justjo

Why are some people attracted to alcoholics? This baffles me some.

Rella927

I know that for me it was a learned behavior...

I grew up with 3 A brothers, an addict brother and an A father and mother mentally ill in and out of clinics .....

So for me it was all that I knew and being treated in a destructive way was my life as a little girl. I learned how to love the way they did, I learned how to behave the way they did, I learned how to act out and react, I learned when to keep my mouth shut...I learned distored love and thinking-which is what most A's have.

That is why I personally was attracted to unhealthy people not necessarily an alcoholic but someone who was emotionally unavailbe to me, because I was not emotionally available it was too much work.

Today I'm fortunate and very GRATEFUL to have my HP, AL-Anon, SR, counseling and my friends and family (Wow amazing the tools available to us to recover!) so today I do not attract toxic people in my life ......today I desire healthy people that know how to love me for me, who behave in the right way and who appreciate life and all it has to offer and today I do my work to be as healthy as I can possibly be TODAY.

This is my life today....and it is HUGE!

Buffalo66

ditto. I was raised by an alcoholic father, so, in a sense, the chaos life was an easy chair for me... my comfort zone.. Even though I had done work to heal myself, the unhealed parts still gravitated to that awful dysfunctional glow.

parentrecovers

well, my ex was a good liar and an excellent manipulator. i was young and not very worldly and uninformed. i had no idea he was an alcoholic until i was pretty far into the relationship. now my daughter (his daughter too) is an alcoholic and well, that's just the way it worked out..

i guess some folks just grow up and go back to what they learned from their families.

i was just one of those that "ended up here".

hope this helps, k

elizabeth1979

For me, I dont think it was that I was attracted to an alcoholic I was attracted to dysfunction bc its what I knew. I didnt really know that my relationship wasnt functional. That and low self esteem made me think I couldnt really do any better than someone with problems, bc what 'together' person would want me with all my issues.

Pick-a-name

Actually, in many respects,my exAH has it more "together" than I do. More organized, very successful in his own business,etc. We were married nearly 20yrs/2 kids before the drinking started to be a problem (I guess he was a "workaholic" before then and he started drinking as "stress-relief" after years of that). Really took me by surprise.

I never knew about alcoholism at all. Now,it seems, both my Gpa's were A's ,a cousin has died of it and my sister just went thru rehab in the past few years (closet-drinker,too),so part of it may be it IS familiar...who knows? I just learned my best friend when in high school is an alcoholic and another childhood buddy....

kelsh

Hi,

I grew up in a home with my alcoholic grandmother, my Mom's mother, living with us.
Our home life revolved around her and her drinking & sobering up. We couldn't have friends over after school because we never knew what grandma would be up to.

I even told myself when I was twelve that I didn't want to be like grandma. My Mom didn't drink and my Dad drank very little until my brother and I were graduated from highschool and out on our own. Then my Dad started drinking daily right after work....the tavern .. then home for a couple more beers. Mom never figured out how much he was drinking. My brother is an alcoholic in recovery for 15 years then started drinking again when the time limit ran out of a ten year suspended sentence. Both my brother's kids used alcohol & drugs and two of my five children are alcoholic and drug users still using mostly alcohol.
My Dad and Brother both went to treatment. My Dad never drank again; my brother is 65 and still drinking and using some drugs. I sobered up 19 years ago...We have cousins and nieces and nephews with alcohol and drug problems all treated now and not using.

I strongly feel some of this behavior is learned but most of it is a predisposition to addiction of any kind. I have always been drawn to a certain type of personality & it seems it was either a person actively drinking or a person in recovery from drinking.
We all are a nice lot of people when we are sober!

After I sobered up I went back to college and got a BA Degree in Psychology and went to work for the County Mental Health Center....I worked up to be a Geriatric Mental Health Counselor and helped the Elderly still in their homes. It was usually a person with depression, grieving issues, or behavior problems and a good amount of them had an alcohol issue. I loved this job but had to quit when I was 60 due to my depression & arthritis. Elderly people were referred to me from docs, the PUD elderly program, Chore Service, or came in wanting help.

This illness of addiction is no respecter of age, race, nor financial situation. There is a lot of help out there today and the stigma isn't as bad as it used to be, especially if you ask for help and are able to sober up eventually. Now as I said before, this is just my opinion based on personal experience and work involvement with addicted people wanting help.

kelsh

MsGolightly

like elizabeth mentioned, for me i think it had to do with low self-esteem (although that's probably more the reason that i hung on so long after things went to hell, rather than why i was attracted to one in the first place).

i never grew up around alcoholism, so i was naive in a sense. i think i was attracted to someone that i thought i could "fix," or make more "normal" (whatever that is!). i saw unlimited potential and a person underneath the disease that i just wanted to help bring out... but for her benefit, not for mine. to me, it's just sad watching someone throw their life away.

i stayed, though, after her year of sobriety ended, because i thought i was worthless... i didn't think i deserved more.

CBrown

Nope, I'm not attracted to them in the least! I never really knew an alcoholic until my XABF. We were long-distance friends for years, chatting on the phone and online, so I had no idea he was spiraling. Even when we finally went to a relationship back in '04, I knew he liked to drink, but I didn't see where it was out of control. In '05 and '06 is when he went totally to a liquid diet, and I was out of his life. The relationship just wasn't going anywhere. This past December I found out he was last-stage and it through me into a panic. By the time I found out he was killing himself, lying to everyone, and had led a miserable life of lying from friends, I was good and hooked emotionally! Funny how I should have seen the signs all along, but never put it all together because of my limited contact with him and only from his perspective.

