Justfor1

I believe most alcoholics reach a point when they realize it's either alcohol or their significant other.The fact that they choose alcohol may be a shock but, sadly, is very common.

Boon44

He also choose her...

dandylion

Boone he chose someone who wouldn't get in his way with his true mistress. He isn't prepared to truly love anyone--not in a mature, lasting and healthy way.

I know that you feel replaced---don't fight the feeling. Let the feeling wash over you--feel it--and picture it washing away from you. These are just feelings and they won't kill you by feeling them--I promise. Cry as much as you want. It helps to let it out. The pain will not swallow you up. Letting the pain pass through you will actually help you feel better.

I have been where you are--that is how I know these things.

sincerely, dandylion

Boon44

When I was there with them the other night
she was saying all the same things I'd said
to him for years. He didn't seem to argue with
her, he just stood there looking at both of us. At some
point he told me he had been mean & nasty to me
just to get me to leave but I would never just leave
so he just got worse & worse. He said we argued
all the time, yes about his drinking or not ever
wanting to do what he didn't want to do. Then another
minute he tells me he choose the bottle over me, in a
very unremoserful way..."sorry." I stood there
begging for my relationship with him, she sat there
knowing she was going to stay at the house with him
when I left, he on the other hand said he felt
flattered by my efforts that night. He knows I would do
anything to be with him & work this out, to make the
relationship better. He says it might just be too
broken to fix. On the one hand he takes responsibility and says its
all his fault, and on the other he says I stopped listening to him. I just
got tired of the buzzed, drunk, self centered way he behaved. I withdrew after trying so long to reach him. We even tried therapy but the counselor got nowhere with him. He says he is not an alcoholic, just makes bad choices.


he would see I was unhappy

SolTraveler

I know you can't see it now, Boon, but he gave you a gift. Anyone who treats you that badly is not deserving of your time and attention. Period. I know that does not help now, but it will.

As I said before, he will treat her the same way. Maybe not at first, but he will. And as Dandylion said, it isn't so much you versus her as it was you versus drinking. Eventually, she will tire of it too and then he will move on again.

dandylion

Dear Boon, as was recently mentioned in someone else's thread, the reason it feels so confusing and crazy is that you and he have to different agendas. Your agenda has been to preserve the relationship---his has been to preserve the ability to drink with impunity. A relationship with two directly opposing goals cannot survive.

What you did was what one with a wisp of self-preservation left does---leaves the toxic place. Admittedly, you thought that it would cause him to do turn-around. However---the part you didn't fully grasp is that you can't control him---alcoholism controls him. His alcoholism is controlling her (she just doesn't realize it).

You are the only one that is free, right now. This grief is just temporary (but painful). Your road right now, as I see it, is to navigate through this grief process and begin work on yourself (alanon) so that you never pick one like this one, again.

This is going to get easier and easier with time and some distance. You have a lot of good times to come in your future.

Trust us. Until you can trust yourself.

sincerely, dandylion

LexieCat

OK, well, it doesn't feel so good to be a fungible commodity, does it? If that's how he is, then trust me, you deserve a LOT better.

It's always crappy to feel used, and to question our own judgment when it turns out someone doesn't care to be with us anymore. It seems to happen to most people at least once or twice in a lifetime.

You are still young--heck, I wish *I* were 45 again! You can have a great future ahead of you. Don't linger too long on the past--you don't need to live there. Remember, you had reasons to leave, and they haven't changed. That part of your life is over. I spent lots and lots of years in bad relationships, but life is good now--or it will be once I get my *literal* house in order!

nothopeful1

Tru day Lexicat! You are right!

nothopeful1

*dat!!

Boon44

Thank you all. I've never experienced this level
of grief. I'm told my imagination runs away from me
and I start to imagine this wonderful life he is
going to have with her, not me. She is funny, likable,
they both ski, share interest in music etc...eveything I'm not.
I wanted him to share himself with me...despite our differences.
I wanted him to spend time with me, friends, and family
without having to drink. He would only do this on his terms and
often it was an argument. I panic at the thought she will be
able to make the difference in his life, he will be inspired by her and
pull his life together, something I failed to be able
to do.

SolTraveler

If he gets better, it will be because he wanted to, not because of her. Just remember that.

Boon44

My other panic is that he will then choose her...not me because of
all our history...she will be the good one...me the damaged person who
was controlling and mean.

LexieCat

If he gets better while he is with her, it won't be because of something she DID or IS, that you did not, or were not. It will be because he is ready to recover.

