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Help! My Boyfriend Implied That I Shouldn’t Have Children Because I’ve Struggled with Addiction
From Dear Prudence
Q. Irredeemably addicted: I recently read an article about opiate addiction and a commenter said no addict should ever have children. I told my long-term boyfriend, and he said he could see where the commenter was coming from.
I’m in recovery myself and was really hurt by this. He didn’t understand why I was upset and said he was alarmed I wouldn’t think of that as a viable perspective, therefore implying that I am blind to my lifelong risk of relapse and irresponsibly inconsiderate of my potential impact on my potential children. He said he thinks “all the time” about how my addiction would impact our future family. When I said not everyone would think of me that way, he said that’s because “they haven’t had to check if you’re breathing.”
I’m worried about what he thinks of me, and I have so much shame and regret about my past. I’m now doubting if I should ever have children, even though I’ve always wanted to. I feel like he is saying I’m not fully human anymore, that I don’t have the same rights as everyone else. Am I making a big deal out of nothing?
A: No, you’re not. Disagreeing over whether to have children is a huge issue for any couple.
Add to that the fact that your boyfriend apparently considers you incapable of ever being a parent by virtue of the fact that you’re a sober addict, and you’re at a serious impasse. Not to mention the fact that he’s clearly felt this way for a while, but never mentioned it until you shared that you’d be hurt by an anonymous comment on an article about addiction. It’s one thing for him to still experience pain or resentment over the toll your behavior had on him while you were an active addict. But the proper response to that would be to see a therapist together, or find a support group for the partners of addicts, or to share some of these feelings with you directly (or all three!), not privately decide you’re not fit to ever have children.
The reason you feel dehumanized by your boyfriend’s comments is because they were dehumanizing. You don’t make choices on the assumption you’re going to relapse and spend the rest of your life in active addiction. You have not forfeited the right to decide for yourself whether you want to have children. You are not an inherently bad parent just because you’ve gotten sober. This is a real crisis point for your relationship, and you shouldn’t shy away from it. It’s better to find out now if your boyfriend is capable of staying in a relationship with you and finding ways to deal with the pain of the past that don’t involve constantly holding the future hostage.
Q. Re: Irredeemably addicted: Whoa, there! The boyfriend just said he could see where that belief comes from. He didn’t say he holds it himself, and indeed, he admitted he thinks about how addiction might impact “their future children.” I think you’re jumping to conclusions badly.
A: I disagree! The boyfriend said “he was alarmed I wouldn’t think of that as a viable perspective,” and I don’t think these are two reasonable positions with a meaningful compromise. To claim former addicts, as a category of people, have forfeited the right to have children, is an immoral position; to entertain it as a viable perspective (especially in relation to his partner) is cruel.
Q. Irredeemably addicted: I recently read an article about opiate addiction and a commenter said no addict should ever have children. I told my long-term boyfriend, and he said he could see where the commenter was coming from.
I’m in recovery myself and was really hurt by this. He didn’t understand why I was upset and said he was alarmed I wouldn’t think of that as a viable perspective, therefore implying that I am blind to my lifelong risk of relapse and irresponsibly inconsiderate of my potential impact on my potential children. He said he thinks “all the time” about how my addiction would impact our future family. When I said not everyone would think of me that way, he said that’s because “they haven’t had to check if you’re breathing.”
I’m worried about what he thinks of me, and I have so much shame and regret about my past. I’m now doubting if I should ever have children, even though I’ve always wanted to. I feel like he is saying I’m not fully human anymore, that I don’t have the same rights as everyone else. Am I making a big deal out of nothing?
A: No, you’re not. Disagreeing over whether to have children is a huge issue for any couple.
Add to that the fact that your boyfriend apparently considers you incapable of ever being a parent by virtue of the fact that you’re a sober addict, and you’re at a serious impasse. Not to mention the fact that he’s clearly felt this way for a while, but never mentioned it until you shared that you’d be hurt by an anonymous comment on an article about addiction. It’s one thing for him to still experience pain or resentment over the toll your behavior had on him while you were an active addict. But the proper response to that would be to see a therapist together, or find a support group for the partners of addicts, or to share some of these feelings with you directly (or all three!), not privately decide you’re not fit to ever have children.
The reason you feel dehumanized by your boyfriend’s comments is because they were dehumanizing. You don’t make choices on the assumption you’re going to relapse and spend the rest of your life in active addiction. You have not forfeited the right to decide for yourself whether you want to have children. You are not an inherently bad parent just because you’ve gotten sober. This is a real crisis point for your relationship, and you shouldn’t shy away from it. It’s better to find out now if your boyfriend is capable of staying in a relationship with you and finding ways to deal with the pain of the past that don’t involve constantly holding the future hostage.
Q. Re: Irredeemably addicted: Whoa, there! The boyfriend just said he could see where that belief comes from. He didn’t say he holds it himself, and indeed, he admitted he thinks about how addiction might impact “their future children.” I think you’re jumping to conclusions badly.
