lastchance24

I'm 26 years old, 27 here soon and I have a serious question for those of you that have the same experience as me. I know this will sound dumb, but I feel like I'm only getting older by the day and that I NEED to find someone to spend my life with soon. Very irrational I know. A lot of people don't get married until 30+ these days, but I hate seeing everyone around me getting married and having kids and I'm all alone. I'm also worried that all of the "good ones" will be taken by the time I'm ready to date again. Once again, very irrational and I realize that. But going from the thought of getting married, to going back to the dating scene is so scary to me. Frankly I hate dating and getting to know someone again with the typical, "what do you do?", "what's your favorite color?", blah blah blah.

Without going into too much detail, I lost my fiancee because of my alcoholism about 2 1/2 weeks ago. I'm the type of person that seeks acceptance from others all the time. This usually translates into jumping from relationship to relationship. But this time it's different... I thought I had found the one that I was going to spend the rest of my life with, so the thought of dating again hasn't crossed my mind in a long time.I'm working on this because I know that I'll never truly be happy until I can become sober ON MY OWN. Then once I find myself I can truly give my love and life to someone else.

My questions to others here is: When did you find yourself able to date again? I'm still struggling with the whole acceptance thing, and I feel empty trying to do this alone (without a significant other). How do you do it on your own? I have support of my family, friends, AA... but I feel empty without another person by my side at that intimate level.

Any help/advice is greatly appreciated!

Badwolf

It's not irrational to feel that way... I lost a great girl because of drugs.. one i spent 5 years with.. and i'm in the same situation, same thoughts as you, at 22. It feels like the longer i wait, just like you said, the good ones will be taken. it's all about optimism, what i've realized is that I wont be able to handle a healthy relationship until my drug problem is 100% taken care of and I can be happy with myself...

It wouldnt be smart to jump into another relationship right away because im scared to wait.. it would only end up the same way as last time... so my best advice, what i'm trying to do, is focus on me and my sobriety so i can be the best possible bf, husband, father I can be without drugs in my life. I feel like once I've put drugs in my past and have the confidence to move forward, that's when I'll need to focus on relationships.

It sucks, doing it alone, but it's just a sacrifice I'm choosing to make so that I can actually be a good partner for someone, and not the lying manipulative druggy that I felt like i was turning into. I refuse to put any girl through that until i'm right with myself.

Idk if any of this helped or not, but I read your thread and was feeling these thoughts as well, this is all just my approach to it. hope it helps.

Threshold

wow, where to begin?

welcome. You didn't say how early in recovery you are, but kudos on that too.

There is no hard and fast rule about how long before one should get into a relationship. THere is TONS of opinions and real life experience, and many people think the one year rule just makes a lot of sense.

People can and do get sober and stay sober single. Having a spouse or partner does not guarantee support or even make it easier to get and stay sober. So the idea that it would help might be misplaced.

I too HATE dating. Hate it. Won't do it. If I meet someone as I bop along in my life and like them, then LIKE them like them, I will start making moves towards seeing how we work as a couple, but the sorta artificial job interview feeling I get from dating totally turns me off. I find job searching to be one of the most ego crushing necessities in life, and dating is right behind it.

It's understandable that you want to find a life partner and get going on marriage, family and all that good stuff. Your chances of finding a healthy partner, having a good relationship based on real shared goals and values and being a good parent all go up astronomically when you have gotten some real honest to goodness recovery, not just clean time, but recovery, under your belt.

I honestly believe the surest route to all those good things is to work your recovery with as much honesty and patience as you have. I say patience because for me recovery was NOTHING like I anticipated. The thoughts feelings ideas and changes in myself and my life have been pretty surprising...sort of a "wow, who knew?!" sort of thing.

I tried forcing recovery. I tried acting "as if". I tried working on it 8 hours a day to rush the process along. But for me, it just doesn't work. Recovery moves along at it's own pace, sometimes in fits and spurts. Sometimes I feel very positive, other times I feel like I'm making no headway at all. WOrking on my recovery daily HAS kept me moving forward but more hours a day doesn't necessarily mean faster recovery. It takes time for my mind, and soul to absorb things, divulge things...it just takes time and I've learned to trust the process.

I think significant life relationships, be they with ourselves or others are the same. They are a process, they take time. Forcing it won't make it happen faster or better.

I began dating about a year into recovery. I relapses a few times. I've been sober now for just over a year. My BF is recently sober and not 100% commited to recovery. We were talking this morning about what our relationship was like in the early days, insane. And he said "I was basically in an alcoholic stupor then." his priority was getting drunk and tuning out. Now he wants to be tuned into us and our life together. It's been a very rocky process.

I've already done the marriage/kids thing so I didn't feel under the gun about that. I really like having a life partner, don't get me wrong. But he and I have been "together" as much as we've been apart during the time since we decided to be a couple.

There is no simple answer. My suggestion is to first and formost make your commitment to recovery. Work on that daily, and trust that process and that when you are healthy and ready a relationship will happen. As long as you are not isolating, either physically or emotionally, we do tend to find ourselves drifting into relationships.

You may not find your life partner here on SR, but I can pretty much guarantee you'll meet some amazing people!

Received

I don't know, lastchance. This may be something you should seriously consider getting help with. IIRC, you were to get married May 11th and were struggling greatly with the loss of this woman who was to be your bride.

I know you expressed a lot of concern for her wellbeing and regret for what you had put her through. My question would be, what do you have to offer at this point that you can bring into a new relationship?

