shirou: (cloud)
shirou ([personal profile] shirou) wrote in [community profile] agonyaunt2018-05-21 04:03 pm

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.

malnpudl: (Default)

[personal profile] malnpudl 2018-05-22 10:41 pm (UTC)(link)
I've been thinking about this a lot since I first read it.

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.

kiezh: Tree and birds reflected in water. (Default)

[personal profile] kiezh 2018-05-23 06:27 am (UTC)(link)
I think there are very important differences between A) "I don't want to have kids with you" (which LW's boyfriend has every right to say, and so does anyone else), B) "I think you need to get your shit together a lot more before considering parenting" (which is iffier but still potentially reasonable from a close friend or partner), and C) "People like you are unfit to parent and should never have children."

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.)