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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Dear Cary,
I've been living with my boyfriend for the last two and a half years. We live in a city where housing prices often force premature cohabitation, and as I was the one with the apartment, it was my concession, early on, to agree to live together, and I suspect that this planted a kernel of resentment that has seeped its poison steadily throughout our time together. Both of us have issues with depression and substance abuse as a way to mitigate that. He binge-drinks and socializes widely in the neighborhood, while I tend to stay closer to home and smoke weed by myself or with a few close friends. I go out with him sometimes too, and our societies of friends are very intermingled. We are a very public couple.
I want to change patterns of consumption that I think are leading to an unstable home economy. I'm 31 with a salaried job, some debt I think I could get a handle on if I stopped getting stoned, and he's 33, a freelance artist, with steady design gigs but sporadic checks that don't quite cover his half of expenses -- or they would if they didn't cover quite so many rounds at our locals. He has tried A.A., but isn't willing to go back, and of course I can't force him to.
Our level of intimacy and tenderness is rare for a gay couple nearly three years into a relationship. We've gone through so much together and have both been transformed by the relationship. But just recently we had a fight when he returned in the wee hours, drunk and ranting in the other room about a fight we'd left dangling before he went out without me because at the last minute I decided I would hang back rather than go out in public while an argument was unresolved. He continued ranting until dawn, in the other room. I lay in bed, my stomach in knots -- again -- until he petered out on the living room sofa.
When I said that the relationship wasn't working, he immediately took an aggressive stance and began dictating the negotiations of the split. I was huddled in a corner sobbing. Then he was "comforting" me and saying that he was a terrible partner and that I'd be better off without him. We settled into affectionate holding of each other in bed, each crying, in turn. We ordered Chinese, cried some more, watched TV. I began to cave.
Before our latest two and a half years, we had a six-month stint together that I also blurted out a call to end, but when a few months later we saw each other at a party, I caved and within a matter of days he was living with me.
Are we going to be Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, forever splitting and coming together? What can you do with a dysfunctional system that seems so familiar that it is both the torture and the comfort? Should we bite the bullet and separate?
Hate Closure
Dear Hate Closure,
You probably cannot change without outside help; it would be like trying to perform an appendectomy on yourself. Whatever you call it -- recovery, healing, therapy, enlightenment, growing up, whatever -- you're going to have to undertake it with some outside help.
You can get through this. It will be painful, but you've already begun to see your situation. Describing it clearly is a great beginning. The fact that you know you're dealing with depression, that you know your substance abuse is related to that and to your economic problems, and that you have written to someone for help are all powerful evidence that you're on the road to change. I think the next thing you need to do is go somewhere where you and your partner can sit down every week with someone who can help guide you through this. I know what you're talking about, and I just don't think you can make much progress alone.
And if your partner isn't willing to commit to such a project, I think it would be best if you moved apart. That doesn't mean you have to break up. If you still want to be together, you can be. But the kind of work you need to do can't be done if your partner is living with you but unwilling to participate. When economic conditions play a role in cohabitation, there's a temptation to be there just for convenience. That won't work. He has to be committed to you for more than just the apartment. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Good luck. Let me know how it's going.
