Please I Need A Pep Talk
 

Ugh I think my mind is playing tricks on me. It's been 3 weeks since I left my very high functioning alcoholic boyfriend. He didn't argue and just let me walk aside from a letter I got in the mail last week that said "I love you and miss you, sorry I wasn't enough for you and can't meet your needs but I am who I am." I never acknowledged it.
He is a local politician and today while reading the paper, he was quoted on a recent city revitalization project. I started hysterically crying, like to the point I had to leave work and sit in my car for awhile.
Now I am doubting everything. His quote was so intelligent, so thoughtful, so normal. And seeing his name just broke me. And now I'm so sad and thinking I overreacted. So what if he drank every night after work. He wasn't abusive, he wasn't angry, he was perfectly functional. We were so in love and had so much fun together. Yes he had communication issues and shut me out sometimes, but it was only sometimes, every relationship has issues.
I'm falling apart guys. I'm dying to call him, to hug him, anything. I've been having very vivid dreams where I wake up calling out his name and am hysterical after and can't get to bed.

I've been reading these forums and started therapy yesterday and reading al anon online. And I know it's only been 3 weeks. This is so, so hard and I need to get it together before I pick up my kids.

Thanks for listening.

Welcome to SR, Gemlitigate. I'm sorry you are feeling so badly. It is very normal to second guess ourselves after leaving, especially if our addict appears to be doing fine. However...there was something not right in the relationship or you wouldn't have left. Some need or needs you have weren't being met. If you went back, it would just be more of "I am who I am," and you will eventually feel the same way as before.

Hang in there and read around the forums here. Post often...it will help.

That says it all. He's an active alcoholic who has no intention of stopping drinking, even if it means loosing you. So I hope you can keep the focus on the reality of what is instead of running back to an untenable situation. Moreover, alcoholism is progressive and his drinking will escalate while his life deteriorates.

I know the pain of leaving and my heart goes out to you. I went to Alanon, which was tremendous support when I needed it the most. I learned I am powerless over the alcoholic and his disease, can only heal myself and work to get the kind of person who is capable of having a relationship. I suggest reading the posts on the website and one particularly helpful book, "Codependent No More".

A big hug, you aren't alone!

Dear Gem
I remember your situation well from your last posts.
We have been separated 1-1/2 years, and I still have some very difficult days. Today seems to be one of those. I can't figure how the guy could just chuck 14 years together.
Your comment about minimizing his drinking never works very long for anybody. The relationships regularly featured on this forum that all went south have the drinking as their chief commonality, and they all end up pretty much the same. The question usually is: leave now or leave later?

Cut yourself some slack. It has been no time at all. Like I told you before, let your intellect (head) make your decisions for you.

Keep coming back!!!

NYC put it best....that is 100% accurate and is exactly, word for word, what my husband told me hundreds of times-"I can't meet your needs, I'm not enough for you, I am who I am and I can't change that". Gem-I fought this battle, him, for years-but guess what?!? He was telling the truth-an active alcoholic could not meet my needs, or my kids needs, or....the list goes on and on. Total cop out and victim mentality. The drinking continued no matter what...marriage, wife, kids-don't matter. Drinking regardless of losses mounting up. Yours will do the same as it is progressive.

Thank you so much for the quick replies. I've calmed down some at least enough to get the kids and start the nightly routine. I wish I can separate the fantasy from the reality or my head from my heart. Thank you again, I will hop back on here after dinner.

It's really hard. My ex was high functioning too....except with me when I needed it. It's been six months and I'm still struggling. This week I've been incredibly angry and I'm not sure why I can't seem to move past it. I think most of it is the fantasy of what he was at times and what he could have been. I don't get how someone just doesn't change. There is no logic in alcoholism.
Something that helps me is making a list of my values and needs. I then compare that list to the list of things he did to me (or didnt do). I then realize he's not right for me.

Anyway, I left him 2 weeks ago. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. Over the course of the relationship I started to lose my self confidence. I got insecure, almost needy, full of anxiety. I was walking on eggshells often, wondering when the next "stress event" was going to cause his shut down.

^^^^^^^^^^^
These were your words when you first posted here.

I know what it feels like to be "shut out", "shut down", it's like you don't even feel like you exist to him. I was hearing the emptiness in you when you posted that first thread here. I had that emptiness also. I had lowered my boundaries to "just treat me like a human being". He couldn't even do that.

Please don't pick up that phone, and don't communicate with him. Sometimes I think we need to play the tape to the end before we do that. What would that accomplish? Wouldn't he still disregard your feelings? I think you've already been in that "playground" with him. If you weren't you wouldn't have said what you already did.

I know this is tough for you, it was tough for me also. Thing is though, nothing ever got better, his treatment of me just got worse, because I allowed him to know that he could "walk all over me" and I would still be there.

I hope this doesn't come across as too harsh, I don't mean to be. I know I didn't want to hear that I was allowing him to "walk all over me", but I was.

((((((((((((((hugs))))))))))))))))
amy

Sure - except that doesn't last forever, and you are forgetting the bad things right now.

Hun, make a list. Write down the things that were intolerable and unacceptable. I KNOW there are many "incidents' that weren't right. I go through the same things...we start romanticizing the good and forgetting the bad.

