1logically

So, new here and need some help:

My fiance' of 14 years told me that he wanted out of our relationship in January. I was knocked flat - totally unaware he was out drinking as much as he was or felt the way he did - I was away taking care of my sister who had a stroke. I thought he was having a crisis??

I have been devastated but I am hanging tough.

Here's are my issues/questions:

1.) I thought that he wanted out for someone else - we went to counseling. That was not the problem and a PI proved it. However, last night I caught him out at 1 a.m. with some woman who says she has just been trying to be a friend since he is a "messed up guy",etc. She said he has been hanging out in this pub for a while and everyone knows him (I knew he was going there) but that they thought he was single. He apparently has been telling people all of our business,etc. THIS FROM A GUY I NEVER THOUGHT WOULD BETRAY ME! Do all alcoholics do this? He says he can't remember and that he lies. At least he remembered he lied??

2.) He said that he "hasn't felt a connection" to me in 4 years. WTF?? He has been out drinking pretty steadily for 4 years - hardcore for the last 2 - SEVEN HOURS A DAY/SEVEN DAYS A WEEK! Another person I know in recovery told me "you feel a switch flip" - it's an emotional numbness to everything..IS THIS TRUE? HE SAYS HE HAS LOVED ME BUT HAS NO CONNECTION TO ANYTHING OR ANYONE.

3.) He says he "will quit drinking when I leave". Again WTH?? Said that he can do it by himself and that together, we are toxic (I DO NOT ENABLE HIM). I asked him if he was blaming me for his addiction - he said no, but if you stay, I'll keep drinking. THIS SOUNDS LIKE ALCOHOLIC MANIPULATION - CAN ANYONE WEIGH IN HERE?

When I told him that I thought the alcohol was a factor in his "numbness" and "disconnection" and that 4 years was an awful long time to fake his feelings, he really had nothing to say except for: When we went to counseling, I knew that we couldn't get back to where we "were" before and that's when I knew nothing would change. Seriously?? He knows he has a problem, he is letting his ego rule his potential sobriety and he is rewriting our life together as I knew it. I knew he was out with friends - I just didn't know he was drinking so much until now!

Toay, he is only 40, has hypertension, nosebleeds,orange/blood urine, blackouts(/) forgets conversations,etc.

HELP!

suki44883

You've been engaged for 14 years?? My advice...RUN!! You don't need his crap. He obviously wants out of the relationship, so give him what he wants. Don't waste any more years of your life with this guy. You don't need to try to understand why he does and says what he does. He's made it clear he wants out, so stop worrying about what he drinks or who he sees. Concentrate on taking care of yourself.

MsPINKAcres

Sweetie - from my experience with Alcoholics/addicts -
Just because they say they'll stop drinking doesn't mean they will.

Usually a person who has been drinking this much for this long won't just up and stop because of a person walking out of their lives.

I hate that someone you thought was being honest and open with you for many years has now revealed many things to you that are painful and heartbreaking.

Please know sometimes it maybe the disease talking - we may be powerless over their actions - but we can learn what is healthy, safe and sane for us, regardless of what they decide to do.

Wishing you a time a healing and rest,
HUGS,
Rita

Pelican

Welcome to the SR family!

Please make yourself at home by reading and posting as much as needed. You will find support for yourself here.

Through Alanon and this website, I have learned about the three C's of addiction:

I did not cause it
I can not control it
I will not cure it

I am sorry that he is not willing to walk away from his addiction but seems willing to walk away from your relationship. That is a painful choice. However, it is his choice.

Please keep reaching out for help and support for yourself. We are here to support you and hope you will understand that you are not alone. We know what it feels like to love someone addicted to alcohol. We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. (Step 1 of Alanon).

wicked

1logically,

wow, what a lot of stuff. i am glad you are here though. you will get a lot of experience, strength and hope from the members here.

I am a recovering alcoholic and from my experience this could actually be true (in an alcoholic twisted kind of way) if he blacks out (like I did regularly) he literally can't remember, and if someone reminds of something he said he knows is a lie....well.
okay, that might make sense to me, but maybe not to you. But it is ridiculous and it certainly does not excuse lying.

