DCSunshine

Hi, I appreciate you reading. I don’t know where else to seek information.

Backstory: My fiancé and I split over three years ago due to alcoholism and violence in the home. We’re not kids; we’re both in our late 40s. I had to get a restraining order, it got that bad. We separated the assets, he immediately moved in with a woman that also drank a lot; I later learned that he had been seeing her all along. He got into more trouble with the law. He eventually got two driving while intoxicated charges at the highest tier of BAC. Our state has a 10-year look back and these were not his first charges (I didn’t know this). He got an expensive attorney and avoided jail or prison time. Unfortunately, he did not follow his probation orders and now he has a situation that will leave him incarcerated.

He is losing everything and it is killing me. This is incredibly difficult to watch. I do not want this person back in my life—yet he is still a person that I once loved and with whom I had a very good six years, prior to his relapse. I didn’t know he had a history of alcoholism and he never told me. He was dishonest with me about nearly 95% of his life and life history, but that’s beside the point. A year ago, I would have told you that I literally hated this person for everything they had done. But I am watching a free fall and it is turning me inside out. His health is poor, judging from his appearance and the difficulty he now has walking (he already had liver problems at the end of our relationship). He worked at a grocery store for a while, which is a far cry from his previous job when I met him. No one deserves this, not even the person who did some really terrible things to me when he was drunk.

He has been selling literally everything he owns on Craigslist. His for sale posts are drunken insanity. Not just household things either, he is divesting of his house, his car, and everything he owns. So many times I thought he had hit the proverbial “rock bottom” and I was always shocked that it was never enough for him.

I guess that I am hurting for him and I don’t know what to do with that or how to make sense of the feelings. He can never be near me again-he told me that he would kill me his last night in the house. He has no one. The alcoholic girlfriend has been gone for a while and his kids have nothing to do with him.

This is just incredibly sad and it’s still breaking my heart.

That is all. Thank you for listening.

venuscat

I am so sorry you had to Iive this and are now watching this guy sIowIy kiII himseIf. s
I think I might caII a counseIIor and get a bit of heIp here.....you are going through a Iot of grief.
And I can't see this situation going anywhere good.....he doesn't sound Iike he is going to make it.

Depending on where you are, if you think he is a danger to himseIf you can caII in the authorities to do a weIfare check.

Other than that, with Iove, you need to Iet go.
I know that is not easy, truIy I do. s ❤️

DCSunshine

Thank you ❤️ This is much more difficult than I ever imagined it would be. I appreciate you writing.

venuscat

There wiII be Iots of others aIong to give your their POV and advice.... s xx

I know from being an aIcohoIic, I did a Iot of damage.
But I chose to get weII and stop infIicting that kind of pain on the peopIe in my Iife.
This is a disease ~ but we have the power to turn things around and get weII, untiI we don't.
This guy chose to Iet this progress and now it sounds Iike he is in as bad troubIe as we can be in.
I am sad for him....but I don't want this to be your pain anymore.
He shouIdn't get to keep hurting you. s ❤️

Bekindalways

Hey DC, I so so get the agony of watching a wonderful person destroy their life. In ways it is worse than death. Watching my qualifier spin out of control caused me more pain than I thought was actually possible for a human to experience. I also could not be around him. I actually left the Northern Hemisphere to avoid having any contact with him

The layers of grief that we go through watching an addict do what they do really is amazing. The best thing I found on grief was a book, How to Survive the Loss of a Love. It is an old book and a quick read. You might give it a try and/or get some counseling for the pain. This is a special kind of agony.

Also, even though you haven't been in a relationship for some years, you might give alanon a try. It doesn't work for everyone but for some it is a life saver. They have online meetings.

