quillan68

I have been poking around here off and on for years, but have only posted a couple times in response to others. I'm a "double winner" and got some good advice here years back when I was first trying to decide if I needed to stop drinking (the answer was definitely yes, and I'm happy to say I did finally stop a couple years ago). I forgot my login info, so I signed in today with a new name.

This is a bit of a saga, but I need to get it out there. The bottom line is that I am going through a divorce from my AW, and I am feeling guilty, and lonely, and full of self-pity. Guilty enough that I reached out to her over the past few weeks to see whether there was any basis to discuss reconciliation. Yesterday I got a nasty note from her lawyer saying that AW doesn't want to hear from me. A few months ago that would have been music to my ears! So why, oh why am I now sad and lonely instead of moving ahead with my life? To be sure, I am taking good care of myself - eating well, exercising regularly, getting good sleep. I’m in the best shape I’ve been in since high school. Yes, I work too much and don't have enough time to enjoy hobbies, but that's nothing new. Anyway, here is the story.

The situation with my AW felt hopeless for a long time. We hit it off seven years ago over a common love of vodka and benzos and got married after only a few months. Three years ago she was went to in-patient treatment to get off the Xanax. Once she was stable she left treatment, against the advice of the doctors. It was an inpatient program. She has been "trying" to get clean (alcohol and pills) for the past four years, but hasn't ever made it more than a week or two without drinking. After I found a bottle of Xanax back in February - she had been swearing up and down for weeks that she wasn't taking any - I issued an ultimatum that she needed to start taking her addiction seriously or we were through. Well, it seemed like she was making real progress. For the first time she started attending AA regularly, though she often complained about the people or seemed to want to gossip about what she heard. Still, that was a huge improvement on her previous attitude, which was that AA was a cult that brainwashed people with "God crap". So, I was starting to become hopeful that maybe she had turned a corner. But several times in March and April I came home to find her clearly impaired, though seemingly not drunk, plus a couple other times she was in fact drunk so it made the different between the types of impairment more evident. And of course it turned out that she was drinking and using Xanax. That on top of Adderall, as she is also diagnosed ADHD.

What infuriated me was that her using had ruined our relationship. We didn't have any friends to speak of because no one wants to be around her. Over the years she passed out at dinner parties and concerts and in restaurants, and when she was conscious spewed hateful gibberish. When AW is drunk she is incredibly rude, haughty, disdainful, etc. She has zero female friends, and I mean literally zero. She hasn't done anything with a female "friend" in years. My wife is a beautiful, in-shape, well-educated 35 y-o woman, so it's not like she isn't superficially someone who should have an easy time making friends. Yet she has no friends and I'm pretty sure she's never had any close female friends (we got married sort of late and she had moved around a lot, so her explanation that none of her friends could attend the wedding seemed plausible). I'm a pretty social guy, so it pained me that we couldn't do things with friends as couples. I went out, mostly to music and sports events with guy friends, but really wanted to be able to have friends together with my wife. And we would try to make plans with just us, but it rarely worked. For example, we would make plans to walk the dog around the lake, but when the appointed hour rolled around she was staggering and incoherent. The same pattern repeated often - we planned to do something, like a museum or movie or a walk, and she ended up drinking or otherwise impaired, and so I watched TV or read, and became more and more resentful.

This spring, the resentment I felt turned into anger. I’ve never been an angry person – in fact, people have commented throughout my life at how mellow I am about things. Well, that changed last spring. I got pretty angry because AW hadn’t contributed to the relationship or the household for the last couple years. She couldn't hold a job, because she missed work due to drinking and when she was there I'm sure the quality of her work is poor. I know from my own experience that when she's drinking or on pills that her thinking is extremely convoluted, and her co-workers and employers must have noticed this too. A few years ago she was out of work for a year and spent all her time on the couch, drinking champagne and popping pills and watching TV. I travel a lot for work, otherwise I might have exploded and asked her to move out. But I wasn't around, and she'd go so far as to kennel the dog so she could binge on booze and pills without even having to worry about letting the dog out. That pattern started again last November when she lost another job. I refused to go through the whole thing again, not wanting to subsidize someone who doesn't want to contribute anything to our relationship, our home, our community, or to life in general.

By May I finally had enough and said she needed to go to inpatient treatment or move out. Instead, she left – one day I came home from work and she was just gone. She went to her dad and when he tired of her act, she went to her mom, who is an enabler extraordinaire. We were in MN and they are out east, so I can’t see her. We haven't spoken since the end of May. I filed for separation in June and she countersued for divorce in July. And I was fine with that until recently. But now I am feeling really lonely and full of self-pity. And I'm second-guessing. Wondering if maybe she really isn't an A (she has mental health problems too and apparently is seeing multiple therapists to address them). Of course she is – the evidence is overwhelming – but the denial I feel is just crazy. And so my question is, in the face of all this, why on earth do I miss her so much??? Our relationship was misery, but I am finding it very hard to hold onto that thought, or to move forward.

-JQ