"wife" in the Big Book

Though my drinking was not yet continuous, it disturbed my wife.

Living modestly, my wife and I saved $1,000.

I failed to persuade my broker friends to send me out looking over factories and managements, but my wife and I decided to go anyway.

There had been no real infidelity, for loyalty to my wife, helped at times by extreme drunkenness, kept me out of those scrapes.

We went at once to the country, my wife to applaud while I started out to overtake Walter Hagen.

We went to live with my wife’s parents.

My wife began to work in a department store, coming home exhausted to find me drunk.

Nevertheless, I still thought I could control the situation, and there were periods of sobriety which renewed my wife’s hope.

The house was taken over by the mortgage holder, my mother-in-law died, my wife and father-in-law became ill.

Before then, I had written lots of sweet promises, but my wife happily observed that this time I meant business.

Sometimes I stole from my wife’s slender purse when the morning terror and madness were on me.

There were flights from city to country and back, as my wife and I sought escape.

My weary and despairing wife was informed that it would all end with heart failure during delirium tremens, or I would develop a wet brain, perhaps within a year.

I thought of my poor wife.

My wife was at work.

My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems.

This man has a charming wife and family.

Finally, he can no longer work, his wife gets a divorce and he is held up to ridicule.

I have a shadowy recollection of being in an airplane bound for New York, and of finding a friendly taxicab driver at the landing field instead of my wife.

We found it very desirable to take this spiritual step with an understanding person, such as our wife, best friend, or spiritual adviser.

We were usually as definite as this example: I’m resentful at: Mr. Brown Mrs. Jones My employer My wife The Cause Affects my: His attention to my Sex relations. wife.

Self-esteem (fear) Told my wife of my Sex relations. mistress.

Notice that the word “fear’’ is bracketed alongside the difficulties with Mr. Brown, Mrs. Jones, the employer, and the wife.

Because of resentment and drinking, he had not paid alimony to his first wife.

We suggested he write his first wife admitting his faults and asking forgiveness.

After consulting with his wife and partner he came to the conclusion that it was better to take those risks than to stand before his Creator guilty of such ruinous slander.

After a few years with an alcoholic, a wife gets worn out, resentful and uncommunicative.

If we are sure our wife does not know, should we tell her?

It is as good for the wife as for the husband.

But he is yet a long way from making good to the wife or parents whom for years he has so shockingly treated.

To his wife, he remarked, “Don’t see anything the matter here, Ma.

If there is any indication that he wants to stop, have a good talk with the person most interested in him— usually his wife.

He should not be pushed or prodded by you, his wife, or his friends.

Your wife may sometimes say she is neglected.

Some of us have taken very hard knocks to learn this truth: Job or no job—wife or no wife—we simply do not stop drinking so long as we place dependence upon other people ahead of dependence on God.

The wife should fully understand his new way of life.

In some cases the wife will never come back for one reason or another.

The story of how you and your wife settled your difficulties is worth any amount of criticism.

But for every man who drinks others are involved— the wife who trembles in fear of the next debauch; the mother and father who see their son wasting away.

Meanwhile you might try to help the wife of another serious drinker.

It is probably true that you and your husband have been living too much alone, for drinking many times isolates the wife of an alcoholic.

O ur women folk have suggested certain attitudes a wife may take with the husband who is recovering.

The alcoholic, his wife, his children, his “in-laws,” each one is likely to have fixed ideas about the family’s attitude towards himself or herself.

A doctor said to us, “Years of living with an alcoholic is almost sure to make any wife or child neurotic.

For example, we know of situations in which the alcoholic or his wife have had love affairs.

Nothing will help the man who is off on a spiritual tangent so much as the wife who adopts a sane spiritual program, making a better practical use of it.

Seeing this, and meaning to be helpful, his wife commenced to admonish him about it.

His wife is one of those persons who really feels there is something rather sinful about these commodities, so she nagged, and her intolerance finally threw him into a fit of anger.

Though he is now a most effective member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he still smokes and drinks coffee, but neither his wife nor anyone else stands in judgment.

When his wife next calls saying he is sick, you might jump to the conclusion he is drunk.

It was the usual situation: home in jeopardy, wife ill, children distracted, bills in arrears and standing damaged.

His wife came, scarcely daring to be hopeful, though she thought she saw something different about her husband already.

One man and his wife placed their large home at the disposal of this strangely assorted crowd.

Many a distracted wife has visited this house to find loving and understanding companionship among women who knew her problem, to hear from the lips of their husbands what had happened to them, to be advised how her own wayward mate might be hospitalized and approached when next he stumbled.

wife would leave elated by the thought of what they could now do for some stricken acquaintance and his family.