Your 2 boys really need to see you make that happen.
I fell in love with someone like that who was a user. It really was quite the same, I loved him the way he had been when he was 17. But he was no longer that person. He became a drug user, would drive drunk, and the idea that he might kill someone driving made him - you wouldn't believe this, but he would just snicker and say, 'who gives a....'. If he thought he could get something out of a woman, he would do it without even pausing to wonder if it was ok.
I can't even describe the manipulative stunt he pulled on me when my mom died. This is a family web site.
It was very, very sad. But I had to get the cobwebs out of my eyes and see him who he really was today and stop thinking about what he used to be.
The other thing is, 'what he used to be', that probably isn't even what he used to be either. It is probably more what you NEEDED him to be back then.