Alcoholic Boyfriend – I had an Addiction

Guest post by the adorable, Zoë Blue over at winkwinkwink!

I have a thing for guys with addictive behaviors. It sounds like a joke: “I can resist anything but addicts,” to borrow from Oscar Wilde. But, really, it’s true. Something about my personality attracts them; the passionate way I live my life, the care-free perspective they admire but do not have, the softness that allows people into my heart too quickly.

I myself am not the owner of an addictive personality. While my friends in college were drinking themselves under the table and into strangers’ beds, I (more or less) drank moderately and resigned myself to being the one who held my girlfriends’ hair as they vomited” Of course, even the most moderate person has her moments, and I too ended up in strangers’ beds, my head aching with the throb of what was probably alcohol poisoning, but those times were few and far between. Contrary to other ministers’ daughters, I never experienced a true Rebellion Stage. Rather, I became the Savior.

As an idealist, I see the best in others, and when a boyfriend would stumble home from the pub, he’d look blearily into my eyes and mumble,”You’re too good for me.” I’d tut-tut him, put him in bed, bring him a glass of water and breakfast in the morning. I loved it; I thrived on being needed. Yes, it was a sickly codependent thing, but I saw through the drunken behavior to the man whose heart was pure and golden.

My mother, a nurse, always told me that the most charming men, were the addicts. “They are the nicest men you’ll meet,” she said, perhaps warningly, “When they want to be,” and she was right. The most wildly passionate, relationships I’ve had have been with men who either clearly had an addictive behavior or were bordering on one.

When I moved to Korea, I met many men like this, men who hid their addictive behaviors by escaping to a world where they were adored as -how else do I put it? – demi-gods. Being a foreign English teacher in Asia can do wonders for your ego, and these men (and women) stayed there, knowing that they would never have been received so positively in their home towns. I met one of these men, a charming Canadian fellow named Jeff who pursued me so vigorously that I believed I must have been the most desirable woman in the world. Or at least in Seoul. He took five hour train rides to see me for an hour, he bought a car so that we could take off together on weekends, he gave me gifts every chance he could. But he also smoked like a chimney and drank alone, in his apartment, every night. I saw this but believed, naively, that I could be his Savior and convince him to quit the smoking and at least drink more moderately or, at the very least, around others. But he hid his path so well that even on a trip to his parents’ house in Newfoundland, Canada, I saw how he brushed his teeth and took a shower and washed his clothes before greeting his parents the next morning.

I became so disgusted, in fact, with the continual nights of him drinking beer that I began to do strange things: I threatened to leave him. Multiple times. I hid his alcohol and cigarettes. I picked up smoking around him, just so he would be so disgusted he’d quit. I appealed to his Christian side by finding condemning Bible verses and,yes, preaching to him. I talked to his friends (which didn’t help much as they also drank quite a lot). I quit drinking and smoking altogether for two years. I prayed every day. I searched the classifieds for English-speaking substance abuse counselors (good luck if you need them in Korea, as I couldn’t find any). And then, after a few unsuccessful breakups, I ended it with him for good. He crawled to me, trying to get me back, crying, calling, threatening, and so on. But I finally stood my ground and re-established some dignity. Had he been the one for me, I might have stayed on with him after some significant efforts had beenmade to improve his lifestyle, but I realized, “Hey, I’m 25, young and I don’t love him enough to make this a life-long struggle for me.”

Since then, I’ve been very cautious around men who fall in love too quickly with me. I simply don’t believe them, and have ended relationships with men who have said “I love you” in the first two weeks, because I know it’s only going to get worse from there. I stay away from men with extreme mood changes, men who make the slightest lie in order to impress me, men who are needlessly secretive, men whose friends display addictive personality traits, men who hide behind a veil of overt religiosity (ever heard the idiom “The bigger the sinner, the bigger the saint”?). Now, admittedly not all of these traits are signs of addictive behaviors, but a good portion of them are and I’d rather be safe than heart-broken.

The men I choose to date now are by no means perfect, but I like them that way: Imperfect. I like men who are unafraid of telling me about their flaws, who are unafraid to tell me they aren’t sure they like me yet, who live moderate lifestyles with room for a little debauchery. I trust them. They are living authentically, and I don’t need to be their Savior. I can have my own interests, my own life and I don’t need them just as they don’t need me, but we hang out because, hey, we like each other’s company and who knows where this could go? I’m happy with that reality. Leave the saving to the experts.

Make sure you visit Zoë Blue over at winkwinkwink!

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