My relationship changed because I now know he wasnt capable of the things that someone with an undiseased brain was. His brain chemistry is altered. I stopped taking it personally. He's empty. There's no real soul anymore. He cannot empathize or rationalize with another person. His priority had been totally different all this time from a normal man with a family. He is not going to just change. And if he does, it will be because he hit rock bottom and didn't die and even then, his priority will have to be recovery. And this will take a long time as he still has resources. And a very small percentage of them do recover. Most have relapses.
Someone told me that addicts can demonstrate sentiment at times. But it's not real love.
I see this so much. He would get teary eyed and act emotional. But did nothing to demonstrate a man that actually empathized or cared.
While i recognize that i had flaws, i realized there was absolutely nothing I could have done different. He would have just used anything he could about me to cover up what he was doing. And that is helping me to change how horribly I looked at myself after he left.
I believed him because i thought, "why else would a father walk away from his family. I must be a horrible person and wife. He wouldn't even accept apologies or my willingness to work on our marriage"
I never understood how he could be so different from the walkaways here. There was no affair thrown in my face, no temperature taking, no jealousy, or strong attachment to son. He just wanted to be left alone. He wanted to pay me as little support as possible and that was it.
Knowing is important for me. My eyes are open. I need to keep my son protected. He sees his dad, and that's important for my son, but I need to somehow figure out how to recognize when ex is spiraling down more.
It's scary and I don't know what to do, except accept it when he can't see son. I'm not sure if I should push for court drug testing. I was initially told by lawyer that court wouldn't do that based on my evidence. But now I am realizing my lawyer is really, really bad. And not sure if I want to do that either. I think son is safe with him for now. But who knows.
Financially, I know his child support will eventually dwindle down as well. So I need to keep that in mind as well.
