Nope

I have been with my fiance for almost two years now and he is an A. Up until two days ago I didn't know how bad it was because he's been hiding it from me. I mean, I knew he drank more than he probably should but I didn't realize the extent of his drinking or how truly addicted he is. He finally sat me down and came clean about replacing the bottles in the liquor cabinet over and over for the last several months. He is now two days sober and I'm heartbroken by this whole thing.

He came into our relationship with a whole slew of baggage that I've had to deal with and help him deal with (ptsd because he is a war vet, a mentally ill ex wife who has custody of his two young children, a bad back that will likely require surgery in the next few months, his blood pressure is through the roof and he just got back on medication for that) and I've been running on near-empty for myself for months because of all of it. Then on top of that there is now this.

So two days sober and in massive amounts of back pain. You can imagine how fun he is to be around right now. The two things he has always brought to our relationship have been his big amazing loving heart and that he has always treated me very well. That is what has made everything else we are facing worth it for me. So what is going to make this worth it for me now? Today I felt like an emotional punching bag. I couldn't say or do anything right. I'm pretty much out of patience and this is just the beginning! He's talking about going to his first AA meeting on Monday evening. Of course, I will. But I need to find a way to get my own anger and disappointment under control or I'm really not going to be able to help him with this.

We are supposed to get married in March. Is that even a good idea anymore?

BoxinRotz

Do NOT marry this guy! If he can give you a year of sobriety, then think about it but if not, don't make yourself more hurdles if you need to get out!

AlAnon for you. This is his problem, NOT YOURS!

DoubleBarrel

Sucks, but this is absolutely the truth.

Two years is not enough to dive into a lifetime of heartache.

Janitw

Run - don not walk for the HILLS girl......a year is a good judge of what he can or cannot do....I agree with this advice....I still say RUN....and don't look back. Alcoholics are always charming as hell while they are hooking you in.....hook, line and then you sink...run fast.

NWGRITS

Rotz said it best. If you want to see what life at damn near its worst with an A can be, read her thread My Husband Was in a Motorcycle Accident. Tragic, heartbreaking stuff right there. I saw where you wrote that you would go to his AA meeting (I'm assuming I read it correctly within the context that was given). You have no business going to AA with him. AA is for HIM, not YOU. His recovery is his business. Your recovery is your business. You each stay on your side of the street and don't try to meddle in each other's affairs.

I would say Run, as well, but this is your life and no one can make these decisions but you.

Dublin

Nope,

You don't have to make any decision right this minute. You have had to take a lot on in the last short while. You should take some time for yourself to process all that has happened. Let HIM work his recovery and you need to work on you. Read up here and get to alanon and listen to the experience of others. You sound worn down by it all and everyone here understands where you are at. We have been there or are still there. You need support and strength now and you need to get yourself back healthy and strong so that you can make good decisions. I'm sure the March date was set before any of this kicked off. It is not good for him or you to have a huge life event that early in his recovery if he stays the course so I would think about that for a start. Do what you can today but get some help for you so that with a clear head you can make some good decisions. Look after yourself.

Lyssy

Get him to the droctors asap. Detox from alcohol can be deadly.

I agree with all of the above posts. At least you know now vs. almost 18 years into the marriage. At a minimum give it at least a year (or more) before committing to a life time.

I give him cudos for at least coming clean and being honest with you.

Lots of hugs and keep reading and educating yourself on this disease.

thislonelygirl

A future with an alcoholic is fear and uncertainty.
Not trying to upset you but imagine you do marry him and he does get and stay sober...lets say he stays sober for 5 years....you build this life together and then he falls off the wagon. Everything you stood on falls with him. Its stressful and the quaking hes doing doesnt just go away right away and if he starts drinking again you can pretty much count on all the work he put into a program starting over and the quacking starting back up. Theres no cure for alcoholism. It can be medicated with self control aa rehab etc but never cured.
Job loss, financial problems,poor health, jail and even death. These are the consequences for alcoholism.
If you do plan to stay with him and marry him prepare for a ride....
Learn to detach and read up on alcoholism.
It wont be easy

Nope

Thanks you all for your replies. I'm just starting to be able to hear what you are saying. It's hard though and just the ability to listen is going to be a process. This isn't my first time at the rodeo with hard sh*t. Just my first time in a relationship with an alcoholic. I agree I need to put some time into my own recovery from this situation before I do anything.

