Alcohol-induced cheating... what to do?

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-30-2005
Alcohol-induced cheating... what to do?
22
Sat, 07-30-2005 - 6:21pm
Last year around this time, my best friend at the time came over to my our apartment because she was having a particularly rough time with her own boyfriend (my boyfriend & I had been living together for 6 mos. at that point but had been together long distance, on & off, for about 6 years).
My friend had come over many times before and had crashed in our spare bedroom many times... no problems at all. I felt somehow, that when she came over, she & my boyfriend hit it off very well.. they had very similar tastes in things and they had an amazing communication with each other. I never got jealous because he said that he wasn't attracted to her because she was a smoker.
Nevertheless, this night that she came over, she brought over a huge bottle of champagne. He had already had some scotch before I got home and when she got there, we cracked open the champagne. I had half a glass and then fell asleep on the couch because I was exhausted from the day (it was Friday).
I woke up to her rushing out of the apartment at like 3am saying she had forgotten to take her birth control pill or something. My boyfriend & I then went into our bedroom & went to sleep.
Then at 6am, he woke me up and told me he remembered doing something wrong with her. But he couldn't remember what. He had told me stories from before about him drinking & blacking out & not remembering things, but I was concerned. Then, she called me later that day to tell me that the night before she had woken up to him sitting next to her on the bed. Her shirt was pulled up and she said her bra was undone.
I have no idea to this day what happened that night, but it wreaked havoc on our lives. She filed a police report against him for assault. They went to court and the whole process took months until the case was dropped and he got a plea bargain and now is attending AA meetings.
Things haven't been the same, obviously, since this happened. I moved out shortly afterwards and moved in with my friend. Only to have her kick me out for reasons I didn't understand, about a month later.
I'm confused and don't know what to do. These days I can't get myself to feel anything for him and most of the time I just feel numb.
Please, anyone, let me know your thoughts. I could really use some advice on what to do.
Thanks.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 08-02-2005 - 12:38am

I know what you mean, Munitiongirl. It is helpful to get the perspective of strangers. You know for certain they're not "siding with you" because they know you, they're giving you their thoughts based on the facts, nothing more.


Rayny has made a good point about your boyfriend, if he thinks it's acceptable/permissible to cheat when drunk he'll do it again. Likewise if he thinks "not remembering" is an acceptable excuse. Sorry, but many, many people get drunk without cheating. If he didn't want to, he wouldn't have, period. Ever hear of a "straight citizen" type find himself breaking into a store when drunk? No? That's because he doesn't have desires or tendencies to steal. Know what I mean?


And I can't stress the importance of Northwestwanderer's message enough. If your boyfriend is an alcoholic, which everything strongly points to, I urge you to run in the opposite direction as fast as you can. Your boyfriend is not taking treatment seriously and does not think he has a problem. He shows no signs of being ready to deal with his alcoholism and he may never be ready to do so. Life with an alcoholic is hell, believe me, it's not a place you want to be. An alcoholic relationship is dysfunctional, it can't be healthy. This isn't about your abstinence, it's not your program, it's not your problem -- it's his and he's not dealing with it. Alcoholics can't just "drink a little" or "once in a while", they can't drink, period. My ex-husband didn't think he had a problem either, but he did.


I too hope your posts indicate that you're planning to move out and create some space between yourself and your boyfriend. Keep us posted on how you're doing, okay? We care.





~ cl-2nd_life

"You can't control the length of your life,
but you can control the width and depth."

~ Author unknown

my signature exchange partner:

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Edited 8/2/2005 12:40 am ET ET by cl-2nd_life








"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
Avatar for ddnlj
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 08-02-2005 - 9:28am

Nothing was intended to be an excuse, but everyone is jumping on the BF. If he's truly an alcoholic, then he needs to work on that. But Miss Friend just sounds like trouble to me. And I've known the type. The best friend who smiles to your face and behind your back is worming her way into your love life any way she can.

I'm a believer in if you're having problems with your love life you stay home and fix it; you don't run off to Mom's or a friend's house. You don't go off and get drunk and you don't go find someone else to sleep with. You be a big boy or girl and stay home and take care of your issues. That's maturity.

