This is one of the most common things women tell us, and it is almost always said in a particular tone. He is a good man. He is not like that normally. It is only when he has been drinking.
All of that can be true at the same time as something else being true, which is that the drinking is not the reason.
What is genuinely true about alcohol
It is not nothing, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
Alcohol lowers the threshold at which somebody acts on an impulse they already have. It makes injuries worse, because a person who has been drinking hits harder and stops later. It makes the night less predictable, which matters enormously for planning. And a household where money goes on drink is a household under a second kind of pressure entirely.
So the drinking is a real safety factor. Knowing which nights are dangerous is genuinely useful information, and you should use it.
What is not true
That it makes an otherwise safe man dangerous.
Plenty of men drink heavily and never touch anyone. Plenty of men who are violent at home have never had a drink in their lives. If alcohol caused violence, the first group would not exist, and it is very large.
The questions that settle it
You do not need an expert for this. Six questions will tell you what you are dealing with, and you already know the answers.
- When he drinks, does he attack his employer, his landlord, or a police officer? Almost never. He attacks you, and sometimes the children. That is a choice about target, and choices are not made by alcohol.
- Where does he hit? If the marks land where clothing covers them, something is being managed, and management requires judgement.
- What happens if somebody knocks at the gate? If he stops, straightens up and speaks normally, then he can stop. He stopped for a stranger.
- Is he like this in someone else’s house? If he drinks the same amount at his brother’s and nothing happens, the variable is not the drink.
- Is the criticism new? If what he says while drunk is a louder version of what is said sober, the drink did not invent it.
- Does the control stop when he is sober? If your movements, your money and your phone are still being managed on a Tuesday morning, the pattern was never about alcohol.
That last question is the important one. Violence is the part that gets attributed to drink. The control underneath it usually carries on regardless, and it is the part that shapes your daily life.
Why the explanation is so attractive
Because it is the kindest available theory, and it protects several things at once.
It protects him, since a man who has a drinking problem is unwell rather than dangerous. It protects the marriage, because a problem with a name has a treatment. It protects you from having to make a decision, since there is nothing to decide while a solution is still being attempted. And it protects the children from a conclusion nobody wants to reach about their father.
Everybody in the situation has a reason to prefer this explanation, which is why it survives for years without being examined.
What happens when he does stop drinking
Sometimes he genuinely stops. It is worth knowing in advance what usually follows, because women are unprepared for it.
Frequently the violence reduces and the control does not. The monitoring, the money, the accusations and the isolation stay exactly where they were, and there is now no explanation available for any of it. That is a hard period, because the thing everybody was waiting for has happened and the marriage is not what was promised.
Sometimes he stops and things do improve substantially. It happens, and where it does it is usually because he was already treating you decently when sober and the drinking was a genuine additional problem.
What does not happen is that stopping drinking teaches somebody to be respectful who never was. Nobody learns that at a treatment centre.
Staying safer on the nights he drinks
Whatever you decide about the marriage, these are worth doing.
- Know the pattern. Which days, what time he comes in, what state he is usually in. Most women can predict this better than they realise.
- Do not be in the kitchen when he arrives. Knives, hot oil, gas and glass are all there, and it is the worst room in the house for this.
- Do not raise anything important, and do not try to resolve an argument with somebody who has been drinking. It cannot be resolved and it can escalate.
- Do not try to stop him drinking on the night. That is a confrontation you cannot win at that hour.
- Know your exit and keep it clear. Keys where you can reach them, a phone charged, the gate not locked from inside.
- Send the children to bed early, and give them one instruction: go to a named neighbour, do not come and help.
- Tell one neighbour what you would like them to do if they hear it. Most people want to help and do not know whether they are allowed.
What to do in the moment it starts covers this in more detail, including which room to move towards and why.
If he wants to deal with the drinking
Support it. Genuinely, it is worth doing for its own sake, and his health is a real thing.
Just do not fold your safety into it. Keep the plan you have, keep the account you opened, keep the documents where they are, and do not treat a good month as proof. If the change is real it will still be real in a year, and nothing is lost by keeping a plan you did not need. Why the good phase is convincing is worth reading before you decide.
The sentence to hold onto
If he can stop when there is a knock at the gate, he can stop.
Everything else follows from that. It does not tell you what to do about your marriage, and we are not going to tell you that either. It does tell you that you are not waiting for a cure, which changes what a sensible plan looks like.
Questions people ask
He is genuinely a different person when he drinks. Does that not count?
It counts for how dangerous a particular night is, and it is worth using to plan around. It does not explain why the person he becomes attacks you specifically and stops when a stranger knocks.
If he goes for treatment, will it stop?
It may reduce the violence, which is worth having. It does not usually change the control, and it does not teach respect to somebody who never had it. Support the treatment and keep your plan.
Should I pour the drink away or hide it?
No. That is a confrontation at the worst possible hour and it puts you in immediate danger. Your safety on the night is a separate problem from his drinking.
He blames stress and money, not drink. Is that different?
No, it is the same shape of explanation. Everybody is under pressure and most people under pressure do not hurt the person they live with.
Am I making it worse by arguing when he is drunk?
You are not the cause of it and nothing you say justifies being hurt. It is still true that an argument cannot be resolved with somebody who has been drinking, so leaving it until morning is a safety decision rather than a concession.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
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