their journey with me, I began to piece things back together bit by bit. I have been lucky. The closest I have come to a slip was a Baileys’ cheesecake at a wedding a few years ago, and in the decade and a half since rehab I’ve always been drawn to addicts and their stories. It’s tough being an addict anywhere, but it’s perhaps doubly tough in Ireland, a country which arguably stigmatises sobriety far more than active addiction. The bar is set incredibly high for someone to identify as an addict in Ireland. In fact, if anything, all the societal impulses are telling you that you’re not really that bad. As the writer Conor McPherson once told me, walk into a bar in Ireland and the guy at the counter drinking Ballygowan, that’s the alcoholic!
Since I went public about my fraught relationship with alcohol, many individuals and families have contacted me over the years, asking for advice or help with their own struggles. Many are fearful of the societal response to publicly acknowledging their issue and seeking help. This particularly applies to Irish men over a certain age, for whom a large part of their formative experiences may have been framed using alcohol as a buttress. The difficulty for loved ones around addicts is just how deceptive, manipulative and destructive the addicted person can be.
‘According to him, I was the only problem he had in his life,’ Paula says, reflecting on her ex-husband’s outlook. ‘He would probably sit you down and if you didn’t know he was my ex, you would believe everything he says. He is almost a split person. He can be an amazing, charming and really kind person, and then he is awful. So it’s the total ends of the scale, and unfortunately, there was more of the awful behaviour than the nice person as time went on.’
Paula says she tried everything to get her husband to face up to his addiction, even managing to persuade him to go to a rehab facility for an assessment. This did not end well as he wouldn’t accept the opinion of the professionals. ‘I remember his face,’ she says. ‘He was in complete disbelief and then afterwards, he said it was what I said before the assessment that made them decide he was an alcoholic. He was that much in denial about it. He would deny all the affairs, even when a woman came to me and confessed she was with him and she broke up with him because of the guilt. She confessed to everything and he was still denying it to me.’
Denial, not just a river in Egypt, as we used to say in rehab. But for Paula, it’s almost easier to accept her husband’s behaviour, knowing that he does have an addiction. ‘I think I would be very angry with him if he was behaving like this and he wasn’t an addict,’ she says. ‘I am more forgiving and understanding now, though, and it is easier to accept that he is not a completely black soul. I just think now that maybe it is the addiction that has made him the way he is.’
His drinking was becoming a daily problem and then, in addition to the emotional abuse, he was physically violent. Eventually she plucked up the courage to go to her solicitor and seek a separation. Any emotional ties she had had with him had long since been cut by this point, and physically, she and her ex-husband had been apart for some time. His actions from the day she told him she wanted a separation convinced her that she had done the right thing.
‘I didn’t have to open my mouth; the truth all came out and not from me. I am a very private person,’ she says. ‘While all this was happening, a woman told me about the affair she had been having with my husband for two and a half years. She then wrote me a letter and said if I ever needed it for anything legal to use it. What she did was so courageous. I know her quite well. I thought we were kind of friends. She didn’t really get on with other mothers and the irony is I used to make an extra effort with her. Little did I know ...’
To anyone looking in from the outside, Paula’s husband seemed a highly functioning individual. He was careful only to drink at night but it became apparent after several years that he had lost a lot of work opportunities. He could have done so well, she says, but his dependence on alcohol held him back hugely. Despite all his faults, her son still very much looks up to her ex-husband. She hasn’t tried to influence his opinion of his father; she says he will figure that out for himself some day.
After all she has gone through, including emerging from an abusive relationship, I’m curious as to why Paula has decided that this is the right time to put her rings online and try to sell them. The break-up is still relatively recent. ‘If I don’t, I’m afraid I will lose them, or they could get stolen,’ she says. ‘He could also take them back, and I thought if I do sell them, it will provide a fund for the kids’ education. It would be something positive, and I’m a big believer in turning negatives into positives.’
The whole experience and ongoing fallout from the break-up of her relationship has impacted on Paula’s ability to make future connections and relationships. ‘I don’t think I ever want to get into a relationship again,’ she tells me. ‘I think he would have to be extraordinary for me to even look at him twice! I feel like I wasted many years, but I learned so much and I am proud of myself for coming out of it. I question everything now when people talk to me. My eyes have been opened and I can’t believe how gullible I was. My faith helped me. When I was outside the door, crying into my hands after a bout of abuse, I would cry out, “Please God, help me” and He did, and along the way, I found groups like Al Anon really useful, to be honest.’
At her worst, Paula was afraid her husband’s drinking would drag her down with him, and depression would become an issue for her. She says she came from a very happy family: both parents were non-drinkers and theirs was an open house in the country. It was the kind of childhood home where they drank tea five or six times a day and everyone was open and honest with each other. ‘I often wonder how I did not see that these traits were missing in the person I married. How did I miss that? If by me going through this though, I prevent my kids falling into addiction, then maybe it will have been worth it.’
We’ve been talking for almost an hour, and Paula tells me she has to do the school run and needs to go. I thank her for her time, openness and honesty.
I came away from our phone call thinking that it was relatively soon after her break-up for her to be selling the rings online and that in my experience most people travel a few years down the road before they take that step.
A few days after our chat, when I noticed the ad had expired, I texted, asking whether she’d had any luck with a buyer. ‘I decided to take the ad down,’ she tells me. ‘I just thought, maybe I should think about this more. I didn’t want total strangers contacting me and then having to explain the backstory. I’m just not ready to face all that right now.’
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