Originally Posted by
LexieCat 
Cyranoak,
We were socialized differently than you were. We were taught to behave, to please our partners, to keep the peace. Some of us have reason to fear violence from our alcoholics. It's simply a different situation to be a woman in a relationship with an alcoholic man than it is to be a man in a relationship with an alcoholic woman.
We share some of the same pain and frustration and desire to help. But the bottom line is, it's not as easy or as practicable to fearlessly do what you want to do from where we sit as it would be for you.
You're a good guy--but a lot of the guys the women here are dealing with are not. And it also isn't as easy to walk away for many of the women here for a lot of reasons, including economic dependency, responsibility for young children where there may be limited ability to get childcare, lack of confidence, the very realistic fear of what the alcoholic might do if they try to leave.
So cut us some slack, here--we are all doing the best we can and are working on getting stronger every day.
No, it's not easy to walk away from a relationship that by all accounts was broken before it began.
I'm just finally coming to terms with that after a three year relationship with an alcoholic - one fraught with highs and lows, good and bad and the inevitible chaos. In spite of the chaos, I still love him.
Why did I keep going back to him? In spite of Al-Anon and SR, I kept thinking that he would stop drinking and see how special our relationship was.
We had hopes and dreams like other couples but the spectre of his alcoholism kept coming back to haunt us. I moved cross country to be with him, to a city where I knew no one, wanting us to start a life together.
Since then, he has been through rehab, therapy, psychotherapy, group therapy, we have been to couples therapy, he has tried antabuse, Baclofen, Topamax, all manner of anti-depressants, white knuckling it and AA-all brought him back to the same beginning line. Every single time, there was an excuse than a relapse.
Each and every time, we got back together because I still harboured that faint hope that this would be "the" time when he would be sober.
Things changed for me at Christmas when yet again, he was drinking-he came to my house on Christmas Eve, spaced out on Ativan after another drinking binge, wrapping Christmas presents at 5am, wondering why I wasn't happier, after all, it was Christmas.
I spoke my mind to him but it didn't register. I kept telling myself that it was my high expectations for the holidays that upset me so much-what I was upset about, truly pissed about was that he was drunk, he was still drinking and had not stopped. Well, the inevitible happened-aother psychiatrist, another promise that this would help, but there was an excuse why he didn't go back. He didn't like her or what she told him about his drinking.
It's now March and last week, drinking yet again, in the midst of a heated, drunken conversation, he called me a quitter - said I wouldn't finish my accounting courses.
He then went on and told me to quit smoking to save our relationship, that his sex drive had taken a tumble because of my smoking. He kind of left out the fact that he is taking anti depressants, meds for high blood pressure, borderline diabetes. Those tend to kill somebody's sex drive, plus 30 years of non-stop drinking does not help.
Everything came flooding back to me as he said this and I knew this time around that what it boiled down to was that for him, for us, there was no more next time. For me, the realization that he will never stop drinking because he is an alcoholic finally hit me like a ton of bricks.
I haven't talked to him since Friday and have no desire to. No urges to pick up the phone, email him or anything. Yeah, it takes a few tries and it's not easy to walk away. I wish it was that simple but it's not.
Luckily, I have friends here to support me, I have enough money to get me by as I go to school to get my accounting diploma (BTW, I'm 53 yrs young) and like TuffGirl, I'm intelligent, witty, have a good sense of humor and live for blues music. I used to feel the same way, that if someone is in a relationship that was bad for them, walk away. Found out the hard way that that just does not happen because I also got conned and fell in love with a charming, handsome guy who was a sweet as the day was long, but was an alcoholic.......