Many couples that I work with struggle with the same issues as couples who started in long distance relationships, but they were never long distance! I wondered what these other couples all have in common and realized that, often, these couples share a history of fairly constant “partying” aka binge drinking and/or drug use during a significant length of time during their dating years, often in highschool/college or their early 20’s. These couples have many issues related to never really getting to know each other while sober, and then when they are hit by the demands of work and kids and have to be sober most of the time, they face specific challenges.
The challenges that partying couples face fall into a few domains. The most common is when one partner stops wanting to party so hard and the other still does. Even after kids, the partner who isn’t ready to give up constant socializing or getting drunk at work happy hours will really frustrate the partner who is ready to transition to a more stable life with less or no substance use. Here’s an example of a couple in this dynamic.
When one partner wants to focus on work and family and the other still wants to drink/use drugs and socialize a lot, the latter partner feels like there was a bait-and-switch. Since the couple both enjoyed partying and often even met when drinking/using, the one who is now being told to “grow up” feels betrayed and angry. On the other end, the partner who feels done with this lifestyle may have thought it was obvious to both that the partying would eventually have to stop. If the couple never openly discussed their expectations for if/how their lives would change with age and kids, both end up feeling resentful and alone.
Another issue that can plague couples who primarily spent time together when drunk/partying is a difference in sexual desire. When low libido people are drinking or using drugs, their libido may be artificially inflated and their inhibitions are much lower. This is how a man who used to have crazy sex with his wife in college when both were wasted will feel confused and bitter when she no longer wants crazy sex ever after she has stopped getting that drunk. Also, sexual disparities in preferences or libido are masked by constant substance use, which can lead to glaring differences when both are sober for long periods.
The lack of inhibition when drinking can also lead to more “emotional” (read: dramatic) conversations than one or both partners would be capable of when sober. If most of a couple’s emotional discussions are when both are drunk or high, then they will often feel awkward later on when they are not drinking or using anymore. They literally may never have said anything emotional to one another when not aided by an inhibition-lowering substance. This can yield couples whose communication patterns resemble college kids’ even though they are in midlife. They never learned to talk to one another openly and maturely in a critical window of development.
If this resonates with you, read the memoir Smashed. The author talks about how she was thought to be, and felt internally, much younger than her age because she had only really learned to socialize when drunk. When she stopped drinking, she realized she had lost years of social development and was basically frozen at the age that she was when she started binge drinking, which was early adolescence. When you don’t learn to talk to others when sober at a younger age, you need to learn this later on.
A final issue that these couples struggle with is when one partner truly believes that the other is addicted to alcohol/substances but is disguising this addiction by calling it “having fun” or “relaxing.” If one partner continues to drink/use daily or near-daily, gets drunk/high on a regular basis to the point that you wouldn’t want them to drive, and/or blames the other partner’s being “uptight” or “difficult” for their binge drinking/using, this is a problem and can speak to a greater issue with addiction, particularly if there is a family history of addiction (workaholism counts).
Couples who deal with issues like these can often benefit a great deal from couples counseling. They can finally learn what they missed learning years ago: how to communicate directly like adults, instead of having dramatic drunken fights or avoiding conflict altogether. They can also move from idealizing their past dramatic drunken hookups and learn to have even better, closer sex where both partners are fully aware and involved. And of course, both partners need to figure out their expectations, assumptions, and fears about changing and growing older, and what role substance use of any kind will play in their adult lives.
If this post spoke to you, send it to your partner and see if you can have a discussion about whether you struggle with any of these areas. If you both agree that you do, start to consider the idea of couples counseling to see if you can improve your dynamic. Especially if you have kids, you owe it to yourselves and them to see how you can grow together and fully inhabit and enjoy your relationship. And till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Says, Intimacy Is Even Better When You Can Remember What Happened.