Sorry for the confusing sentence, but he asked me to go to his AA meeting with him this coming Monday.

He is also under a doctors care and was given Valium to help with the detox. Of course, the usefulness of that has already gone out the window as he had some anxiety this afternoon and is already back to square one. Basically, he is not easy to be around right now but doesn't want to be left alone. I don't want to feel emotionally abused and I can't be right there holding his hand 24/7 even if I was willing to put up with his anxiety and passive aggressive BS.

For those telling me to run: You see two years and think it's no big deal because that isn't a lot of time. But two years might as well be forever as far as his little girl and little boy are concerned. They love me and I love them. His daughter with her own allowance money bought me a bracelet that says "#1 Mom" this past summer. His little boy is at that age where all he wants to do is cuddle with me and I adore every moment I can get. It hasn't been his charm that has won me over. It's been the way he takes care of me and lets me know in a million ways every day that he is thinking of me. Everything from buying me flowers to busting his butt in the kitchen for hours putting together a beautiful meal he knows I'll love. He's always there when I need him and his idea of a perfect evening is one spent curled up on the coach watching movies with me. He has been an amazing partner over the last two years and although we've had our arguments in the past we never forget even in the heat of a fight that ultimately we love each other.

It's just that now he goes a couple of days without a drink and he turns into the anxious and unfriendly mess I've been dealing with all weekend. And now he feels guilty because he went out and had a drink and I am certainly not going to tell him it's ok or try to make him feel better about it.

He will probably need back surgery in the next couple of months. I think the surgeon may give me an easy out for the wedding when we ask about recovery time. (It's a 10+ hour flight for a destination wedding.) I'll let the surgeon be the "bad guy" if possible. If not, then at least we can put a hold on things and tell everyone that it was because of the back surgery. He'll be pissed, but that's his problem. I'm already pissed but reality is reality.

Can anyone recommend any good books on what I am supposed to do to a) help him and b) help myself? Because right now he's been getting a lot of tough love and I haven't been really letting him drag me into his emotional stuff. He keeps asking me if I still love him, and I do. But between all the other problems and baggage that he legitimately needs me to help him with, I just don't have the room on my plate for something he is currently doing to himself.

BoxinRotz

Well, I don't know what to tell you other than welcome to ALCOHELL.

choublak

So this mentally ill ex wife was the lesser of the two evils and they gave her custody?

Those poor kids.

Sasha4

I have two thoughts for you to consider.

1. My other half has made me about to be mental and difficult to his friends Male and female. I have read the private messages with him moaning about me to, mainly women I have to say, on facebook.

I have not not had a drink in over 18 moths, I am responsible, work a good career, I am the main breadwinner, BUT according to him I am mentally ill. How can I be if I work full time, look after my daughter, have no 'me' time?

And maybe its just chance, but hey who knew? His ex's were all mentally ill too. Can you believe that? The bits he told me anyway..................

And when he takes my daughter out (we are not separated yet) he buys her toys, treats, feeds her junk. He never does the hard bit's of parenting. And it is a hard job parenting. How he panders to her every whim makes me cross, fed up and tired. But in no way am I 'mentally ill'.

It sounds like you and your partner do a lot of taking the kids out and treating them. You probably don't see the tantrums at home and naughty behaviour because, if those kids are anything like my child, they are as good as gold when with others who spoil them. But its the mummy that has to do the telling off,the discipline and the naughty step. The not so hard bits.