Here's a little exercise for you to try--or not, your choice. Try praying for happiness and recovery for him. Try taking yourself, and anyone else, out of the equation. Do you want him to suffer? Or do you want him to be happy and healthy? Or do you only want him happy and healthy if YOU benefit from it?

My relationship with my second husband, whom I had to leave after he went back to drinking after nearly dying of it, is irretrievably over. If he showed up on my doorstep tomorrow, exactly the way I hoped he was when I met him and fell in love with him, I would not want him. HOWEVER, I dearly hope that someday he gets sober and is able to enjoy his later years (he is in his sixties now, and how he is still alive I have no idea). My happiness does not depend on whether that happens, though, but I still wish it for him.

If he's sober and happily in a relationship, God bless him. Good for him. It won't be because someone else did "better" than I did, it will be because he is finally, finally ready to change for good.

Boon44

I went to an Al Anon meeting tonight...women's group. They were celebrating 11 years of being together. I shared, cried, met someone who just went through a similar situation a few months ago. Picked up the phone list and plan on going back.

My head is still going crazy with all of the what if's...what if he ends up in a long-term relationship with this other person, what if he gets sober and chooses her, what if she gets the life with him that I wanted? Etc...etc... I feel like I was good for him in the beginning, just like her saying all of the right things, caring for him, etc. She was drinking with him the other night though and I know they both like to smoke weed so how can she be totally good for him? I don't really drink and I don't use drugs or smoke weed. Ugh...I don't know which is worse now. The fact that he is an alcoholic in denial or that he has someone else in his life to work things through with. I was ready, willing, and up until the drinking took a toll on me and our relationship, very capable. How did this happen to me?

Newlook3

Hi Boon44, I can empathise with everything you are saying and feeling, I am going through the exact same thing. Partner of 13 years, would do anything for me but liked a drink and on occasions would be verbally abusive. Things have been very rocky for the last few months and he has been drinking more but after each episode was sorry etc etc, we met up a few weeks ago and he just had no emotion. Since then all he has offered me is sex, he has thrown all the blame of the relationship failing at me and whilst I don't know he is seeing someone else I think it is quite likely as he seems driven by sex. I too am imagining him turning his life around for her???? He had been seeing a mental health nurse for depression and seemed to be getting straight, he had stated that he was doing it for him and not for me, which is what he should do. But now I can't help thinking that the 2 are linked and that he was getting himself sorted but by doing so realised he wanted out of the relationship so dealt with it the only way he knows how, getting drunk and shouting. I can't stop torturing myself that he will be the person I saw when he wasn't drinking with someone who is so much better for him than I was.
I know my self esteem is low but I am quite a boring person, and he has picked up on that. I now think he has wanted out for a long time but just couldn't see it through......

