Dear Gabby: #29 Advice re: boyfriend's drugs & gay phone-sex hobby

#29 Boyfriend's drugs & gay phone-sex hobby / Not safe space for boyfriend to tell truth

Dear Ann Landers: For the last 18 months, I have been dating a man in his early 40s who has never been married. Things were going well until I discovered by opening one of his phone bills that he had been having phone sex.

It didn't seem to be all that bad until I started to call the numbers that appeared on the bill. They turned out to be gay party lines. Needless to say, I am in shock, not only because he had been making these calls but because the phone bill was over $700. This is a lot of money for a man who has told me repeatedly that he is on a very tight budget.

When I demanded an explanation, he claimed he was under the influence of alcohol and cocaine when he made those calls. I pointed out that the calls did not occur on just a few nights but over a period of several weeks. He also had obtained a feature that allowed him to get voice-mail messages from gay mails.

He keeps insisting that he is not bisexual and swears up and down that he will never touch drugs again, which he says, were the source of his erratic behavior. I was well aware that he drank, but I have never seen cocaine in his house. I feel very vulnerable and need your guidance. ARCADIA, CALIF.

Dear Arcadia: The facts speak for themselves. Most likely, this man is bisexual, plus he is an alcoholic and a drug abuser. Dump him at once. He is bad news. —ANN LANDERS

Gabby's Response:

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Gabby’s Response:

Hi Arcadia: You have two main problems both stemming from fear. Fear of acknowledging the truth and of being alone. No matter if you dump him today, which I doubt you will do, you still need therapy or you will continue to attract partners addicted to deceit, lying, and substance abuse. It's you who do not know how to communicate in such a way as to be a safe space for a man to tell the truth and it's you who are addicted to substance abuse users. Put another way, a person who is whole and complete, has a supporting loving relationship with his/her parents, operates from a ground of being that is totally alien to you. Such a person creates space for the truth to be told, they are a virtual vacuum cleaner when it comes to consciously and unconsciously extracting withholds. It's virtually impossible to hide something from such a person because they inspire integrity, they live from open, honest, and spontaneous communication. You on the other hand inspire deceit. This indicates that you have accumulated a lifetime of perpetrations for which you have yet to be acknowledged.

One way to have you both win, given that you are equally damaged, is to get yourself (alone) immediately into a two-or-more sessions per month therapy program or a Co-Dependant Enabler's Support Group. Most importantly, communicate to your friend that you'll be willing to interact with him again only when he can say he's not had a drink or drug for six months straight, and, has completed an equal amount of (by himself) therapy. You both can use the alone time to get clear about sex. If it's meant to be you'll heal simultaneously whatever that looks like.

Every conversation/interaction you have with him after reading this reply will keep you both stuck even longer.

You don't say whether you had his permission to open his phone bill, in any case, use your therapy to get to the source of your sneaky (calling behind his back) deceitful behavior. Sneaky always begets sneakiness. You think that he sneaked first but the truth is you entered into the relationship with the option to sneak, this character flaw of yours automatically attracts, a partner who also reserves the right to sneak their items of choice. With aloha, Gabby

PS. Do show him our posts.

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