If you or your spouse are curious about getting sober or curious about the dynamics of partnership and life without alcohol, this episode offers insights and reflections to the enduring strength of partnership. Join me on a transformative journey as I share the story of how my husband and I recalibrated our lives after deciding to quit drinking together, from navigating social settings without alcohol to rediscovering shared activities. This episode delves into the challenges and triumphs of our sobriety adventure. Discover how we revamped our communication, explored non-alcoholic alternatives and redesigned our lifestyle, ultimately finding a deeper connection and appreciation for each other. Welcome to the no Hesitations podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators. I am your host, kristen Marvin, with Solutions by Kristen. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant leaders to help them overcome burnout, increase retention, reignite their passion and drive successful businesses. I also work directly with restaurant leaders through one-on-one coaching and group workshops to help them identify their blind spots, build their confidence and overcome challenges in their business. If you're curious about learning more, visit my website at ChristinMarvin. com/ Contact to book a 15-minute goal-planning session. This podcast is sponsored by Schedulefly. Schedulefly provides a simple, web-based and app-based restaurant employee scheduling software backed by legendary customer service. If you are using pen paper, excel or fancy scheduling software with tons of bells and whistles that you don't use, schedulefly is perfect for your business. When I was a regional manager handling seven locations, schedulefly was our go-to for scheduling. It's, hands down, the easiest platform that I've ever worked with, and their employee scheduling tool is awesome for shooting out mass messages about crucial restaurant updates. Visit Scheduleflycom and mention the no Hesitations podcast to learn more and get 10% off. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Tyler, my husband and I first crossed paths during our college years, both pursuing marketing degrees. We found ourselves collaborating on a project for Concho Itori winery. At the time, I was managing at the Broadmoor, while also studying to become a sommelier and delving into the world of mixology. Tyler, on the other hand, was overseeing a restaurant downtown and handling wine procurement. Our connection blossomed over our shared passion for dining out and the art of pairing food and wine. Post college, our professional paths diverged. I climbed the managerial ladder in the restaurant industry and handed up spending over 15 years selling wine to restaurants.

Throughout, the focal point of our lives remained consistent food and beverage. Our time was often spent with friends at dinner parties, where we would lay out, photograph and document the many, many, many bottles of wine we enjoyed, or we would go out supporting and appreciating Tyler's accounts in the very vibrant culinary scene in Denver. We were always eager to be the first to experience the latest bar or the newest restaurant opening in town, and when we moved to Denver in 2007, the local culinary scene was absolutely exploding, so the entire Denver restaurant market was just a playground for us. We found really our public spaces in our home completely saturated with alcohol A result of accumulated samples and nightly bottles that Tyler would bring home that we would, of course, have to drink before they expired. Being in the wine business, oftentimes he would bring home at least six open bottles of wine per night.

The decision for us to stop drinking marked a significant shift in our lives. We had to start by clearing out every ounce of alcohol in the house, which ended up being about 50, plus cases that he had accumulated over the years. We urged our friends to come over and pick them up and donate them to local restaurants during the pandemic. At that time, with alcohol out of the picture, we realized that we were going to have to relearn how to navigate our entire lifestyle and our shared activities without alcohol Dining out, spending time with friends, golfing, vacationing every single thing that we did with a drink in hand now needed a new approach and a new strategy. I remember one of the hardest things for me was determining when and how we were going to communicate that we had stopped drinking with our friends, because many of them were still in the alcohol industry or the restaurant industry, and we first started strategizing by looking for non-alcoholic options that were available. We would go to liquor stores, we'd look online, we'd look at restaurant menus before we went out to eat.

We were not the type of people that wanted to just drink club soda or water when we went out to a restaurant. We really enjoyed pairing food and beverage together and we didn't want to lose that enjoyment. So we discussed how comfortable we were telling people around us that we were drinking or not drinking and why. And I remember we went to a friend's Christmas party and we're both a little uncomfortable and decided to buy koozies and put them over the non-alcoholic beers that we had brought, so that we didn't have to answer any questions and it just took us a little bit of time to really get comfortable with that verbiage until we really sat down together and said, okay, what's our messaging here? Do we want it to be consistent, do we want it to be clear, and what's going to make us most comfortable in these public settings? Because for us at the time we had discussed quitting drinking for the rest of our lives. Now that didn't necessarily happen. It took us a couple of times to get there, but really getting streamlined on that communication was really important for both of us to feel comfortable going back out into public.

The most substantial adjustment that we had to make really involved filling that void left by the absence of alcohol. We did not realize how much time we spent drinking and we needed to learn how to figure out how to be bored and what to do with that time. Redesigning our lifestyle became absolutely imperative. We had to figure out how to incorporate activities that kept us active, that kept us busy, that helped us pass the time. Those activities included hiking, running and golfing.

Tyler and I clashed a little bit because he has a very energetic nature and I'm an introvert, and so at the end of a long day I like to come home, unwind, start reading a book, watching a TV show and kind of tune out and he is on the go all the time. So we struggled with that a little bit in the beginning and really had to spend some time with the therapist, kind of working through what we wanted this new lifestyle to look like and what we wanted our relationship to look like and how to find new hobbies that we could do separately and together. At the same time, our efforts in restructuring our lives after nearly two decades of shared drinking have really brought us closer together. We now make a conscious effort to walk the dogs together, to explore farmer's markets together, attend events or festivals together in our new town.

It definitely takes time and effort to redefine a lifestyle that was so ingrained with the influence of alcohol, but I would say overall the journey has strengthened our bond, vastly improved our communication and deepened our appreciation for each other. For sure we're just more aware of every single thing that's going on around us now. So we're much more proactive to tackle issues and have those important conversations when they need to come up. And I would say that the most gratifying aspect is that we're creating new experiences now together and we're able to remember them. I think back on all the vacations and the concerts and the times we spent with friends and walking away and waking up the next morning and not remembering those memories fully was sad, and now we get to remember every single thing about the experiences that we share together. So, all in all, for us it's been the most amazing journey, the most difficult thing that we've ever done. I won't speak for Tyler, but I would say that it has completely changed my life and the way that I value all relationships in my life family, friends and has given me the energy and the perspective that I've needed to start my own business, and for that I am eternally grateful.

I hope that you are taking away a couple nuggets of wisdom from this episode. If you want to discuss this any further, please feel free to contact me at ChristinMarvin. com. If you or anyone that you know are in need of resources around mental health or substance abuse, chow is a wonderful resource. They offer meetings on Zoom and in person that anyone can join every single day of the week, in addition to a website full of additional resources for you, and their website is chowco. org. Thank you so much. Be sure to share this podcast with any leaders you know in the restaurant industry that could benefit from listening and be sure to follow me on LinkedIn at Christin-Marvin. Thanks so much. We'll talk to you next week.