flamingo84

My therapist recommended that I write a letter directly to alcohol instead of to my boyfriend. I found it cathartic, and thought I'd post.

Dear Alcohol,

We have a complicated relationship, you and I. I was always taught that you were evil, though when I was in college, I bowed to peer pressure and we became acquainted. You made me feel so attractive, interesting, and we generally had a really good time together (though there was the price to pay the next day, and the guilt that went along with it). Things got more and more serious over time, and I realized that you cost me more than you gave me. Gone was a single day of being hung over. You cost me an entire week of feeling depressed and hating myself for a single evening of feeling included. The decision was really made for me, and you and I parted ways for the most part. You became an occasional acquaintance, but our conversations were brief.

You’ve come back into my life in such a big way, though, when I met the most amazing man. He is so charming, sweet, empathetic, funny, witty, and handsome. I feel like he fits me like a glove. If I could wake up with him next to me every day of my life, I’d be a happy man. (He’s actually pretty chilly in the morning, and I love wrapping my arms around him.) Unfortunately, he’s met you, too. I think his story went a little differently.

I think you’ve known each other longer than you and I have. I don’t think he had the same notions of you that I did. You were normal, you were a comfort to him. I think you took a little, lovely, lonely boy and made him feel included, made him feel special, interesting, witty and lovable just like you did for me. I wish he knew that without you (just like I wish I had known that about myself). You gave him a social circle based around you. You’ve given him the life that he wanted with so many friends that care about him, help him forget about the stresses in his life (if for a moment), and make the stress bearable.

Why I’m angry with you, now, is that you’ve stopped giving, and you’ve started taking. You’re the CAUSE of a lot of his stress, and his anxiety, even if he doesn’t realize it. I feel like I’m negotiating with you all the time for my amazing man. I feel like it’s a negotiation I’m losing. I don’t want a relationship with you, I want one with HIM, with him just as he is, without you. I don’t want to negotiate how much of you we can get away with in our lives before there are consequences: there are already consequences.

You make me doubt everything, you make me feel unsettled, like my boyfriend is out of control, and that no matter how much he wants to be reliable for me, he cannot. Sometimes, he controls you, and you’re gone from our lives for a few days, but you always come back, in force. I need reliability in my life, anything less unsettles me and sets me back in my growth. The thing is, you, by your very definition are unreliable. I never know when you’re going to demand more or less of him, when you’ll lead to bad choices and hangovers or just a pleasant evening. You take away his peace, so he can’t sleep, you take away time and energy he could be spending on himself, you take away time and energy I could be spending on myself. I want you to leave us alone, so I can have him back, so he can blossom into the person I know he is. Ultimately, I think the things that you used to solve, you’re also causing, now.


Wherever he’s with his friends (and he has SO many now), you’re there, in the background, lurking. You’ve pulled them all together, and I think that many of them need you in the way that he does. I think you’ve been such a constant companion that none of them can even conceive of not having you there.

I don’t want you in my life. I won’t raise a family while negotiating with you all the time, you take too much energy. I deserve more, my future children deserve more. I want to know that I’m in control of my life, I want to know that he’s in control of his, and that the choices we make are truly ours.

I see you now, I know exactly when I’m talking to you, when I bring you up and he gets defensive and angry: that’s you. You get quiet, you get angry. You take the place of my empathetic, loving boyfriend. You turn on me. You’re unkind to me, you blame me for that extra drink, blame me for having an issue with you. You’re abusing him, and I love him. When you love someone, you don’t accept them completely as they are, you have expectations of them because you believe in them. I believe in him. You don’t, which gives me power over you.

Negotiations are over. Relationships are not made in threes: When you’re around, I’m gone. When he’s with me, you’re gone. It’s up to him which one of us he decides to live with.

I’m sorry, but you and I are over.

-J

Steely

J. I don't think I could have a lasting relationship with anyone who drank excessively. I could if they just drank socially but not otherwise. Does he drink like 'us'?

Dee74

Hi and welcome flamingo

I hope the letter was cathartic and helped you.

As a alcoholic in recovery I can't really blame alcohol myself.
It was just the rocket fuel for my ship of Crazy.

I got better tho - and saner - and I hope your bf will too.

I hope you'll consider your own hopes and dreams too - I do agree with you there's no future in a menage a trois,

D