On last night’s Intervention, 33-year-old Chris said he drinks excessively to deal with the pain caused by the fact that his 15-year-long relationship is not recognized as legitimate by his family or society.
Chris’s family is accepting of the fact that he’s gay, but they don’t view his long-term relationship as “real,” the way they do with his sister and her husband, who have been together a much shorter amount of time. He’s also resentful that his nieces and nephews don’t refer to his boyfriend as “Uncle Shawn.” Lastly, he’s upset that he doesn’t own a house and have a family. His pain about these issues is real and palpable, but it’s hard to say that if they weren’t present in his life that he wouldn’t suffer from alcoholism, as his father and his father’s parents all had the disease.