I appreciate your story Focuss - I'm just not sure how it relates to me?????? I know that anyone who has had to go through living with an addict is scared by and from it. However, I don't think I'm even close to that here - other than my own personal history with opioid addiction - now in remission for coming up on 9 years.
Apologies for not explaining better, I'm a bit zonked...working two jobs in two different cities this month, so I'm pretty tired.
I think you mentioned some red flags, and comments that other people had made, and also talked about how easy things seemed to be? Did I remember that rightly?
That resonated with me. Of course, when I met XH, he didn't have 'alcoholic' tattooed across his forehead, and neither of us were thinking about M at the time. We just seemed to have such a good time together, and I was flattered by his attention. Before long, all his friends knew about me, and welcomed me into the fold like and old friend. I felt very accepted and very much at ease with all of his friends. I was super easy going, very go with the flow and just seeing how things were unfolding and enjoying myself.
At this point we were just going out (a lot) and having a good time. He seemed incredibly socially at ease with everyone he met, straight off, and would be the life and soul of the party whenever we went out. All of my friends were charmed by his extrovert nature. Then before long, two years had passed like this. I met his parents, the rest of his family, he met mine, all that kind of stuff. We never fell out over anything, argued or disagreed.
We were both young, so I thought that his drinking was because of this - a hangover from student days if you like. And I thought that he would somehow, at some point 'grow out of it' and become more of an adult...more responsible. Of course, he never really did. And it got to the point where other people pointed out how much he drank and how irresponsible he was/could be. This was years later though.
And the never disagreeing, or arguing, or falling out over things was also to do with being conflict avoidant (both of us) as much as being live and let live and easy going. Neither of us ever really learnt to talk about our feelings. Well, I mentioned how his drinking would affect me, but he just carried on as before and we never really learnt to talk about these things in an adult, constructive way (even if it meant agreeing to disagree). So you could say he was very selfish in that way, refusing to even consider another point of view than his own. But that's the benefit of hindsight.
