Hi Alexis. I’ll just be straight forward and honest with you. If one of my daughters every came to me asking for advice a situation like this, I’d scream RUN!!
First of all, it sounds like you are ready for some companionship — and that is great! There is nothing wrong with wanting someone to connect to. However, be mindful of your need and be aware that there are many eligible men who would love you and love your daughter. You don’t ne
As far as “Boy” is concerned, I’d urge you to slow down and reevaluate things. You are considering a relationship with someone who you’ve just acknowledge has a “million faults”. What if those faults never go away? What if you cannot change him? Do you want a relationship or an improvement project? While humor is an awesome trait to bring to a relationship, you need more than a good laugh to be successful.
Again, I’d urge you to take things slow with Boy or *any* other person for that matter. You sound like great catch. Don’t settle. Explore your options (safely) and maintain a good sized buffer on your heart. I’ll speak from experience and say that I pretty much wanted to marry every single woman I every met, not because all those women were marriage material, but because I wanted to be a husband. People like us are more vulnerable to abuse so you need the buffer. Protect your heart at all costs. Make sure you think long term. Don’t let your heart and your feelings get you into circumstances that you ill later regret. You are only 24. There are lots of eligible bachelors for you to choose from 🙂

Hi Alexis,

I agree with Staples and Raventrue (love that quote by the way) about keeping your distance. If you enter a relationship hoping to change that person, it means that you are not able to accept them for who they are even if the change is for their own good. If someone is not ready to change, which appears to be the case here, you are going to be frustrated in all the things he does (e.g. drink driving, ignoring your or just being drunk most of the time) while he gets frustrated for you trying to change him. Usually the relationship ends up as some form of co-dependency with lots criticism and attempts to fix problems.

Though it is true that some partners can help through an addiction period, the person being helped needs to have a lot of trust in the helper to overcome feelings of inadequacy, weakness and judgement. This is especially difficult for men as we are not raised to be emotionally vulnerable. If you want to persue a long term relationship with this person, let him be so that he can work his own way out of his addiction. Who knows, he may become the person you wish him to be all on his own and you two may reconnect sometime in the future. Otherwise, don’t spend years fixing someone else’s problem because no matter how much you invest, they are not going to get there unless they want to.