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Old 10-20-2010, 10:01 PM
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trickytiger
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 7
Anyone want to read a novel? New poster

My story:
I was involved in a LDR relationship for 1.5 years – he travels for work, and I’m a graduate student in my second career, and we’d been able to spend one week a month together. For the last year, it’d been dysfunctional enough to make me unhappy. He’d pick fights at night over random, innocuous things, and I could never figure out the triggers. This would always be followed by a sweeping apology and some sort of grand gesture plus promises “never to do it again”. Add to that a liberal sprinkling of broken promises and everpresent excuses, and this relationship was following a sadly predictable pattern in my life. All the danger signs and red flags were there in the beginning, but I could not or would not heed them. After exiting yet another relationship with an emotionally unavailable man, P’s statements of love and promises of what our life would be were exactly what I wanted to hear. So what if he fell in love instantaneously? So what if this is exactly what happened when he started dating his ex-fiance? Of course SHE was the crazy one! Of course he didn’t have a drinking problem! So what if all his friends were heavy drinkers? He was athletic: a mountain climber, runner, biker- this man lived for the outdoors and I thought this meant he took care of his health.

For the last 6 years, I’ve had a history of dating men who didn’t treat me very well. The emotional abuser. The liar. The one who had to make sure he always won. The manipulator. The emotionally unavailable. My friends and family, at first, couldn’t believe my bad luck. Then they began to worry each time I started seeing someone new. I began to wonder if there just wasn’t anyone for me. Never mind that I’d rejected my best friend when he fell in love with me- he is bright, kind, curious and loved me for over a decade. We don’t talk anymore, and I can’t say I blame him. I was shy as a kid- loved to read, loved school, but felt horribly awkward and socially unloveable. My parents grew up in emotionally distant or alcoholic homes and although they did neither one of those things, they are both very controlled people. Although we are close now, I was relentlessly and pathologically tormented and teased by my older brother- he was everything to me, and he hated me and after years of it, I thought I deserved it. My parents didn’t stop it- they just told me to “ignore” it. Thus, I learned to deny that anybody or anything could hurt me. I learned not to trust that I felt bad when in fact I felt guilty for existing at all. I never learned to be honest with others how I feel, because I thought I wasn’t supposed to HAVE those feelings. I was supposed to be the good kid, the perfectionist, the athlete- and I was. Still am. I’m also very critical of myself and find it much easier to be kinder to people who really don’t deserve it than to be kind to myself.

I didn’t realize the full extent of P’s drinking until August and September, when we briefly worked and lived together for a job. He didn’t hide it anymore. He drank on stressful days, on happy days, on days off and in anticipation of days off. He quit running. Went to the gym once or twice, but drank a beer beforehand. He’d start with cheap beer at 5 and drink till 11. I’d come home from an evening class and find him already lit on nights we were supposed to go do something. This didn’t stop it- just fueled it. When I put the dysfunction and drinking together and realized what I was dealing with, it hit me like a 2x4 across the face. This was three weeks ago.

I moved on- to a small city where I’ll be living for 3 months on an internship. I didn’t give P my address- he made excuses about why he didn’t want to help me drive across the state, and spend the weekend drinking with friends. I sought information – lurked on these forums, read as much as I could, talked with the people I love and trust in my life as best as I was able to. It broke my heart. I knew, deep down that I could not stay with an active alcoholic. I want kids someday, a partnership, someone I can trust. I talked with P and told him what I’d observed, knowing that there was absolutely nothing I could do to change it. His denial was textbook: those moderate drinking guidelines were clearly unreasonable and not applicable to him, so no, he didn’t drink too much. He couldn’t see “any problem” with a nightly six-packer. After all, he was only affecting himself, right?

I found myself saying very calmly and directly that although I loved him, I just could not live like that, and I was done. Hung up the phone and cried for an hour. Cried for days. Cried all the way through my first Al-Anon meeting, and like a classic codependent, apologized for it.

And I don’t know where to go from here. I’m seeking a counselor to help me, because I clearly am hurting myself with my choices. I feel like I’m doomed to repeat the pattern, or doomed to stay alone. And if I had to choose, I’d rather be alone.
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