This.
My gf may have a drinking problem. So may I. That’s what is so fine about us being together. It’s Tuesday night and I wanna get shitfaced. Who better to live with than someone who will happily join me?
At some point, altering one’s behavior to mollify demands from the alcoholic in one’s life starts to become co-dependency. Being in a relationship should not mean that all of her problems become your problems to the same extent.
It seems to me that asking that you not bring alcohol into her home is one thing, for instance, but expecting you not to drink in public with others begins to look controlling.
The OP doesn’t say Lynn asked me not to drink in public.
Then what was it that upset her?
The OP says that Lynn was upset by my drinking in public, moderate though it was, and thought it was a bad idea. That is not the same as saying that she asked (or told) me not to drink at all. Saying “I worry when you drink alcohol because I think it is generally dangerous” is not the same as saying, “Don’t drink when you’re out.”
I think it’s totally unreasonable for her to object to your going out once a month with friends where social drinking takes place.
If it were a matter of drinking when she’s around, or bringing alcohol into her home, then she would have a right to an opinion about it, and if you could not accommodate that, then it would be time to split up.
I agree with this. Even in the first situation, I’d be pissed if the person watched me drink for months before letting me know what was up. Plus, the OP’s girlfriend getting upset if he drank at all, not just with her, is an issue.
This is probably easy for me to say from the safe sidelines of being married, but life seems way too short to even bother trying to date someone who has an issue with anything, whether alcohol or something else, as huge and life-altering as the person described in the OP. Even if they were perfect otherwise, it would be a hard sell.
I like my beer and wine (almost equally and for different reasons). Wine, especially, has become a hobby for me (going out to all the nearby wineries a few times a year and trying the new releases and then buying the good ones, picking wines to share with friends).
If I my husband became an alcoholic? Tough to imagine. I could probably be convinced not to drink in front of him but when I am not in his presence? Sorry, I am still going to go to a pub with the boys sometimes.
(However, I wouldn’t get involved with a recovering alcoholic in the first place. If they kept it secret for a while, I would probably drop them like a bad habit when they told me for lying.)
If a hypothetical SO was a recovering alcoholic and asked me not to drink around him, I wouldn’t, and it would be no problem for me.
I wouldn’t refrain from drinking ever, if I felt like it, but I hardly ever feel like it.
I never really though about it but I wonder if this was ever an issue for my parents. My mom stopped drinking when I was 15, thus becoming a recovering alcoholic. My dad never stopped drinking. He was definitely not an alcoholic but was (IS) a huge wine enthusiast.
I suspect he would’ve stopped drinking around my mom if she had asked him to because he is the nicest man in the world. My best guess is that she decided to learn to give up drinking while still being around drinking because wine was such a huge part of my dad’s life (even today in his retirement he works at a winery, for free!).
It’s not the same words but it’s the same effect. She was trying to control your behaviour, in this case through her concern.
I agree that when in a relationship with an alcoholic if it’s a problem for them you don’t drink around them, and I would probably even agree that if they had issues with it, not returning home drunk would also be a reasonable request. However you’re talking about a level of drinking that is so benign that if you were willing to lie to her she’d never discover. I think that no matter what your personal issues with alcohol you need to consider the other person in your relationship as well. But that’s considering this issue in a vacuum.
In some relationships that balance could be achieved in other ways, I could give up alcohol 100% and my alcoholic spouse could start or stop something that was important to me. I don’t think there are any black and white rules, it comes down to the people involved and what works for them.
I’d be pretty unlikely to become involved with an alcoholic, and mostly because I don’t want to give up drinking, myself. Plenty of fish in the sea, and I’d rather be with one that doesn’t have addiction issues.
But if my husband decided he needed to stop drinking, I’d also cut way back. Not likely, though.
Because sometimes you can meet someone who’s so neat otherwise that being with them beats participating in a given pastime? A good relationship-- friendship or romance-- beats any pastime, IMO.
Anyway.
I was with Bekki a decade or so ago. She had been a teenage alcoholic (amongst other substance abuses), was in recovery when I met her. Without telling her, I stopped drinking alcohol. I felt hypocritical when I encouraged her teetotaling while having a drink myself… so I stopped. Eventually, she asked why I didn’t get a drink at some dinner, and I told her why.
It was never about not drinking around her in fear of luring her to the dark side, and she was never offended by those drinking around her. But there was that flash of increased solidarity, that I was serious about her, and willing to back her up with actions, not just words.
I disagree that saying “I think alcohol is dangerous” is equivalent to saying “I don’t want you to drink.” But that doesn’t matter, because the thread is not (or rather was not intended by me to be) about the alcoholic’s behavior anyway. It’s about the partner or spouse’s reaction. I’ll rephrase the question:
Knowing that your moderate drinking distressed your romnntic partner, a recovering alcoholic, would you continue to partake anyway?
It’s drinking, not bowling. Drinking alcohol is a pretty embedded part of much of my socializing, and I’m good with that, and I’d want a romantic partner who enhances my life, not detracts from it by curbing my social life. That’s not a value judgement about either drinking or not drinking, it’s just an incompatibility.
The only way I’m going bowling is if I can drink in between/during throwing the ball.
I would stop drinking completely to support a recovering alcoholic partner. I love alcohol but I drink it rarely… maybe 2-4 times in the last year. (I drink it rarely because I love it, if you catch my drift.)
That said, I probably wouldn’t get to that point in a relationship with an alcoholic. Because of alcoholism in my family, heavy drinking is kind of a dealbreaker.
Hmm. Do you mean to say that you’d not get in a relationship with a recovering (or perhaps recovered) alcoholic? Someone who had had issues in the past but had it under control before you met?
If someone had their issues under control for a significant amount of time, it probably would not be a dealbreaker, but I would be very cautious and probably reluctant to commit. My Dad is an alcoholic. Like skid-row, no driver’s license, absolutely refuses to change alcoholic. He told me when I was about seven that nothing would ever keep him from drinking so I might as well get used to it. I currently make a habit of calling him only on weekdays because he’s not as drunk then. I’m not traumatized or anything, but it certainly makes me think twice about becoming involved with someone who has a drinking problem. It’s tiresome to have to be the responsible one all the time.
More to the point though, I don’t see myself becoming involved with an alcoholic because I don’t drink much, my friends don’t drink much, I don’t go to bars or hang out at places where drinking is common… so we probably just wouldn’t cross paths anyway.
How would that have preventend you from getting involved with someone like Lynn – someone strongly opposed to drinking and given to avoiding places focused on alcohol?
Depends.
If this was about an intolerance for the behavior of other people, then the relationship would end…i.e. alcohol is universally evil. Someone who isn’t getting to “I have a problem with alcohol” and is still blaming the alcohol still has a problem. No.
If this is about someone who is really important to me and takes responsibility by saying “its really hard for ME to know you’ve been indulging because it makes it look so easy to be a casual drinker and it isn’t for me.” Sure