On a particularly gorgeous evening a long time ago towards the end of a gathering of friends in my home, two young men sat on a balcony having a conversation that I will never forget. As I walked by I heard a physical description of a woman, alongside whom one had sat on a recent trans-atlantic flight, along with the qualifier "the kind of woman you would want to ravage."
I walked up to his chair, took his favorite pipe from his hands and lobbed it as far as I could into the night sky. Then turned around and went to bed.
That constitutes a lover's spat between myself at the time and the young man who would become my husband. All these many years later life has gotten no less complicated. There is not a chance in the world that I could honestly, dispassionately coach him through recovery/sobriety and vise versa.