Hi, This is my first time posting, I have been with my alcoholic partner for almost two years and have struggled through some difficult situations on my own but now I need help. I don't feel like I can speak to any friends or family about problems with my partner because they do not understand the added complexities of life with an alcoholic. Some background - my partner and I met online, clicked instantly and began seeing each other regularly. It was supposed to be casual but turned into much more. He started his recovery 4 years before I met him and had relapsed about 3 times. I believe he'd been sober for around a year when I met him. He had also recently started antidepressants so was feeling better than he had in a very long time. He had just found some good work and was flush with cash and had new workmates he enjoyed spending time with. Everything was going great for him, then he met me and thought he had hit the jackpot. Four months into our relationship he lost his job, this was a catalyst to begin drinking and smoking again. He told me he was drinking a few weeks after he started. I was concerned but had no real comprehension of what this meant for him and us. A few weeks after that he broke up with me. He said his feelings had changed and he had to 'move forward alone'. I was devastated. We were in love with each other and the break up did not make any sense in light of what he was saying to me leading up to it - he'd never met anyone like me, he was so happy, he was so lucky etc. It made me question everything he had said up until that point. About a month later he contacted me and we began seeing each other again for casual sex. It was very stupid on my part as I was still in love with him and wanted more. I was setting myself up for a lot of pain. Another month later he realised he wanted me back as his girlfriend. I told him he needed to get his s*** together if he wanted that. After an epic bender I stayed with him while he detoxed as he was adamant he wanted to stop drinking but he needed help. During this detox I had his wallet, keys and phone so he could not leave the house and get booze. I knew I was not going to get much honesty out of him at this point so I went through his phone to find out exactly what had happened over the last two months. He had a met a girl at a wedding while we were still together. He was trying to meet up with her for sex but she kept making excuses. They were sending each other sexually explicit messages - what they wanted to do to each other, naked photos etc. He told her he was interested in polygamy, she knew he had a girlfriend and that we did not have an open relationship as far as I was concerned. He never slept with her but told a mate that he slept with another random girl the week before he broke up with me. The break up now made sense. He wanted to sleep with other people and our relationship was getting in the way of that. I was hurt but not really surprised and I convinced myself it was just because of the alcohol. He successfully got through the detox and we began our relationship again. He went to great lengths to show me he was serious about sobriety and our relationship. He has not cheated since or even contacted another girl inappropriately. BUT, he still romantices partying. He would like to eventually be in a place where he can have one huge drinking session a year. Completely write himself off and then stop. He knows he can't just have a couple of drinks on a Saturday night but he thinks he can do a once a year bender. We are now engaged and concerns about this desire to party are plaguing me. I don't believe he can have a huge session and then stop cold turkey. I fear the fallout if he tries. He also thinks he can do other drugs safely. We are travelling and I have found out that he is trying to get cocaine to take when we spend a week apart. He thinks because it is difficult to obtain he won't be able to abuse it when we get home. I am now having doubts about marrying him because I do not want to be hurt by what will happen if he drinks or does drugs. I don't want to see him spiral out of control, I also don't want him to use drugs or alcohol as an excuse to cheat. I have now become quite obsessed by this possibility. I occasionally check his phone because of his past deception and I only found out about the cocaine because of this. If I didn't look I would have been oblivious. Another issue is sex in our relationship, we do not have much of it now after a very sexually explosive start to the relationship. It could be medication, emotional issues, fatigue and just the passing of time in a commited relationship that explains it but with the history of cheating I can't help but feel he is just not sexually attracted to me. It triggers my own anxieties about my desirability. Sometimes I think he is with me because I am a safe, calm and balanced option. If he was with a party girl he would spiral out of control again. I think that if he was partying with drugs or alcohol he would sleep with another girl he was more sexually attracted to. Apart from these concerns everything is great. We have a lot of fun together, we talk very openly about everything (except each of our own deceptions - his cheating and my phone snooping), we are aligned in our desires for a future together, how we would raise children etc. He is very warm and affectionate and we love each other deeply. I know that any man I have a relationship with will have baggage and this is his. So my question is, do I need to quit checking his phone and obsessing over what MIGHT happen and focus on what IS happening? Stop living with the fears in my own head? Focus on myself and my anxieties and stop obsessing over his past? Deal with any problems IF they happen and stop obsessing over them before they happen? Or am I completely delusional and setting myself up for pain and misery if I marry him? In all honesty I think I know the answer and I just need to find a way to deal with the inevitable uncertainty of life but I am interested in the perspectives and wisdom of people who have been living this life for a lot longer than me. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Welcome Mokka, Alcoholism is  a dreadful, progressive, chronic, disease over which we are powerless and over which there is no cure .  I urge you to search out alanon face to face meetings in your community and attend.  Here you will break the isolation caused by  living with this disease and develop new constructive tools to live by.

