moderation. I just knew. The knowing that splits your life into a Before and an After. I was done, even if I didn’t yet know what being “done” would require of me.

I can’t tell you exactly how my husband responded. I think he nodded. A small shrug, maybe. A half-smile. Pacifying. Not dismissive, but not grasping the magnitude either. To him, it probably sounded like just another one of my declarations: “I’m starting Whole30,” or “I’m quitting sweets.” Things wives say, husbands nod, and life goes on.

But life didn’t go on. Not in the same way.

Looking back now, I’m shocked (and honestly proud) that I didn’t ask his permission. There was no “Do you think I should quit?”, no “Want to do this together?” Not even a soft, “Would you support me if I stopped?”

That night, there was no we. There was only me.

And that was radical.

Because in this house, under this roof, I am a wife. I am a mom. I am the caretaker, the glue, the one who smooths the rough edges of everyone else’s lives. Their needs, their schedules, their triumphs and trials, those usually come first. Not in a martyr way, but in the way that wives and moms often instinctively tuck themselves last on the list.

But that day? I shoved myself right to the top.

I was single-minded, almost obsessive. One AirPod permanently in my ear, devouring Quit Lit while chopping vegetables, folding laundry, or rocking my baby back to sleep. I inhaled podcasts and memoirs, studies and science, anything that would help me understand what alcohol really was, and how it had become my crutch, my escape hatch, my fake connection.

Some nights I’d lie in bed next to my husband, spilling everything I’d learned. “Did you know alcohol is literally ethanol? Like, the stuff in rocket fuel?!” I’d say, eyes wide, voice buzzing. He’d listen, patient but skeptical, half amused, half cautious.

His drinking wasn’t wild anymore. It wasn’t nightclubs and bar crawls like when we were dating. It was quieter, more ritualistic. Fridays meant golf. Golf meant beer. Normal, by most standards.

But as my eyes opened, I started noticing. I could smell it on his breath when he came home from the course. I could feel the slight edge in his voice after a few beers. I started paying attention to my own body’s reaction. When did I tense up? When did I feel disconnected?

It took time, but I finally realized the line: two beers, I was fine. Three or more, and I felt him slip away. Not belligerent. Not cruel. Just distant. Removed.

And that distance planted the seed of resentment.

So, I set a boundary. “When it’s just us, when you’re coming home to me, please no more than two beers. I want to feel connected to you.”

It wasn’t a one-time conversation. It was ongoing, clumsy, imperfect. But it was mine to set.

I didn’t police his golf outings. I tried not to ask for counts. I didn’t lecture. I let alcohol’s natural consequences do their work. I counted on the pounding head, the sluggish mornings, the creeping guilt. But oh, how I wanted to say it. To point at his bleary eyes and declare, See? It’s the alcohol. It’s always the alcohol.

But I bit my tongue. Hard.

Because I knew something essential: you cannot shame someone into sobriety. You cannot nag them into it, either. If I pushed, he’d dig in. He’d defend his drinking, convince himself (and me) that he wasn’t “that bad.” I knew he’d cling to the illusion as long as he could. And I knew one thing for certain: I didn’t want to put him in a position to defend alcohol.

So, I stopped pushing. I chose silent influence instead.

Okay, not completely silent. I may have “accidentally” blasted my latest audiobook loud enough for him to overhear while I cleaned. And I lobbed a few random alcohol facts over my shoulder while making school lunches. But mostly, I let him watch.

And he watched everything.

He saw me wake up early on Sundays, padding downstairs to sip coffee in the quiet, no longer trapped under the weight of a hangover. He saw me clean the kitchen every night, resetting the heart of our home for the day ahead. He saw my patience deepen with the kids, my resilience stretch further than it ever had before.

And when my dad died, just over a year into sobriety, he saw the hardest thing of all. He watched me sit with the grief instead of drowning it. While everyone around me numbed their pain with booze, I let mine burn. He held me while I wept, stone-cold sober, gutted but present.

He had a front-row seat to my transformation.

And eventually, he decided he wanted in.

Four years later, over morning coffee, he said it casually, like it was no big deal: “I think I’m going to commit to one year without alcohol.”

I wanted to cartwheel across the kitchen. Instead, I said, calm as ever, “That’s great, babe. I’m excited for you.”

Over the next year, he saw what I had seen. For the first time in his adult life, he stood sober in the middle of drunk adults, realizing how much alcohol had been his armor. He noticed how often he’d used it to blunt social anxiety, to soften business stress, to numb the pressure to perform.

He began to feel what I had felt: that sobriety isn’t punishment. It isn’t deprivation. It isn’t a dull, gray existence stripped of joy.

It’s freedom.

And then, finally, I let myself do that cartwheel.

Suzanne Warye is a sobriety influencer and the author of The Sober Shift, out Sept. 30.

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