This, again, could be true in a twisted way. I drank to get numb, to not feel the pain, guilt and shame that I was not a good mother, and self medicating my depressive disorder which was only getting worse because of the drinking. And if it is true for him, I hope you find a way to let go, even after 14 years. He is telling you his truth, and it sucks big time for you. I am sorry. Deeply sorry.

IMO, I think it is definite blame shifting and manipulation. But, he is telling you to expect more misery. Believe it.

yes, my ex, who was also an addict/alcoholic definitely rewrote history. I let him keep that. I know what happened, especially after I got sober. It is easy to rewrite history when most of it is distorted through alcoholic numbness and blameshifting.

I hope you get some help for yourself 1logically.

Beth

1logically

I am just trying to understand where he is coming from....I feel like a 2x4 has been slammed across my back

I do not want to take the blame for being the reason he drank "i will quit when you leave"??

I also want to know if there is such a switch - do alcoholics actually get numb after drinking for years? If the chemicals are to blame, I won't feel compelled to shoulder these terrible feelings. (He cries when he tells me he loves me but then looks stoic when he says he feels nothing).

He just said he has been drinking since he was 16 but really has been hardcore for last 2-3/4 years.

wicked

1logically,
I want you to understand completely....
you are not responsible for any thing he does! including picking up alcohol!
i am responsible for every single beer i guzzled, every single one.
no one put a gun to my head to black out every other night.
it was a choice i made, until i made the choice to recover.
and no one held a gun to my head to recover either. it was a choice.
MY CHOICE!

I started drinking when I was sixteen too. Once his brain has been hijacked by alcohol, it has nothing to do with you. nothing at all. 24 years of drinking.
he has damaged his brain and his body.

if he quits drinking when you walk out the door, you better call the media!
it will be an Easter Miracle!
in other words, it will never happen. never. he needs medical intervention to detox and spiritual intervention to learn to live.
he is stuck at 16.

wicked

anvilhead,

you always get right to the center of things.
i appreciate that.
i always want to explain.
sigh....
truly 1logically, take care of yourself.

Duped

Man, thinking about what's in our own best interests is hard sometimes, isn't it? Especially when things have been skewed and turned around so much......to make us feel selfish about actually wanting happiness and what's good and healthy for ourselves.

wanting

I was completely blindsided by my XH too. I know how it feels. I understand wanting "more information" and all that. The thing is though, it just doesn't help to keep focusing on them. It's unhealthy. What do you want for your life? I'd focus on that. If it's meant to be with you and this guy, it'll happen. (I suspect that you're meant to be with someone who loves and appreciates you though.) Focusing on yourself and becoming healthy can't hurt anything.

Summerpeach

Sorry you're in so much pain, but this is real easy, he's too sick/weak to accept that he's the cause of his addictions so he's blaming you.
When you leave, he will not stop drinking, his drinking will intensify and he'll be begging for you back in no time
I suggest, ignoring his pleas, tell HIM to leave and get yourself into Al Anon right away

ItsmeAlice

Welcome to the SR family!

Please make yourself at home by reading and posting as much as needed. You will find support for yourself here.

Through Alanon and this website, I have learned about the three C's of addiction:

I did not cause it
I can not control it
I will not cure it


I've quote Pelican here because she has said exactly what I want to.

It sounds as if his addiction is taking a deep toll on his health and his desire for anything else out of life. He is at a crossroads. Come clean to you and face his addiction or get out of the relationship and continue on as he wishes to with his addiction and die from it.

I am so sorry he has made the decision to leave you in favor of alcohol. His addiction is his misteress, though I am sure you'd be able to settle in your mind his wanting to leave if it were an actual woman and not booze.

I am doubly sorry that to disuade his own guilt over the horrible and deadly choice he is making he has tried to make it your fault.

