In this podcast Neil and Robin respond to a woman on a quest to get healthy and have a stronger voice with her husband. She is struggling with how her husband fights with their college age son and wants the pattern to change.

Franchesca from Minneapolis, Minnesota writes:

I have a question about dealing with an old pattern in my family.

My son was just visiting home from college and he and his Dad got into an old familiar fight about our son’s habit of not putting things back where they belong. I left the area where they were fighting and grabbed a beer to calm myself down in another room. 

Later, my husband came in still steaming about our son’s behavior and his unwillingness to take responsibility for his behavior. I told him that I thought the yelling was way over the top and that neither he nor our son were listening to each other. They kept repeating themselves and accusing each other of not listening. This just angered my husband even further and he accused me of siding with our son.

I realized that the fighting and my drinking are linked and that I’ve used alcohol to deal with family stress. I’ve been getting healthier this past year. I’m in therapy, cut back on my drinking, lost weight, and have been finding my voice with my husband and feeling much better. In this case, I can’t get him to listen, and I’m upset with myself for using alcohol to cope. I know I can only change me, but do you have any suggestions for how to deal with this unhealthy pattern?

Neil and Robin explore the many reasons things need to change and they offer this growing wife and mother a way to get her voice heard.