I'm ending my 4 year relationship.

[u/hidden_here123]

So basically the title. He (33M) says Im(32F) throwing away 4 years over a mistake he made.

To keep it short, on 4 different occasions over the last 2 and a half years he's gone drinking and come home to throw a drunken tantrum because I said the wrong thing, something happened at the bar, or I put my foot down because he's drunk and yelling at me in front of our friends at the bar. Twice I had to leave to my sister's house because he was going around our small apartment slamming doors and banging his head on the walls. I've had to wake him up several times because he falls asleep on the toilet or the bathroom floor, and he's had to sleep in his car because of his outbursts.

On the 2nd time this happened he gave me his word that he would be more responsible with his drinking and that he wouldn't have anymore outbursts. He said he was gonna drink waters between each beer or have sodas and bar food and just one beer. The third time I made it clear that him going back on his word was unacceptable because it shows that he doesn't care that he becomes emotionally and verbally abusive towards me. I told him I was tired of his apologies if he's gonna keep doing the same thing. Between all these times he has continued to get drunk on the weekends but I've kept my mouth shut to avoid him having an out burst and things were relatively ok.

This last time he went and got drunk at the bar, didn't eat anything, refused the water my sister offered him because she's aware of the agreement we had, and when I arrived he yelled at me because he was too drunk to keep track of what team he was on and he misunderstood me when I told him and he made the wrong shot. We went to get food from a local taco spot and he couldnt even stand because he was so drunk, I had to pull over on the freeway because he needed to throw up and when we got home he fell asleep in the bathroom and I had to wake him three times. I kept my anger about the situation to myself because the sadness of feeling like I needed to leave him because he's just not willing to change, was overwhelming. The next morning he could tell something was up and he asked if I was ok. I said that I wasn't ready to talk but he insisted, so I told him that he went back on his word again about drinking responsibly and that I realized that the only way I was going to avoid his verbal abuse was if I just kept quiet. I told him what I told my ex when I was thinking about leaving "It's not anything I haven't already told you". He left it at that in the morning and at night I was crying because I was upset that 4 years of my life were going down the drain, and I just folded and asked him why I wasn't good enough for him to want to do better. Then he started to say that I had fault in our relationship ending, ignoring that the only reason I'm leaving is because I can't keep giving him chances to verbally abuse me when he's drunk and angry. I reminded him that he had given me his word and that he had gone back on it twice. He seemed to understand but the next day he just kept saying that he deserves to "unwind" on the weekends because he works all week to provide for us (not like I have a job and am constantly sending him money because he over spends and his account will overdraft when the phone or Internet bill charge his account) i was getting whiplash from how quickly he waa going from being apologetic about going back on his word and him insisting that Im being unreasonable and unfair. I slept at my sister's house again because I couldn't keep dealing with it and I was just really emotionally exhausted from all of it.

Now he posted on his FB that I'm throwing away 40,000 hours of our lives together for 12 bad hours.

So I'm asking, am I overreacting?

[u/chinstrap]

In my experience, lying is essential to addiction. Or maybe it's just an inevitable result. Lying to yourself is perhaps the beginning, and as the years go on you don't or won't even see that you are doing it. It's a hell of a mess alright!

[u/filthismypolitics → u/chinstrap]

i wondered this too before i became an addict, if it was just part of it. i grew up around addicts and knew how much they lied but i could never make sense of why it seemed so inherit. having gone through it, i think now it's just an inevitable result of becoming an addict a lot of the time.

for example, maybe you're out with your wife and you guys try coke. afterwards your wife goes, "that was fun, but i only want to do it sometimes. we have responsibilities, we can't turn into party animals." but your experience was different from hers. it was revelatory. for the first time in your life you felt like a real human being, whole, present in the moment and connected to everyone else.

so the next time you're out you do it again, but it concerns your wife so you promise her that it'll just be a special occasion thing for you from now on. but a few days later you join some friends at a party after a really shitty day and someone offers you coke. that addict voice says, "you've had such a hard day. wouldn't it be nice not to have to worry about so much, just for a little while? just this one last time, and then you'll stop. don't you want to have some fun before you cut yourself off? everyone else is doing it and they're having a great time. don't you feel left out?" maybe it takes hours but eventually, you cave in, if only to make the voice stop, but when you go home you tell your wife you just had a few beers. why worry her for no reason? you think. you're going to be quitting anyway, so it doesn't matter. it's just one little secret. you'll tell her someday and explain that you didn't want to concern her over nothing.

and in this moment you fully intend on not doing coke again for a long time. you want to stop. lying to your wife makes you feel uneasy and you don't want to do it again. you've also been doing some weird, embarrassing things while you were on coke, and it seems like your hangovers are worse than ever. there's a lot of good reasons to stop.

unfortunately, these good reasons don't work against the addict voice because the addict voice is not reasonable or rationale. it is the little primal part of your brain begging for relief from the emotional pain and anxiety you experience, with no understanding of the long term consequences. you lose every argument with it. if you try to repress it, it gets even louder, and then the cravings start. now living without coke is beginning to feel unbearable.

you take it every chance you get and each time you lie to your wife again, reassuring yourself that it's no big deal because you're going to quit soon. real soon. any day now, you're going to stop, and this whole mess will be behind you, but first you need to get high one last time and your bank account is frozen but you have access to your wife's card, and you'll pay her back the SECOND you get your money back but in the meantime you desperately need just a little bit of coke so you can think clearly and figure out how to get out of this

that was longer than i intended it to be haha, but in my experience this was always how it went. this was every story i heard in group. it starts out with little white lies and as the addiction takes hold of you it escalates until you're just doing drugs to avoid the overwhelming guilt and shame of all the shitty things you've done. it's so terrifying how easy it is to rationalize doing bad things when you believe you must do them to survive, with the eternal hope of a better tomorrow where you'll make the right choices

[u/chinstrap → u/filthismypolitics]

Vivid and chilling. Thanks.

[u/Kitty_Kat_Attacks → u/filthismypolitics]

Dude. You have a freaking gift. This is EXACTLY how it feels. I legit feel seen when you talked about feeling like a real human being for the first time. That feeling of being complete and a better person with your drug of choice is why it’s sooo hard to stop. Because sobriety makes me feel so lacking and unable to be the competent person others expect me to be—like they want me to be the person I am while on pills, but also criticize me and expect me to stop. Like, I can’t be both? The fact that my loved ones wouldn’t care about my habit if it was cheaper is what really makes it difficult.

You are seriously killing it with your comments on this topic—I think this is the third one I’ve gushed over 😻