SOME guys get a raw deal. Like when their partner hits the booze - and the kids with invective; flips her personality; threatens him with a knife; crashes the car; loses her licence - and her job - and ends, up in the slammer for violence while resisting arrest.
All that happened to a Dublin businessman Man Alive talked to last week and who learned the hard way that an alcoholic isn't always just some down and out on the park bench. So ubiquitous has the image become of the violent, male alcoholic victimising a defenceless wife that it's easy to forget that occasionally, and sadly increasingly, the boot can sometimes be on the other foot.
Even much of the literature on alcoholism seems to presume that the long suffering partner will invariably be a woman.
Utter bewilderment was the reaction of the man we spoke to when his "good looking, intelligent, beautifully groomed" wife started a descent which led her into sexual infidelity and him into a six month depression.
"It was like living on a knife, edge. You never knew when it would happen but once it started I was unable to stop it and so was she."
Like most men he avoided tile family support group, Al Anon, which has been described as almost exclusively a women's club. He worked through it himself, with a doctor and friends: "I'd go and be with them and say nothing or pour it all out. I didn't cry. Probably it would have helped if I'd been able to."
When his wife ultimately sought counselling at St Patrick's Hospital in Dublin, he overcame a reticence he shares with many men and got involved in the sessions too. "I'd gone through eight years of the relationship and I didn't want it to end."
Because he had a senior management job and was more master of his own time than most he'd been able to see that home life ran relatively smoothly, much of his effort going into ensuring that the children didn't see their mother seriously drunk. "They've only seen that twice. Our daughter remembers the Christmas when she was abusive and violent. She knows mother gets sick if she drinks."
Men tend to rant and rave when dealing with an alcoholic partner, according to Dr Bryony Crowe, a Consultant Psychiatrist and Director of the Alcohol Programme in Wexford. But "women need to hear that" he wants to help, not that he disapproves.
Another trap men fall into is unwittingly facilitate the drinking: "If the housekeeping isn't being done, he does it. If she crashes the car, he fixes it."
"It can be blow to a man's pride that he couldn't control his wife," says Frances Nugent of the Women for Sobriety group based at St Patrick's Hospital. Men, she says, tend to use emotional battering and blackmail - the "you're a disgrace" attitude - which only makes women feel they are suffering constant criticism and scrutiny.
Dr Crowe says men in this situation can feel they have failed as husbands. But they need to be reasonable and non judgmental. They need to discuss and negotiate practical issues: looking after the children; inappropriate spending; whether the car should be available to her if she drinks and drives. "A decision cannot be made unilaterally," she stresses.
Men may not relish the idea but somewhere along the line the underlying causes of the woman's drinking must be looked at. "The husband needs to look at his own behaviour. If he is blamed for things, it's unhelpful to be defensive. He needs to bite his lip and listen. Just because she's saying it doesn't make it true and it doesn't make it false either."
Some men of course simply take another route altogether. Sheila: Lyons, counsellor and family therapist at the Stanhope Alcoholism Treatment centre in Dublin talks of those who simply "high, tail it out of there". Possibly because men still tend to be more economically solvent than most women, they are less likely than women to hang around an alcoholic partner for years waiting for them to get sober.
EVEN when the drinking stops the problems are far from over. Adjusting to sobriety can be hard work too. Sheila Lyons says people can find it difficult to cope with an intimate relationship post alcohol. "Booze is a shield against the need to get intimate. Remove alcohol and you can find two strangers. They'll need to get to know one another, negotiate how they're going to resolve problems and talk about their hopes and dreams."
Frances Nugent agrees: "While the woman has been drinking, the man has had control of everything: housekeeping, bills, maintenance, collecting children. Suddenly mum is back again and the man can find it difficult to cope. The kids consult with her, not him.
"And he has a problem with trust. Like the sun in the Irish sky he wonders how long will it last."