You're listening to the Love Over Addiction Podcast.

Thank you so much for agreeing to be on the podcast all the way from Australia waking up at 5.30 in the morning to talk with us. I really appreciate it.

I'm really happy to be here to talk to you.

So I always ask people the same question every time because I think it's fascinating the origin story. So when did you first meet your partner and how or when did you know they had a problem with addiction?

Well, I met my partner around 10 years ago now. It's interesting because I met him because my friend was cousins with him.

So I already had a bit of a background to him and she actually said to me, don't go near him. He's an alcoholic.

And and I thought to myself, well, he doesn't seem to drink every day. So how can he be an alcoholic and so, but he was really cute as they often are told I can hand him and when I when I met him out, I met him at a pub. We call it barb. You guys bar pub. We call it a pub here.

But at the time, I guess I was very caught up in a binge drinking sort of cycle myself. So that's kind of what I was looking for. And at that time, I didn't realize you can meet people in other areas of life, not just at pubs.

So basically when I first met him, it was a night out, but I didn't think that he was drunk and I was I was quite under the influence, to be honest. And so he was really sweet. All of you know, we didn't nothing happened, but it was cold and he gave me his jacket and then we parted ways for the night.

And then I didn't see him for a couple of months. And then we started dating and there was no alcohol involved at all. He would just come over to my place or would go out for dinner or whatever.

And but the first sign that I noticed that it was a problem was about three months later. He went to a football football training.

And I texted him and said, what do you like come over for dinner, what do you want to have. And then he wrote something back. And then I started making the dinner. And then he just didn't show up. And I was like, because he his training was like an hour away as well.

I was quite worried he had to drive on a freeway. I was thinking, gosh, I hope he hasn't crashed the car or something, you know.

And so it turns out his cousin and him went to a party and ended up like staying at the party and all of that sort of stuff and they were drinking. So it was about three months into the relationship that I started to notice. And then there it actually escalated really quickly. I think he did a really good job of covering up.

In other words, he had the drinking problem long, long before I met him and was able to cover it up a little bit at the start of the relationship. But once it kind of got a few months in, it was pretty hectic.

Did you were you already in love with him when you found out or when you first suspected that this was a problem.

Yeah, like that was the thing. He would come over to my house and he would help me clean. And you know, he was really fun to be around and all of that. And yeah, I did fall in love with him.

And then it sort of it all came kind of crashing down, but then obviously I kept staying. And so I know even at that early once I first started seeing it. So we had a housewarming party my sister and I.

And we lived together at the time. I think I was about 20. I would have been about 26 when I met him. And then at the housewarming party, he got so drunk that he fell over.

And so things like that started happening really quickly. And my friends were saying to me, like, you got to get rid of him that so like he's doing some stuff that's really like embarrassing and not normal, you know, and so pretty quickly I was like had a lot of doubts about it. And especially because people around me were really kind of, I guess, sort of pressuring me into that as well.

I felt, I guess, and I think probably a lot of people can relate to, well, this might be just me, but I felt really sorry for him because I thought he's a really nice person, but he's obviously like he doesn't know when to stop drinking.

So I did talk, I had many, I've had so many conversations with him over the years about it. And I know that like even within the first year, we'd already broken up, you know what I mean. And then I just wanted to take him back. It was always actually me that wanted to take him back, even though I was the one trying to break up with him.

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