I learned what a waste of  my time it was to keep checking up  on him , especially after I had previously confirmed infidelity.  Alanon also stressed the simple fact that  I was powerless over him completely.  Placing the focus where it belonged on myself,  helped me to rebuild my tattered self esteem and self worth, develop healthy tools to live by, as well as  restoring my ability to have fun.  I urge you to seek out meetings and keep coming back here as well.  There is hope   

I'm glad you have found us.  I wanted to comment about one thing you said that reminds me of what I used to say to myself: "I know every man has baggage and this is his."  It's true that no one is perfect and everyone has flaws, whether few or many.  But that doesn't mean that everyone's flaws can be lived with.  My experience is the same as what Al-Anon and AA say: that alcoholism always gets worse, never better, unless halted by a rigorous formal program of recovery.  The fact that your guy is wishing for a yearly blow-out shows that his recovery is not all there - not to mention looking for cocaine, extra sexual adventures, etc.  If I came across a guy with those tendencies I would consider them big red flags and deal-breakers. 

When I was first with my A (now my ex-husband), he was an intermittent binger.  His idea was that he would go on a binge once a year and just disappear for the time and then come back and all would be hunky-dory.  I wasn't experienced with alcohol so I thought "Oh, okay, sort of like a fishing weekend or big football gathering or whatever."  But the binges were worse than I had imagined, even in the beginning.  He would call me up drunk and cause trouble, he'd go in pursuit of other women, he'd get DUIs - and these were the early days!  Before things got worse!  But I was confused because after each one he would say, "You're right, I'm never doing that again, I don't have an alcohol problem so I'll just stop, no worries."  And so I'd gradually calm down and start to trust him cautiously.  Then the binges got closer together ... I'll skip the long version and say that things got very bad but i was so enmeshed and I didn't know up from down.  I lost the point where I could see straight and say "This is so not normal, this is so painful and I have got to get myself out of this horrible mess."

I would say, judging from my experience and having seen dozens of people go through similar experiences, that what you are dwelling on is not what MIGHT happen, but what WILL happen.  As our own Jerry F once wrote, "The destination is printed on the ticket."  Alcoholics do not up and quit on their own.  Or just because other people want them to.  Statistically the majority of them never quit.  That includes alcoholics who have started a program of recovery.  The majority relapse.  The time to conclude that an alcoholic's recovery will probably work out is years after they have last drunk, when they have years of genuine sobriety with no lapses.  Otherwise statistically speaking it is not a matter of if but when. 

My other experience is that we Al-Anoners tend to worry that we're over-concerned about their drinking, but actually we're usually under-concerned.  We think a lot more drinking is normal and healthy than actually is.  Our "pickers" tend to be broken and we accept bad behavior that most other people wouldn't.  We get addicted to them ourselves; the chaos distracts us from our own sadness and issues; we feel safer when people seem to "need" us; and we don't have confidence that we could do better.  All of these things keep us in pain and turmoil.

I hope you'll find a face-to-face meeting, get the literature, read up and read the threads on these boards, and keep coming back.  Hugs.

Aloha Mokka and welcome to the board.  You are not alone. If you check the membership numbers of this board you will see you are one in thousands and that is how alcoholism works it affects everyone it comes into contact with drinker or not, family member, friends, associates everyone.  The disease is older than the life of the Christ and mention of it I believe is in the bible.

I was born and raised in it on both sides of my family and I learn how to live within its character.  For me alcoholism was normal and I didn't then even know what it was...I didn't know and didn't know that I didn't know and dysfunctional relationships were natural for me...I married the women I drank with and didn't know that that mattered or that it would one day almost take my life after it had already taken my sanity. 

The AMA (American Medical Association) definition of alcoholism says that the alcoholic has three choices...sobriety, insanity and/or death.  Yes this is a fatal disease and it is not only the drinker/alcoholic who gets those consequences.  Everyone is affected.  For the friends, family and associates of the alcoholic we have much the same three choices...Serenity, insanity and/or death.   From experience I know this to be true.  It can never be cured...only arrested by total abstinence.

Al-Anon is in every country on the planet for a reason.  This is THE DISEASE...Welcome to the board.

It took me a couple of trips to get into the program and stay.  I wasn't enamored of self help social model therapy which my own therapist called "the program" and I learned to accept after I became a therapist and then who best to teach and heal me but the people and members who found their healing in this program.  On the second trip I came into the rooms and sat down and listened with an open mind and let the fellowship show me what I was up against and had been most or all of my life and how they also had walked my journey.  

The fellowship on this board are those people that keep me sane and serene today as I also pass it on to others.  There is no need to suffer from the disease, pain is optional if you are willing and dedicated to your own recovery.   Keep coming back.

I like your response to the board in mentioning what you plan to do...GREAT.  Maybe you will meet some of us out there also as you walk toward a happy destiny.  I am in support.   Keep coming back daily.   ((((hugs))))