This is good stuff, Onipar. I'm smiling as I read it. And I am grateful that you are so kind to people who mean well for you.

For me, awareness was key. I didn't really understand what was happening to me and my life, just that it was all crumbling. When I began Al-Anon and started reading this forum, the lights came on. It only took me a few months to completley re-frame everything and to be able to do what I never, ever imagined was possible - get this man out.

Once I read the pattern over and over again in everyone's stories, I had no choice but to surrender to rational thinking, and let the heart want what it wants, but not respond to its call. My heart was leading me down a path of destruction. But the reality is, I cannot save my husband. I can lovingly get out of his way. I can save myself. And make a peaceful, loving home for our children.

Just wanted to second this. And I know Onipar that you are struggling with what we all did. I love this person, I want to believe he/she will improve, it won't get worse, I will wait until I feel stronger to end it etc...

Feel free to read my old posts-- I started off asking "is there a problem or am I imagining things?" and I didn't leave until there was physical abuse (and not even after the first time it happened). I wish I could go back in time and make choices that would have kept myself and later, our kids, out of harms way. I was worried about my xAH's drinking (no where near as bad as your gf's) before we married but got married anyway. I was worried about his anger, his delusional thinking and his drinking once we were married and then we had a child. I started to become more and more focussed on his behavior, moods, needs, my worry for him etc... and isolated myself from friends who did not "understand" my love for him and then got pregnant again and the abuse started. And still I didn't leave....

One day you wake up and realize all the times you could and should have left and all that you lost and it's heartbreaking. You will find it much more difficulty to leave if/when she loses her job or if you marry or have kids.... The more ties there are to the A, the harder it is to walk away (at least for me it was).

You are worth putting your own well being and happiness first and living with an A it's impossible to do that.

I don't post all of this to be melodramatic or preachy-- I just wanted to share a bit of my experience to shed light, as others have too, on how easy it is to be in the space of "I know I need to leave" and then somehow years pass and you are still there but with many more complicating factors.

I don't want you or anyone for that matter to have to go through what I and so many others have.

When you feel you can, please break it off for YOUR well being. It doesn't preclude you from perhaps one day being with her again if she gets well. But right now you are trying to save someone who has made it clear she does not want saving.

On a totally separate note, when I read her statements to you about how she is bored and maybe if you and she had more fun together she would not drink I felt a visceral reaction in myself. I was told the same stuff. I was made to feel that I wasn't fun enough or suggesting enough fun things to do together and that it was my job to make him happy enough that he would not want to drink. I'll save you the trouble of trying to do the same. It's BS. She is not bored, she doesn't want to go out and have more fun. She is an alcoholic and it appears not only wants to drink daily but NEEDS to (drinking to the degree she does each day she must surely be physically addicted as well as mentally addicted).

You deserve to go out or stay in and have peace and fun and it sounds to me like you spend your evenings as I spent mine for years: dread, hoping you can manage to avoid conflict, worry, wondering etc...

I hope you apply for that grad program and move forward with your life in the direction you deserve.

She is dishonest, sneaky, drinks at work, lies to your face, and on top of that you don't even feel you can communicate with her. I would ask myself what is left of the relationship when there is no trust, no communication, and no respect? You deserve an equal partner that you can have conversations with and if a problem comes up you can talk it through like adults.

She is not ready to get help, and it seems like you are not willing to sit around and be treated like this anymore. I would make a plan of how you want things in the future to go. Most likely she will argue and lie more and it is important that you do not doubt yourself or second guess any decisions you make. You know what the truth is and you know that she is no longer someone you feel you can have a successful, happy, meaningful relationship with.

Trust yourself, you know what the right thing for yourself is.

Oh, mine too! How they can turn it all around on us. And why we let them?

I think that if you are an honest, rational person, you assume that the people you are dealing with are too. So when Mr. Arch criticizes me or tells me that I am the cause of the problem, I start to take inventory to see what I can change about myself to contribute to a solution.

One - that is NOT how he responds to my concerns. He just ignores them.
Two - he's irrational and self-serving. So his complaints are about manipulation, not about speaking truth.
Three - my life was dripping away consumed with the dread and hope and conflict avoidance you mentioned, and I was trying to change myself in someone good enough to actually fix it.

I am done with that now. And, oh, I am so excited to be free of the crazy mental prison cell I built for myself, when I let his words and actions dictate my choices.

Thank you for this. Than you so much. This is something I am struggling with right now.