katie1121,
Drug addicts of course violate all the rules, so that is of course at issue, but also many have an underlying hard-wired psychological disorder, and it can be extremely difficult to make a life with someone who, even clean, cannot function in relationship or in family life. You might google "anti-social personality disorder." Or "severe ADHD." Prisons are full of drug addicts who also have these disorders. They cannot be reliable husbands or fathers. They are usually very impulsive, often selfish and self-centered, and unwilling to compromise or to sacrifice for the good of the relationship or the family.
But here is the crux: you can read about drug addicts and about personality disorders, but eventually, you will have to circle back to you: what part of yourself are you abandoning, what values are you betraying, what power have you given over to another person who exploits you? Why do you see the good and try to explain away the bad or wish that soon it will go away?
I ask these questions because most of us who have loved a person with an addiction became controlled by that person. Addicts isolate their partners so they can control them. The isolation happens gradually, but the chaos, the embarrassment, the financial crises, the extra burdens of childcare because the addict is unavailable: all these isolate the spouse. Isolated, we are more easily controlled.
So we have to ask ourselves, what is it in me which needs looking at? Was i neglected or abused as a child? Do I suffer depression that is untreated? Am I isolated because of lack of work or am I in a strange town or country and have no support?
When we keep asking the "why" of the addict, it deflects the focus from ourselves. But if we give away our power, our serenity, our right to be treated lovingly and respectfully, we must look in the mirror and ask "why."
Painting a room does not make a good man. Getting attention and admiration and sex from a woman does not make a good man. Dependability, honesty, self-direction, the ability to self-sacrifice, and the facing of life's challenges without playing the victim....this is what grows a man. It takes years and years of facing life's challenges, meeting them, learning something from them, and moving on to the next to mature a man. Your partner has not even begun.
But you: you can do that. You can mature. And this is one of your first tests: will you see the reality that is before you and make a clear-headed decision about what is best for your child? Or will you minimize and rationalize your partner's actions and choices?
Find some help there. For you. Look at you. There is your answer.