...some thoughts.......
.....maybe your 'signature' says it all!?
...if it is real love,,you should be able to talk with him,no?
...................now that I'm in my 50's,,I realize how just -not- mature were my 30's
....my spirituality is my -deepest- intimacy.....I'd certainly take it as a clear warning if someone were diss'ing my HP


..why not make 2 list's of pro's/con's in the situation you're looking at,,see where the balance lies?

Dave R wrote:

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Talk to your sponsor about it. That' what sponsors are for.

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 ...thanks Dave ,I forgot the most important!..

.....ironically,something rather big came up for me yesterday and I didn't call. 

Hey Liz Blessings of this day! And yes anything that may affect your recovery is a recovery issue...I never give advice I only suggest from my own experience and for me being married 3x,,divorced 2x and heading for a 3rd before I finally surrendered you can see one of my reasons why  :)  or you could say I have a lot of experience   :)  Anyway this was a message from a blog I received with someone in a similar situation I'll share with you and you will have to make final decision and I always include the God of my understanding in all decisions I make ,,would also run it by my sponsor and talk with the one I love (the hardest but maybe the 2nd best place ?)heres the blog

 

We have a habit of ignoring a person's faults until we agree to marry them. As the wedding day gets closer, we start seeing the person and all his faults and ask our self, "Do I really want to spend the rest of my life putting up with all this man's faults?" 

About 2 weeks before my wedding day, I wanted to call off the wedding. But all the wedding plans were done and the invitations sent out. How could I call off the wedding now? I told myself I just had cold feet and I went ahead with the wedding. Big mistake!!! Two years later and now with a baby, I divorced him. All my fears about him and what marriage would be like with him, all came true. 

When you marry someone, you have to believe with all your heart that he is the man you want to spend the rest of your life with. Just because you love him, doesn't mean that you are meant to be together for life. 

Call off the wedding. Tell your boyfriend that you love him, but you just aren't ready to make a lifetime commitment at this time. 

Yes he will be hurt and maybe angry, but you will be making a big mistake marrying someone you feel that if you had it all over to do again, you wouldn't marry him. If he's not the right man for you, then you need to move on and find someone else. 

I think it would be hard for him to continue being just friends, while you date other men. It would be a mistake also for you to continue dating him after you cancel the wedding. Don't put your life and your future on hold like that because you love him. As you said, you love him, but he's not right for you. Make a clean break. It's the best thing for the both of you.

 

This is a little conclusional for me,,but some good points made...And of course you have stated settling may not be your forte at the moment?? I will lift you up in prayer,,seek your Higher Power,,share your concerns the best you can,,,like CD says ...this is your LIFE.....Above all a no brainer for US...JUST DON'T USE!!!!!      Peace

 

Age wise, if you enjoy being with him it can work. The 'Half plus 5' rules says you are ok. 33 divided by 2 plus 5!!

 

Love wise, oh boy. You have your eyes wide open, be honest.....how could you keep him in the dark and not discuss this with him??

-- Edited by Davethewave on Tuesday 13th of May 2014 06:15:42 PM

LizC wrote:

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I have a hard time communicating with people about serious issues. I've been working on it but it's definitely not one of my strong characteristics. I think I might just be scared but I don't know.

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......a good question to bring up with your sponsor,,no?

 

.... interaction with my sponsor gives me someone not only to bounce my ideas off,,,but also helps me learn to build communications I can trust.........all important in the real-life situations I face each day

Liz, so stressful and certainly not helpful in trying to manage your day to day life and I've been where you are now.

I'm also not a proponent of advice giving but I can share my story.

As sweet sixteen was nearing an end for me, I found myself completely entrenched in an addictive lifestyle engaging in rampant drug, sex and bulimic abuse and attached to a 25 year old alcoholic bum that I didn't care about but couldn't shake for some reason (he was a cockroach to be nice) . A friend quipped something about where I was headed and I suddenly became very self-aware and started hoping something would come my way and get me back on track, especially since I was relatively affluent, fairly intelligent and had a head for business. When I was introduced to a 22 year old that was hard working, future thinking and best of all, straight as a pin, rarely drinking and never entertaining even a single thought of using drugs, I was quick to grab the lifeline that was to become my best friend for the next 8+ years.

He would create these great business concepts, I would generate the business/financial plan to give them life and together we would see them through to fruition.
Making money became my new addiction and by the time I was 20 my personal net worth was scary impressive. We were perfectly matched in business but that's about it so when he cheated on me I was faced with having to decide between him and my addiction. To emphasize how my addict mind really warped my thinking... his cheating was a full blown relationship with a married, family member of mine so it was a double betrayal for me and yet, for the sake of being able to continue making money with him, I let the overwhelming thought of having to separate all our assets and the terrifying thought of dismantling the 'golden duo' prevail and guess what I chose? Part of the justification was the fact that he was technically my bff; we did everything together and always had a blast doing it and I think we really did love each other as bff's.

He did what he thought he was supposed to do and proposed and I accepted because it must have seemed logical after cheating??!! Doh! But it was another four years when we were well into a solid financial setting that he randomly explained that he guessed the next step was to set a date. We owned a resort at the time and we started planning a beautiful country wedding for the next summer. We went on what supposed to be a romantic holiday the Christmas before, taking in the sun of Florida, Disney World and a Caribbean cruise. When we returned home we were exhausted from our non-stop adventure yet re-energized and ready to get back to work. It wasn't long before a girlfriend asked how it went and after recalling the great time we had she asked "what about the romance?" and in that moment I realized there hadn't been any... for all the excitement, the laughs, the great experiences, the sharing of thoughts and ideas and the bed we slept in every night, I don't think we even kissed once. I didn't know what to do, I didn't want to think about it so I kept on with the wedding planning.

Eventually the uncertainty of whether or not I should be getting married began to eat away at me and every thought in my mind became 'what if...' By then I was so far into my wedding plans... thousands spent on invitations, high-end outdoor dinnerware & decorations, reserving/importing a live band, etc. for a guest list of 200, a wedding party of 10 (dresses and tuxes coming from the US to Canada) and a massive pig and beef roast. The only saving grace was that we owned the venue and were able to accommodate the out of town guests which in turn meant no one would be out having made reservations elsewhere. Three - four months before my wedding I started taking more scripts, drinking heavily, I took up both smoking weed and cigarettes again and even cheated all in less than a month and that lead me to wonder if I'd rather spend the rest of my life having lost my bff (and all that went with him) or spend the rest of my life wondering if there was a pure, romantic love somewhere, out there waiting for me.

So this is where I found the courage to reach deep down and step away and I lost my bff permanently. Part of me is happy that I hadn't yet come to terms with being an addict and unable to predict that the worst was yet to come because I may have let my life ride out as it was. Next week I'll be celebrating 13 years feeling totally blessed to have married into that pure, romantic love I wondered about. I guess the moral of my story is that I couldn't predict the future and as an addict it was even more difficult to discern what was best for myself but if in moments of clarity got real with myself and took leaps of faith that were good for me at the time. Somehow I managed to allow myself to see a different future and ran with it and for me it worked.

Note: Looking back it would have been so much easier to leave him when I was only 20 but I believe that things happen for a reason when they're supposed to happen. I was much more mature and I left with a gracious attitude (he wasn't so happy with me though). Ironically I was so ready to leave that I decided to leave with nothing except my clothes, a china cabinet and all the pets. We did take a loss on the business to have it sold but I was ok with that. Oh and before I forget... my aunt ended up taking all that high-end outdoor dinnerware which took well over a decade to use up at family gatherings! lol

If you ever need to chat, send me a message, take care.

kd