k10w3

I've been lurking here for a while, reading other's stories which are all so similar to mine and yet different in some ways, too.

When I met my husband 12+ years ago, I was in an on-again, off-again relationship with another substance abuser that I had been living with for 4 years; it was during our off-again period and he was trying to sweet talk me back into his life, took me to a bar that we had gone to frequently and that's where I met my addict husband; he was bartending. It was a fast romance, I dumped the on-again/off-again guy in favor of, what I thought at the time was the genuine article, and we got married within 6 weeks, I suspect on his part because he was afraid I would break up after finding out just how much of an alcoholic he was, and on my part, to make sure I didn't go back to the other guy, because the other guy was violent, on top of being an addict and a drunk.

I knew my husband was an alcoholic; he admitted it up front. At the time, I was drinking pretty much myself, but not compulsively, just because I was used to partying a lot after being with the other guy. When I saw the amounts of liquor Brian (my AH) could put away and what it was doing to my liquor bill, I told him it had to stop because I know myself, and I know the sort of bitch I become when my income is messed with. I knew this because Steve (the other guy) had accused me of being a bitch when he used up my cash and I protested. NOW I can see that "bitch" is a word addicts use to manipulate their enabler when she/he gripes about a boundry being violated.

Brian truly did want to stop drinking. He had been to jail for drunk and disorderly, his family had been on his case about it, and he had tried AA several times; just couldn't stop. I told him we would do it together; I bought a book, put him on a decent diet, talked with him about his low self esteem, built him up, and he quit drinking...but he was also using pot, not all day, and not on some days, but more than once a week. I didn't think too much about it because he was just getting a little bit of it from a friend, I wasn't paying for it. He lost his job bartending within a couple weeks of us getting together, so we started our marriage out with me footing the bill for all living expenses, and him just working on staying not drunk.

Time past, we moved to Florida, he got a job working as a janitor at a motel where the manager got high, too, and that lasted for about 18 months, but then he tried to get promoted, which means pouring everything he has into his job (while still getting high at work) and when he was overlooked for the promotion, he quit. When he tried to get another job, he couldn't because he couldn't pass a urine test. I spent money on those clean up kits, but they didn't work. He would get employment that would last a few months, and then he would quit again, because someone in an authority position would say something that would irritate him that he interpreted as degrading and he would walk out.

More time past, I bought a house, things were going well, and then in 2004, just a year after I bought my house, that string of hurricanes that hit Florida that year wrecked our house, taking out the power for weeks, so I couldn't work (I work from home, doing transcription). After trying to ride out the first one, us at each other's throats due to the heat and the helplessness to control the damage, and the second one hit, I called my mom in Wisconsin and asked if I could drive up there so I could continue working. She said I could, but she would not allow my husband to come with me, because she felt he should have been doing something to bring in money so we could fix our house. I told him "I'm taking my kids and the pets up north to keep working; where are you going to go?" He interpreted this as me "leaving him for dead," and after I got back when the power was restored, he took off for Oklahoma where he is from to go to vocational school because he said he sat in the house the whole time we were gone thinking about how he needed a job skill and he was getting his associates degree in A/C repair. Once he got to Oklahoma, he demanded I cosign the educational loan or he would divorce me. I did, because I hurt too bad to divorce him; in my head I have this idea of what sort of a supportive wife I am, and he kept saying if I loved him and wanted what was best for us, I would support him in this.

This was a 2-year stint that pretty much drained my income. He started out staying with his father when he was going to school, but that lasted only 2 months before his father kicked him out (it was inconvenient to have his son in his house on the weekends). I ended up paying for a rental house for him, and spent half of the year living in my house with my kids in Florida, and the other half of the year living with my husband in Oklahoma. When he graduated, he got a job, but that again, only lasted 5 months when he was terminated simply because they didn't like him and it was an employment-at-will state, and they could do that. The whole time he was working there, of course, he was getting stoned in his car on the way to work; he was getting stoned when he came home. He started growing in the closet at home. Meanwhile the debt he took on for school had to repaid and it became too much for me, between that and taking care of the house repairs...long story short, we had to file for bankruptcy and we lost the house to foreclosure (or threatened foreclosure--after we left, the mortgage company stopped the foreclosure process and now we have a "zombie title" in central Florida).

After losing the house, we moved to Oklahoma because one of his cousin's had a house she was renting us. This was a really bad move; because he grew up here when he was completely steeped in substance abuse, he started hanging around old buddies that he had grown up with, and his pot use has gone from twice a day to all day, all the time, growing, selling; spending all day online on his computer reading on marijuana news articles, watching marijuana videos on how not to get caught, how to grow better, all day, every day, nothing but his drug of choice.

I work hard to keep the utilities paid and the rent on time, and on the days I don't have to work (Friday and Saturday), I need the car to run errands. This conflicted with his most busy pot delivery days. On January 20th, due to me "being mean," he left me. He said "we may find down the line that we just can't live without each other, but right now I'm DONE! I guess I'm just an addict." He went to live with his nephew, who is also a pothead and a drunk, but he gets state assistance because he has a son, and his mother gave him a house to life in for free, so AH gets free shelter and a place to get high; he's selling so he gets a little pocket change. He came back the next day to "get his stuff" (this translates to take things I bought that he considers his because he wants them) and when he found that I had changed the locks on the door and that my daughter had erased his white board that had his clients on, he totally wigged out and said it was over; that my family hated him and that we erased his white board just out of spite.

It's been 3 months now. We've had to share the car, which translates to him keeping the car at his nephew's, me calling him because I need the car for groceries, him driving the car 10 miles across town to my house, handing the car over to me on fumes so I have to gas the car up, driving him back the 10 miles to his nephew's, then back to do my stuff, then back to his nephews so he can drive me back to my house; it's a mess, so I finally saved up enough money to buy myself a semi-dependable used car last week, because I keep reading here that I need to be "no contact" with him.

This hurts so damn bad! I probably could have lived with this for a little while if I had been the one to throw him out (I was planning on it; had gotten the name of an attorney, checked it out, but then I was also researching things I could do to make this 12-year marriage work again). I begged him to please lets get couples counseling but he would have none of it--probably because he knows darn well the problem isn't me, the problem is he's addicted to marijuana. He choose a stupid plant over me! And not because I gave him an ultimatum, just because I gave disapproving looks when he smoked up, and because I interfered with his dealing schedule by making reasonable demands that I have access to the car I was footing the bill for!

It takes everything tiny ounce of pride I have left not to stalk him now that I have a car. I'd probably be inviting him over nights for physical affection (he was always really good at that), but for the fact that my daughter lives with me and doesn't want us to get back together because she knows it's not good for me, that he's done nothing but use me, and she wants me to move on.

I keep reading the pinned threads, what addicts do, and the 10 signs to let go. I wish so much my head knowledge would translate over to my heart, or that he would call me and tell me that he has decided to quit pot and go to rehab because he made a horrible mistake leaving me to destroy himself.