Progress and backslide

Old 04-26-2017, 11:10 AM
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Progress and backslide

Some good news before I start whining and crying!
My sister gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. She is not in this country right now but she will be visiting in two months with my nephew. I was so happy for her and so excited for our family. Even with my depression, I could feel overwhelmed and happy that we have a beautiful new addition to our family now. This was yesterday morning. And then a sudden wave of sadness hit me. The fact that my XABF and I were together when my sister was in college, when she found her love, when she got married, when she became pregnant the first time and then this time. But not now. Not when she had her baby. I think that's what it was that triggered the sadness. And then I broke down at work today. After almost two weeks.
I thought I was making progress with my meds, by reading posts/books but then today, I checked his Facebook profile from another account and saw that he has changed his picture and cover photo. I know I shouldn't have but this just reminded me that EVERYONE is replaceable. I even think maybe he cheated on me or something and that's why he broke up. I am not sure about anything anymore. They don't tell you when they'll leave. They don't tell you why. They just leave. And the pieces of your heart are scattered in all the places that you've been together. Nothing matters. They tell you one day they will die in your arms, next day they are fighting over which furniture they paid for. It's f u c k ing crazy, this love. Did he love me? Was I ever loved? Could this all be a nightmare? I don't know. Only he knows.
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Old 04-26-2017, 12:46 PM
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They don't tell you when they'll leave. They don't tell you why. They just leave. And the pieces of your heart are scattered in all the places that you've been together.
As it’s been pointed out to you, he didn’t break up with you, you kicked him out and he stopped the cycle of come here go away typical toxic relationship with an alcoholic.

You are not the VICTIM you are the survivor wanting to play the role of victim. I hope you are continuing with therapy and taking your meds. Good days/bad days keep trying to tip the scale in the direction of good days.....

Congratulations on becoming an Aunt again!!!!
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Old 04-26-2017, 01:00 PM
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Originally Posted by Ituvia View Post
We met at work and started seeing each other 5 years ago and his issues with alcohol slowly started coming to light. The first time he took me to meet his friends, he passed out from too much drinking and his friend tried to grope me and my bf had no idea. Then he'd drink and go to sleep every alternate day. Things started unraveling when he moved in and I started noticing that some days he'd take sick leave and get drunk. I started fighting over his drinking and he'd make promises he can't keep. After two years we got two dogs and I thought he'd be responsible but on most days when he is relatively sober in the mornings, I'd have to wake him up to take the dogs out. In the evenings when he is not drinking, he'd go to sleep early after food. I started becoming more and more lonely. He'd not know who's in the house or what anyone's doing. The dogs would bark and he wouldn't wake up. I was so helpless and I'd fight with him all the time. Not talking, kicking him out and taking him back. Things started getting out of control when he'd drink a whole bottle and not know if I came back from work. I'd wake him up and fight and a few times, I did hit him. I am not justifying what I did. I am so ashamed but I was furious that he was wasting his life. I informed his folks who kept saying it's his life and they can't help. I even offered to take him to rehab and pay for it and support the house until he is clean and he agreed but never actively wanted to go. He'd pester me to drink along with him even if I don't want to and If i say no, he'd not talk for hours.
Read this a few times and ask yourself what you miss about this. I have a tendency to miss my qualifier when he vanishes on his benders, but I know it is just emotions playing tricks on me and that I only miss the good moments and seem to have amnesia for everything else. And as atalose says, he finally broke the cycle and I would consider it a true blessing. You are going to hurt for a while like any break up does regardless of whether it's with an alcoholic or not. We grieve, we feel pain, we don't like how life feels without the person we were use to no matter how awful they were or were not. It's an adjustment, but you will get through it all and you will eventually stop feeling this level of pain. It will lessen, and you will move on with your life free from the nightmare of addiction with a loved one.

Also, please know that one day he too will move on with another and you just may click on that Facebook profile photo and see a pic of him and another woman. It may devastate you depending on where you are in your own grieving and healing, or you may be past it and hurt for a little bit and then feel it lift because someone wonderful has walked into your life whom you would never have known if you stayed with this toxicity.

