FeelingGreat

SO, you've got some excellent feedback here. My own contribution is that 'accepting me for me' is quack for 'accepting me as a drinker'. She may have undergone a period of sobriety but she's drinking now, and reverting. For many As this is part of the process of recovery, but she might have to crash and burn before she stops drinking altogether.

Everything you've said and done shows you can't accept a relationship with an A, so you've made the right decision.

Thomas45

I just want to point out here that these two sentences immediately contradict one another. "Accepting that she is an alcoholic" means "this is the way that you are, and I accept that part of you." Needing someone to change is not acceptance of what they are. This is exactly the same mistake I made with my ex wife, so I think I know what kind of mindset you're coming from.

I'm going to be a little blunt, and it's not because of any fault of your own, but simply because what you're going through sounds very similar to the mindset I had with my ex wife and that mentality wasn't healthy for me. That said, it isn't possible for you to be happy with this girl and I'll list why. From an objective point of view, she quite plainly isn't in recovery.

1. She, an addict, isn't following the advice of a top-notch addiction specialist. If you go to your doctor and he tells you that you have cancer, you follow your doctor's advice because he knows more about medicine than you do. It's his professional job. If you don't heed his advice, it's because you get a second opinion from another doctor. The same goes for addiction. If your addiction therapist tells you that you need to stop drinking and attend meetings, then you follow his advice. Part of going to the meetings and following the steps of a program is confronting (and being confronted about) your past actions, feelings, and issues in a proper, structured and supervised way.

2. My ex also accused me of being hot/cold with her, and if your ex is anything like mine (which it sounds like they are quite similar), your ex fails to realize that the reason you were hot/cold with her is because her drunken actions at some point in time hurt you very badly and made it difficult for you to stay "lovey dovey" with her 100% of the time. Am I close? If there was ever an evening where she was being drunk and belligerent with you, did that make you want to treat her like a princess the next morning? Of course not. You aren't a loyal dog who will come back tail wagging after being emotionally beaten down, you're a grown man with feelings of your own. She isn't fully confronting the impact that her alcoholism has had on other people and is still assigning some of her blame onto others. A real apology isn't "I'm sorry for my actions but you have to be sorry for yours," it's "I'm sorry."

3. She doesn't want to stop drinking. Alcoholics can not self-moderate in the long term, being able to drink 'like a normal person' is every alcoholic's dream. If she was attending meetings or working a program she would understand that. She's only telling you that she drinks in moderation right now... does she always tell the truth 100% of the time? If you want to read about alcoholics trying to self moderate, go visit the "newcomers to recovery" forum. Every single thread from an alcoholic that starts with an attempt at self-moderation ends with complete failure. That is what makes them alcoholic, they do not have the capacity to drink like normal people and the vicious habit always returns with a vengeance.

4. She is already looking for a partner who will enable her drinking problem. of course he's never been hot/cold with her, it's a brand new relationship and she is on her best possible behavior because it's new and exciting, and it's just the honeymoon phase of being giddy. They haven't been together for 3 years, and he likely hasn't seen her at her worst yet.

This quote:
Let me rephrase it:
"I know I hurt you a whole bunch of times, but it's your fault that my actions made you emotionally withdraw from me. My expectation of you was that you would take all my abuse with a smile and a hug afterwards, and because you weren't able to do that, I blame you for my low self esteem."

That's what she's telling you, and that doesn't make much sense. She is right about one thing though, you can not accept her the way that she is (accepting her alcoholism rather than trying to change it), and for that reason alone, you are both better off without each other. Healthy relationships only happen when you start with two healthy people who do not have unrealistic expectations and do not wish to change the other partner, and what you have here isn't that. Let her go and find yourself a partner who is already emotionally healthy.

SomethingOther

Thank you for this. This is extraordinarily helpful.

I guess the thought was that I know an alcoholic is a lifelong alcoholic, even if they succeed with sobriety. I could accept her always having the disease, but not her casually letting it consume herself and those around her.

I find great inspiration in families that have conquered the lifestyle damage, even if the disease is lifelong.

I very much appreciate the perspective. It's massive muddy confusion for me right now, still being so close to it.


I could split hairs here, but I get and accept your point. Thank you.

You're spot on. This has been incredibly frustrating to me. She can't seem to possibly fathom why I went cold with her. And it's so blindingly obvious. I've spelled it out for her word by word, over and over again, and she's still unable to remotely grasp it. It's just some opaque mystery to her - why did he go cold? Why won't he take responsibility for the hurt that caused? This alone has made me see how futile it is to try to build any more consensus with her.

The impasse we've hit has been absolutely absurd. She's convinced there are all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with alcohol, and the more I think of it the more I realize that's just plain wrong. It really is that simple. I'm just tired of this.


She has no clue how long-lasting the effects were, or that my wariness lasted well beyond the next day, or us making up after the immediate fight.

This is so helpful to read you have no idea. I know she's not going to stop insisting on apology from me. I have yet to just hear those two simple words from her - and now the damage goes well beyond alcohol (the way she handled the situation with me and this other guy has been completely unacceptable). In her voice she's as much a victim of fate as anyone else.


This has become increasingly obvious. She laid out some pretty impressive sounding monologues about how much she hates alcohol now and how tired she is of it and how prolific her progress with her therapist is. But her desire to still drink is absolutely undeniable. Nothing more to say.


Oh, it's terrible. He checked himself into the hospital for a Xanax overdose over the summer. She kept him strictly as a friend for months - he couldn't handle mere "friendship" and tried to break away for his own sanity, but his break lasted half a day. He tried that multiple times and never stayed away for more than half a day. He has no life outside of her. He panics if he doesn't hear from her in a couple of hours. It goes on...

But I increasingly understand this is not my problem.


This is exactly what I need to hear. The main reason I posted this thread in the first place was that my self esteem was on the rocks - was she right? Was I really that bad, and that responsible for all the instability? Did I really bring down the confidence of someone I love? Am I problematic? Rationally, I'm sure none of this is the case. But she said these things with such conviction. Thank you for throwing real perspective onto her words.


This one is really hard to digest. Everything you say makes sense - I see nothing to argue with. But it's so hard to digest. We really did seem so uniquely compatible otherwise. But I get "otherwise" isn't enough.

Thank you again for all the relating. I'm sorry you've built up all this wisdom through your own comparable experience, and I hope you're in a much better place now.

Thomas45

That last bit of advice was also very difficult for me to take in, but it is also the one thing that would have helped me the most to hear if someone had told me sooner rather than later during my own separation. Believe me, I know how hard it is to take it in and it's something that really takes time to appreciate... simply letting go of a relationship that spanned several years which required an immense amount of effort and contribution to maintain seems almost unthinkable. The silver lining in that cloud though is that after you're able to let go and start healing, it will slowly but surely seem unthinkable that you even put that much effort into the relationship to try and make it work.

Those enduring, loving relationships you hear about that span a lifetime happen when you are your own source of love and happiness, and can share that infinite source of happiness with someone else who is already of a like mind - mentally and spiritually. If a person has a void of self-love inside of them and they try to fill it with love that can only come from someone else, the relationship will not last because that person will never feel truly whole.