"he still swears he's not drinking.....here's the thing.....I don't believe him."
I remember being in this place soooo well. My XABF never, not once took a drink around me. His behavior changed completely some months into the relationship and I immediately knew, on a gut level, what was going on. Lied to myself. Eventually he came clean and swore that he was done "this time." One night he came over late - we went to bed and he -reeked- of beer. I was half asleep and asked whether he had been drinking. Oh, the %^&* storm that followed. I didn't "trust" him, yada yada ... you know the drill. He said he had eaten Indian food before he came over (?!)
I learned quickly not to ask - and to lie to myself about what I knew. Which is crazy. It's a hallmark of the disease and I've since read on the boards about people breathalyzing an A then having the A tell them the machine must be broken.
Looking back I realize how futile it was to expect an A to be honest about their drinking. People who don't have a problem with alcohol don't lie about their alcohol consumption. People who do, do. But I pretended to buy it, then I stopped asking. And truly, it wouldn't matter whether he had come to bed smelling of vanilla and molasses - by that point his behavior was harmful and unacceptable and that was all I really needed to know.
As a postscript, when I got the last of my stuff back he packed some of it in a reusable grocery bag. At the bottom was a receipt for a six pack of beer and the date on it was that Saturday that he'd eaten "Indian" food. No idea whether he meant for it to be in there (I suspect not) but that receipt was really important to me at the time. I shouldn't have needed a piece of paper to show me in black and white what I knew but at that stage, I still did.
You don't believe him - and this is probably because he's not telling you the truth. So what now?
Hugs,
SL