Grieve, be patient with yourself, be kind to yourself, and slowly the pain will lessen.

Congrats on being an aunt! It's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me!
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Old 04-26-2017, 01:35 PM
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You already know you should stay off FB, so I won't belabor the point. This is what happens when you give in to those kinds of urges.

Time to refocus--on YOU. And congrats on the new nephew!
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Old 04-26-2017, 08:08 PM
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Hey Ituvia, I second that loving an addict is a totally crazy kind of love. Actually it probably doesn't have much to do with real love.

Cry hard, scream, yell, feel that God awful pain and then get up, breath and do the next teeny tiny right thing in your life.

It does get better lady. It just takes time . . . . . lots of time.
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Old 04-26-2017, 09:25 PM
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^^^^^^^Yes!^^^^^^^^
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Old 04-26-2017, 10:39 PM
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Atalose, yes, I kicked him out and asked him back. He came back home, stayed with me for three days. In those three days, he said he'd stop drinking and that we should get married and move to Canada(which was the plan all along). Fourth day, he left. Without telling me. I didn't kick him out
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Old 04-27-2017, 02:02 AM
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Originally Posted by Ituvia View Post
Atalose, yes, I kicked him out and asked him back. He came back home, stayed with me for three days. In those three days, he said he'd stop drinking and that we should get married and move to Canada(which was the plan all along). Fourth day, he left. Without telling me. I didn't kick him out
But you did kick him out in the first place. I think he did you a favour leaving of his own accord. You had a very lucky escape. Marriage to him would have been a disaster. I've just read your back story and do you really want that kind of life? I wasted 20 years with my exah and nothing he has ever done has made sense, added up or been rational. It was all about protecting his drinking and that was his first love, same as your exbf.

You ask :-

Did he love me? Was I ever loved?

Probably did or probably didn't. Maybe or maybe not. It really doesn't matter anymore cos your relationship is over and the only answers you will find are within yourself. Focusing on yourself will help you heal. Learning to love yourself will help you not to choose a man like him again....that drove you to violence and made you feel like rubbbish.

Facebook is a nightmare. Blocking him would be a start. Looking at what he is doing is not helping you move on. If he's got new girlfriend look on it he is someone elses problem now.
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Old 04-28-2017, 06:38 AM
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Ladybird, I have blocked him on my Facebook, I looked at his profile through another account I had from long back which I never used. I know I shouldn't look either way cos it's just bringing more pain seeing him move on faster. I have constant reminder with the dogs we rescued and raised together. He has not bothered to ask how they are. My therapist says I am exhibiting symptoms of Stockholm syndrome, I don't know. I kept defending him when my therapist was asking me questions. I know that he is bad news and him leaving is good for me. I feel like I don't know what was real in our relationship and the fact that I didn't mean anything to him now. It will pass with time, I hope.
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Old 04-28-2017, 07:17 AM
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Ituvia....if you read through the thousands of real life stories, here, on the forum.....you will see your same question, asked, over...and over...and over. the question about what was "real" in the relationship....
This seems to baffle almost everyone who is grieving the lost or destroyed relationship....
I don't think it is an easy question to answer.....I will say, though, that your FEELINGS were real.....It is that he was looking though his filter of alcoholism....and you were looking through your own filter....especially, (in your case), the filter of need for everlasting security....
It troubles you deeply, that he doesn't ask about the dogs. You, obviously. see this as a symbol. You think of the dogs as your "children" that you were raising , together...and, he seem to see them as pets that he no longer lives with....(two different filters)....

