Addict has a question or 100.
Sorry to bug into the friends and family forum, but I want to try to see things from my non-addict boyfriend's perspective.
Ok, so I know we're supposed to do one day at a time. And I do really try to. I don't know if anyone recognizes me, but I am a crack addict, 11 months clean. My "birthday" is February 3rd.
My boyfriend and I started seeing each other in September '08. I was just at the starting point of realizing I had a huge problem with crack cocaine. We weren't serious, so I was able to hide my addiction well, from him. We started getting serious in December and I decided he needed to go into the relationship with his eyes wide open, so I confessed what I was. Especially since I was going to NA meetings, and it was getting harder to explain where I was going, without lying and I did not want to lie anymore. Not about anything. Not about smoking crack. Not about trying to get clean. Not about going to NA. None of it. I didn't want our relationship based on a lie. So I told him everything I could remember.
Anyway, I finally get my act together in February '09. Haven't touched that junk since. And December of '09, my boyfriend gives me the best Christmas present ever. He tells me that he is in love with me. I was elated.
And I still am. But the subject of marriage came up and he admits that he was on a motorcycle forum (he's a harley/car dude), where they had a section for recovery and he mentions that he lives with an addict. He told me that 95% of them told him to run. Which, is advice that, I feel, is given in haste sometimes (even by myself!). I know the majority of addicts are hard to live with, putting it lightly. And he says he's not running, but he doesn't want to make that final commitment (marriage) until I have more clean time under my belt (which totally blows my dream of receiving a ring this Valentine's day, DARN IT). And I understand it on the one hand, but am not able to fully wrap it around my head on the other. Part of me is saying he's just making excuses. He's never been married before and he's almost 50 years old. Part of me is worried that he's just sitting on pins and needles, waiting for me to relapse and do the whole "I KNEW it" thing.. And part of me is trying to see it from his side..
So I figured, to settle my brain down, I'd come here and ask what y'all think. LOL. Which opens up all kinds of cans of worms, whoop butt, and so on and so forth, but I really do want to better understand and put my mind at rest. Not at ease, but just not so confused and get myself back to "Just for Today."
He's really an awesome person. I do love him so much. I never believed I'd find a GOOD man, for once in my life. All the losers I've dated and married, and the way things went about when we got together. Would you believe I put an add up on craigslist (originally looking for someone to party with) and he answered it. A bunch of dillheads answered too, and I was kinda worried when he said it was OK to meet at his house (and then we went to a couple cruise in's together), but I went anyway. And he told me he had never looked at craigslist for relationships before, and really hadn't intended too, but he just wanted to check it out and found me.. It really was a small chance that we got together. Despite the fact he lives less than a mile from my Mom's house. Where I was staying, at the time. We live together now and I am more than OK with waiting a while to get married, but the whole "He went online, people told him to run, he's concerned, what now?" thing kinda flips me out.
Thanks all.