Speaking from experience, you’re going to go through what you go through either now or after 10-1000 more times of him leaving, each time hardening yourself a little more and perhaps growing more and more bitter, as I did.
I don’t want to make any assumptions, but when I was where you are now, I still hoped that by my refusing to let my soon to be AXH come back into my house with our children, he’d magically wake up and realize the havoc and devastation he was wreaking and commit himself to recovery and rejoin our family. I hoped that for over a year. He was homeless, panhandling on the corner, then he’d be so low that he’d actually go to rehab. Then shortly after he got out, relapse. Rinse and repeat 4 times in that year. I’ll post my full story eventually, but my point is, I can sense that you are almost exactly where I was for a long time. Stuck between KNOWING in my gut, that this can’t work, and KNOWING how much we loved each other. But being stuck means you’re going nowhere. Stuck on this hamster wheel of being in love with an addict. He’s not going to change until/ if he’s ready. Maybe. Addiction is a beast and he may never be ready. YOU have to decide to if you want to change what you’re ready to accept in life. No ultimatums, no putting my foot down verbally, no stern talking tos changed anything he did. It just made me feel crazier that he would do the same things over and over and not learn and do differently for a better outcome. Then I realized I was doing the same thing for my own life. Just like his choice after choice kept him in that addict chaos, my choice after choice kept me in his addict chaos. When you’re ready to be done, you will be. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but you have walk through each day with that pain and be strong knowing it will get so much better. It’s still hard for me, we’ve technically been married for almost 9 years. 6 of them were happy, and I was BEYOND devastated, but I’m so much happier and at peace now than I was a year ago. It was the most difficult thing I’ve honestly ever done. But I lived through it, and you will too. And although I had to ask for a lot of help with my children and my life isn’t perfect, every day I wake up relieved that I’m away from that dark life. I still get panicky when I think about the times he just dropped off the face of the earth or the sentimental things he pawned or the look on my sons face when dad didn’t come home again, and it still hurts that he abandoned us, but at least I’m not letting him do it week after week anymore. Those wounds are slowly healing. But I had to be ready. I had to stop fooling myself that he couldn’t would just kick his addiction and other issues just because he just looooved us so much. And that readiness came with time and reading A LOT on this forum. I usually just read and have never posted myself, but checking in here every day showed me that I’m just another casualty straight from the addicts handbook. That all these other people’s stories and feelings were so similar to mine in different ways, and in most of those stories the addict hasn’t changed, the loved one of an addict does. I realized that we loved ones are a dime a dozen that all fell trap to the manipulation but somehow mustered the strength to throw in the towel and forfeit. Now I look back and read posts like yours that seem, and not trying to sound condescending because it’s not, but naive. I was naive for a long time but I’ve realized we’re all losers in this game of addiction, but I don’t want to waste my time continuing to play the 59th inning when when the score is 0 to -30, with me being in the negative.