Will I have anything to do with an alcoholic again. Heck no! What's the point? It will always be about the A and his bottle mistress. No thanks!

minnie

I didn't fall for an alcoholic. I fell for a handsome, attentive, loving, thoughtful, playful, supportive man. There were rumours that he had a drink problem, but he was going though a divorce from a bitter and vindictive woman (so I was led to believe.) I believe I thought that I was woman enough for him that he wouldn't want to drink now we were together.

The fact that he was an alcoholic wasn't what attracted me to him. It was that he presented himself to me as my ideal man. I then ignored all the indicators showing me that it was all a facade, until I was in so deep emotionally and financially and couldn't see the wood for the trees. Actually, when the facade started to unravel, I got in even deeper because I thought that I could fix this poor, broken man who must have been so horribly treated to need to put on such a mask.

Why did I put myself in that situation? Because I was brought up not to trust how I felt, to be a caretaker, to be stoical, to swallow my pain, to keep secrets. Drama was comfortable, being responsible was the norm.

It wasn't that he was a drinker - drinking is a coping mechanism like a branch on the dysfunction tree. We have no addiction issues in our family, but we have plenty of other stuff that stems from the same root. I could have ended up with a workaholic or someone who exercised excessively. But I was pretty much destined to be with someone chock full of dysfunction.

Besides, earlyish stage alcoholics are funny and charming!

hbb

Yes, for me too! When we met he told me he wanted to quit drinking but needed help but i fell in love with the charming, needy, loveable, kind person i thought he was. I thought we would deal with the drinking and that wouldn't be hard, not knowing he was drinking since 16. Boy looking back, I would have run for the hills if the blinders were not on. I looked beyond EVERY flaw, financially, emotionally, addiction. I then like Minnie said, i KNEW i could "fix" him and we would have a fairytale life, home, family and pets! Boy did that end up a nightmare. So i too wasn't attracted because he was an alcoholic (i didn't know either)...other things came first!

keepingmyjoy

"Because I was brought up not to trust how I felt, to be a caretaker, to be stoical, to swallow my pain, to keep secrets. Drama was comfortable, being responsible was the norm. "


Yep, that's it in a nut shell for me! Famous last words in our house: "you shouldn't feel that way!", "that's not true!", and my all time favorite: "Now, why would you want to feel that way (or believe that)?????"

UUGH, no wonder I am messed up and chose an abusive A first, and then another A second! But, they both led me down a healing path and for that I am grateful!

Spiritual Seeker

This is evidence of why it is imperative for the non addict to do "the work"
Otherwise we are attracted to someone who matches the part of us that is broken (on an unconscious level) then we proceed to work on our childhood issues and the dysfunction cont. IMHO

prodigal

This entire thread has helped me as much as sitting in an Al-Anon meeting. A lot of insightful, on-target stuff has been said. Why did I marry two A's? Charming. Attentive. Treated me like the center of their universe; on a pedestal, no less. In BOTH cases the period of time that sort of treatment lasted was eerily similar - about one year.

Bottom line, or should I say A LINE spoken by Tom Cruise to Renee Zellwegger: "You complete me." Yeah, right ... another human being can become my partner and "fill in the blanks" that are missing in me. Nope. No can do. Not possible. I was a starving person. I made one lousy shopper!

SaTiT

I'm ACOA
one of my parents is an alki the other is a a codi.
So I get the best of both world..I'm a recoverying alki and codi too.
yeap..I have the funk of the dysfunctional...which I thouhgt was normal.
wires are crossed and screwie.

why am i attacted or have a radar for certain personality triats ?
I'm really sick..all of my partners have the same resemblence , hair, eye, body type.
even thier names are close or have simular sounds.
they all treat me the same..even the way they call out my name in certain situations.
bascailly they have the combination of my parent's traits.

bascially in the animal kingdom, some animal gose back to home in certain season.
such as birds flying south for the winter or penguins head for the south poles.
I'm a domestic creature...I bring home to me.

it's familar and I function in dysfunction. A healthy person would
vomit in dysfunction. I vomit when as i get well.

justjo

Thanks all. I asked the question because I was trying to understand it. Basically my sister is a cronic alcoholic, Messed up all the time and drinks every day except on the days she has to recover her body.
She has had many relationships since the divorce two years ago. Most are alcoholics that she got involved with and they controlled her. The latest though apparently doesnt drink, cant understand why her family well, now, doesnt run to her every five minutes anymore, cant understand why we are not in a hurry to meet him (not his fault). He holds a fulltime job, goes home to her most days and well, cos Im your 'norm' I dont know what he sees in her when she is like this most of the time. It was great to read all the responses.

denny57

Maybe he sees a chance to rescue someone; that would answer a need in him. You sound good, justjo. :-)

hadenoughnow

My mother is not an A but is very codependent and has other issues, I went from taking care of her to taking care of my AH.

ARealLady

"You complete me."

That's the line that will send me running for the hills if I EVER hear it again!

Famous last words in our house: "you shouldn't feel that way!", "that's not true!", and my all time favorite: "Now, why would you want to feel that way (or believe that)?????"


And that was my home situation too! No addictions in my family of origin and none today but so much stifling of feelings, avoiding certain subjects or being told how to think and feel. My mother "served" my father and us children were always reminded how much we had to be thankful for. I grew up feeling guilty. I guess I thought that my role was to serve in a relationship. My estranged H is a workaholic and falling in with XABF was one more chance for me to "show" what a good person I could be for others.

Good thread, lots of helpful insight! Thank you!

ARL

ItalianGirl

I have no clue. None.

I'm with smoeone that's in a situation that boggles my mind.

I fell in love with him SO fast .... saw his problem right away, and it STILL didn't steer me away ...

I have no CLUE why people are attracted to this.