Boon44

I woke up this morning with a sense of dread and panic realizing more and more that this relationship is over. I can see now that he has been unhappy for a while and has wanted out of this relationship. He blames it on us not getting along and wanting different things...maybe. I wanted to be close to him, share my life with him, have a future with him. He says he loves me and always will but also says the said the same thing about his ex-wife recently. I really thought he was the one, I convinced myself of that. The day I moved in he was still drinking, I thought that would get better with me there and us working on being together in a relationship. That was seven years ago...somewhere along the line he changed his mind and I missed the signs. I just kept arguing with him over his drinking, thinking that if that were better or out of the picture our relationship would improve. Looking back I think he gave up on the relationship a long time ago but just didn't know how to say it to me. He told me the other day that he was not "man enough" to tell me how he has been feeling because he didn't want to hurt me and that by behaving the way he did with the drinking he was just trying to get me to leave...but he said you would never just leave, you kept coming back! I reminded him that I did leave a few times and told him I was not coming back unless he sought help and stopped drinking but he always told me to come back and that he loved me. He told me that when those times happened he did that just because he felt guilty. That really hurt to think that he brought me back out of guilt and not because he wanted and loved me. I'd asked him many times over the years if it was me, if he was just unhappy with me and wanted out of the relationship and he always told me no, that he was happy with me and that it was himself that he had never been happy with. Now he is telling me it is me, but that he does love me and maybe sees himself with me in 10 to 20 years from now but just not now. He also says that he does not know what is going to happen in life and that he could also see himself back with his ex-wife someday...who knows he says anything can happen. I'm so confused and honestly still in a lot of shock about this whole situation. He definitly drinks daily and way to much to deal with life. He says he is not an alcoholic and that he just makes bad choices (I know I've said this before in earlier posts). Can someone help me understand this? Is this what it looks like and feels like to be in a relationship with an alcoholic? This chaotic, dramatic, and uncertain? Does it sound like his alcoholism is progressing? I guess it was naive of me to think that his way of thinking and drinking would not directly effect our relationship one day. I know I started resenting him more and more over the past year and was getting angrier and angrier about it. Seems like he was drinking more and more because he was unhappy with us and wanted out and did not know how to tell me that. Maybe that's what he means by making bad choices, that he drinks to deal with his emotions and is not able to deal with them directly. I loved him so much and really wanted a future with him...kids the whole nine yards. He has said at times he did want those things and at others that he did not. He has said so many things to me and then changed his mind and taken them back how would I know what he really wanted? He told his friends he loved me and did not want to lose me but did not want to get married but he tried IVF with me? He said he did this because he knew this is what I wanted however on the day of the egg retrieval after dropping me off at the MD's office he left me to have the procedure and went to run some errand. I begged him not to go and to stay and be there with me so that when I woke up he could come into the room and be with me. I wanted us to go through this together. This is often what it was like with him. I worked hard to get us close and he would pull back. When I would ask him why he would not FINALLY divorce his ex he told me that they were legally separated and that it meant the same thing and that he had his reasons and just didn't want to deal with it. This went on for years until a friend of his finally pushed him through with getting it done. I could go on and on about the things he pushed aside and did not take care of. I recall a time not too long ago that we were out shopping and out of the blue he told me that recently he had been in a texting conversation with his exwife about something and that he asked her, "What happened to us?" I remember at the time being so confused...7 years in and he is still wondering about this? I just kept living my life with him taking those moments he choose to give me and making them enough for me to believe he was more committed to me than it now seems that he was. He told me for years that he was committed and really at times made me feel that way, he would get close, pull away, get close pull away. However, the one thing that never really changed was that he always had alcohol there on some level to help him cope. He told me the other night when we were speaking that he told his best friend that he really though he had done some major damage to this relationship...his friend told him "I don't know, maybe you did, I wasn't there." Again, I'm so confused...he loves me, he doesn't want to be with me, he does see himself with me maybe in the future, he is to blame because of his drinking, he choose the bottle over me, it is my fault because I did not pay enough attention to him this last year, he was never really committed because he did not actually divorce his exwife until about 7 months ago...I'm not sure what to believe? God this is so confusing...he wants me gone now that's for sure but tells me in a text after I was out of the house that he was really hurt by all of this, that he would never discard me, that he loves me forever, that he thinks about what I showed him daily, and that if I ever need anything he is there for me? He did discard me and how can he love me if he treats me like this? What did I do to deserve this? I just loved him and wanted to be with him but I was never enough no matter what I did. If I agreed with him too much I was told I was weak. If I argued back and stuck up for myself then he would sometimes tell me "good for you, you finally have a backbone." He later would tell me he knows what he did to me and that he was letting me go because he does love me and that he knows he is not good for me." Then he tells me we just don't get along and makes it seem like it's my fault again. Sorry, I know I'm dragging on and on but I'm trying to get some answers out of all of this. Did he ever really love me? Was he just using me not to be too lonely, is it the alcohol that makes him act so irrational and go back and forth, is it what is underlying reasons behind his drinking that are causing this? I just thought we would be together forever and that together we would figure this out. What made him change is mind? Why did he not want me anymore to be there for him to help figure this out? I would've stayed forever and been there for him, that's what couples do right? Everyone is telling me he is an alcoholic and that he has a disease and that he is not capable of being in any healthy relationship right now. Is that what it sounds like to all of you? Is this part of my denial that I'm dealing with and the reason it does not make any sense is that his alcoholism is causing this and that I can't solve it because I didn't cause it, cure it, and can't control it? Is is me? Is it something I said or did? I just feel this morning that if I'd done anything different I might have been able to avoid having this relationship end...maybe I should have pressed for counseling again, listened to him more, not tried to control his drinking, not given him such a hard time when he drank, not accused him of drinking when I thought he might be trying to hide it. Maybe if I'd had the tools from Al Anon I could have learned to deal with this differently and did not have to create a situation that was so stressful in the relationship around the drinking that he felt like the only way out was to end it. Is this my fault? Did I cause this? Please someone help me understand what happened to my life?