I guess work on you. For me when I came to a place where I realized I didn't need anyone else to make me whole is when I was ready to start considering dating again.

lastchance24

Thank you to everyone on here who has replied. Where do I begin...

First of all I am only a little more than a week into recovery. I went on a 2 week bender (blacking out almost daily) after our breakup. Finally realizing that I lost her because of my drinking and that my ONLY way of thinking to cope was with alcohol is what drove me to go back to treatment. This is my second time through treatment in the last 2 years. I floated through an outpatient program 2 years ago and then met my now ex-fiancée. she knew NOTHING of my past. I thought because I 'graduated' and that she was in my life I could control it... And I did for a little while. But it eventually crept back, worse than ever. I know I need to get myself better before I can truly commit to anyone again. I know this deep down, but obviously I am still very early in my recovery and battling the remorse and guilt that I lied and deceived her for so long. But it does make me feel better that it need before we got married because she is a wonderful woman and I don't deserve her when I'm in this stage of addiction.

I've kind of come to the conclusion that I'm not going to actively seek a relationship. If something comes along I will evaluate where I'm at in my recovery if I can bring someone else into my life. One injustice I did to my ex was that I thought I could hide my drinking and then once we got married I'd quit and life would live happily ever after. However I do realize that I don't even know who I am, so I don't know what kind of man I would have been. How would I have reacted to our first big fight or if she had to leave town for a few days. Would I have taken that opportunity to binge again? It makes me feel a little better that she is free now of my addiction because she doesn't deserve that.

Right now I just need time to heal and to start working the program. I have yet to meet a person that says they've worked the program and it failed them. Thank you everyone for the input.

Grateful for another sober weekend!

ex D-Boy

Very happy to see you come to this conclusion on your own! When I first saw you say you were only a week into recovery and putting a priority on getting into a relationship I SMH :/. These things will come in due time but right now all that should concern you is maintaining your sobriety.

Oh and as for all the good ones getting taken? Very unlikely. Girls are like buses, if you miss out on one right now it's no big deal, they'll be another one just as good within 15 minutes

lastchance24

WOW I needed a good laugh this afternoon! That really lifted me up! It's surprising how a little humor can make you feel better! I'll wait for my bus to come around again some day!

Joe Nerv

+1

I only have my own experience to share.

Against suggestion, I got involved with a woman while still in rehab. She wasn't an alcoholic though, met her on a weekend break when she rang my doorbell looking for my brother. I fell head over heels for this woman. Sparing the details, that cost me 2 years in relationship hell. My pride protected me from picking up a drink during those 2 years (didn't want to hear anyone say 'told ya so'), but in hindsight I know how emotionally unready I was at that time to love, be in love, or be loved. I have no regrets however. Had I married her, I'm certain I'd have had many. I strongly feel I had a higher power in my court throughout that relationship, which led me to a whole lot of people who I listened to and learned from. Learned a lot about relationships and love.

After surviving that horror show, I had a couple more repeat performances with other women, and started to only then really learn... again, through sponsors and other people who came into my life. I grew through the pain of my bad relationships. Started having healthier, more loving relationships, went to therapy with a few of them and learned even more...

The end result, 17 years ago my higher power introduced me to the most awesome woman in the world. She's now my wife, best friend, and partner for life. She's light years away in every way shape and form from the women I met when I was in early sobriety. I am so very happy things went the way they did for me, and yeah.... like that.

I have some strong convictions regarding being and falling in love, and every day it seems someone else is popping up to prove those convictions true. I hang around a lot of younger people, I hear about how much they love each other, they get married, and usually around 4 years down the line, it falls apart. One of them cheats usually, or things just get ugly. A long time ago I decided I will never make a judgement on how I truly feel about someone until I'm with them for at least 2 years. Not saying it's impossible to make a successful decision to stay with someone for life before that, but I'm certain that I don't know how I'm going to be relating to someone until at least that much time has past. Romance, and the feeling of being in love fades, and changes. Once that initial high is gone the real deal presents itself. The real issues and differences crop up and IMO people start either slowly turning against each other, or working towards knowing they're both on the same team. Really loving one another. My wife taught me how to do the latter. We initially broke up after 4 years (weren't married at the time), and then spend a lot of time learning what really relating, and really being in love is all about.

Sooo.... early sobriety is a dangerous place for lifelong decisions. Hopefully, we heal and grow into people who are much, much different than our former alcoholic selves. That takes time. In most cases, a lot of it. I highly recommend holding out on getting seriously involved with anyone for a while, and if that's not possible (wasn't for me), hold off and making any lifelong decisions. And no matter what, don't pick up a drink.

I could obviously go on and on about this stuff, but I'll just end here by saying that another genuine danger of getting involved right away is that there's a good chance of all the sickness that went into our drinking addiction, attaching itself to our newfound love. Other people can be as powerful a drug as any synthetic drug out there. The other side of this forum is testament to that. Being free from alcohol is great. Turning the shackles alcohol clamped onto us over to another person could be just as devasting as the alcohol was. Proceed with caution, but have fun and live. My $.03. Inflation.

lastchance24

Amazing post joe thank you! Once again that's exactly what I'm looking for! People with experience that can talk me down from rushing in to anything for a while. I hear it time and time and time again from everyone in recovery. I've never heard anyone say "go ahead and get into a relationship, it won't hurt a thing." I'm learning to take the advice of the people with experience and that's why I'm so grateful I found this forum!