lisamevansceo

What my 6 week courtship taught me about myself pt.2

If you haven’t already, please go back and read part 1 of this post.

So what happened with the man who was supposed to be my last relationship I met on a dating app?

If you read my blog, you know that I’m a recovering alcoholic, if you don’t, hello my name is Lisa and I’m an alcoholic.

That being said, anyone in the running to become my potential love interest must be a non drinker.

I try to vet this upfront in my initial conversation with someone I’m interested in (that’s usually through the messaging feature on the dating app) and if their answer is anything but “no”, I thank them for chatting with me, wish them luck in finding love and move on to the next.

I admit that I didn’t do that this time. When I asked him, he told me that he wasn’t really a drinker and I took that for a “no”.

Our first face to face meeting was at a park. We walked and talked, it was like a scene from one of many of my favorite Romantic Comedies. We later met for dinner that evening.

We clicked right away. Similar philosophies, core beliefs, mutual attraction and we wanted the same thing from a relationship. After that initial meeting, it was consistent “good morning” texts, long phone conversations and plans to meet up on the weekends.

Things were going smoothly until one night I met up with him and his demeanor was different. He was more playful but forgetful, repeating himself and seemed to be having a conversation with me and another one in his head simultaneously.

I asked him had he been drinking. He told me no. I didn’t press the issue but I had a nagging feeling that he wasn’t telling me the truth. As I was driving home from our meeting I was convinced that if he wasn’t under the influence then he seriously may have a mental disorder.

We talked the next day and I told him about how weird he was behaving the night before and he said he was just tired from working a graveyard shift that week. I accepted his explanation and moved on.

A few weeks later I invited him to my place for dinner. He was supposed to arrive at 5:30pm. Two hours later he shows up at my place calls me from in front of my building and admitted he had been drinking with friends and he was inebriated.

I didn’t let him in my building and told him to go home.

Later that night he told me his friend, that he hadn’t talked to in a while, asked him to come over because he needed to discuss something serious with him and they ended up having a few drinks. I accepted his explanation and moved on.

The next time we hung out he took me to a Mexican restaurant and ordered a margarita. I told him that I didn’t think things would work out between us because he drinks alcohol. He told me that he didn’t really drink, he didn’t need to drink and he chooses me over alcohol. I accepted his explanation and moved on.

Don’t judge me. The recovering alcoholic in me knew he was full of it, but the potential love interest in me heard violins playing in her head. Now who really has the mental disorder.

Looking back, this is the point where things got really dangerous for me and I started to rationalize the irrational. Doing so is a symptom of the disease of alcoholism and one doesn’t have to be in the midst of a full blown relapse to experience it.

I was actually trying to convince myself that as long as I didn’t pick up a drink that I could be in a relationship with someone who did drink alcohol as long as they didn’t do it around me. That was the impression I gave him. I was lying to him and more importantly, to myself.

The climax to this Romantic Comedy turned Horror movie is, one night he was out with a friend drinking and playing pool. He called me periodically through the night to give me drunken updates of how his night was going. Then he called me and said that he was at my building and for me to come down and drive his car.

He was three sheets to the wind (drunk, drunk).

“Let’s live in the moment and have an adventure. Drive until we run out of gas.”

It would have been the perfect scene to a real life Romantic Comedy, but it was 11pm, I had to go to work the next day and my romantic lead was guzzling a mini bottle of rose wine that was clearly going to take him one step closer to alcohol poisoning.

We drove around the block and then came back to my place. There was no way I would let him operate his vehicle, so I let him stay the night. We talked for a minute then he passed out.

I couldn’t sleep, I was uncomfortable in my own home. My sanity, my solace, my safe haven, my sanctuary had been infiltrated by alcohol because I chose to invite it into my life. I knew I had made a huge mistake.

All this because of my desire to be in a relationship. I would rather be alone for the rest of my life than to ever put my sobriety in jeopardy again.

Two days later, he asked me if I could take him to get some food and ginger ale because he still wasn’t feeling well. I agreed because I wanted to tell him what I had to say to his face so nothing got lost in translation.

I first apologized for giving him the impression that I can make a compromise in regard to being with someone who drinks.

I told him clearly and definitively that I can’t be with and have no desire to be with anyone who drinks. He said he understood.

The end.

Although disappointing, I am proud of myself for not allowing a bad situation to get any worse. I’ve learned a valuable lesson and will not let anyone else cross that boundary with me.

I share my experience for someone who may be going through something similar. Being in recovery we tend to have more compassion for others and believe change is possible, but we must remember we cannot allow compassion to cloud our better judgment. Protect your sanity at all costs!

What my 6 week courtship taught me about myself

I have written in an earlier post about a person that I met on a dating app. My hopes when meeting this person was that he would be my last relationship. To read the post click here

Well so much for all the things I’ve learned and believed about finding love from fairy tales and Romantic Comedies.

This finding love thing is more complicated. More than just wanting to be in a relationship, walks in the park and talking on the phone for hours at a time.

It’s the little things (that are really land mines) I overlook when I like someone that end up blowing my relationship fantasies to smithereens.

I’m not ashamed of the truths that I’m about to reveal about myself. I’m actually proud that it only took me 6 weeks to get out of this situation rather than the year and a half it took me to get out of my last relationship.

The things that I have learned from the past 6 weeks are a direct reflection of unresolved issues I still hold about myself that are embedded deep down inside of me.

1.) There is still residue from a past abusive relationship that has me afraid to speak up for myself when I need to.

I don’t say what I need to say in the moment. I overthink what I want to say and how I want to say it, and when I do speak up what comes out is a watered down ambiguous statement that has lost all impact, meaning and is often misinterpreted.

2.) I move to fast. I want to go from 0 to relationship in 9.5 seconds flat.

I really didn’t want to own this about myself and I tried to justify it by attributing my over zealousness to being a grown a$$ woman who knows what she wants.

A question I have to ask myself (and explore with a therapist) is why is the process of getting to know someone to see if they are worthy of getting into a relationship with so hard for me?

I’ll admit that the not knowing where I stand and the ambiguity involved in developing a new relationship brings up feelings of abandonment.

When I’m in this space I revert to that nine year old girl who had just lost her father to cancer, and had her core foundation shifted.

3.) I don’t stay in the present.

I’m so focused on the end result that I’m not paying attention to the process or noticing the red flags waiving vigorously before my face. It’s so stress inducing it takes all the enjoyment out of the courtship.

4.) I still don’t trust my own intuition. I know what I know when I know it.

I’ve never been wrong when I get that feeling that something isn’t right, but yet I still find a way to make excuses and rationalizations to ignore warning signs.

5.) I take on the role of a “fixer”.

I’m so eager to prove that I’m a “good woman” that I will accept the person’s brokenness and excuses for not being able to fully be present and give me what I want, need and deserve out of a potential partner.

THERE IS NO HONOR OR REWARD FOR ACCEPTING SOMEONE’S BROKENNESS. YOU DESERVE SOMEONE WHO IS WHOLE THAT WILL GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT, NEED AND DESERVE. A RELATIONSHIP IS WORK BUT IT’S NOT A JOB. IT IS NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO “FIX” ANOTHER PERSON, IT IS THEIRS.

I put that in all caps just in case someone besides myself needed to read that.

6.) I romanticize red flags

This explains my reference to Romantic Comedies in this post. I will take something I should be paying attention to as a warning and turn it into an attribute.

So with these takeaways from my 6 week courtship, I will wait until my next post to talk about what actually happened for me to finally end things. Meanwhile I have made an appointment to start talking to a therapist. Mental health care is self care.