You asked if there is a switch. I'm not a recovering alcoholic but I am a recovering codependent and enabler of an alcholic (a position I held for 10+years) and there was a switch in me most definitely. I cannot say that I saw it at the time, but it was there. I had to accept that once the circuit was thrown, I couldn't love him in the way I had in the beginning. I pitied him, I had compassion for him, I liked the man he could be in sober times, but I stopped loving him the way I had.

You are hurt in many ways, but you are here. You are here with people who have been on both sides of addiction and have lived to tell the tale. You are here with sincere and honest folks who want to live life on its terms and be healthy happy people coping with the affects addiction can take on the individual and their family and friends.

It's wonderful to have you. Please stay and work through this.

Alice

MissFixit

Dear,

Sorry you are going through this. Glad you are here with us.

I had a similar experience. My exAbf/fiance up and left our relationship one day. Turned out he was engaged to a woman he cheated on me with for several months. I wanted answers and explanations. Laurie here told me that I would not be getting closure or answers from him. She was right. I did not. I did get harassed and my name dragged through the mud by his gf.

He is an active A. He is insane by definition. His actions don't make sense. You have him 14 years. He doesn't care enough or want a relationship with you for some reason. The reason at this point doesn't matter. He is a dirtball loser and doesn't deserve you. He threw away someone who loved him, and that is HIS problem.

(I hated this part the most) He has given you a gift. You have freedom now to live without a metally ill drunk. That is a huge opportunity.

Take care of yourself and do nice things right now. Bubble baths, exercise, good food, friends, pets, movies, shopping, travel. Whatever makes you smile that has nothing to do with him.

HUGS,

Miss

alanonicnov2008

I've been there. Even recovered alkies do this if they have enablers in their lives -- i.e., people who will listen to everything they say nod their heads and flatter him by not calling him crazy.

He's too sick and suffering for you and life is too short. Al Anon is a great way to get your life back.

Jadmack25

Honey, you spent 14 years engaged to marry him, the last 4 years he has drunk heavily and says he has felt "emotionally numb" during that time.
Now he wants you gone and then 'he will quit drinking.'

Please excuse me for laughing, (because I know you are very upset), but really!!!

The kindest excuse for him is that he has finally fried his brain.

If he 'quits drinking' anytime within the next 5 years because of your leaving, (short of his dying) and he stays off it for more than 30 days.......I will crawl fromone end of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the other.

It is nothing to do with you, apart from you being the fall guy for his hang-ups and the one who has been terribly hurt.

The only good thing he has done for you....is to free you from his miserable, drunken and blaming self.

Let him go, as if he were a fouled anchor, something that is only capable of causing damage and danger to any craft attached to it. Cut him loose.

God bless

Bucyn

Only my opinion, so take it for what it's worth.

He does want out for someone else. Or rather something else: Lady Liquid Love.

A woman who is 'trying' to be someone's friend because he is so messed up has BIG problems of her own. "Oh, looked there's a really effed up guy, he looks like friend material." That fact that she's 'trying' means she's not really getting through no matter how desperately she wants to enable Sir Misery. Warning: if you dump him, he will dump himself on her for his enabling. She won't ever mean any more to him as you do. She's a non-factor and not a problem in your relationship.

It's an interesting contradiction. He tells everyone he's unattached but also tells everyone all your mutual problems. So they know he's involved with someone. And for him to explain why he's still got complaints about you even as he claims you are not still a couple means that he's got to be playing that you are stalking/harassing/persuing him and some version of the story that you used to be together, but he broke it off (which demonstrates he's sane and normal) and you can't handle it, so you keep bothering him (which strokes his male ego, he's so wonderful you can't leave him alone), and he tells his bar buddies about his problems with you for sympathy, free drinks, attention, and to reassure himself that you are the problem, not him. You are the crazy one, not him. You are the one out of control, not him. And look, all these people in the bar agree with him. And if they agree with him, then it must be true.

Yes, all drunks do this. It reassures them that there are more messed up people than them. It diverts attention from their drinking, and in drunk logic, the more people who believe your lies, the more those lies turn into the truth. It's drunk logic.

I don't know if he remembers or not. But if he does, saying he doesn't gets you off the back. And he thinks if he admits lying, then you can't accuse him of anything.

