"But MIFLAW I am presuming you have been sober for a while and that your wife trusts you absolutely to remain so. That's a little different." You know, it really isn't. This is what "one day at a time" is all about. Yes, i've been sober for nearly 9 years. But when I met my wife I was just coming up to my second anniversary. Our relationship, like my sobriety, has been one day at a time. Every single day, I prove to her that she has no need to worry - and, each day, she believes me a little bit more.
Incidentally, we nearly didn't get together. We met on an online dating site that allows you to say how much you drink. I put "none at all" - she put, "heavy". We kept showing up in each other's searches because we were quite well suited and she kept thinking, "non-drinker? Dull and uptight - no chance!" I kept thinking, "heavy drinker? Nightmare to be around. No chance." When we finally met, she realised that time spent with me was many things, but dull was not one of them (...) And I realised that her idea of "heavy drinking" was what I would have called "a fucking joke."
She is convinced that she has been out and got drunk with friends every couple of months since we have been together. My opinion is that she has been drunk once. The rest of the time, she's just a bit irritating because she's drunk the sort of amount I would have considered a snack.
Drinking really isn't a problem in our relationship and almost never has been. Things have also got better as, progressivly, she has realised that some of the "fun" people she used to drink heavily with are, in fact, massive problem drinkers. Many people drink heavily and irresponsibly when they are young, free and single. Then they stop because other things become more important. Others of us don't and soon become the sort of person you cross the road to avoid.
But, take the drink out of us, and you'd struggle to pick us out of a line-up.
Incidentally, I didn't say Robbie would make a good life partner, nor did I say that the men I named were all good dates. I asked if you would think, purely based on their decision not to drink, that they were boring.