ABSTRACT
A concerned wife watches her husband drink his fourth martini and shortly fall asleep in front of the television-his nightly routine. An other wife is notified by the police that her husband is in jail-arrested again for drunken driving. A third woman has observed that her hus band's drinking is increasing, and that he has also become unusually touchy and quarrelsome. Each of these women wonders if her spouse's drinking is getting out of control. None of them is able to decide the issue immediately. Some continue a watchful waiting for clues; others let the matter slip from their consciousness only to have their concern re kindled by a new episode of excessive drinking or public drunkenness, which always raises unpleasant issues: What kind of a person is her husband that he could act like this? What should she do about it? What does it all mean to their marriage?
