At the meeting tonight, there was a man there from when I was last sober 4 years ago. We looked at each other long and hard and at the ciggi break outside we realised where we knew each other from. I had only seen the guy twice at a big book meeting and we were curled up laughing because the chair had us all in little groups talking about sex in sobriety. How embarrasing but it gave us a really good laught tonight remembering it. lol.
Having read your first post after coming on the board, Rich, I did have to chuckle at your response here! Yeah, you will find that the quality of most aspects of your life will improve in sobriety(including relationships).
A good time to bring up that relationships are not recommended in the first year of sobriety ( I would say give yourself a couple years). Through the vast amount of experience and time this program has, it's been observed over the years that getting into a relationship in early sobriety lowers the chances of staying sober considerably (those are my words but are consistent with the general consensus.)
I definitely agree with this. I know that for the first time in my life, I feel vulberable (I'm not one of those touchy-feely wuss types by any means)- and I am sure that others feel the same upon entering the program... I mean after all, i imagine most of us first crawl into the rooms in a state of pretty sad state of despond... I know i did-- unless your dating mother theresa herself, the recently sober alkie is not gonna be on equal footing with a normal person, cause the alkie is pretty much in the edge of the abyss, and is reaching out for anything to pull him back and away from it, and consequently it seems to me, is necessarily gonna invest more and do it faster than a normal person. This is obviously very bad for relationship dynamics-- To put it bluntly, the recent alkie is in too fragile of a mental state to really handle any serious emotional relationship, and all his BS (1) makes it more likely the relationship will end badly; and (2) dramatically increases the liklihood that it'll affect him real bad and cause him inordinate frustration and pain just because of the state he happens to be in at the time.
Annnnnnnnd, he'll endup at the damn liquor store.
LOL, okay maybe im just projecting my own thoughts on the matter onto others, but my theory is that as much as all of us would love to be different, we're mostly the same, especially with regard to our psychologies, and most especially the addictive ones--
Anyways im probly talkin outta my ass, but either way, those are my thoughts on relationships in early sobriety...
Dont get me wrong, thats not stopping me- the reason i've thought about this is cause im on the verge of gettin myself in trouble as per standard, OBV... Mebbe ill post about it later...
ps, shootmeplz... StPeteDean wrote:
A good time to bring up that relationships are not recommended in the first year of sobriety ( I would say give yourself a couple years). Through the vast amount of experience and time this program has, it's been observed over the years that getting into a relationship in early sobriety lowers the chances of staying sober considerably (those are my words but are consistent with the general consensus.)
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