Imjoco - I hope you don't mind hearing from an addict's perspective, but your story caught my eye.
It sounds like he is really struggling with his early sobriety right now. I think it actually speaks for his character that he took you to the meeting so you could better understand his perspective. Like him, I also found it easier to talk to other addicts rather than those closest to me about what I was going through. Part of that is because I don't expect people that haven't been through addiction personally to completely understand what I am going through. It isn't a knock on non-addicts, but I think it is too high of a standard to hold a non-addict to. I know that for me personally, even if I could go back in time and explain the way things are to my pre-addict self it would have done very little good. If my pre-addict self couldn't understand it why would I hold others to that standard?
As far as addiction in general goes, and addiction to opiates specifically, one thing I would say to keep in mind is that once you cross a certain threshold it becomes a life of abject misery. Often times I get the impression from spouses / gf/bf of addicts that they think the addict is having the party of their life at their expense. That just wasn't the case for me. Sure, the beginning / honeymoon period was fun, but the magic faded years ago for me and I was left in a life of slavery. The drive to avoid getting dopesick is closest to the drive for water in my opinion. Sure, someone could probably go a day without water if they wanted to, but talk to them on the 2nd or 3rd day. The only difference with being dopesick is that you don't have the comfort of knowing that you will die at some point. At least with the prospect of death you know that there is a limit to your suffering. I used to literally get down on my knees and pray to God with tears streaming down my face that He would strike me down so that the suffering would finally be over.
As far as your question on the temporary vs. permanent breakup goes, I don't think he knows what he wants right now. In early sobriety I have dealt with a rollercoaster of emotions and questioned a lot of things that I took for granted when I was using. He may very well be being honest with you, feels that he may relapse and doesn't want you to suffer with him.
I hope this can add to your understanding of addiction. I was an active opiate addict for about a decade, and the last two years of that were a severe IV H habit.
KeepinItReal - I have to respectfully disagree with you regarding someone being evil in active addiction. In my active addiction I still held a job and provided for my family. My wife lost it months ago with a mental illness and I had to take care of her and both of my children while still actively using. On top of that I had to quit on my own and go through withdrawal while effectively acting as a single parent with two children under the age of 4 and a wife that was psychotic. Was I functioning at 100% of my ability? No, but even at whatever percent I was able to function at I never gave up, and I was a hell of a lot better than a lot of fathers/husbands that never took so much as a drink in their life. So, while a lot of addicts are "evil" I don't believe that to be a universal truth.