A: I disagree! The boyfriend said “he was alarmed I wouldn’t think of that as a viable perspective,” and I don’t think these are two reasonable positions with a meaningful compromise. To claim former addicts, as a category of people, have forfeited the right to have children, is an immoral position; to entertain it as a viable perspective (especially in relation to his partner) is cruel.
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Prudie concludes that "It’s better to find out now if your boyfriend is capable of staying in a relationship with you and finding ways to deal with the pain of the past that don’t involve constantly holding the future hostage." This makes it sound like it's only the boyfriend's responsibility to deal with the pain of the past, when it was the LW who inflicted that pain. Having to check if she's breathing! It sounds traumatic. What the boyfriend said was hurtful, but it would take me time and work to gain enough trust in the LW to have children with her also.
So maybe the LW can now suggest therapy to help them figure out how to get past the trauma. Prudie was right to say this would have been a better option for the boyfriend, but why shouldn't the LW take the lead? The LW has a lot of responsibility in this situation.
I'm glad Prudie didn't go immediately for DTMFA. Because on one hand, what he said was hurtful. But on the other hand, he was the one who was there with her, at her worst, making sure she was breathing. Life is complicated.
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I disagree really very strongly. "Silent resentment, probably for years, and treating someone as a bomb about to go off when they have made very real and tangible efforts and progress toward getting better", and total failure to understand his partner's perspective while getting indignant about how valid his own is, is really not a good look. He... doesn't actually get to I Know Best all over this, regardless, and bringing it up at a point when she's already hurt and asking for comfort is really not a kind or mature way to approach this.
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He said he thinks “all the time” about how my addiction would impact our future family.
This relationship has gone septic. He is either holding LW's history against them "all the time" (!) without ever telling LW so they can do something about it, or going straight for the jugular in an argument so he can hurt LW badly enough to 'win'. Or both.
They should break up and go to therapy separately - him for his lingering issues over LW's addiction problems and how they affected him, and LW for the shame and regret and hopefully some help in making future plans. Having kids is a big deal and requires a lot of planning and care; there's no reason LW can't think about their long-term strategy for getting to a place where they can have kids, and how their recovery would factor in, with the help of a good therapist and a support system that doesn't think LW is too defective and stained to ever parent.
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-- at the point at which dude is not capable of thinking about LW as anything other than an addict, as anything other than their illness, in spite of apparently substantial progress toward recovery, I find that deeply concerning in terms of long-term viability of the relationship -- because it sounds like he isn't, actually, considering LW as a partner.
I have a lot of feelings about this because of the nature of my mental illnesses and disabilities and how those impact my interpersonal relationships and care needs. The worst symptoms of my illnesses do not define my capabilities and it is patronising and dehumanising and disabling for people to treat me as though I am never capable of getting out of bed, or of thinking clearly, rather than making actual realistic assessments of where I am at and listening to mine, too, in a context where my self-assessments have been consistently reliable for many years.
I don't think we have evidence that the LW isn't similarly capable. As such, it's not okay to behave as though they're not.
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People with disabilities can and do have relationships that don't include a major violation of trust, so I think that's a pretty different situation from the one in the letter.
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I mean, maybe he feels that nothing she could ever do could earn it back, but... among other reasons why I don't think that would be a useful stance, I don't see it as being an encouragement for her to work towards what would be an impossible goal.
And I think that saying "As a recovering addict you can never possibly be a decent parent, no matter what," is another way of saying "there is no way you can ever earn my trust back." I know it's easy for me to sit here and say he should give her a chance -- I'm not the one who found her and didn't know if she was breathing. But if he's interested in being in a relationship with her, and for the sake of love and the evidence of her working on her recovery, I think he should give her that chance. Which might mean going to therapy to find a way to give her that chance.
(My sympathy for her is conditional on her actually being a recovering addict. I'm not writing this to excuse the devastation that active addiction causes. But I think we should hope, we should judge people as more than just their worst moments, or there's no reason to be else than our worst moments.)
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It's not about 'right', at all. It's about whether it's a good idea. That is a very different thing (and also a thing I don't know enough about to say anything more).
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One pattern I've seen in my own life ("you're depressed, do you think you could deal with a baby?") and so many of my friends' lives, is how any issue, no matter how large or small, can be seen as Absolute Disqualification For Being a Parent. Do anything from drink a latte during pregnancy to being in debt and You'll Ruin The Child's Life. Now, addiction is a pretty big issue. But as I said in my other comment I think we should give people who are honestly and long term working on their issues a chance, and in general should not demand perfection of people before they become parents, because no one is perfect.
I certainly know that parents can mess their children up badly in many ways -- my parents actually left a lot of scars on me, both physical and emotional. And they did so while looking like a perfect couple to raise a child, married, employed, stable, community pillars. I think a conscientious person who knows what their issues are and has made restitution for major mistakes in their life has the distinct possibility to be a compassionate parent who maybe won't respond to every peccadillo with "OMG KID YOU RUINED YOUR LIFE." I don't think being a recovering addict of long standing is an automatic disqualified for having a child.