Let us know how you are getting on.

ciowa

DC Sunshine,

Welcome and Im sorry it is under these circumstances. Unfortunately, I've known quite a few people who have drank themselves to death and I dont think there is much that anyone can do to stop this downward spiral unless they end up in prison or decide to stop it on their own.There is typically some guilt felt by different family members but the choice didnt lie with them but rather the person drinking. Grief, anger and sadness are also normal feelings for us to carry afterwards. Find some way to sit with them and eventually process them in the best way possible.

A friend of mine focused a lot on his daughter as her mother drank herself to death, living in a run down motel with her alcoholic boyfriend. He spoke honestly about what was happening and told her not to carry bitterness and resentment for the rest of her life due to her moms choices. The daughter is doing well 10 years later.

You are right that this is a sad, destructive waste of ones life and I hope you can find a path to peace and acceptance.

DCSunshine

I’ve downloaded the book; thank you for the suggestion.

The pain I went through three years ago, and even since, was very difficult. I didn’t think it could get worse and I was very wrong about that.

Appreciate your kind words.

DCSunshine

Thank you for your kind words. It does occur to me that he is going to drink himself to death and that’s hard to accept, even when I think of how his drinking impacted others and what he did when he was drinking. As you say, he is responsible for his choices—and I hold him accountable for the choices he made throughout our relationship and after. I know that where he is now is nothing but a result of the decisions and choices he has made over the past three+ years. Logically, I know that; I guess that I just never expected things to get to this point. I always thought he would get help and get his life back.

nikegoddess112

Al-anon, grabbing ahold of a sponsor and having her lead me through the steps of this friends and family recovery program, absolutely changed my perspectives. It's not easy. It is quite simple. I show up, do the work, my life changes for the better and I gain amazing new perspectives and skills.

I'm sorry for what you're dealing with. I'm glad you're here.

DiggingForFire

I don’t have any great advice, I just wanted to offer sympathy. I watched my ex-husband die of his alcoholism, over the last year of our marriage and then he 2 1/2 years he lived after the divorce. (He died 2 months ago at 43.) I had a fair bit of direct contact with him because we shared a child, though she lived with me. I struggled a lot with the urge to imagine myself and his situation, and how miserable I would have been. I had to fight really hard not to focus more on him than I did on myself.

I guess what I would say to you is, you did what you had to do to literally save your life. You couldn’t do anything to protect him from himself when you were together, and you certainly cannot now. If you dwell over much on his misery and his downfall, you are basically sacrificing your hard won peace for absolutely nothing, it won’t help him and it certainly won’t help you. It’s OK to recognize the grief and the waste of a life. But hopefully you can acknowledge those feelings and then send them on their way, rather than letting them steal away your own life.

There’s nothing you can do. There never was. The only choice you have now is how much collateral damage you will allow him to do from a distance. I hope you do consider seeing a counselor who can help you figure out how to make peace and let him go. It sounds like you don’t share any children and he is many years out of your daily life. There’s no reason for you to even follow his life if I am understanding your situation correctly. I hope you can get some distance and detach from the situation in your own mind.

Best of luck.

Amaranth

Hello dcsunshine. It's horrible to watch a loved one self destruct through their own choices. You also have a choice - don't watch.
I wish I could have stepped back sooner from the drama and gone no contact. I finally managed to do that and it is such a relief. I don't need to know what my ex is doing. The less I know about him, the less I want to know. There was a time I thought I needed to know, in a kind of compulsive way.....
Don't worry too much about the prison thing. The only times my ex ever got clean was when he went to prison. It does him the world of good.
Please try to put yourself first. Your own health and your own sanity. Every minute spent worrying about him must be offset with at least two minutes of self care.

edoering

I am so, so sorry. I am married to an addict who was clean/sober/in recovery for our entire marriage (until this last year, and I’m currently watching him spiral, though still hopeful he may pull himself back using NA and therapy and his coping skills from his time in rehab before he met me), and then my brother also struggled with addiction and had to go to an inpatient facility a few years back.

