Attached to a Man with a Drinking and Drug Problem

This man is damaged goods and not relationship ready. He may be a wonderful person and have great potential, but as he stands now, he is not a good bet. You need to ask yourself if you would be willing to spend the rest of your life with him even if he stays just as he is. If your answer is yes, then I wish you all the best.

I think if you answer the above question honestly, your answer will be 'hell, no, I don't want him to stay the way he is.' Reading between the lines, I understood that you are hoping that he will get off the drugs and alcohol. In other words, you are on a rescue mission that involves helping him to allow his true colors shine through.

I hope you know that you are setting yourself and your daughter up for a lot of heartache. Your future involves waiting and hoping and not getting what you want. I say this because I didn't read anything in your letter that said that he, too, wants to change. He isn't in a rehab and he isn't receiving drug and alcohol counseling. Clearly you are more ambitious for him than he is for himself.

What I see is that you are repeating the kind of frustration you experienced as a child. See my articles on repetition compulsion and unfinished business and you will understand more about what I mean.

I will give you a brief overview of the repetition compulsion process: we recreate the traumas of childhood by choosing people who emotionally resemble the parent(s) who let us down; we do this partly because we gravitate to the familiar and partly because we want to relive our childhood wounds and achieve a happy ending, which is a healing of those wounds. The happy ending comes when we succeed in getting our mates to give us the emotional goodies we yearned for from our parents.

Unfortunately, the happy ending rarely is achieved precisely because we choose partners who are damaged and limited in the exact same way that our parents were. Instead we end up beating our heads on the wall and just feeling damaged all over again.

You need to figure out what wound you are recreating through your relationship with this guy and what your happy ending looks like. Then ask yourself honestly if you have a chance of achieving your happy ending with him just as his is. Keep in mind that the imagined happy ending that we all seek involves fixing or changing the damaged partner (who symbolizes the damaged parent).

The fantasy that we can change the damaged partner stems from the omnipotent (all powerful) fantasies of childhood. All kids think that whatever happens is because of them and likewise that they have the power to change everything around them, including their parents. The child usually imagines that being a better boy or girl (more giving, more loving) is the key to changing the parent.

Reread your letter and see how you are playing out the omnipotent fantasy of childhood. You talk about being so giving, but you aren't aware that the fantasy behind your giving involves hoping to fix him so that you will finally achieve your happy ending and be loved.

All this is to say that you are going to need to take a hard look at yourself and the situation. Accept that you aren't omnipotent and that you can't change him. He is what he is. Then you are going to need to decide whether you are interested in staying with him just as he is.

Have courage to look inward and ask these hard questions. You will find it easier to make the right choice for yourself and for your daughter after you ask these questions.