Smack and Marriage Don’t Mix: The 4-Way

By: The 4-Way Panel (View Profile)

The gay woman’s perspective: Jody Fischer

Counseling, my man. Head on over for some intensive, long-term counseling. Until you can prove to yourself that you will not return to your heroin addition (or to any others as a substitute) you need to take a break from your relationship. Ever see the movie 28 Days with Sandra Bullock? Go rent it. The advice one of the counselors in the film gives to their drug-and alcohol-addicted clients is as follows: once you can take care of a plant for a year without letting it die and then graduate to a pet for year, you will be ready to begin dating again.

If she is the right one, she will still be a year from now, or even two. You have to rebuild your own house before letting anyone else in. You need to do this for you, not for her. I have no doubt you love her, but relationships also need trust. Your relationship trust with her is badly broken, and your relationship with yourself needs quite a bit of repair as well. Now is not your time to get married. So get yourself lots of support, but not from her. Stay clean and tend your own garden. Rebuild your life, one plant at a time.

The straight man’s perspective: Chris Kennedy

Here’s some genius, groundbreaking advice: stop using heroin.

Sorry if I appear unsympathetic but I just don’t care why you use heroin or how hard it is to stop. Or how hard you think your life is, or if you’re claiming to have it in your DNA to be a user/addict, blah, blah, blah.

Life isn’t easy and if you want a woman to choose to spend her life with you—and I assume you do since you proposed marriage to one—then you gotta stop the usage and the lying.

We 4-wayers are not addiction specialists so I’m just going to go at this from a relationship perspective. Honesty is the best policy. If you’re really afraid of losing her, you’ll stop using drugs, stop lying to her, and continue getting as much help as you need to keep you off drugs. It’s that hard and it’s that simple.

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posted: 05.20.2008
KT
Thank you for this article. I found it so refreshing to read the various perspectives on this issue as I also broke up with my fiance due to his substance abuse problem. He lied and hid from me too much for me to forgive & forget. When his family (thankfully) intervened it opened my eyes to the fact that this was a substantial problem that needed to be addressed. Since I called off the wedding, he has been seeing a counselor which I acknowledge is a positive first step step. When he talks to me about it, he says he can't wait to show me that he can get better and show me he can be moderate, which to me indicates that he is still in denial. I finally can appreciate the sentiment that once you find internal happiness, it will resonate with the people around you. So clean yourself up first and then focus on what's next.
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