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Alcoholism
Universal Deal Breakers
Intentional Interview Series #3
Posted July 14, 2020 Reviewed by Matt Huston
My client intoned, "Well, I broke up with Susan." Looking at my raised eyebrow, he continued, "She told me she was an alcoholic but I just didn't see any evidence of that so I stayed...nine months more before I had to give up. Between the bottles I kept finding and the drama she kept up, I guess I decided it was time to leave, you know, before I stopped loving her."
The cultivation of relationships that make sense and are enormously satisfying can be compared to gardening, where the gardener sets goals and makes sure that those goals work with nature rather than fight against it. Tender blooms that spring up out of the cracks in the sidewalks of L.A. are unlikely to survive even with the most attentive care when cultivated in the Sierra's alpine environment. Everyone enjoys beautiful heirloom roses but when deer regularly visit your garden, those roses are little more than an appetizer at a buffet. We can like (or even love) what we like, but gardeners (and lovers) ignore reality at their peril. No one can guarantee the success (or the failure) of a given relationship—but we can get very real about the odds of success in a given relationship. In the case above, there was no "us" because the girlfriend checked out mentally every time she drank. Her alcohol use made loneliness a regular feature of their relationship.
In 1736, Benjamin Franklin advised Philadelphians that “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Everyone agrees that preventing disasters is better than trying to fix them, but to what extent can we protect ourselves from romantic disasters? The simple answer: we can do a lot. We can get to know someone...intentionally.
An un-rushed, enjoyable Intentional Interview allows us to get to know one another if we know what to look for. This is not an interrogation—you did remember you're on a date, right? And the first rule of dating is to have fun. If you're a loving person looking for a mate with whom you can share your life then you need to know that the Intentional Interview is shamelessly enjoyable—even if we find the other person is not the right one for us. Remember Thomas Edison's words about his many attempts to solve building a light bulb, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” Your disqualifying 10 prospects isn't a failure, you just found 10 people who won't work for you.
Caution: Thinking rationally about romantic success leads to our understanding and accepting our limitations—we can't happily live with just anyone. When it comes to what the word "success" means in a relationship, we have to stop defining it as long-term duration. There are many marriages that have endured for a half-century or more, not because they were all so great, but because of other, far less great reasons such as a lack of options or difficulty believing that anything better was even possible.
We started this Intentional Interview party with acceptance of the simple fact that not everyone who wants a loving relationship gets a loving relationship. Not everyone who needs a loving relationship gets a loving relationship. My needing and wanting a loving relationship has nothing to do with my being capable of being in a loving relationship. And this is going to hurt some people: My neediness does not mean I deserve a relationship—love knows nothing of entitlement, and the universe doesn't owe me a relationship.
There are two specific types of variables, both deal breakers, that can keep two people from having a successful, loving relationship. Today, we're only going to discuss the first type. The "universal deal breaker" refers to the concept that, if the goal is a healthy, sustainable loving relationship, there are barriers that make such a relationship impossible for anyone—even when two people love and want each other. Thankfully, it's a short list:
- Unresolved and untreated mental illness.
- Deserving of a second line item of their own, alcohol or drug problems.
- An inability to commit to and to maintain an abuse-free lifestyle.
We've already talked in this series at length about mental illness so let's go on to drug and alcohol abuse. There is no amount of love that nullifies the lethal impact of substance abuse on successful intimacy. Yes, 20 years into my partner's addiction I might still love them and they might still love me—but no one would call that relationship "successful intimacy."
How would I discover whether my prospect has a substance abuse problem? The answer is simple and is dependent on our ability to defer our craving for immediate gratification: Just get to know them over time. We don't need to interrogate, we don't need to engage in covert surveillance, we simply need to be informed and observant. Discovering that drinking or drug use is a problem doesn't spell the end because I do get to talk about my feelings and my thoughts, and I may find that my partner has been looking for an excuse to get sober so we may be a couple yet.
Committing to and maintaining an abuse-free lifestyle means that both of us have agreed to give up any attempts to control or manipulate one another. There's to be no intimidation, name-calling, putdowns, or guilt trips. No nagging, no threatening, and, well, you get the idea. Basically, anything that isn't respectful, including just a demeaning tone of voice, is totally unacceptable. "Totally unacceptable" doesn't mean there isn't a remedy, because there is one—I acknowledge what I did wrong and I sincerely apologize. How much abuse should we remain willing to tolerate? Some of us have had enough abuse in life that zero is the right number. Some like a "three strikes and—you're out!" approach. But we're not talking rocket science so, after all, why should it take them years to stop abusing me?
If you've been in a relationship that failed for one of these three reasons, please know that no one (not even your favorite deity!) could have been successful under those conditions. Your being aware of and avoidant of these universal deal breakers is going to make the next step a whole lot easier for you—and dramatically increase the odds of success.