I would really investigate further what mental illness his ex has and if that is the case then why does he not have custody?

There is a huge difference between someone at the end of their rope struggling to not shout at their children, than someone who is mentally ill.

Does his ex know that daddy calls mummy mentally ill?
Are you completely 100% in the know why they spilt up?

My partner had an affair when I was pregnant.
It turns out he had done it before to his last partner.
I wish someone would have told me and then I could have walked away and had a child with someone else, someone who wanted the same in life as me.

I also wanted to stress that the reasons he said I was mental was so he could say how unhappy he was with me. He told the women he emailed that I did not understand him, I never showed an interest in him. We have nothing in common etc etc.
I am surprised some of the women believed the 'my wife does not understand me' bit, considering they are all sensible, well educated, have good careers.

However he will have neglected to tell them I am unhappy because he is continually in debt, I have to pay for everything, he has not spent one day of annual leave from work this year which means me and my daughter have no-one to go on holiday with ....all reasons I think are valid.


2. If I was one of your friends and I met your partner or someone very much like your partner what would you say to me?

Would you say 'yes I think his drinking, his ex wife and his 2 kids sound a brilliant set and you are 100% doing the right thing by marrying him and sharing his hopes and your dreams. It sounds like paradise. I think the ex wife situation will be fine, nothing to worry about'.

You are hardly going in to marriage together with a clean slate that spells happiness ahead. Your slate seems clean. His slate is overflowing from where I am sat.

I m thinking maybe not...........I don't want to offend but I would hate another woman to go through what I went through.

Have you thought about children and do you want them?
How reliable is he going to be with a child and all the hard work they bring. Like no sleep, constant attention etc etc.

If you want children I would think long and hard. I would also sit him down and have a serious discussion about your future and what it involves.
He might change his mind later, but he might not and you need to know.

Don't sacrifice the things you want out of life for him and his drama.
If you don't address these issues now you maybe childless. as in your own biological child, looking after his 2 kids, while he is out and about drinking. You might be feeling resentful that you have no child and your life revolves his children.

I hope you don't feel I have overstepped the mark with my comments, but I wanted to say if I had found out some of the things from his past, it would have saved me a whole lot of heartache in the future.

And there have been some very unhappy times and I feel great bitterness towards him.

You never know, you might be the new ex he describes as 'mentally ill' in time to come.......

I really do wish you the best. xx

AnvilheadII

But between all the other problems and baggage that he legitimately needs me to help him with, I just don't have the room on my plate for something he is currently doing to himself.

he didn't legitimately NEED you to fix anything...YOU made that choice to dive in and start fixing him. yes he had baggage coming into this....but IT WAS HIS BAGGAGE. never yours. he didn't really come to you with a lot to OFFER....except it sounds like he can cuddle and cook.

he says his ex wife is mentally ill. and yet SHE was awarded custody??? hello, red flag. now his poor little kids are clinging to you and calling you mom. you might think that is a compliment, but it is really a sign of how damaged these poor kids are. when my daughter's dad and I split up and he had a new partner, renee never ONCE called her mom. when I later got remarried she never once called him DAD. why??? because she already had a mom and a dad!!!

he can't be THAT amazing if he's been hiding his addiction from you all this time. he has/had a secret life of which you were not a part. now he's added this to the pile of things you feel obligated to fix.

relationships are not about FIXING the other. taking charge of the other's life cuz they are incapable, or ACT incapable. while you were taking care of everything, he was busy drinking. THAT is his first priority. that is what he protected the most.

choublak

There's a phrase that goes "how you get 'em is how you lose 'em".