The OP's girlfriend comes over with a bottle and proceeds to spread her misery around. What really happened that night is anyone's guess, but seeing that we have a girl who's drinking and feeling sorry for herself and a guy who's a blackout drunk, well... it's not hard to paint a mental picture of these two together.

Because no one remembers what really happened, no one can really be blamed. My suggestion to the OP would be to find some friends (including a BF) who do not drink. It's a given that when alcohol enters the picture things often have a tendency to go bad. There are many, many people who have some serious regrets in their life and walk around saying "if only I hadn't been drinking."

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-12-2005
Tue, 08-02-2005 - 9:39am
If you mean legally, then I agree with that, if no one remembers and there is no overwhelming physical evidence, then no one can be blamed. I myself think as far as rape that the situation could have gone either way. There is no way anyone can know at this point. As far as the cheating, if you need to watch your man that closely and not allow him to be around certain people, then there is something wrong with your relationship. I would not get into a relationship if I had to watch a man,and I am an adult. I don't need to be watched either. Blacking out is no exscuse for cheating in any way. Alchohol lowers your inhibitions and judgement, but it doesn't make you do things that are out of character for you. If you cheat while drunk, you're a cheater.
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-30-2005
Tue, 08-02-2005 - 2:22pm
Rayny-
You are right and it's a question I have bounced around in my head quite a bit actually.... Not being sure what to believe, I have thought to myself... "Well, if he didn't have this tendency (to cheat, to rape, to assault, whatever), he wouldn't have even done what he did, drunk or not."
Again, there is no pure evidence, but my friend told me that she woke up once, he was walking away from the spare room bed and the covers were pulled down from her. She thought nothing of it & went back to sleep. She woke up again and he was walking away from the bed and her shirt was pulled up and her bra was undone. This is all according to her. The reason it sounds fishy is because if you wake up once, a person is walking away from where you are sleeping and you notice that the covers have obviously been pulled down from you, you don't go back to sleep, you ask that person, "What are you doing?" At least that's what I would have done. You don't just go back to sleep after seeing that. That just doesn't work in my mind. Don't you think that's strange?
This experience has been worse than having concrete cheating (which has happened to me before) because at least then you have people admitting to what they've done and you know exactly how you've been betrayed. In this instance, there is no concrete evidence, just one person's word against another's... All that I can come up with comes from my imagination, which is worse. Plus, my boyfriend and I have mostly been together long distance, we have only been living in the same town for a year & change... how do I know that he didn' t do stuff like this before? I don't... that's what's scary.
I try to talk to him about it, but he just gets annoyed, or so it seems, and wishes that I could just let it go, forgive him and never think about it again. But it plagues me.
You all are right. No matter what, the right decision is to end this and stop kidding myself. I don't know why I'm staying. I keep telling myself I really do love him when I am just not feeling anything for him anymore... Why do I continually convince myself that staying is the right thing to do?
Am I afraid to leave? Am I afraid to leave him because I'm scared about what he might do to himself?
Am I more afraid to be alone...
I'm not sure what the answer is. I think I'm too messed up emotionally now to know any difference.
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-12-2005
Tue, 08-02-2005 - 2:39pm
I think that just the act of not getting up when the covers have been pulled down and some one is walking away is not strange when you are drunk, alchohol slows down your mental processes, so if she was sober she may have been suspicious and walked out, but she may have been so impaired that she didn't even think anything of it at the time.
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-31-2004
Tue, 08-02-2005 - 4:45pm
Did you return to him because you have no place else to go? Would things seem right if you were not being dependent upon him for a place to live?
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-31-2004
Tue, 08-02-2005 - 4:58pm

You're projecting. Who you know is non sequitur to OP's friend.

Her boyfriend already had a problem with drinking to excess and passing out, not remembering what he did while in a drunken stupor. No, the friend should not have come over with a bottle of champaign, but even the OP joined in the drinking of it and she didn't admonish her boyfriend for mixing liquor, seeing that she knew his propensity for drinking and passing out, nor did she tell the friend not to open the bottle, seeing how tired she was from the week.

