Smarie78

"If he does it once more I'm gone"...."one more relapse and I'm gone.", "If he cheats again I'm REALLY leaving. That's definitely my bottom"

How many times have I said this to myself after forgiving him? Let's see...a good year and a half now of the same cycle repeating itself. With each time I say that's my bottom and I now have an excuse to leave and not feel it's the wrong decision. "This time I am going to listen to the universe which is being loud and clear", I say. I say it each and every time and I am always back to square one of renewed promises that 10/10 times result in the same disappointment.

He is off on another bender. This time there is no big drama. No needing to pry him off of my couch or call police. No tears or dragging trash bags of household liquids to the car to lock. No cleaning up the mess or the cigarettes or laundry. I am thankful for that. There is no anxiety or pain. There is however, guilt (for drinking with him after he convinced me social drinking is ok and will keep him from a bender, and I stupidly went ahead with it because I was afraid to make him upset), there is sadness (because I feel love for him despite it all and the familiar abandonment yet again, and sadness that I cannot go save him from himself and he is somewhere alone and hurting as he does). But most of all, there is another window. Another opportunity for me to leave. I must take it. I am terrified I won't even though I feel so strongly about it now. But like his relapse, I always relapse too and go back to him when he comes back for another chance.

I am praying hard and going to alanon and my therapist during this window where I am both at my strongest and my most weak. I need to hang on tight to the fact that he is very sick and demonstrated numerous times that he is not getting help. And something has to change this time. And leading up to this bender he sensed distance from me and unhappiness at the fact that our relationship is shattered and I am trying to show love to a man that has hurt me over and over. And that's hard. It's hard to pretend everything is ok when it's not. It spills over into your affection for each other because as much as you love them, your gut won't stop pulling you back to protect you. And he sees that, and it hurts him. So maybe leaving will be the one loving thing I do.

I want to believe this short window I have is the one where I find the strength to leave. If he comes out of this, I need to make that choice. And I need to hold on tight to it. I am uneasy, and vulnerable and feel uncomfortable without him in my life as I always do during these vanishing moments. But I can't live this way - we can't live this way together.

Not looking for advice or consoling as I know you must be tired yourself of this tired story I am just hoping that this time is different - that this time I find the strength to really let go when all my heart wants to do is hang on.

dandylion

I wrote this short poem for you.....
If you forward
YOU will be glad
If you go backward
you will be sad (again)
dandylion

Smarie78

thank you dandylion...I like it

AnvilheadII

And leading up to this bender he sensed distance from me and unhappiness at the fact that our relationship is shattered and I am trying to show love to a man that has hurt me over and over. And that's hard. It's hard to pretend everything is ok when it's not. It spills over into your affection for each other because as much as you love them, your gut won't stop pulling you back to protect you. And he sees that, and it hurts him. So maybe leaving will be the one loving thing I do.

i hate to break it to you but that is NOT why he drank again.....he drank again because he is an untreated alcoholic and drinking is HIS PRIORITY. not you, not the "love" you share, none of it.

you cannot LOVE him well, the ONLY person you can love well is....

you.

leaving won't change him. but it will change YOU. you won't have to do this anymore. you can make this stop - at any time. once you accept this HIS addiction has NOTHING, zero, zip, nada, to do with you. it has progressed, unabated. it will NOT get better.

musiclady14

Smarie...Best wishes, whatever your decision may be. I left my AH yesterday. My three kids and I have gone 7 hours away to live with my parents. Early thoughts...So.Much.Peace. My kids are happy. No one is walking on egg shells. I feel like all the weight of 7.5 years of living with his alcoholism, depression and abuse has been lifted off my shoulders. I'm looking forward to the future rather than dreading it.

It was a long journey to get to this point. Very emotional. Challenging. A learning experience of monumental proportions. But I did what was best for my kids and I, and I have no regrets. I don't ever want him back. I wish him well. Maybe some day he'll get help.

Hugs and peace to you. ❤

teatreeoil007

You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it. The '3 C's'. It is simply not your fault. You don't need to figure out "why". The alcoholics in my life put their alcohol first time after time after time. They'd rather go to the bar and drink together than have a nice alcohol free heart to heart visit with me. It hurts sometimes, but the pain is much less now.. But I realized there is not a damn thing I can do about it, except work on loving myself despite not feeling very loved from them when they'd rather drink and they know that doesn't include me. I used to feel "excluded" and left out. I don't anymore.

Bekindalways

Hi Smarie, it's good to have an update from you. I too hope this is it for you . . . but we all have our own timing/pace as we move through this journey.

You feel what you feel inspite of any rationality. I wish we could pour into your psyche that it doesn't matter whether you drink with him or not . . . he is an alcoholic and nothing you do will affect this.

Let us know how it goes . . . keep posting.

sauerkraut

Smarie,
When you say "I want to believe this short window I have is the one where I find the strength to leave. If he comes out of this, I need to make that choice," it sounds like you're letting what he does influence your choice. Is that right? Why? Why not focus on what you want? Unfortunately it sounds like he's already made it pretty clear what he wants, and it appears to be liquid.

LexieCat

I think NOW is when you need to make the choice. Why in the world would you wait until he comes out of it? Unless he dies, he almost certainly will come out of the bender, and you can easily predict what he will do when that happens, because this has happened so many, many times, right? So you know what you can expect, because you've BTDT. What you need is to BTDSD (Be there, do something different).