Nope

Ok, the easy thing to do is just clarify the whole "mentally ill" thing for all. We have no documentation to prove she is ill. And we've certainly never once said one word about illness or said anything nasty about their mom in front of them. That behavior doesn't help the situation. I'm calling mental illness based on a lot of research and behavior I have witnessed with my own two eyes. Her screaming rages (in front of the children) that she doesn't remember later that she even had, her inability to take responsibility for anything while accusing others of things that can be proven false (twisted logic), her constant lying so that her version of the "truth" is whatever she needs it to be at the moment, even if five sentences later she changes her "truth" to exactly the opposite of what she was saying before. And she screams every word of it like it is 100% the truth when it all has no basis in reality what-so-ever. She has already been found in contempt of court once for trying to keep him from being able to talk to the kids on the phone. And we are taking her back to court for a second round of contempt because she is still doing the same thing. She lives with the kids out of state so even though custody is technically 50/50 he only sees the kids for six weeks during the summer, every other major holiday vacation, and every once in awhile when we can afford to go out to her state and take them to a hotel for the weekend. According to the court he is supposed to get "a minimum" of one phone call a week with the children and there are times where he doesn't get even that one call, or if he does she has the phone on speaker while he's talking to the them and she starts screaming at him for some perceived slight. So he has to hang up to keep her from continuing to scream in front of the kids.

The kids are not little angels. The daughter lies constantly to everyone. She does it partially to tell people what they want to hear so she can be the "good" kid and partially to protect her mother. She may have got me that bracelet but her mom is still her mom. The little boy is always seen as the "bad kid" no matter what he does and he's got a pretty horrible inferiority complex for a nine year old. It also takes him five minutes to tie his shoes because we just taught him when we had the kids two summers ago. The ex didn't keep up with it or give him any help so this past summer we had to teach him all over again. We can and will prove in court that she hasn't been getting up to help them get ready for school an that's why we had to send money directly to the school to make sure the kids would have lunch.

He has a good job, is a fantastic father when he has the opportunity to be, and has never been late once on child support. The ex has no idea that he has a drinking problem or she would have thrown that in his face in court already. The reason she has residential custody is because he was in the military and deployed a lot so she was the primary caretaker. Neither of them live in the original state the divorce happened in. And frankly, the fact that this has gone on as long as it has is because he used to be very afraid of her. She raged at him the whole time they were married and he is, at his core, a HUGE people pleaser. He wants to make everyone happy with him. So he tolerated a whole lot. Including her getting pregnant with another man's child four months after the little boy was born. She actually made him sit and watch as she went full term with it. She gave that little boy up for adoption. The two kids they had together were very small and he was still in the military and she told him she'd make sure he never saw his own two again if he tried to leave. Top that off with the fact that she was arrested twice for assaulting him while they were separated, and you can tell this isn't the typical situation.

I know his problems aren't my problems. But he doesn't always know what to do for himself. The willingness to participate is generally there, but he just doesn't always think things through. He was just going to go with the first back doctor he saw, and I pushed him to get a second opinion at a well respected medical center that was somewhat further away. Good thing I did because he got a very different diagnosis the second time. I have some legal background so it just makes sense for me to do the documenting when all of these raging phone calls and texts happen with the ex. I'm not doing anything that any partner in a relationship wouldn't do. There is just a lot that needs to be done right now.

I had been going to bed well before he did for months because I have to be out the door by 5am to go to work every morning. He'd been drinking after I went to bed. He always gave himself a cut off time so that he'd still be able to function at work the next day. He has a lot to offer. But he also has a problem. And baggage. I know I have a decision to make, but like I said he has a HUGE heart and I'm not willing to give up without giving him a chance. Not just for him, but yes, also for those poor kids who I already love so much.

Wisconsin

I certainly understand this, and I understand that things are never as easy as "run and never look back." Certainly not in early recovery.

Food for thought: My AH has a HUGE heart, and I have been unwilling to cut and run, wanting to give him a chance because he loves our son so much. But three years into his relapse, I am preparing a domestic violence plan. The reality is that my AH DOES have a huge heart. There IS a good and wonderful person in there. But the reality also is that he is an emotional abuser who is spiraling out of control, increasingly desperate, and possibly capable of doing some pretty awful stuff. As I have advanced in my recovery, it gets easier to take the blinders off and come to terms with the whole reality. The REALITY. Not the past, or what I want things to be.

