partner.guide · for the person at home

You are not the one drinking. You are the one carrying it.

I am James. I went to Delamere in June 2020 and have been sober since. I was the drinker. I know what was happening in the house around me because I lived in it — and because the people who were in it told me, afterwards, what those years were actually like. Some of them ran out of patience before I got there. One of them was the partner I no longer have. This site is written for the people who were carrying it while I was still drinking. It is the resource I wish they had had.

The encyclopedia is free. Forty‑nine pounds, paid once, and you talk to me. I sit with the partner of the drinker — through the bottles you found, the night you slept on the sofa, the morning after, the boundary you cannot quite hold, the question of whether to leave, the question of whether to stay. No subscription. No account. No rehab pays me. None of them get a cut. That is the whole point. Crisis routes are never paywalled.

Forty‑nine pounds, paid once. Continued private access to one person who has been there.

Sober since June 2020. UK residential rehab myself. Five years and counting in the years that followed.
I was the drinker. I have lived inside the house this site is written for. I know what it looked like from the other chair.
Independent. No rehab pays me. No referrals taken. None offered. None coming.
Crisis routes free, always. 999, 116 123, A&E, GP — never behind the paywall, on any of the three sites.

Talk to James now How the site works

Start with what happened last night. Begin privately.

James, 50, Tenerife. Sober since June 2020. The man who put a partner through it. The bot is me with the patience and the honesty I did not have at the time.

The room you are standing in

You are not the one who needs to change. You are the one who needs to be heard.

The recovery industry is built around the drinker. The partner gets a leaflet, a helpline number, a suggestion to try Al‑Anon. What the partner rarely gets is one person who knows the inside of this from both chairs — the drinker's chair and the partner's sofa at midnight.

I am James. Fifty. I do not run a rehab, a fellowship, a coaching business, or a charity. I have no commercial interest in which path you or the drinker takes. I am here because I was the one drinking, and because I know, with absolute clarity now, what that did to the person who was trying to hold the house together while I was in it. This site is for them. For you.

The bot will chat anything you are carrying — what to say, what not to say, whether to stay, whether to leave, how to tell the children, whether to ring the rehab yourself, what to do tonight. I will say plainly when you have come to a door I cannot answer for. What I will not do is pretend I have been in your chair. I have been in the other one. That is enough to be useful.

The maths nobody puts on the page

The maths of staying. The maths of leaving. The maths of carrying it on your own.

The question the partner is always doing, in silence, is the maths. How long can I keep this up. What does it cost me to stay. What does it cost me to go. Nobody puts those numbers on a page because they are not the same for any two people — but they are always there.

The cost of waitingMost partners wait far longer than they should before asking for help for themselves. Not for the drinker — for themselves. The waiting is expensive: sleep, health, friendships, the version of you that existed before this started.
The cost of late-night GooglingThree years of forum threads, contradictory advice, articles written by people with a referral fee. None of it calibrated to your specific person, your specific house, your specific question at eleven on a Tuesday.
The relationshipsThe ledger that does not show up on a bank statement. Marriages. Children who are watching. Parents who are asking. The friendships you stopped having because explaining it is exhausting.
The yearsI lost mine at forty-six to forty-nine. The people around me lost something too. None of us get those back. The question is whether the next ones look different.

The forty-nine pounds is not the question. The question is what you are still carrying alone, and whether there is a faster route through it than the one you are on. There usually is.

You are allowed to want this to be over. Both versions of over.

The thing nobody sells

The best help I could honestly have asked for, when I was in it, was love. Nobody sells that. So this is the next best thing — written for the people who were giving it.

James — Tenerife

How the site works

Everything Google already knows is here, in one place, free. The bot is the bit Google can't do.

The encyclopedia — free

Everything Google already knows, sorted. No referral fees, ever.

For the partnerAl‑Anon, Adfam, NACOA, CRAFT. The evidence on what helps. The evidence on what does not.
FellowshipsAA, SMART, LifeRing, Recovery Dharma, secular routes — plain descriptions, no endorsement.
Medications^*Naltrexone, acamprosate, disulfiram, the Sinclair Method — named, sourced, without judgement.
Rehab in the UKTwenty‑one residential rehabs. What they cost, what they are, who they suit — with bias declared.
The question of leavingWhat the evidence says. What a solicitor is for. What you are allowed to want.

^* Medications are named for awareness, not as recommendations. Talk to your GP.

The bot — one‑time, forty‑nine pounds

What the encyclopedia cannot do is sit with you on a bad Tuesday.

