Women with AUD experience different challenges than men with AUD in general and particularly in terms of intimate relationships. Data from longitudinal research suggest that husbands’ drinking patterns prior to marriage strongly predict women’s drinking in the first year of marriage, and male partners of women with AUD are more likely than wives of men with AUD to have AUD as well.47 Women with AUD see relationship problems and the male partner’s drinking as important antecedents to relapse, and they use alcohol to cope with relationship problems. Male partners of women with AUD tend to avoid confrontation as a way to cope with the woman’s drinking.48