Newlook3

Boon, your post struck a chord as I am thinking all the same things as you. I too have been told exactly the same things as you, one minute I didn't love him enough, the next I tried to change him, the next that I deserve someone better. I don't know the answer to your questions or my own for that matter, I am however starting to realise that I may probably never know. My gut instinct is that both my partner and yours wanted out for sometime but as you rightly said they both struggle with dealing with difficult conversations and therefore bury their heads in the sand until the drink gives them the courage to spill it all out, they then feel guilty and try to retract it. I'm at the stage now that I truely believe my ex partner wanted out for sometime, possibly because of someone else, possibly not although knowing him I think that is very likely. I finally broke down at work today and was in floods of tears, I think maybe I had been holding too much in for too long. I'm hoping I've reached my bottom now and the only way is up. Sending you hugs x

peacedove

I understand you are confused, hurt, in shock and all the other things you feel. IMO, yes this is what happens when involved with an alcoholic. Everything is confusing, the back and forth, the constant changes and then you end up here looking for help. This is a great place to be with great people who can and will help. Read every post in every section and it will help you gain clarity over time. These stories will help you see some of the answers you are looking for.
Alcoholics love alcohol. First and above all else. He can see you two together in 10 or 20 years down the road?? Come on.......see the statement for what it is. Keeping your brain and heart connected to him but meanwhile he needs to do what he needs to do--which is not be with you and live his life doing what he wants.
Focus only on you. Not on the past you had with him. Yes, it is normal to be processing all of this and I did, too. We all have. I haven't long been away from my ex but I can tell you if you will go no contact, get your life back on track without him, leave him totally alone and only work on a new life for yourself it will get better every day.
Another woman is not getting any prize here if they end up with this guy. Someone else has already said it, too.
Keep getting support from family and friends and stay on track with a goal in mind of being independent and free of this man.
It's your life. You control it. Not him. Put all the energy you are putting in to thinking of "what if" or "why" or "how did this happen" and turn it around and say "ok, this did happen, it stinks, i don't want to live like this and i am not going to."
It isn't easy but it can be done. You can do it!

EverHopeful721

"She was drinking with him the other night though and I know they both like to smoke weed so how can she be totally good for him? I don't really drink and I don't use drugs or smoke weed."

I think you have your answer right there, Boon. He's not interested in getting sober for you or for anyone, and certainly not for himself. I've seen it said so many times on here - like attracts like, unhealthy attracts unhealthy. Alcoholics/addicts are always looking for an enabler, and if they can find an enabler who will drink/use WITH them?? Well then, even better!! As you said, you don't do any of that stuff. She does. He's not looking for someone who will be 'good for him,' or at least not in the way you're thinking. In his mind, anyone who will let him drink/use whenever and however he wants, is 'good for him.'

I also understand what you and newlook3 have said about asking them if they wanted to end the relationship and they always said no. I wasn't with my A anywhere near as long as either of you were, but I also asked him several times, including the last two times I saw him, if he wanted to keep seeing me. I asked him right to his face, looked right in his eyes. He could have just been a man, grown some b*lls and said 'no, I'm sorry but this isn't working for me anymore.' After all, I was giving him an easy out right then and there. It would have hurt me deeply, yes, but I would have at least respected his decision and his honesty. Not to mention, it would have hurt a hell of a lot less if he had done it after only 4 months (the first time the subject came up) than after almost a year and a half! But he NEVER did. He ALWAYS backed down and said he loved me and wanted to keep seeing me. Know why? Because he didn't have things set in place yet with the woman he ended up dumping me for - one of his exes who works at the dive bar where he drinks and uses coke several times a week. So you see, he still NEEDED me as a fail-safe, a back-up plan to satisfy his selfish needs until he knew for certain things were a 'go' with her (which means he was working on winning her back for I don't even know how long. Months? The entire 16 months he was seeing me? Who knows...?!) But my point is, as soon as he had someone else to go to, an enabler who either also uses coke or doesn't care that he does, he dumped me with a cold, cruel text message, as if we hadn't known each other for almost 30 years. Sadly for us, that's just WHAT THEY DO.

Sending big hugs to both of you.

Boon44

Thanks...she said she doesn't normally drink & drive & that it was
just an accident that she stayed there because she had a small one. He then
piped up with "I sold her on it" like I've heard him say & do to
me so many times before. The weed thing he can't deny because he told me
that she does it from time to time (before we broke up). He told me that he had smoked
weed again lately, Vegas & sking, and that he wanted to start doing it
again and he knew I would never be okay with that. I actually thought about being ok
with it at one point...but I never really would've been. It would've just
been another compromise on my part. So she sounds like an enabler right? Maybe as
I stopped being one he found her more & more attractive. She was sitting at the
table telling me he had a disease, not my fault, etc. So I said if you think he has a
disease why are you here drinking with him then! She just looked at me & said
I understand, I understand. What the heck does she understand?