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Dear Prudence I read Dear Prudence and have for years. I thought I'd share a post that I read this morning regarding codependency/alcoholism. My takeaway is that we have choices and trade offs in all of life's situations. Dear Prudence - Blinders On Dear Prudence, About four months ago I started dating a really wonderful guy. He is considerate, well-educated, thoughtful and we have a lot of fun. I could see a future with him. However, there is one issue that I am concerned about. My boyfriend’s father, who was a manual laborer, is in his late 50s, and has been out of work for some time. He lives with my boyfriend, who completely supports him financially (the mom is not in the picture). I genuinely like his father. But his dad is an alcoholic and every day my boyfriend brings home two liters of wine for him to drink. I have gently brought the situation up with my boyfriend, but he says this is better than his father drinking cheap booze, and that his dad supported him for his whole life, so it is his turn. He has tried to get his dad to stop drinking, but his father won’t. Is there anything I can do about this or is accepting him enabling his father just the price of admission to an otherwise amazing guy? —Blinders On Dear Blinders, Your blinders seem to be off because you see this situation clearly: Your boyfriend’s father is an alcoholic, your boyfriend is enabling this, and unless someone wants to change this situation—which apparently neither has the will to do—this is the way it will be, until it ends. Your boyfriend’s father is drinking almost three bottles of wine a night (and let's hope when he's doing this he never gets behind the wheel). One of these days his liver is going to give out, or he’ll fall and hit his head, or—you get the picture. The amazing thing about alcoholics, though, is their capacity to guzzle for years, so this could be quite a long-running show. You seem to have two choices: walk away because you can’t accept this, or decide that this is serenity prayer time, which you will keep repeating because your new guy is worth it. —Prudie |
We do have choices and there are tradeoffs. And I think that's one thing I didn't understand. I thought staying wasn't a choice, it was just letting things go on. It was when I started seeing every day I stayed with an alcoholic as an active choice that I started questioning it and figuring out whether that was what I wanted from life. |
I'm a big fan of Dear Anybody- Prudence, Caroline, Amy, Abby. I'm sure that says something about my deep-seated need for schadenfreude to feel better about myself. A couple of days ago Dear Abby had a letter from an elderly gentleman who liked to imbibe "two generous cocktails" every night before dinner while offering a running commentary on the news. He made sure to add that he always told his wife how beautiful she was and so didn't understand why she had a problem with his drinking. He made sure to mention what good provider he was and that he felt "entitled" (that was the word he used) to those drinks. I couldn't help wondering how his wife would have described the situation in a letter to Dear Abby. |
I gotta say, it was either Ann Landers or Dear Abby that gave me the idea of not marrying my first husband until he had been sober for a year. It was a good move. I wish I'd followed that same advice before marrying alcoholic #2. |
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