The Next Round: What happens after you change your drinking?

Live Valentine’s Day special on drinking and relationships

March 3, 2021
Dru Jaeger

On Valentine’s Day, Club Soda’s Dru and Laura were live on Facebook and YouTube for a community Q&A, talking about drinking and relationships. In this video, they discuss how changing your drinking can change your relationship with your friends and your partner, for better or worse.

Drinking and relationships

Valentine’s Day is a great chance to talk about relationships, and how they can support us and hold us back as we are changing our drinking. In this video, Dru and Laura take a deep dive into the subject of drinking and relationships, and share their experiences about:

how your friendships change as you change your drinking (3:47)
how changing your drinking can affect your relationship with your partner (9:05)
how drinking together can turn from a shared passion into a shared problem (10:09)
you can spend time together without drinking together (12:45)
how women influence men’s drinking in heterosexual relationships (14:18)
changing your drinking even if your partner doesn’t get it (17:26)
remembering that your partner can’t read your mind (19:04)

As ever, there were lots of questions from the Club Soda community about other issues that arise when you change your drinking. In the second half of the video, Dru and Laura also talk about:

ambivalence and self-doubt about drinking after taking a break (20:20)
the skills you need to moderate your drinking compared to being alcohol-free (26:05)
how Club Soda’s courses can help (28:25)
how to ask others to get the support you need (29:55)
why some people might react badly to changes you’re making (34:00)

Your questions answered

Ask Dru Live is on the second Sunday of the month. Join us on Facebook or YouTube to get your questions answered about every aspect of changing your drinking.