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Unbearably lonely, surrounded by lies - I know what it's really like to be married to an alcoholic

Ant McPartlin and Lisa Armstrong - PA
Ant McPartlin and Lisa Armstrong - PA

I have spent the best part of 17 years hiding. You get very good at that when you are married to an alcoholic. Their whole existence is built on a tightly woven web of lies – lies which you often end up helping them to keep

David was always very good at hiding his problem. So good that for years I couldn’t even acknowledge that he had one. Since I admitted to myself that my husband has been an alcoholic for as long as I’ve known him, I found myself waging a daily battle to keep his secrets, and keep him sober.

So while I believe Ant McPartlin, who is going back to rehab after being arrested on suspicion of drink driving, deserves help and support, so too does Lisa Armstrong, the wife he is divorcing (and who he previously thanked for trying to help him beat his demons). And so too does his sidekick of 29 years, Declan Donnelly, who is said to be “gutted” for his best friend – and understandably worried his demons may doom their TV partnership.

I know from experience that an alcoholic will do anything to protect their drinking, no matter who that destroys in the process. Being their partner, whether in marriage or business, makes you collateral damage.

my husband and I met while working in the City. Back then, long liquid lunches were routine, and the partners would sink a few bottles of wine on a daily basis. David was no different.

Ant and Dec with their OBE's for services to Broadcasting and Entertainment - Credit: Geoff Pugh
Ant and Dec with their OBE's for services to Broadcasting and Entertainment Credit: Geoff Pugh

When we began dating one of the partners came to me and said “Sarah, you need to be aware that David has a problem with alcohol, we’ve all noticed it, I just think you ought to know”. I didn’t speak to her for six months, assuming she was jealous. How could he be an alcoholic? He’s phenomenally successful, he couldn’t do what he does if he was drunk all the time. 

But that’s the point about many alcoholics – they are very high-functioning, and they are rarely overtly drunk. They’re as likely to be the man (or woman) in the corner office as the one swaying on the corner of the street. When David was drinking he might slur a little to me, but then he’d pick up the phone to a client and perform. When you have to, you pull out all the stops and put on that front. 

For some time I told myself lies, but ten years ago, everything changed. David, now 62, became very ill and was diagnosed with cirrhosis. He was forced to stop drinking for a while, but as soon as the doctors told him his liver was showing signs of recovery he started again, and pretty soon we were in hospital three or four times a week, as his condition became more and more dangerous. He was put on the transplant list, and eventually was given a new liver, and what should have been a second chance at life. 

Even then, with the damage David had done to his body clear to see, our friends didn’t ask any questions, didn’t try to talk to either of us about his history with alcohol. The trouble is that by then most of our friends were his rather than mine - I’d cut my friends out so I didn’t have to face the questions, because they were coming thick and fast. His friends were very much your upper middle class types who don’t really want to know. “Oh what a shame, poor old David’s in hospital again, oh well we’ll send him a card and have them over for dinner once he’s out”. 

Ant McPartlin and Lisa Armstrong - Credit: PA
Ant McPartlin and Lisa Armstrong Credit: PA

You put yourself in this little bubble so you can keep protecting the lie, because you don’t know how else to carry on. And I think I always thought I could do something about it. That’s the hardest pill to swallow; the realisation that you can’t cure them. 

Soon after his transplant, David started drinking again. But by then he’d got very good at hiding it from me. He’d also begun to tell lies about me, to anyone I tried to reach out to for help. He would make me out to be hysterical. 

The trouble is that the more people tell you you’re a mad harpy, the more you behave like that. You’re so desperate, it becomes the norm to scream at your other half, to hide the alcohol from him, to need to know where he is at any given moment of the day. You help him perpetuate the lie, and the more isolated you become the deeper the lie grows. It is devastatingly lonely. 

You put yourself in this little bubble so you can keep protecting the lie, because you don’t know how else to carry on

Anonymous

In September last year, we were on holiday and I caught him drinking. I walked past a bar and saw him sitting there, being served a gin and tonic. He turned, saw me and panicked. He made to run away, but when he realised it would be hopeless to escape, he ran back and began downing the drink – the thought of not being able to have it filling him with more horror than the prospect of me running after him in a public place. I have never behaved as I did next and hope to never again. I stood in the doorway of the bar and screamed at him. People turned as I shouted “what the hell do you think you are doing?!” I ran towards him, knocked the drink out of his hand and stormed out, as he ran after me apologising profusely, all the old excuses being trotted out. It sounds so sordid now. I had become the screaming harpy he had always made me out to be. 

When we got home I phoned his grown-up daughter and told her what had happened. Together, we persuaded him to go to rehab. He didn’t go willingly. He barely participated at first. But slowly, he grew to love going, and two months later, he is sober and seems to have turned a corner. 

It sounds awful, but strangely it was as hard to see him coping as it was to see him suffering. Suddenly he didn’t need me to keep him alive – he had this group of sober friends from treatment who he spent all his time with. I’ve found myself feeling terribly jealous and left out over the past few weeks; ridiculous as that sounds.

It has made me realise what I’ve shut myself off from, these past few years. The addict has to cure the addiction. But the partner often ends up developing addictive tendencies too – in my case, to policing his behaviour, constantly obsessing over how to keep him safe. 

It has been so terribly lonely. I’ve been on my own on a raft desperately trying to keep it from sinking. Now it’s floating on its own and I’m left with my self confidence in tatters. You start to believe that there must be something wrong with you if you can’t keep the person you love from hurting themselves. I know now that I wasn’t the cause of David’s drinking, nor could I cure it or control it. 

One thing I’ve never truly doubted is that I want to be with him. In the heat of a row I’ve thought of leaving, but all these years later I’m still here. David is using rehab to get better, now I need to help myself, too. 

As told to Eleanor Steafel. Names have been changed.