OP may never know what the truth is, but the fact that he plead down and took AA classes tells me that he's got some culpability in this. I don't believe he was wrongly charged. I think that he breached boundaries with this friend. Her saying that she forgot to take her birth control pills while running out the door probably was her way, in the moment, to get out of the house without having to make a scene and being called a liar and a slut by OP in her effort to protect her boyfriend. I don't know of any sexual assault victims who are cold and calculating immediately following their attack.

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-31-2004
Tue, 08-02-2005 - 5:08pm

" The reason it sounds fishy is because if you wake up once, a person is walking away from where you are sleeping and you notice that the covers have obviously been pulled down from you, you don't go back to sleep, you ask that person, "What are you doing?" At least that's what I would have done."

Don't enable him by judging her with standards that would apply to someone who didn't drink a bottle of champaign.

In the first place, would you have gotten drunk to the point of blacking out?

Did he even get in the bed with you that night and if so, did you feel him get up and leave, being that you weren't nearly as drunk as they were? Seems to me that if he didn't even bother to get in the bed with you that night, he had nefarious thoughts on his mind--that your friend was so inebriated that he thought he could molest her without detection. If he got in bed with you, then got out of your bed to go into her room, that's worse because he was truly playing you for a fool.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-30-2005
Tue, 08-02-2005 - 9:39pm
Quenek-
No, he did not get into bed with me... the situation was this:
We were all in the living room watching a movie when we started hanging out at the beginning of the evening. That was when the bottle had been opened. I was unaware that he had had excessive amounts of alcohol previous to when he got home. He hides any inebriation very convincingly and I couldn't smell it (he claims he had two or three glasses of scotch even before we laid into the champagne. This I found out after everything had happened).
So all three of us were watching a movie. My best friend on one couch, I on the other and my boyfriend in a chair. All of us equidistant and far away from the other.
I was on the couch when I fell asleep. I trusted both of them and didn't think that something like this would happen, so I didn't think twice about it.
The story was that she went into the guest bedroom to go to sleep. She told me that first she had seen him in there checking email (the computer is in there). Then she told me she woke up again to see him walking away from the bed and the covers were pulled down. Then she told me the second time about him walking away, her shirt being pulled up and her bra being undone. She had fallen asleep between these two incidences.
The next time I woke up after falling asleep on the couch was to her rushing out of the apartment at 3am or so. Nothing seemed particularly wrong. I got up to go to bed and he was in the hallway walking towards the living room away from the guest bedroom. I asked him what was up and he seemed confused so we just went to bed.
It was that morning around 6am that he woke me up to tell me that something bad had happened but he couldn't remember what it was...
Maybe it's bad to assume anything about this. We can all project anything we want to on this set of circumstances. I guess the important thing to learn is that something happened, it led to problems with the police, I lost my boyfriend & best friend in one blow, and whatever did happen that night, it changed my life. I blamed nothing on my best friend, no matter what happened, I always took her side until she kicked me out of her apartment. Then I didn't know what to think.
Yes, I probably wouldn't be here if I didn't have anywhere else to go. But I am looking for an apartment and am hoping to end everything and leave soon. Money is an issue, but I'll figure out a way to make it work.
Thanks everyone.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 08-02-2005 - 11:16pm

Hey Munitionsgirl, I can totally understand how confused and messed up you'd be in this situation. It's like something out of a psychological thriller: "Girl wakes up and whole life has changed, nothing is as it was before. Is boyfriend innocent? Is girlfriend a victim?" Ack. How do you sort it out?!?!?


I think for the most part, you don't, at least in finding the answers to the questions goes. I think you walk around numb and shell shocked for a while (you don't really get a chance for it to settle in when you're dealing with events and issues that pop up as a result -- like law enforcement and court action. That just swirls it up even more. Once it's over (court action, etc.) you have a chance to let it settle and sink in. I think if you're looking for answers of guilt or innocence, the best thing you can do for yourself is find a way to let it go. You'll never know what really happened, never know who's right, who's wrong or what portion of each's claim is accurate. You'll drive yourself nuts trying to figure out something that isn't possible to figure out. What you can and should do is deal with what you know. Your girlfriend turned out to be not such a friend. who knows why, but she did. After you supported her and stood by her, she booted you out. Whatever the reason for her reaction, what you know is that you can't trust her, period.


