It felt really good. Like It another door had closed to the past. It felt like part of my journey. I wasn't expecting any of that.
So tonight is interesting. I feel slightly triggered.
The wonderful man I'm with lives about 2 hours drive away from me, in a small village.
He works incredibly hard during the week (a very physically demanding job, getting up very early). His work is quite a big drive away from where we both live, at the other point of a triangle, if you like, in the town where his grown up children live. He pretty much always comes up to where I live to see me at the weekends. Very occasionally he'll go on a hill climbing day or weekend, usually by himself. They have a half day on Friday as his job is so physically demanding, so he drives up after that. I go and stay with him during the week sometimes, and take myself some work to do.
Anyway, that's by the by.
Alcohol. I've become very sensitive to how much of it people drink after everything that happened in my M.
It's been a year and three months we've been together. He's only been slightly tipsy a couple of times during that time (one of them was new year). He really doesn't drink much at all, and usually will just have one beer, or one glass of wine. He simply chooses to stop, and would pretty much all of the time choose to stop rather than feel terrible the morning after, or choose to stop if he has something to do the morning after.
He's also far too interested in being very physically healthy to 'be a drinker'. And these are things that I love very much about him. Before we met, and when I was imagining the kind of man I'd like to be with, three of the things I decided I found attractive in a man would be someone that doesn't drink and someone who is healthy and makes healthy choices.
This was something that my XH just couldn't do. My XH had no self control **at all** as far as alcohol was concerned. He could never choose to stop, its like he had absolutely no self control over alcohol, even if he was already very drunk to the point where he couldn't stand up and couldn't speak. He could never go out for just one or two drinks and come home at midnight. It would turn into an all night thing, going on until he was the last person there or there was nothing more to drink, which would generally be 5.00am, 6.00am or later. This was even when he had important stuff to do, like go to work. After he left, one of his work colleagues commented to me 'we all know how much he drinks'. Two thirds of the time, he wouldn't even text me to let me know where he was, so I would wake up at 3.00 or 4.00am, in bed, alone, with no message from him. My insomnia got really, really bad during this time, and it was bad for years, exacerbated I believe by this.
This wasn't really even just one night a week, but it could be 4 nights a week for a while. Then he would just stop and not drink anything at all for a couple of weeks, or a month. Then he would start again. I wouldn't ever know when this would be, or what would cause it. He would just start drinking and going out all the time again.
The wonderful man I'm with now is staying with me this weekend. He has gone out to meet up with one of his friends. They've gone to a gig together. It's not really something he does much of, or has done. It's rare he'll go out for a night out. I'm very happy that he's out seeing his friend.
What am I up to? I felt pretty tired early evening, and it's very cold outside. So I wrapped myself up in some blankets and read for a bit. Then I fell asleep for a couple of hours, which is something that I love doing as well and don't get the chance of doing very often.
Perhaps I should focus on how much better I feel my life is now? That I can see, and truly understand, how out of kilter things were in my M? That I wouldn't be prepared to put with with many of the things that just seemed normal in my M?
I can't help feeling a little triggered and a little scared. It's about alcohol consumption. But how much someone else chooses to consume, and how they treat me when they're at that point, is their choice. I can only decide what is and what isn't unacceptable to me.
Is this about letting someone be who they are, and make the choices they want to make themselves, without trying to interfere and control and make the choices for them? There were plenty times in my M when I tried to make those choices, over alcohol, for my XH. Including taking bottles of alcohol to bed with me, so he couldn't drink them. We also didn't really have alcohol in the house, as I knew that it wouldn't last long.
After he left, it took me a good while to have anything more than the occasional bottle of wine in my house. And even then it seemed like a magical revelation that I could drink a glass and the remainder would still be there, after a couple of days.
The wonderful man I'm with has bought me spirits, and shared the bottle between our houses, so we have the option of having the occasional drink at my house or at his house. I told him I felt odd and nervous about having spirits in the house. We talked about it. It was something that he wanted to do, and it's been absolutely fine. I've almost even forgotten about it, it's become so normal. Just occasionally I'll look up to my wine rack, and see it full, and just feel happy that that is the new normal now.
Is this about trusting myself? About trusting my boundaries? I have to admit, they feel a little 'hair trigger' over the alcohol thing...
