Hi seekingcalm,
Your name speaks well of you and your desires, for calm and serenity is hard won at times.
It is not my intention to hijack this thread, but I would like to share a couple thoughts regarding your reply.
First off, thank you for your warm and considerate comments. They made my day, by letting me know I helped someone along the way today.
Secondly, my experience with alcoholism had taught me so many things, and one is that I need help in overcoming this addiction in my life. I need help today and I ask for it, for myself. I'm not married, never had children and maintain a healthy distance from my family of origin, so I seek recovery today in order to change as a person, from the inside out. It's taken me 50+ years to get to this point, and I struggle and fall just like many others on this path toward serenity.
One thing I have to learn is that I know nothing about healthy relationships with women. The models I saw when younger were the basis upon which I tried to maintain relationships and they were shallow attempts at best. It pains me today to watch others deal with life as I did for so many years because I know the results I found by doing so, and the end was not pretty. I found myself totally alone and this was the result of my efforts for many years. I gradually began to realize that the common denominator in all these broken relationships was me, and it hurt to admit that, but it was true. After speaking with a few guys in recovery, I discovered that they too were lost in being fully intimate in relationships, being fully open and honest, being fully involved as much as a guy can be. I also believe that there remains a fundamental difference between the sexes, and that some men are just incapable of handling the complexities of true commitment, so we escape into addictions to drown our frustrations and numb our feelings, so as to not have to deal with this undesirable reality. However, the emotions do not go away, they lie dormant, and once the alcohol or doc is removed they come out of the abyss demanding attention and reckoning. Then comes the choice of whether we want to deal with these unresolved emotions or continue to drown them out. I tried drowning them for a lifetime, only now to have them resurface like a tidal wave upon my soul. Running no longer works, thus my only option is to work through these pent-up emotions and stay the course of recovery with hopes of becoming a healthier and more content person. Easier said than done. As a man, I have always fought having to deal with all this, and still do somedays, but the alternative of active addiction has taught me that it's easier to deal than to continue along the path of destruction that was my life for so many years. Many other men never stop to sort it out, as I refused to for many years. We just don't have a clue.