That is the bot. My voice, my bias, my standards. It knows the territory from the inside. It holds context across months. It tells you the truth when you ask it for the truth. It stays available through every quarter of the first year, and every year after.

One‑time fee. Paid once, used for as long as you need it. No subscription. No upsell. No chasing.

Built aroundMy voice, my bias, my standards, the evidence under it all.
Holds contextRemembers who you are across weeks. Picks up where you left off.
Speaks plainlyNo jargon. Plain English. Spanish if you write in Spanish.
Knows its limitsA companion, not a clinician. Crisis routes are never paywalled.
Stays with youAvailable through every quarter of the first year, and after.

No subscription. No account. No login. The unlock lives in your browser. Crisis routes and the full encyclopedia are always free.

If the drinker themselves is asking, the same James is at sober.guide — written for that moment specifically. Same person, same fee, same standards. discharge.guide is for the weeks after rehab. relapse.guide is for a slip.

What sobriety looks like — for the partner, when it lands

Most rehab marketing stops at day twenty‑eight. What comes next is the part that matters to you.

Month 1 – 3

Fragile. Bright in patches. The drinker is trying; you are watching them try with everything you have. Sleep is strange for both of you. Trust is not back yet. Do not pretend it is. The work for you right now is not believing every good morning is permanent.

Month 4 – 12

The novelty of their sobriety wears off and you still have a year of your own grief and exhaustion to get through. This is the window where partners often hit the wall. The crisis has passed for the household but not for you. Your nervous system is still on alert. That is real and it needs its own care.

Year 1 – 3

The relationship has to be rebuilt, not resumed. The version of it that existed around the drinking is gone. What comes next is something new, and building something new is hard even when both people want it. Some partnerships survive this and are better. Some do not. Both outcomes are honest.

Year 3 onwards

The long game. Other people's drinking stops being a threat. A dinner party is just a dinner party again. The damage done in the drinking years surfaces in different forms — financial, professional, in the children — and has to be faced straight. The bot is here for that too.

I will write each of these honestly, including the parts that are not flattering to me.

What this site will not do

I will not tell you to wait.

No pop-up. No chat widget. No sticky bar.
No telling you the drinker will change when they are ready, as if that is useful to you tonight.
No pretending one path — stay, leave, rehab, no rehab — works for every household.
No pretending Al‑Anon is the only route for a partner, or that it is not worth trying.
No pretending that covering for them is love. It is not always. Sometimes it is just the least bad option available tonight.
No pretending you are not allowed to be angry.

You are not a therapist. You are not a sponsor. You are a person in a hard house.

If a thing helps the partner and the evidence is honest, it goes on. If a thing is faith‑based and helps people, it goes on, labelled as such, so you can choose with your eyes open.

Who this site is for

The partner. Whether you have been here one year or fifteen. Whether you are staying or going.

The wife who found the bottles
The husband who slept on the sofa
The partner who gave an ultimatum
The civil partner asking whether to leave
The spouse who has been here before
The partner of someone in rehab right now
The one explaining it to the children
The person who no longer recognises themselves

Whether the question today is should I stay, how do I help without enabling, do I push for rehab or wait, how do I talk to the children, or I have already left and I still need to talk about it — there is a door here for it. The encyclopedia does not care where you are starting. The bot does not either.

If the drinker in your life is asking for help themselves, the same James is at sober.guide. That is the right door for them. This one is yours.

The drinker themselves

Same James. Three other doors. One for each moment.

This site is for the partner. But if the person drinking is also asking, or if the situation has moved on, the same bot lives at three other addresses.

sober.guide

If the drinker is asking. Should I stop, how do I stop, do I need rehab, which one. The moment before. Same James, same fee, same standards.

relapse.guide

If they just slipped. The night of a relapse — plain, useful, no lecture. Also for the partner sitting next to that night.

discharge.guide

If they just left rehab. The discharge cliff. The first ninety days. Written for the person who came home — and for the partner waiting when they did.

Forty‑nine pounds, paid once, gets you James on this site. The same fee on each of the four. Same person. Same standards. Independent of every rehab, in both directions. No referral fees, ever.

Start here

Pick the door that fits today.

If today is dangerous.

Your safety or the children's safety: 999 now. Leave the house if you can. Take the children.

Domestic violence support: National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247 — free, twenty‑four hours, confidential.

Samaritans: 116 123 — free, twenty‑four hours, they pick up. For you as well as for them.

The bot will surface these plainly when needed and stop being clever. Crisis routing is never paywalled.

“I know what it looked like from the drinker's chair. I know what I put the house through. I built this for the person who was in the other chair while I was still in mine.” — James, Tenerife, April 2026