I have read this. What's hard about all this now is that I don't know for sure he is using. I know you will all say it doesn't matter, because his treatment of me is bad. I know that deep down too.
Another thing that I didn’t state is that I had a chilling conversation with his ex wife when all the crazy making started one year ago April. I can’t believe a year of my life has passed with this madness. This is when he was pretty messed up on tons of vicodin (I had no idea at this point that he was addicted to vicodin….up to 30 per day). He called me one day out of the blue and told me that his ex wife showed up to his work and assaulted him . I mean this literally came out of nowhere! We were not arguing, not having any chaos, nothing. This story went into a great deal of detail, including what she looked like, what she said, etc. Fast forward a month into when I started to really become aware how bad his addiction was, I called his ex wife one day. I can’t believe I did but I don’t regret it. She talked to me for a few days. The chilling thing was that she was shocked when I told her this story because she had not stepped foot into the state of Michigan since their divorce several years ago. She also tried to tell me some things to warn me but I could tell she was holding back. Many of the stories he told me about her were so untrue. She cheated on him, she used him, etc. None of it was true. She told me that she loved him more than anything and just couldn’t take it anymore. He was extremely verbally and emotionally abusive to her as well. She said he would leave and she had no clue where he was, he said really nasty things to her, basically treated her the same way he treated me. He also told me this huge story about how he left her, she went to work one day and when she came home the locks had been changed and he gave her money and a key to the storage unit where her things were. Well, actually when I found out the truth, he came home one day and all her stuff was gone. She left. She couldn’t take it anymore and she had hoped he would come running after her but that never happened.
The thing is that was our first major break up. We did not speak for awhile. When I asked him why he did this, the answer is that he was trying to make me jealous and his mind was obviously not thinking clearly while taking vicodin (at this point I had NO CLUE how much he was really taking.) His life was spiraling out of control during this time. He was gambling, lying about where he was going, hiding things about his addictions, his past, just everything. I walked away. Fast forward several months of getting back together and me realizing he was still using until he hit his rock bottom and ended up in rehab in December. I was dumb enough to think that this was a problem with drugs. I really did. I know this just can’t be drugs. Drugs or not, who makes up such detailed lies? It can’t be drugs. It’s crazy. Then when he got out of rehab, he told me the truth about everything, about how terrible he treated his ex wife, how in the end he cheated on her (she didn’t know this), how he loved her terribly and just treated her like crap. The thing I feel bad for is that in the end, when we did get into a few arguments, I threw this stuff in his face. I told him he was doing the same things to me he did to his ex wife. His response is that he loved his ex wife (really?) and I knew nothing about marriage and how dare I say anything about him and this is why he feels it’s unsafe to tell me anything, etc. Why all of this to get to the truth?
Looking back, I know this should have been the end for me. How did I stay after finding out such crazy lies that entailed a great deal of detail. This cannot just be addiction. This stuff is just insanity. And I stayed. I told myself it’s just the drugs that have hijacked his brain. I think he just felt like such crap about himself that he couldn’t face his own reality. But he repeated this with me. I love you more than anything but I can’t be with you so I’m running away. His ex wife tried to warn me. I wish I would have listened.