– How do I love, with all my heart, my husband who is an alcoholic?

– “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Mt. 19:26). It is very hard to love a husband who tortures you, your children, relatives, and all people around you by his drinking. You can do it fully only with the help of the Grace of God.   In our faith, this reflects in compelling yourself to patience. Of course, it does not mean we should stimulate the person to further drinking by our patience. We should cry and persuade, and speak strictly sometimes… but keep trying. There are extreme cases when even the Church blesses to leave such people. There are options stipulated by the Social Concept of the Church, adopted in 2000, where even the Church gives its blessing for leaving a drinking husband, if he is a threat to his wife’s and children’s lives, and if he has degraded so much that he becomes socially dangerous.  However, these are extreme cases. 

Archpriest Sergiy Baranov