2018LizAnon

Hi. I'm new here. I wrote a similar post in a different forum, but I think it's more appropriate here.

I broke up (for good) with my boyfriend of 2.5 years about a month ago, and I'm having a difficult time working through everything that happened over the course of the relationship. We were both graduate students and are now 30 years old. Early on in our relationship there were several incidents were my ex got extremely drunk in inappropriate situations. But he would apologize and I would forgive him. He's very intelligent, hard-working, driven and passionate about his work, good-looking, and can be very sweet and complimentary (overly so) when he needs to be, but also could be disrespectful if he felt like I was “attacking” him, which usually meant I was upset about his drinking. When he drank he was never physically or verbally abusive, but seemed to go from sober to sloppy drunk very quickly. He also never had any tangible losses from drinking (that I know of), but did have a reputation with friends and colleagues for drinking too much.

Over the 2.5 years we were together, there were a lot of other inappropriate incidents. For example, one time he was out drinking with a friend and they brought two girls back from the bar to the friend’s apartment and they all spent the night there. He told me about it a week later in passing. I don't think he drank every day for the first 2 years that we were together. Sometimes he could have a couple drinks and stop. But there were many times (maybe 40 in 2.5 years), where he got obliterated and I had to babysit. Sometimes he would fall asleep in bars or during social events or disappear for 20 minutes or so and come back tipsier or go for a drive and come back buzzed. We had soooo many long and serious conversations about these incidents and each time he promised he was working on getting it under control, that that was the last time, that our relationship was more important than drinking—all the things I wanted to hear. But, it always would happen again.

When we moved in together, I saw that he drank 2-6 beers most nights of the week and usually quite a bit more on Saturday and Sunday. He would drink before going out, and after getting home, often bringing a beer or a glass of wine to bed with him. I started to realize that this wasn’t entirely an issue of growing out of a phase, but more of a serious problem. I pushed him to get some type of help and became more “controlling” (confronting, monitoring). He started to hide it more (hiding beer in a towel to take to the shower, emptying the recycling at midnight after I had gone to bed, staying up later to drink by himself, denying drinking, excusing himself to go the restroom while actually sneaking up to bar to have a secret drink or two, etc.).

We ended up going through this horrible year of semi-break-ups and make-ups, during much of which I was pissed off and he was drunk (binging at home in the spare room for days on end). He moved to a different city for his career about 6 months ago and we kept in contact on and off. He wanted to try to reconcile. Fed me all the lines (I love you so much, you're the person I want to marry, I'm so sorry for the hell I put you through, etc.). But a month ago, I told him that I didn't trust him at this point and there was no chance of us getting back together unless and until he had been sober and seeking help for 1 year. Well, of course, his response was that the relationship would never work, and he didn't want to have any contact. I didn't even really care anymore at that moment. I was so exhausted.

I know I should be happy that I dodged a bullet, but I still get these feelings of guilt, like maybe I was too critical or controlling (he certainly said these things). Maybe I made him unhappy, and the drinking got worse because of that. Maybe if I would have been more compassionate or empathetic he would have sought out treatment (I was compassionate at first though). I know that it's not my fault, but I'm finding it so hard to stop second guessing everything. I did love him and we had a lot of great times. But I don't think I'm wrong in feeling like I just cannot trust him anymore, that he had a serious problem, and that I wasn't overreacting? To be clear, I have no thoughts of contacting him or trying to reconcile (I physically, mentally, and emotionally cannot go on this roller-coaster again), but I'm having a really hard time not replaying and analyzing everything that happened over and over in my head. It's like I have to understand how the relationship took such a huge nosedive and that I need further validation that I made the right decision (probably why I'm writing this now). How do I stop these thoughts, put this behind me, and move on?