Intimacy poisons have a huge impact on relationships. They
can destroy trust and with it, hope. They can create secrets and they can lock
couples into short term strain reduction rather than long term growth. The intimacy
poison that I’m going to focus on is addiction; the addiction to alcohol.
I met a guy about 5 months ago, in a bar (which should tell
you something right away), and we started talking. We had fun times when he was
sober and we shared secrets. However, he would constantly put ‘going out,’ and
drinking before our quality time together. We would make plans to see each
other over the weekend, but when the weekend came he insisted that he wanted to
go to the bar with the guys instead. So usually, our weekends consisted of
hanging out at the bar together/see each other from a distance. It was not a
good relationship at all. I would consider him to have alcohol dependence,
which means that he needs an extreme amount of alcohol to get the drunk feeling.
He would tell me that his drinking issues give him problems
with his family; as his parents lecture him about it being unhealthy, and a
complete waste of money. Unfortunately, drinking was a daily routine for this
guy, and nothing I said would change it. He would sometimes tell me, “I’m so
unhappy in my life, I don’t know what to do so all I do is drink. I know I drink
too much but I can’t help it.” The drinking became too much for him one night,
as he went to bed with another girl. He was passed out in bed with her when I found
them. Neither of them knew I seen them, and the next morning he pretended he didn’t
do anything wrong. This is where the secrets came into play. It completely destroyed
trust, and the relationship went to potentially long term, to short term just
like that.
In a way, we were doing an “intoxication dance.” I would
over function and try to fix the relationship, and he would under function and
be irresponsible with the choices he made. That is how an intimacy poison
ruined my ‘relationship.’
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