Q Should you give up drinking for her?
Here’s the issue. If you know in your gut and in your heart that this is the girl you want to be with for the rest of your life, and if you’re honest with yourself and realise that you’re drinking more than you should, then yes, respect her wishes. Of course, it will be a gruelling, lifelong battle that will require more than just will power — it will
require support groups, sacrifice, and a change of your lifestyle. But if you honestly feel that you’re not drinking too much, and that she’s overreacting, then you could be having compatibility issues. You may have gone this far because of lust but reality kicks is a lot different.
Q Have you spent enough time with this woman to know that she’s ‘the One’?
There’s a tendency for couples to have a fling or even something more serious and then get separated by distance. When people hear about long distance relationships, they assume that the hardest part is the months apart and the lack of sex. Nope. The hardest is the fact that you’re never living “real life” together. When you have a weekend together, you spend all 48 hours having sex and having precisely zero minutes for the mundane, day-to-day stuff of real relationships. Before you jump into your lifelong commitment, however, spend some more day-to-day time together.
Q Are you drinking too much?
Be honest with yourself. Are you drinking more than most of your friends? Again, we don’t make any claims to have any expertise whatsoever in diagnosing alcohol abuse. But get a quick reality check. Recreational drinking on the weekends is probably no big deal; but getting buzzed literally every non-workday is, well, at the very least, something to explore.
To summarise: the alcohol could be a small problem, but symptomatic of a larger problem in your relationship.
MCT