Alcoholic wife

Dear Dr. P,

Hi, I have been married to a Korean woman for about two years. I am convinced that she is an alcoholic and it is ruining our marriage. It seems that no amount of anger, arguing, cajoling, reasoning, threatening, or anything else I can think of can persuade her to stop drinking — or at least, drink more moderately and less frequently.

She refuses to even consider the possibility that, whatever other problems we may have in our marriage, the root cause is her drinking. She justifies her drinking by saying that if I were a more attentive husband she would stop. (Now, I will admit that I may not be the most attentive of husbands.)

When she is drunk, she makes the most ridiculous accusations that I am seeing or lusting after other women, and constantly dredges up issues from my life before I even met her. When she is sober, she is the most loving and caring of wives, and I have no complaints and truly try to be more loving and attentive. But it doesn’t work, she soon finds a pretext to drink and usually comes home at unacceptably late hours (2 a.m. or later), and becomes quite verbally abusive and successfully finds every one of my buttons there is to push.

I know that you cannot possibly solve this problem in a single e-mail, and I also know that I am probably somewhat to blame for this problem. Were she amicable to counseling, she would probably paint me in a much darker light than I have painted myself. I would really appreciate it if you could at least point me in a direction to resolve this problem. I am not certain how much more I can take this. Thank you for your time.

A husband

Dear husband,

My heart bleeds to hear that you are suffering due to your wife’s drinking habit. As a matter of fact, though it is known that there are more alcoholics among men than women, alcoholic problems in women may sometimes make more serious complications because they should take care of their children.

We call housewives who drink in the kitchen secretly “kitchen drinkers,” and the number is one in ten among housewives in their 30s or 40s. The reasons for their drinking vary from conflicts with the husbands or parents-in-law to depression or occupational stress.

Whatever the reason, drinking alcoholic beverages is a matter of habit, and your wife should have the will or motivation to stop by herself. If she doesn’t have it, there will be no cure for her problem.

First, I would like to recommend her to attend the A.A (Alcoholics Anonymous), meeting at the USO on Yongsan Army Base (www.aainkorea.org) if she can communicate in English. Of course you must not stop giving her the love and affection that she really wants.

Best of luck to both of you,

Dr. P

Hello, Dr. P,

The topic of bullying last week was very interesting.

I agree with your opinion but not with everything. You said “communication is the key in bullying,” but I don’t think that is true. When I was a high school student, our class had a bad habit of “changing a bullying target.” We chose a different bullying target every week. And one week, they made me a target. That experience was awful. I also participated in this practice, but our class wasn’t full of particularly bad students. We had good communication.

I think “Korean bullying” is somewhat different from those in other countries. I also think learning about Korean traditional culture may be a solution. Students will become more gentle people.

Dear sender,

I appreciate your comment for my column.

It is true that the bullying phenomena occur in every human social system, and it may continue at this very moment. Historically one of the most serious examples of bullying was the persecution of Jews by Hitler.

But I think that they share the same roots. If people could grow up with enough love and respect from childhood, they will neither bully others nor be bullied by others. And it will be vice versa if they grow up with disapproval and rejection from their parents.

Korea has an ideal philosophy in the foundation of the country “hong-ik ingan” (devotion to the welfare of mankind). Korean society has had a good traditional culture of having careful concern for and giving affection to neighbors. In that sense, your opinion to teach Korean traditional culture could be a good suggestion.

Please give me continued interest for my column.

Thank you.

Dr. Park Jin-seng is a psychiatrist who runs a clinic for foreigners in Seoul and operates personal therapist forums on www.lifeinkorea.com. Please submit questions to him, either in English or Korean, to mdoctor@korea.com or call the hotline at 02-563-0678. Those who have their questions selected will be presented with a copy of his book “Finding Yourself within Love” (Korean e-Book).