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Hey y’all,

From 2013 to 2017 I dated a woman who was severely, severely alcoholic. I was incredibly young at the time (we started dating when I was 14 and she was 20) and the relationship was, I can see now in retrospect, absolutely horrible. She was drinking pretty much constantly, and would go out and party with her older friends and get blackout drunk and cheat on me. Because they obviously didn’t approve of her being involved with someone so young, their solution was to actively encourage her cheating and drinking. This continued on for four years, my entire high school experience, and during the last two years she was trying to get sober, but after the 5th relapse I ended things.

Fast forward to now, my life has improved so dramatically, but my trauma from this is becoming incredibly debilitating. I am now dating a wonderful lady my own age, who is barely a drinker at all but every couple of weeks or so likes to go out with her friends and have a couple of drinks. Whether I am with her or not when this happens, my mind enters a total panic mode and I pretty much shut down for the entire night, and fixate on it all the time. I just can’t handle her being out and drinking because I’m my life this has only ever led to me being hurt and lied to and cheated on. She has never done anything to hurt me or given me a reason not to trust her in the year that we have been dating , and I know my thought process is incredibly unfair to her, but my brain just refuses to tolerate the fact that she is drinking with her friends. Because of the role of my ex’s friends in her drinking, I am also villianizing my girlfriend’s friends, who are also my friends, even though they haven’t done anything wrong. I just can’t stop thinking about it and I don’t know what to do. I have been sober for four years so I can’t empathize to my own drinking experience for help (I got sober because of seeing my ex’s awful addiction.) I have talked to her about it and she is very understanding and sensitive with me, and does what she can to help, but I’m having a really hard time with this. It makes me feel like a bad/abusive person even though I would never try and enforce her behavior.

Please, if you have any advice, or similar stories, or if you just want to reassure me that I’m not a bad person, please respond to this. I’ve been working through this for so long but I’m having such a hard time and it’s barely getting any better.