LovelyKaya33333

My ex AH left on Sunday. Gave me an hour to less me know he was leaving our marriage and moving across the country. I think he was drunk when he did it. I went straight into emergency mode... filed for divorce, took him off my car insurance. Cleaned out bags of trash and items he left behind... I have been in shock this entire week. I think that the shock is wearing off and the pain is hitting. I know logically I don't want to be with him anymore. I know for certain I will carry these scars of abdonment for a long time. ( This isn't his first stunt like this but it will be his last cause I got off the roller coaster and I am not getting back on ) but I am so so sad. Just so so sad today. I still have to get **** done but I can't focus. I am writing a list right now for one of my employees to do for her day and I am so distracted. I have therapy in an hour with a therapist I have been seeing for a year so that is good. But I think as the shock is melting the pain is coming in heavy waves. I reached for him last night in our bed.... how can you dissolve a marriage in a matter of minutes. How can after 7 years of sleeping next to me he can just walk out. I know why. I know it is primarily cause I let him know I could not be around him if he drinks....he tried for 10 days and went back to drinking and I said I can't be with you while you are in active addiction... I get it is clear that he chose alcohol over me and over our marriage no matter what he tells me or tells himself that is what is came down to... I just so damn hurt...Thanks for listening

Bekindalways

Ugh yes Kaya. As much as it makes sense to end this relationship it still hurts beyond hurts. Unfortunately this type of thing tends to hurt more and longer than anyone wants. Do the best you can to feel the feels and surf the pain. When I was going through it, I would just live 15 minutes at a time as that was all I could do.

Keep posting here. We can't end the pain for you but we can be with you, at lease electronically, as you go through this.

Ariesagain

Here’s the thing…you are seeing this as him making a clear, premeditated, logical choice to keep drinking a beverage over your marriage. No wonder you’re so hurt and rightfully so.

But there’s nothing clear or logical about his brain now. It’s been hijacked by addiction and that voice is louder than any other in his brain. That voice is saying, “Everyone is just trying to control you, be a man, stand up for your rights, don’t get pushed around…you know you NEED this and everyone is just trying to stop you from getting what you need.” It’s not a choice between you and a beverage…it’s between you and an addiction that has him convinced he’s not addicted and that the problem, if there is one, therefore must be you.

And he’s pulled a pretty classic geographic…when the alcoholic decides that the problem is what’s all around him that makes him drink and therefore if he changes all of the circumstances, he won’t want to drink so much. Not that he’d ever want to give it up completely,because, hey, there’s really no problem, everyone is just overreacting, but just cut down. He’ll probably do it again, FWIW. I feel for his kids. It wouldn’t be surprising that after things aren’t magically perfect in his new/old circumstances he just might get in touch with you again. Be ready for that, because nothing will be different.

So if it helps, please try to reframe this not so much as a rejection of you, as a person, a wife, an individual. It’s a rejection of anything that might shine the light on the truth, a truth he has no interest in dealing with.

I wish you well. Know that there was nothing you could have done to change this.

Cookie314

I find that pain and confusion comes in waves as well. Just remember to focus on HALT like trailmix has talked about. If you're feeling hurt and confused, stop, breathe, and assess yourself. Are you hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? Take care of those physical needs first. Take a break to change your focus, and take care of yourself. You will get through this.

trailmix

I was actually basically just going to say what Aries has mentioned, about this really not being just a choice between a drink or you. It's much deeper than that and as she said, this kind of thinking can be really hurtful to you.

Hmm should I be able to have a few beer at the pub or stay here?

In his addictive delusion he may have thought, well I did so well when the kids were here, maybe that's what I need (because it's not "just" the addiction, of course). And of course that's not it at all and the addiction goes with him.

Addiction, Lies and Relationships
.
"As the addictive process claims more of the addict's self and lifeworld his addiction becomes his primary relationship to the detriment of all others. Strange as it sounds to speak of a bottle of alcohol, a drug, a gambling obsession or any other such compulsive behavior as a love object, this is precisely what goes on in advanced addictive illness. This means that in addiction there is always infidelity to other love objects such as spouses and other family - for the very existence of addiction signifies an allegiance that is at best divided and at worst -and more commonly- betrayed. For there comes a stage in every serious addiction at which the paramount attachment of the addict is to the addiction itself. Those unfortunates who attempt to preserve a human relationship to individuals in the throes of progressive addiction almost always sense their own secondary "less than" status in relation to the addiction - and despite the addict's passionate and indignant denials of this reality, they are right: the addict does indeed love his addiction more than he loves them.