My mother once told me that when it was the worst for my brother, she had to basically mourn his death while he was still living. It’s not that she was cutting him out of her life, or that she was trying to make him feel bad—it was that she had to find a way to let him go with love like everyone talks about. Because nothing she could do could protect him from himself. And his choices definitely put death as a possibility. Thank every lucky star and whatever powers that be, he didn’t die, and he did make the necessary changes to save himself, and so far he takes recovery very seriously. It can happen. But you don’t have to feel your ex’s pain for him in the meantime. And if grieving him and his path help you heal, I don’t think you’d be alone in that.

I’m seeing a counselor, just joined this forum, and am planning to join Nar- Anon meetings virtually as soon as possible. I keep telling myself it’s like airplane oxygen mask logic—you have to put your mask on first before you can help anyone else. No matter what happens, you deserve to be healthy and safe. Whatever that looks like for you.

PeacefulWater12

I sadly saw my husband drink himself to death. Is so very sad. An awful disease for the person and those who care about them.

I saw Al-anon mentioned in a post, I also found working the Al-anon program an enormous help and perspective changer. You might want to consider becoming involved with that.

DCSunshine

Thank you for your kind words. I’ve been sitting on your reply and thinking about it. First, I appreciate that you wrote when you have so much on your own plate. You made me reflect on the last years of my relationship and I really thought about the ex’s spiral and everything that happened along with it. It was senseless; there was nothing the least bit rational or predictable. But then again, he is an addict and so there was nothing rational or logical going on with his thinking.

The empathy that I have for him, right now, caught me off guard—I don’t know where it came from. Truly, a year ago, I would have told you that I hated him for what he had done and if I never saw him again, it would be too soon. I avoided parts of the city, stores, people, places we went; I did everything in my power to avoid him because the mere thought of him breathing the same air as me caused me grief. Today, with the free fall still going on, I’m not sure if I pity him or what exactly these feelings are. So then I thought about mourning his death while he was still alive. There was a lot of trauma and I’ve never had a relationship end like this. I didn’t understand where the person I met all those years ago, and that I loved for so long, went. He’s gone and he’s never coming back; I have to mourn the death of the person that I knew.

Yesterday, he posted some of his most prized possessions on Craigslist, things that I cannot imagine he would ever part with as he was so proud and enamored of them. He posted family heirlooms. He posted items that are incredibly valuable for next to nothing because he has to get rid of everything he owns for whatever reason. No one deserves that, not even him (and it’s saying a lot for me to make that statement). There are only one or two places I can imagine that he is going where he cannot take anything with him and he doesn’t even think there is anyone to store things for him while he’s gone, or he does not believe he is going to survive whatever is coming. It’s incredibly sad either way.

I never mourned the end of the relationship because I was surviving it in the moment and not understanding how it had become so violent. There was no time for grief or to reflect on the person that I thought he was for many years. I used to say that he was dead to me, and now, I have to actually mourn that he really is.

Bowielover7

I hate you’re going through this and my heart extends to yours. Like everyone says, it is the hardest and saddest thing to watch.

You’ll grieve. You’ll get mad. You’ll cry. You experience a myriad of emotions, but you’ll get through it.

Know it isn’t you: it’s a sickness and although it oftentimes feels personal, it’s not.

xoxo

LifeRecovery

Dear DC-

I had to say the following to myself for a long time No Contact = No New Hurts.

I had to learn that I was not letting my loved one with addiction lead his own adult life. He was making his choices and I was struggling to realize that those were his alone.

It was my choice to watch though. It was my choice to engage. That was the end of my tug of war line that I had control over. Pulling against the disease of addiction made my discomfort more painful. When I finally dropped the rope I modified the only thing I had control over.....me.

Good for you for recognizing it. This is when the real change happened for me.

Sueby

I'm sorry you're going through this, I can tell how hard it is on you. No contact is such a simple concept, but a lot more difficult to execute and sustain when you can check on people without leaving your home. Keep busy and try not to look at what he's doing if you can help it (I know how hard that is to do though!!).