AlcoholicLove

^^^THIS^^^ pretty much sums it up.....

thislonelygirl

"I had been going to bed well before he did for months because I have to be out the door by 5am to go to work every morning. He'd been drinking after I went to bed. He always gave himself a cut off time so that he'd still be able to function at work the next day. He has a lot to offer. But he also has a problem. And baggage. I know I have a decision to make, but like I said he has a HUGE heart and I'm not willing to give up without giving him a chance. Not just for him, but yes, also for those poor kids who I already love so much.**"




I hope it does work out for you but everything youve said has been enabling behavior.
Excuse after excuse. Yes he has a problem but I see one in you too.
I excused my ah's behavior for a long time. My hubs is a sweetheart, hes amazing and when hes not drinking there is so much pride in who he is. Im not over exaggerating either. He could be a playboy and hes such a great provider and family man. All of that doesnt matter. An addict can have the biggest heart and still be an addict. Addiction isnt peculiar and that person who has that huge heart is still an addict either way you squeeze it they are still using their drug of choice and as we know being under the influence impairs you. Everything you think is wrong. I assure you.
I thought love was enough, his heart was enough....that because he said he wanted to be sober meant he would be...and I couldnt even grasp at that time what addiction TRULY was. Not what I wanted it to be with him.


His kids deserve a healthy father.....thats not your weight to carry though.
His ex might be mental.....but so is he.
He might manage his drinking.......but if he really could he wouldnt have a "problem"
That big heart is great.......but love doesnt conquer all.
He might have a job and a house and his health. ....but in an instant he might not.
Yesterday he might have said he was done drinking......but today he might just want a little.
He might have alot of potential. ...but CURRENTLY and very much possibly later nothing to offer but what it is now.

You might think your ready .......but you only think you have all the answers.

If you want to ride this out with him . Thats your choice but from someone who at one time was you and who understands the love and compassion and hope you have for this man....take this very very very good advice and run with it now. Not a week from now or a month. Now.
Read everything you can. Go to alanon if you can. Recognize what enabling and codependancy is . What boundaries are and use it all to your upmost benefit because alcoholism iS a family disease and your taking on Not just the love for him or his kids but your taking on his addiction and it will very much impact you . How much it does comes down to how much you realize you need help too and are willing to get better. Easier said than done. It takes learning and bottom sometimes for us too.

Best of luck. Sr is a wonderful place to start and I really hope it works . Lots of people here more than understand and have been there

sesh

You don't have to decide anything right now. There is plenty of time until March.
The best advice I can offer is stick around here and read as much as you can.
Educate yourself about disease of alcoholism.
I know right now everything seems too hard and overwhelming, but it can get better. For you!
Give yourself time and take it one step at the time.
take care

Tuffgirl

Welcome to SR, Nope.

I am sorry for the situation that brings you here, but glad you found a place to learn and share.

This is a tough situation to be in, especially with kids involved, even if they aren't biologically yours. Many of us here have either been where you are, or have moved on but stick around for the newcomers like you, to share our own wisdom, experience, and hope.

If you don't want to end the relationship just yet, don't. But while you are giving this another chance, use it as an opportunity to learn about alcoholism and how it effects you. Go to Al-Anon meetings, open AA meetings (to listen, not to participate), read the alcoholism forum here, even the newcomers to recovery forum here. Read books. A good one to start with is Under the Influence, then I'd follow that up with Codependent No More.

Yes, he can recover, but it is his journey, not yours. Yes, you can help him, but instead of that "help" looking like actions for him, instead help him by being a good role model and help yourself. Learn to detach from his actions and behaviors and turn your focus back to you.

And remember to "take what works and leave the rest". And "one day at a time". These are slogans you'll hear in the rooms of Al-Anon and after a while, will make a lot of sense to you.

Good luck!
~T