Merissa and Augie have been in a dating relationship for four years. They met while taking the same dance class at a medium size, countryside, private liberal arts college located in the far Western part of the United States. While they were basically good pals at first, they finally began dating when they were in their third year of college.
Because both of them came from very strict backgrounds, neither one of them drank much beyond the social drinking stage when they first began dating. As the time passed by, nevertheless, they started to go to more sorority and fraternity parties, football bashes, keg parties, and happy hours. Consequently, they over time began to drink increasingly more the more they saw one another.
Their Social Life Typically Consisted of Going to Professional Sporting Events, Going to Parties With Their Friends, Going to Happy Hour With Their Friends, Going to Restaurants Three or Four Nights Per Week, and Going With Their Friends to the Local Saloon on the Weekends
After they graduated, they both landed jobs in a relatively small city that was about sixty miles from their undergraduate college. Then they decided to move in with each other.
Since they were far removed from the college drinking scene, however, their social life usually consisted of going to professional sporting events, going to happy hour with their friends, going to restaurants three or four nights per week, going to parties with their friends, and going to the local nightspot with their pals on the weekends. To put it simply, Merissa and Augie started to drink in a hazardous and abusive manner.
Now that were living with one another and beginning to get more steadfast about their relationship, nevertheless, they began thinking about having children, buying a house, becoming more responsible, and getting married.
With any pivotal change in an individual’s life there is frequently something that forces the specific adjustment in question. For Augie and Merissa the notion of having children and buying a new house was this “mechanism of change.” Stated more forcefully, for the first time in their lives, Augie and Merissa started to critically appraise their hazardous drinking and the long term effects of alcohol on their lives.
How Would Their Excessive and Irresponsible Drinking Affect Their Relationship With Their Parents, Their Finances, Their Relationship With One Another, Their Ability to Have Children, and Their Mental Health?
Would their irresponsible and heavy drinking adversely affect their ability to have children? How would they be able to continue spending nearly all of their money on drinking if they were to start saving for a new house? How mature would they be if they had children and continued to drink in an abusive and irresponsible manner? How would they be able to face their parents and tell them about their long term aspirations, hopes, and dreams while they still drank in an abusive and irresponsible manner while having fun as they did when they were in college? What would their heavy and excessive drinking do to their relationship? How would their irresponsible and abusive drinking affect their mental health?
From a different line of reasoning, although neither one of them ever suffered from alcohol poisoning, received a DUI, or experienced alcohol withdrawals, they realized that their irresponsible and abusive drinking was becoming a problem that they could not discount any longer.
After Giving Their Situation Some Serious Thought, Augie and Merissa Grasped the Fact That Their Hopes, Aspirations, and Dreams Would not be Brought to Fruition if They Continued Their Heavy and Excessive Drinking
All of these questions clearly pointed to the same conclusion: Augie and Merissa needed to comprehend more clearly that they couldn’t continue their hazardous and irresponsible drinking if their plans, dreams, and hopes were to be fulfilled.
Once they settled upon this conclusion, they notified their drinking buddies about their plans to start a family, about their marital plans, and about their goal of buying or building a new house. They also told their drinking friends that they still wanted to pal around with them but that they would be drinking responsibly from this time forward so that they could start to realize their future dreams, aspirations, and hopes.
Much to their astonishment, all of their buddies expressed relief because they too had been contemplating their lives and concluded that their life-styles were much too frequently focused on drinking. They also thought that they would have to change substantially if they were to become more responsible and manifest more respect for their health, their careers, and for their goals in the next fifteen or twenty years.
After their heart-to-heart chat with their friends about their hopes, dreams, and plans, Augie and Merissa in actual fact started to have more meaningful relationships with all of their buddies. The key reason for this was the fact that all of them had the same mentality regarding their hazardous and excessive drinking and their relatively short and long-term aspirations, goals, and plans.