Molly, Molly, Molly....
You are me and your addict is he (Robert). I was the straight girl, good girl. He was the worldly, wild, exciting, erotic bad boy. Oh, that makes for such a beautiful, romantic, alluring story of love. The thought of him still makes me absolutely crazeeeeeee and the reality of him and me makes me absolutely INSANE. (Do you understand the difference?)
I never did drugs of any kind. I drank, but not much. I came from an alcoholic family, BUT I HAD MY CRAP TOGETHER (yea right). I'm very smart, very analytical, don't make snap decisions, think things through very thoroughly, read and read and read. He was a cross addict (alcohol, cocaine, pot) who was in recovery when we met, had been for almost a year by then. Three months later he'd started smoking pot, ended up going to jail for 10 days on probation violation (he says it was unrelated to him smoking pot again, but frankly the reason he wouldn't go see his prob. officer is because he was smoking pot again, therefore he violated probation ...yadda yadda.) He was in recovery again for about another year before he started smoking again ... which is how I ended up here on the message boards.
Robert and I started out as friends and became much much more. I shared things with him I had never told anyone in my life. He shared intimate, painful, private thoughts and incidents with me as well. We wrote each other e-mails, poems, had long telephone conversations filled with love and hope and promises and dreams. We fell in love. He was my knight in shining armour and I was his angel. And to this day, I still feel the same way about the man I met. I still love him with all my heart. I still dream about sharing a life with him one day, but chances are...none of that will ever happen and that tears me apart daily.
The reality of our relationship was I was a co-dependent and he an addict. In the recesses of mind, I thought God had brought us together to take care of each other. That's such screwed up, co-dependent thinking.
I'm not going to tell you to give up hope on your friend or a relationship with him because first of all, that's not what you want to hear and you're going to believe what you want to believe. My advice to you is to start going to Al-Anon and Nar-Anon meetings in preparation for having a relationship with him. You are going to need the advice, the wisdom, the strength that you can only get from other people who love an addict too.
Read the postings from me on these message boards. You'll get the gist of our whole ugly fairy tale.
I'll tell you what I shared with another person who asked about relationships with an addict....I have read success stories between addicts and between addicts and co-dependents, but they've all come from Al-Anon, AA, Nar-Anon, and NA. All of the stories involved two people who were actively working recovery programs. I don't think a relationship between two such individuals has a chance in hell of surviving any other way. You have children: Consider what you may be exposing them to then decide if all this prep work is going to be worth the risk.
I'm just beginning my recovery so I don't have boundless wisdom to share with you, but I do have experience with what does NOT work. If you ever want to talk, please feel free to e-mail me. I'm
[email protected].
Heels
[This message has been edited by HellOn2Heels (edited January 12, 2002).]