Dealing with alcoholism in the family

It is often said girls marry men who in some ways are like their fathers. FILE PHOTO | SHUTTERSTOCK

My daughter fell in love with a man she met in rehab while undergoing treatment for alcoholism. She now plans to wed him. Her father is an alcoholic and I have told her not to make the same mistake I made. Please help me!

In one brief sweep, you have asked several questions, some of which are easy to answer, and others have no easy answer.

You have, for example, asked if alcoholism runs in families and by extension if your daughter might have the same or similar medical needs as her father concerning alcohol use disorder.

The answer is a qualified yes, meaning that in some, but not all cases, the condition does run in families.

You have also alluded to the possibility that your daughter has fallen in love with a man, whose personality is similar in some way to the father she presumably adored, and again the answer is a qualified, yes.

It is often said girls marry men who in some ways are like their fathers.

You have also asked us to address the almost impossible question to deal with, which is how you tell a girl in love that her choice is, in your view, a mistake.

Indeed, how do you tell her how to fall out of love today, for the sake of her future, and presumably, for the sake of your grandchildren? Do you hear yourself?

Other queries from your seemingly simple question are related to how we choose who we marry. We might as well start with you and the choice to marry her father.

Did you, for example, marry him because he was very similar to your father or was he, for example, very similar in his preferences to you?

Were you both the party animals who were to be found in nightclubs while you were both at university pursuing the same degree?

In the alternative, did you admire and perhaps envy his life as a free spirit while yours was a sedate Christian Union type of existence, and did you hope for freedom through his lifestyle?

Look back and determine what attracted you to this man. Did your mother give you any warnings or hints?

In the early 1970s, we could at university, tell which girls had come from Catholic boarding schools with all their strict rules and those who had come from the more liberal schools.

The former behaved like recently released prisoners who would go on heavy drinking binges, many becoming pregnant within a few months of joining university.

The latter were more natural in their ways and seemed “to know the ways of the city”.

The concept of assortative mating also came to mind from your question. In positive assortative mating, one marries the girl from next door, that is one who is exactly like himself, in having mothers who go to the same church, live in the same estate, and have the same values in life.

Is this the choice your daughter is making, that because both of you already know how to cope with alcohol addiction and its consequences, there is little to learn for either of you? In other words, she has been attracted to “one of us”.

At the other end is negative assortative mating in which one chooses from a completely different end of the spectrum almost arguing that our current lifestyle is so boring that one must find a completely different type of person to complement their personality.

As you can see, the boy your daughter has brought home can be examined from many different theoretical angles but sadly, at the end of the day, your role in deciding who your daughter marries, ends with your performance of your role as a mother, which is to offer your opinion from the position of parental love and concern. If, however, your relationship with her is such that this is the first time you are offering an opinion to her for her consumption, do not be surprised if it is rejected.

Finally, and on a note of some hope, going through rehab is often the beginning of a new life and it does not spell the end of life. Many people go through rehabilitation and come out to lead healthy and fulfilling lives.

Therefore, do not write off either your daughter or her chosen partner only because of where they met or even because they went there.

There is both life and hope after recovery from alcohol and other substance use disorders.

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