Originally Posted by
trailmix 
Not really. I mean addiction is heavy duty stuff. If you have someone emotionally stable, you don't have the trials and tribulations.
Those are things we can learn from, for sure. If you decide to persue this relationship, if he doesn't actually get in to really solid recovery, 2 years from now those trials will be dragging you down too.
You can't really be around a person who is living another reality all the time without it affecting you. The life of a Meth/Sex addict is not your life experience, thankfully, so you can never be part of it (again, thankfully) and if he is not clean and sober and in recovery, it will never work, it will always be conflict.
You didn't Cause it, can't Control it and can't Cure it. An addict will always choose the drug over you, you will always be secondary.
Actually, really, you don't know him as a person in recovery. You know him as a relapsing meth addict. The person who shows up after recovery and after therapy or rehab and a year or so living that life might be quite different.
Thanks for this, trailmix. In the midst of this, I've wondered what I did and if it is me since things go well and then go south after meeting. He always used to say that I saw "bears on the road" and that I can sometimes be negative, but I had had enough and told him that he was the one that has been negative all along, choosing to only see the bad in a lot and wanting to be perfect and wanting everything to be perfect. He agreed with me on that.
He just says over and over that he's insecure. He's 43 and I am 33. He went to one of the top universities in the Netherlands for law and graduated, but found out he was not into it at the end. He joined a particular fraternity simply because of the status, according to him, but does not like the people. I've had a successful career so far and am in the process of starting a new business in the Netherlands as well as about to buy a house. That alone made him nervous because 1) he automatically assumed that I wanted him to move in which I never mentioned and 2) that he has not purchased a home of his own yet and has been living in the same place for the last 15 years while his club members and friends have found some type of success and are moving up. He said that he feels bad that he can't give me what I want, but again he's assumed that as I never asked him for anything. He's never asked me for anything and I haven't given him anything like money. A few small gifts, yes, but he has not been using me as I have not allowed that. He just puts a lot of pressure and expectations on himself, and others sometimes, that he or they could never live up to.