My XA lied about me all the time. He lied to me to his family, then lied to be about his family. He lied about me to my kids. He lies, and is not ashamed. "I didn't mean it. It was misunderstand. I misspoke. I take it back. So it was a lie, are you going to tell me what I can and can't say?"

The point is he's trying to recruit enablers. Hence the lady who is attracted because he's a messed up guy. And if you say the lie often enough it becomes true. The lie he's trying to make true, isn't what he's saying to the others; it's that he's okay and OTHER people, namely you, are responsible for his problems.

All alcoholics blame others and desperately try to get supporters to believe them. That way they can assure themselves they aren't the problem. And thus don't need to look at their drinking or behavior. JMO.

This is probably true. He probably hasn't felt a connection to anyone or anything except alcohol for 4 years. That's sort of the point of drinking...numbness. If he wasn't numb, he'd have to face his problems. Doesn't want to do that.

This is bunk. He will NOT quit drinking when you leave.

If you leave the only thing that will change is you won't know if he's drinking or not, and if you don't know then, by drunk logic, it didn't happen. Unwitnessed drinking by a sober normal person means no drinking took place.

He cannot do it by himself.

Together you are both sane and normal and healthy, but together you are toxic? Ummm...that's just dumb. If the product is toxic, then one or both of you must be toxic. If you mix eggs and sugar, you get the beginning of cake...not poison. If you mix amonia and bleach, you get poison. If you mix bleach and sugar, you get poison. But two wholesome ingredients don't make poison.

If you decide to stay, he'll keep drinking. Well, that's his choice. He's telling you if you maintain the status quo, he will maintain the status quo. Pretty damn honest and fair.

He knows the alcohol is a factor in his numbness and disconnection. Thing is he likes the numbness and disconnection. He knows that without sobriety you and he won't go back to how it was. So he has a choice: 1. the way things were before and sobriety, or 2. drunkness and numbness. His choice is number two.

He knew nothing would change because he knew he wasn't willing to change.

And since he knows he's not going to put in the effort to change, and since it's a basic need of the human ego to think well of oneself or at least to pretend to, he's rewriting history so he can not change, ruin your relationship, and still come out looking good.

You didn't know how much he was drinking because he didn't want you to know. You didn't know because he hid it from you. Remember, you aren't omniscient; don't put that burden on yourself.

He's in bad shape and it's going to get worse. But he doesn't care because he's disconnected and numb.

Your last word is 'help'. Are you asking for help with him or for you? You can't help him, but you can surely help yourself.

coffeedrinker

i too encourage you to keep coming here. i have gained strength and more clarity from this site than all my years attending alanon.

you said you are "hanging tough". good, you need to be tough, you need to tough it out until he is out of your bloodstream. only then will you see things for what they truly are, and not be so heartbroken, but thankful that he is in your past. i hope "hanging tough" is not meant to say you're trying to tough things our with him, get through this rocky time to the other side of your life together. just in case:
1. he has already stated his feelings for you changed long ago.
2. if you want for him to get sober, and he says he will do that once you leave, then by all means, leave.
3. hurts like he!! to be so betrayed, and blindsided, i know. but it's a crazy thing this addiction stuff, and you either see yourself as different, and distance yourself, or you get crazy too

KeepPedaling

So, the 14 year engagement and the PI kinda stood out for me. Do you mean you hired a private investigator to follow him to find out if he was cheating. I think it's great that you didn't marry him, but if he was the one dragging his feet all these years, why would you be "knocked flat" that he left? Also, you don't seem to trust him at all, (PI), so why would you want him anyway? I mean, of course you love him, but love is never really enough for a healthy relationship right? There has to be that other stuff too, trust for one.

He's drinking, which means, he's not really there at all mentally. You can't have a relationship with someone who has checked out mentally. That's the conclusion I came to when I finally left my xabf anyway.

I'm very very sorry that you're going through this.

Whadahay

His alcoholism has nothing to do with you. It's HIS disease! He chooses not to take care of himself.

I know ... I've been him.