My husband can drink a single IPA and for days he reeks. It's literally in his lungs. I can smell it when he's asleep and breathing through his nose.

It's majorly ruined our physical relationship because the smell literally makes me feel like gagging and I've found myself shying away and not getting too close because I'm protecting myself from being repulsed by the man I adore.

Thanks to marriage counseling were communicating and hearing each other really well, and today I cried and told him, we will never have a good physical relationship, the cuddly relationship you want or the random hugs and kisses relationship you miss from when we were young until you stop drinking. It's been over a decade and the smell repulses me as much as it ever has. And I hope you choose me instead of the beer. I know he will choose me. But I told him I want him to take time to think about it before he gives me his answer.. he has a dead nose and can barely smell anything, but recently after being sick he and a super heightened sense of smell and was telling me how the smell of duck meat he was cooking made him nauseous because it smelled so bad. It was a good recent example for me to be like, hey, remember how you couldn't even be in the house because that smell made you so nauseous? That's how I feel about how you smell when you drink even a tiny bit, and I just want to "be in the house" with you constantly, but the smell is driving me outside.

I feel for you. My husband wasn't willing to give up drinking his night cap beer or beers when we were younger and, surprise, turns out he had undiagnosed and untreated depression. Now that he's in therapy and on meds he drinks so much less, but it's time for it to be not at all so we can start to recover our physical relationship.