My experience with my 'high functioning' alcoholic left me:

feeling like i didn't have a partner sporadically
feeling like conversations were sometimes pointless because he didn't remember
feeling like I was in crazy town because of an odd overreaction by him here and there
feeling like i couldn't trust him because if he couldn't remember some conversations, what else did he do that he couldn't remember?
feeling like I was talking to / dealing with a child when he was drunk
feeling LONELY - a lot of the time
sleeping in an alcohol smelling bedroom
getting kicked and punched while he would drunkenly dream away
feeling scared to get in the car with him because I didn't know how drunk he was
feeling like I was the 3rd wheel to him and his bottle
feeling like I was just his designated driver. every day.
feeling empty, and in a non-reciprocal relationship

And then things got worse....4 years later, the drunken incidents were more and more often....

His sad drunks became angry drunks. Randomly. That's fun...
He would have drunken recollection of something crappy I did 3 years ago, and want to angrily lecture me about it NOW?!
He would skip out on my family, cancel at the last second, and bag out on holidays and events to drink.
Things I loved to do with him became things I would dread.
I never knew what I was coming home to, and stopped wanting to come home.
Our arguments became more and more aggressive and derogatory.
He became insulting.
He let his hygiene go.
He started throwing things, slamming things, and breaking things when angry drunk.
I became mean, angry and criticizing to him much of the time.
I didn't like him even towards the end.

If I had stayed, it would have progressed well beyond that.

But here we are - FREE to find something more fitting for who you and I are TODAY.

Make your list - keep it on you - read it when you feel this way. It will snap you back to reality. A relationship with an alcoholic is not bliss. Far from it.

(((HUGS)))

Firebolt....I'm printing your lists....if I was a better writer I would have written exactly those. That's exactly how my marriage was-and I did turn into a mean, nasty, critical mess of a wife. Happy to be free of alcoholism but also the person I had turned into. Thanks, FB, for your words.

Forourgirls - I hear ya. Now, I am more shocked, disappointed and appalled at who I let MYSELF become, than who he actually is.

Man, my side of the street got MESS-SY while I was over trying to make his look clean!!!

Allow me to remind you of what you posted previously:

This is why you left him. If he is content with his lifestyle, why would you expect anything to be different if you got back together?

Hang in there
 

Gemlitigate - Reading your post takes me back to how I was when I first left my xAH. If I knew then what I know now i would have left much much earlier and stayed away.

All those feelings and sadness will slowly decrease provided you stay away from him. It is so true what other members have posted here.

I left my XAH 4 years ago and the only thing that worked for me was Al-anon. Going back for a while didn't help, trying to stay friends with him didn't help , trying to start a new relationship didn't help but alanon did and does help. Your reaction is normal and it shows how you have come to believe you need him to live and therin lies the danger.

We do not need them to live . Staying with them makes us more dependent on a sick person and we in turn become sicker. Give yourself a chance to heal and that will bring you to a much better place - believe me. My ex divorced me - mostly out of spite and I thought I would die. Now I am sooooo glad he did that. He has no power over me and I don't have to live with that constant fear of watching a relationship slipping away. Yes I still have dreams and nightmares about him but the nightmare stops when I wake up as opposed to continuing during waking time which is what happens as alcoholism progresses. Plus I spent 27 years of my life with him which I wont ever get back. But the important thing is you're here in a great place with people who understand and it does get better.((Hugs))

I guess I want to ask just one thing. What has he been doing to get you back into his life again?

Wow everyone this truly is such a great place. Thank you so much for reading and posting. I am so truly sorry for the pain that brought everyone here but it's been amazing to read about so much strength, so much healing and the willingness to share it.
I have calmed down some. Took the kids and the dog on a bike ride and made dinner.
Thought about how I don't need to worry about hiding beer cans when the kids go to bed, don't need to be on pins and needles waiting for the text that he drove home safely after consuming 12 such beers and asking for a disposable cup for the way home beer, don't need to rehash any conversations from the evening to see if I might have said anything to upset him. That used to be my normal.

Just know that most likely someone will always be here checking on you tonight. We do really care about you.

It's hard especially when we are emotionally involved.

G- I love posting this.....
You are walking away from unhappiness and into stability that you are creating for yourself. Don't romanticize his life, he was a mess then and he will be a mess in the future. Difference is, you won't!

Hugs my friend. Stay with no contact and you can do this!!

Amy55, absolutely nothing. He didn't argue or protest when I broke up with him. All I got is the one "I am who I am sorry I can't meet your needs" letter. Maybe that's the other thing that's really paining me - after 2 years of telling me I'm your soulmate, love of your life, best thing that ever happened, blah blah blah, he could obviously care not at all that I'm no longer in his life. He's not feeling any pain or loss, it's like he moved on like any other day.

I have to say that I really understand how much this can hurt. After about 23 yrs of marriage at that time, my ex sang to me, "I gotta be me, I gotta be me". It just broke my heart.

Now I know you can look at this and have a real pity party for yourself tonight, I know I did then. Just know he most likely knew that you saw thru all of his BS, and he can't deal with facing you anymore.

I do hope you know how terrific you are. I can see it each time that you post. I see so much good in you and so much life in you. I just want you to have the best life.

((((((((((hugs))))))))))
amy