Linda and Frank have been in a dating relationship for eight-and-a-half years. They met while enrolled in the same American studies class at a relatively large, countryside, liberal arts college located in the Western part of the United States. While they were chiefly good buddies at first, they eventually began dating when they were in their third year of college.
Since both of them came from very strict backgrounds, neither one of them drank much beyond the testing stage when they first began dating. As the time passed by, then again, they started to go to more happy hours, keg parties, football bashes, and sorority and fraternity parties. Consequently, they progressively began to drink more the longer they dated.
After they graduated from college, they both got jobs in a relatively small city located just about eighty miles from their undergraduate college. Then they at long last made up their mind to move in with one another.
With any pivotal modification in a person's life there is commonly something that produces the specific change in question. For Linda and Frank the idea of having children and buying a new house was this "change agent." Stated simply, for the first time in their lives, Linda and Frank began to critically review their excessive drinking and the alcohol long term effects on their health. As an example, they began to wonder if they would ever experience an alcohol overdose due to their irresponsible and heavy drinking.
Would their irresponsible and excessive drinking unfavorably affect their ability to have children? How would they be able to continue spending a large percentage of their money on drinking if they were to begin saving for a new house?
From a different slant on things, even though neither one of them ever experienced alcohol poisoning, received a "drunk driving" arrest, or experienced alcohol poisoning symptoms, they understood that their irresponsible and heavy drinking was becoming a thorny issue that they could not discount anymore. All of these questions clearly resulted in the same conclusion, namely that Linda and Frank needed to realize that they couldn't maintain their hazardous and irresponsible drinking if their aspirations, goals, and dreams were to be realized.
Once they arrived at this conclusion, they informed their drinking pals about their their goal of buying or building a new house, about their plans to start a family, and about their marital plans. They also told their drinking pals that they still wanted to associate with them but that they would be drinking in strict moderation from this point forward so that they could begin realizing their future hopes, plans, and dreams.
Unexpectedly, all of their pals expressed relief because they too had been taking into account the direction of their lives and concluded that their life-styles were too focused on drinking. They also believed that they would have to change substantially if they were to become more responsible and exhibit more forethought for their careers, their goals, and for their health in the next twenty or twenty-five years.
After their candid chat with their friends about their dreams, aspirations, and goals, Linda and Frank in effect started to have more significant relationships with all of their friends. The fundamental reason for this was the fact that all of them had the same outlook regarding their excessive and hazardous drinking and their short and long-term goals, plans, and aspirations.