In this particular case, yeah, I'd advise LW that she and her boyfriend could use counseling, not least so he can vent and clean out his resentment and she has a structured place to make it clear to him that she is sorry and she is working on changing, but also because I don't think it's helpful for either of them for him to hold it over her for the rest of their lives.
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And then my Dad died 45, when I was ll. Good-bye, picture post-card. My mom was still a good mother overall, but there are habits and reactions that I'm still trying to undo.
So, yeah, counseling is an absolute must with this couple, for all the reasons you state. But as I said somewhere else, it's very dangerous to think not being the perfect parent will produce irretrievably damaged children, because (a) that's not true, and (b) it leads to a whole world of blame when a child does have trouble.
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Also the idea that some section of the populace should be marked as Too Tainted To Reproduce is disgusting eugenicist bullshit we should not entertain. The fact that LW's boyfriend is ready and willing to put LW in that category is grounds for breakup, IMO.
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Me: Sixty years old. Refractory major depressive disorder, mostly likely pretty much since birth, with various ups and downs. Cocaine addict clean since 1981, less a single one-day "test" incident a year after quitting to prove to myself and my SO that yes, I was still truly addicted. Self-defined alcoholic sober since 1992, less a couple of times when I deliberately gave myself 48 hours to get shitfaced in order to get through (process/survive) otherwise intolerable crises. Fundamentally wired for addiction, whether to behaviors or substances or feelings or activities or whatever; currently functionally addicted to food and walking, and coping as well as I ever do.
In my opinion my combination of mental health issues (including my addictive nature and behavior patterns as well as depression) mean that it's a very good thing I never had children, because I would not -- could not -- have been a good parent. In fact I never wanted kids, but even if I ever had, I would have thought long and hard and, I suspect, have ultimately decided against it for just this reason.
My take on this:
1) Addicts and alcoholics often experiences relapses after sobriety, sometimes more than once. It's downright common. That doesn't mean that their recovery is a failure. Some will relapse and not get sober again, but many quit again and, eventually, stay that way for the rest of their lives. Relapse can be a part of the process of recovery.
LW doesn't say whether she has ever relapsed. No telling whether she will or won't. No telling if she'll return to recovery and sobriety afterward. One year is really early in the recovery process. Time will tell.
2) Many, many addicts and alcoholics have other physical and/or mental health issues that they are self-medicating with their substance(s) of choice. If these are not adequately and successfully addressed, not only is relapse a real possibility but so are other things that could impair someone in being a good parent. LW doesn't say whether she has identified any such things in herself and, if so, where she is in dealing with them. Again, one year is early days for a lot of us.
3) Addiction is even harder on the people close to the addict than on the addict. They have earned their fear. LW's boyfriend's fear is reasonable and he is entitled to it. That doesn't mean it can't be addressed and quieted and turned around over time, with a lot of work and good communication and consistency and, again, time. A lot of time. But that fear sinks in deep and chances are it will never entirely go away, nor should the boyfriend be blamed for that, nor for telling the truth about where he is in this process (hopefully not at ground zero, but we don't know one way or the other about that without hearing from him).
Given all of this, in my opinion it is both fair and responsible that LW's boyfriend is thinking very seriously about whether LW is someone he is open to having children with. And at only one year into recovery, in my opinion it is entirely reasonable that he's not yet sure.
In LW's final paragraph, she talks about how her boyfriend's words make her feel. They remind me powerfully of how I felt about myself after I got clean. There was a long period of judging and doubting myself and my own value, my own worth, deeply and profoundly. I felt enormous regret, guilt, and shame about who I was and what I had/hadn't done while using and all the ways that hurt others, especially those closest to me.
So I think it's entirely possible that LW is still in that phase, and still working through all of that. Not at all a certainty, but assuredly possible. I think it's entirely possible that her boyfriend has not come to any conclusions, but rather is still waiting and watching and thinking really, really hard about probably the most important decision he will ever make in choosing someone with whom to have children.
So yeah, I disagree with Prudence. It's much, much more complex than she makes it and there is way too much that we don't know and can't judge.
As always, just my opinion, for what it's worth. Having been there/done that makes me no less fallible than anyone else. I'm nobody's authority.
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What the commenter said, and LW's boyfriend agreed with, was C. That's not about his personal future, or LW's, or the difficulties they may or may not decide to face together. It is, as LW and Prudence noted, dehumanizing. Getting hit by that from a partner is a profound betrayal, and casts doubt on whether he considers LW an equal human being worthy of respect at all.
(And if he really cannot look at LW and see anything but a source of trauma and pain, then he should be initiating a breakup and getting some PTSD therapy, which I suspect he really needs. That's not an insult to him - I have PTSD and have experienced thinking about a traumatic incident all the time and it sucks a lot. If he were the one writing the letter, my advice would be to get the heck away from as many triggers as possible and get a therapist with some experience in treating trauma, so he doesn't have to stay stuck in that loop.)