You can never know what is another person' mind, completely. You can only estimate, based on their presenting behaviors (and, through your filter)....
And, I think you have to accept that you may never know......
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Old 05-01-2017, 06:50 AM
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Dandylion, I understand that. It's just that sometimes I wonder how he could do this with the dogs. He loved them and would constantly keep saying that they are the reason he is able to stay sane(whatever that meant). He has not asked ONCE about them. It hurts me so deeply. I miss him a lot even after all that's happened. If I don't see him on office IM, I imagine all kinds of things. Why can't I really understand that he doesn't give a crap about me or the dogs? How is it easy for him to maintain no contact even if he is drinking? He called when few times before April and been a month of radio silence. My birthday is this Sunday and my mind wanders to the things we did last year when I turned 30 I am all alone and everything hurts.
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Old 05-01-2017, 06:54 AM
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on 2/23/17 you said:

He sent a text letting me know that he'd still support the dogs which I refused.
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Old 05-01-2017, 07:02 AM
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Yes, he said he'd give money but I didn't want money. This was 2 months back, Anvil would it kill him to ask someone about the dogs?
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Old 05-01-2017, 07:07 AM
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He's MOVED ON. Which is what you need to be working on (and I know you have been). Whatever his feelings for you, or the dogs, once were, clearly they are no longer occupy his mind or his life.

As much as we love dogs, they are not human beings. They are not like children, wondering why they were "abandoned" by daddy. If you are feeding them and loving them and caring for them, they aren't missing him. They are happy and healthy.
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Old 05-01-2017, 07:17 AM
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So it’s the office IM that keeps you attached to him, keeps you in a constant state of worry and frenzy with all kinds of made up lies in your head about how bad off he is….hummm maybe it’s time to think about a new job.

We actually do have to take steps in order to achieve our own recovery and some of those steps may seem drastic but are very necessary.

I hope you do not have any expectations of him recognizing your Bday because I think you will be very disappointed.
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Old 05-01-2017, 07:30 AM
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would it kill him to ask someone about the dogs?

no, but again, he is taking you at your word. you said move out, he did. you said no thanks to support for the dogs, he said ok. he is leaving you alone. do you have any idea what ONE contact from him would do to you?? considering your current fragile state, it would just throw you into a serious tailspin.

he's doing you a favor. it's over. relationships END all the time. yes breakups are painful. but they are a part of the whole package called life. OUR ability to let go is what we should focus on. to fully accept life on life's terms and that we don't get to KEEP everything and everyone that comes thru our lives.

now is the time to invest in good self care. to start filling yourself with good stuff, NEW stuff. at 30 you have so much life yet to live, explore, investigate. make 30 your turning point. be fierce.
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Old 05-01-2017, 07:52 AM
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I did have some expectation that he'd call for my birthday. I guess I shouldn't.
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Old 05-01-2017, 08:20 AM
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Hi Ituvia

I am facing the fact that what seemed to mean so much to our loving/devoted alcoholics very soon becomes history as they move on through the maze of addiction.

I am in Vietnam and my AH has gone back to Turkey where our home and pets are. I found myself amazed that he has not once gone to visit them ask the people looking after them if they are ok ...he professed to love those animals and indeed he took great care of them at one time...now they are as nothing to him.
Mind you the children he raised from age 4 & 9 now aged 16 & 21 have not heard a word from him either. We have all been consigned to history. An email he sent to for a job here said he was single and he told his new friends he had no wife and no children...but then he claimed he had resigned from 2 jobs when in fact he was fired for drinking. They create new world's and live in them. What a sad, lonely existence.
Of course on the surface they look good - drinks, parties, women, playing the big men or the poor victim of a horrible ex (us). I wasted ten good years putting up with all kinds of carp from this man - but at least I won't be wasting the next ten....and neither will you.
Big hugs to you and your dogs
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Old 05-01-2017, 08:30 AM
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It seems like we are telling ourselves that they are leading a sad life but it seems to me that they are perfectly fine. Everyone around them are fine with the As too. It's just the spouses that suffer?

[\QUOTE]Of course on the surface they look good - drinks, parties, women, playing the big men or the poor victim of a horrible ex (us). I wasted ten good years putting up with all kinds of carp from this man - but at least I won't be wasting the next ten....and neither will you.
Big hugs to you and your dogs[/QUOTE]
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Old 05-01-2017, 08:35 AM
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I hope you can let go of any expectations from him - you can do it!! He couldn't live up to them when you were together....even the reasonable ones!

Happy birthday to you - I hope you had a great one!!
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