You're wise to realize that since your relationship with your boyfriend was almost completely long distance, you have no idea what is typical for him. That should be scary. The fact that he's blowing it off, not taking a serious look at it is a huge bad sign, you know? If he won't deal with it, won't accept it, won't learn from it, yeah, something bad will be coming down the road for him. What you do know is that he's an alcoholic who is actively drinking and showing no signs of stopping. A person who was not an alcoholic going through the same experience would realize that alcohol was having a very negative impact on their life and they would opt to stay away from alcohol as a result. Does that make sense?


You're struggling with being plagued by it and when you try to talk to him about it, he wishes that I could just let it go, forgive him and never think about it again. He's avoiding the issue. He doesn't want to deal with it or face it. The thing is that for you, you can't just forget about it, you can't never think about it again. He wants to sweep it under the rug and that doesn't help or change anything. It doesn't resolve the problem or the issues that arise because of it. It doesn't let you resolve it in your own mind and it doesn't allow you to resolve it in your relationship. It keeps it alive, current and allows it to continue to do damage. The following articles are about dealing with infidelity, which is what you're dealing with (only you're dealing with a lot more of a convoluted mess). These will give you an idea of what should be happening (such as talking about it openly with your boyfriend, his remorse (daily) his accepting the problem that he caused and his willingness to do whatever it takes to rebuild the damage this has done to your relationship:

Getting Over an Affair
Healing From Infidelity
Recurring Memories of Spouses Affair

I know you've said your relationship and your feelings for him are pretty much over and I don't post those articles to encourage you to try to revive your relationship. I post them for you to see that your feelings are not out of line and that the way your boyfriend reacts is causing more damage.

I think it's wise to consider this relationship over. He's in denial about his drinking problem, even though it's caused him legal issues. He's not willing to face what he did with this girl and as you've already identified, alcohol doesn't make the cheater, someone who is not a cheater will not cheat due to drinking. Any future with this guy looks pretty dismal. I'd say it's safe to assume that all you really know about him is what you've learned in the last six months, since you've been with each other real time. It's very easy to present a picture of how you are long distance. You're relying on his word and that could well be only what he wants you to think or know. Clearly, he's not into being upfront and honest about serious issues.

Damn that first, last and deposit. I really urge women who are in live-together relationships to always have enough savings that can provide emergency funds (like first,last and deposit) to keep them from finding themselves stuck in a situation that they need to get out of. Do you have a roommate finding service in your area? You might consider sharing rent with someone else temporarily to get you out of his place and help you clear your head and heart. You spoke of friends and family, anyone who would let you crash for a few weeks or more? Put the word out that you're looking for a better arrangement and you might be surprised what will come your way.

Munitionsgirl, I would really urge you to get yourself into some counseling to help you deal with everything that's happened. It's a lot to deal with and you're clearly struggling. This is infidelity with some wicked twists. Infidelity is incredibly difficult to deal with and to heal from. Considering you're left on your own to wrestle with it, even harder. I can't tell you how many women have posted here with infidelity issues left over from a boyfriend they had five years prior. The boyfriend's long gone, but the issues and trauma remain. Please see a counselor and deal with this the right way, get it resolved and out of your head before it takes up permanent residence. This is not something you should be dragging along with you years from now, you don't deserve that. You deserve to be free of it. I hear you saying money's an issue. There are options that I can offer if you need them. Also, check to see if you have an EAP program through your work. Human Resources would know. EAP will give you six or eight (I can't remember which) counseling sessions for free. Let me know if you need more suggestions, but please, take care of you. You did nothing to deserve any of this.





~ cl-2nd_life

"You can't control the length of your life,
but you can control the width and depth."

~ Author unknown

my signature exchange partner:

Crisis Center: Rape and Suicide








"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"