My boyfriend and I finally had a chance to speak about what happened on July 4th (he got drunk at his family BBQ and ultimately yelled at me in front of my kids as I was leaving).
We didn't break up, but I did tell him that I have no intention of planning a future with him. He makes excuses for his drinking, and tells me "BUT, I love YOU SO MUCH. If I was coming home to YOU, I KNOW I wouldn't drink like this..." quackity quack quack. Yeah, exactly.
He is very apologetic and knows his behavior was completely unacceptable. But he doesn't feel like he can do a 12 step, he wants to try to make adjustments on his own.
So in the meantime, I have made it clear that we have no future to plan together, that things are the way they are. But I added something. He's been wanting to get his kids and my kids together. They met briefly, at a town fair, but that's it. I told him that our kids have been through enough with our divorces and since we don't have a future together, I don't want to make this harder on them, so we don't let our kids hang out together on the 2 weekends a month he has them.
And it hurts. We've been together over a year, this would be the natural progression.... but now that I've set that boundary about he and I not having a future together, I feel like I am responsible to keep the kids out of it. We can enjoy our time together on the weekends that ex has my kids and he doesn't have his kids but otherwise, on our "kid-full weekends" we continue to be apart.
We had talked for a long time about bringing our kids together, and even though I'm the one setting down the boundary and I know how much this hurts him, because he still has hope that maybe we'd get married one day.... it still hurts me so much, too.
I am detaching. Slowly but surely, in my own time, I'm detaching.