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Hey, this is my first time posting here but I really need some reassurance. I am 18 and have been in a relationship with my girlfriend for 3.5 years. She is 23, but the age difference never seemed to be a factor in our relationship. I know that's hard to believe, but even my parents thought she was a great match for me, so trust me on that I guess.

We were together happily until about a year ago, when her drinking stared to become a serious problem. Because she was over 21 and I was not, she would go out with her older friends and drink, and it would always seem to me, through her friends and my own observations, that she was drinking too much. Sometimes I would walk in on her drunk in her dorm with no one else around. She would drink at work and ALWAYS before any kind of social situation. The last straw for her friends was when she went on a cruise with them and got her alcohol privileges taken away due to excessive and disruptive drinking. Her best friend messaged me and told me about it and I talked with her, and she decided to get sober.

She was able to do so for a few months, from around April to around late August, and then she had a huge relapse. Later she told me "I started and then once it began I never really stopped drinking." She would call me and cry incoherently to me about how she hated her job. She went out with me to a concert she bought me tickets to for my birthday totally drunk. She would be passed out when I would arrive at her place to hang out with her. She claimed she had mono and utterly refused anytime I brought up her drinking. Finally I caught her with bottles in her apartment, and she admitted to it all. She felt terrible and promised she would stop. She started going to AA and really becoming a part of the community. Our relationship was really happy for a few more months. I loved her so much and she loved me too.

Then, I caught her with more. She had been sober for almost two months, and then had relapsed again. I felt utterly crushed, but decided to stick it out because she was really trying and we loved each other. And then, two a month after that, it happened again. That was on January 10th. I promised her I would help her through this, and I would go the next morning to her AA meeting to pick up a new white chip, and she started over. After that I saw the best improvement from her I had ever seen, she was doing so well and we were both so proud of her.

This past Thursday I caught her again. I am so crushed. I am so tired, and I feel so broken. I am just a kid, and I am trying so hard to live with this reality of loving someone so much that is continuously hurting themselves. I broke up with her the next day. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. It wasn't like she wasn't trying to get better, it wasn't like she wasn't trying her hardest to be a good girlfriend. It just is too serious and heavy a relationship to carry, especially since I am leaving to go to college this fall and when things were good we were talking about moving together.

I am not sure I have done the right thing and I just feel so sad, and I miss her, and neither one of us deserves the terrible things we've been put through by this. Please help me and tell me if I have done the right thing, and how to cope, and maybe just that I'm a good person and not leaving and hurting a wonderful thing in my life. I really need it right now.