Addiction protects and augments itself by means of a bodyguard of lies, distortions and evasions that taken together amount to a full scale assault upon consensual reality. Because addiction involves irrational and unhealthy thinking and behavior, its presence results in cognitive dissonance both within the addict himself and in the intersubjective realm of ongoing personal relationships.

In order for the addiction to continue it requires an increasingly idiosyncratic private reality subject to the needs of the addictive process and indifferent or even actively hostile to the healthy needs of the addict and those around him. This encroachment of the fundamentally autistic, even insane private reality of the addict upon the reality of his family and close associates inevitably causes friction and churn as natural corrective feedback mechanisms come into usually futile play in an effort to restore the addict's increasingly deviant reality towards normal. Questions, discussions, presentations of facts, confrontations, pleas, threats, ultimatums and arguments are characteristic of this process, which in more fortunate and less severe cases of addiction may sometimes actually succeed in its aim of arresting the addiction. But in the more serious or advanced cases all such human counter-attacks upon the addiction, even, indeed especially when they come from those closest and dearest to the addict, fall upon deaf ears and a hardened heart. The addict's obsession-driven, monomaniacal private reality prevents him from being able to hear and assimilate anything that would if acknowledged pose a threat to the continuance of his addiction".

PeacefulWater12

This stuff is painful and difficult. Sending understanding virtual hugs

OKRunner

Oh, Kaya, I am so sorry you are going through this. It is a pain like no other, but it is not a pain intended for -- or aimed at -- you. I know what you're feeling with my whole heart -- I went through the same pain this fall and early spring. I'm a tough cookie and this pain had me on my knees, unable to get up. It will lessen, I promise you that. Take good care of your strong, sweet self. I am so proud of you for drawing a line at active addiction and knowing that you are worth -- and deserve -- so much more than he is capable of giving right now. Sending virtual hugs and 100% confidence that things will get better with time. In fall 2020 and early spring 2021 I thought I would never, ever see the light at the end of the pain tunnel but I can tell you my days are 500% better than they were just a few short months ago and each day is better than the last. Wishing you great care ~

LovelyKaya33333

Thank you everyone...Still struggling so much

trailmix

Yes, I'm sorry you are going through this. There will be good days and bad days and better days. Good and bad hours or minutes even.

You're not just grieving the end of this relationship, you know you don't want to be with him anymore, it's the what could have been that perhaps hurts more. If he had not been an alcoholic, if he had been a normal drinker, if he had gotten in to recovery, things might be good, you two might not be about to get divorced, your life could be "normal" and happy.

That's a terrible thing and unfortunately it's what happened here, he can't stop drinking right now or doesn't want to. He is an alcoholic and he wants to drink so he is. That cannot include you. You have become the enemy. It's not logical, it just is.

So, to help yourself, when you dream of how it might have been, remember that it wouldn't really be, if he had stayed he would probably be passed out on the sofa, or drinking in the garage or whatever his m.o. is. The rest, the idea of how it "could" have been was just hope. Now you may be thinking how on earth would that make me feel better!

Well, thinking of what "might" have been can make you feel like you missed out on something. Really you didn't because that isn't the reality (and probably never could be). When you think of his 10 days sober, you two getting along, having fun, going to the gym, remember he wasn't thinking of all that the same way you were, his reality is not the same as yours.

So he isn't who you hoped he would become and he wasn't what you thought he was and that's a terrible, hurtful thing for you. It will be hard for a while. Time will heal this.

The fact that he jumped up and left is also terribly hard as you didn't get a chance to perhaps ask him what the heck he was thinking etc. I'm going to guess he wouldn't have been truthful anyway, because it would mean facing himself. "I want to drink so I'm leaving because she won't let me".

I don't know if any of this is helpful, but I'll post it.

dandylion

Kaya......the word that you use to describe your pain is "struggling"....which I think is actually the Grieving Process. Which is, of course is a natural and expected response to what is expected from your recent experience.
I doubt that there is anyone on this forum---especially the long-timers---who hasn't experienced the deep grieving that you are going through,
We understand that kind of pain.