You can use this time to say to yourself that when he comes out of this, he will still be the same him and you will be the same you, and this isn't working for you. And decide RIGHT NOW that you don't care what noises he makes, you are simply DONE.

atalose

I hope you find the strength this time too!!!

maia1234

Smarie,
Whats your plan?? Are you planning on going no contact, cutting him off phone contact, social media, emails, not responding if he contacts you in person.

You gotta have a plan my friend so you are prepared for wash, rinse and repeat cycle.

Ariesagain

" and sadness that I cannot go save him from himself and he is somewhere alone and hurting as he does."

You need to stop assigning appropriate emotions to him. There is little to no evidence that he has any real feelings of regret, shame, responsibility, or loneliness, not for you, not for his kids, not for his wife.

Every time you decide how he is feeling it's invariably that he's noble and pure at heart but just drinks. Wrong. If anything, I believe if you had been dealing with the guy behind the drunk disguise all this time you would have seen a purely selfish manipulating asshat and dumped him a long time ago.

Now is the time. He's not hurting and alone. You are. He has his bottles and he's just fine.

hopeful4

Right before I kicked out my XAH, I sort of found the same, I was more calm, there was less drama. Now, when I did it that was dramatic, however, leading up to, and after, was not as dramatic as I had thought. I had accepted that it would happen eventually, the drama of it all had literally worn me down and out.

Tight hugs to you. Every time you decide to stay, you are torturing yourself just a little more.

Be well friend.

NYCDoglvr

This is going to sound silly, but one phrase helped me keep reality in check: "a leopard doesn't change his spots". I applaud your hard work in Alan;on and therapy, they do work. A big hug.

honeypig

I went through a period where I also felt great sadness for XAH, based on exactly this--I was assigning "appropriate emotions" to him. I imagined how I would feel, in his shoes.

But he isn't me, and his feelings (or lack thereof) bore little similarity to mine. After several incidents in which this was made abundantly clear to me, I finally learned my lesson and didn't assume that I knew how he felt about anything. It was really hard to accept that someone I thought I knew is, in reality, in a whole different world in so many ways, but at some point, that was what had to be done.

Thank you for pointing that out, Aries--I think that's a pit that many of us fall into.

Smarie78

Thanks to all of you for the wonderful words. This is always a continued struggle for me in drawing the line between anger and compassion. When he falls off into the dark place, the drinking impacts my thoughts and pulls my empathic strings in an almost impenetrable way. Maybe it's trauma from the last year and subsequent months of seeing things I have trouble shaking. Maybe it's being unable to take the sickness away (codependents like me have an almost narcissistic trait of believing we can and are responsible for the outcomes of people we love).

I often wonder how people became angry. When a loved one got really sick like this, when does it turn to anger? My anger comes and goes but is often eclipsed by extreme empathy in the alcoholics experience. Because my brain says, but...who would choose to be sitting in their room or on the streets locked up drinking horrible things in the dirt, just a shell of the person they use to be typically so caught up in their own vanity? This same man would turn his nose at the version his drunk self becomes. It was always easier for me to process the alcoholic who is dancing on the table top - or drinking up a couple bottles of wine with dinner and having some laughs. Why is it easier for me to get mad at that kind of alcoholic. I know people say and "A" is an "A", but do you think there is an added challenge by the "kind" of alcoholic spiral he partakes in? Would I find it easier to walk away if he wasn't the guy who locks himself into what I can only imagine hell to look like?

Ariesagain

If it was hell for him he wouldn't keep booking a round-trip ticket.

As long as you keep assuming that he feels what you would feel, you're going to keep riding this merry-go-round.

Smarie78

And yes, despite all this I have to go. If I stay, I will likely watch him die if he doesn't die this time. Nothing has changed in the last year and a half of the relapse. Not. One. Thing. He promises all the time but nothing has changed. And not just the drinking but even the marriage. He is physically unable to make changes to his life and to keep going will likely throw me into a trauma I may never recover from. At least once every couple months my mind gets to run wild imagining he could be dead. That has been traumatic for me and I'm afraid I can't go another round.

LexieCat

I'm sure that, on some level, he suffers. But apparently not enough to do the work required to get sober and stay that way. After all, you're always willing to take him back, no matter what he's done to you or to himself or to anyone else. You're not helping him, you're just making it easier for him to live with himself. I know *I* didn't quit drinking until I couldn't live with myself.

And it's actually not necessary for you to be angry with him to leave him. When I left my second husband, one of my motivators was that I didn't want to get to the point where I hated him. I still loved him when I left. I loved him when I divorced him. Heck, on some level I probably still love him. But I accepted that his path was one I could choose not to walk with him. I'm sure he's suffered plenty during the past 25 years of continuous drinking since I left. But I couldn't have prevented any of that if I'd stayed. And I would have wound up a basket case.

firebolt

You will. I suspect you might be closer to your rock bottom than he is to his.

Our hearts can be like their alcoholic voice. It's the sickness talking - it tells us that we're so in love. That we're soul mates. That it's something worth fighting for. That we're a special situation and no other loves will be like it.

When the truth is - love doesn't treat us that way. Love doesn't make us want to control another human being. There are TONS of healthy people we'd be compatible with. And we're fighting for something that is keeping us sick, and in conditions that can lead US to an early grave.

You'll get there - keep on those meetings! They are a life line! And thanks for sharing with us - you are helping people you don't even realize!