May I asked what eventually happened with you and your daughter’s father? I totally understand if you don’t want to share. I have finally come to terms that his alcoholism is the biggest problem right now. It took me awhile to get here because he was a “high-functioning” alcoholic. But now I can see that no, an alcoholic is an alcoholic, and clearly many aspects of his life are not functioning!!! I was just looking at al-anon groups in my area....I have been reading on this topic and will probably reach out to a group soon. I think DBing already helped with a lot of what al-anon suggests- detaching is a big one. I have very little anger and resentment at this point.
So we met very young. I had her very young. I mistook a lot of his behavior in the beginning for typical party culture behavior. It was not. But we kept going forward in the relationship because I got pregnant only 6 months in. He got a big boy job. We got a house. We pretended to live like a happy little family of 3 that just started a lil rough, but he got progressively worse. He was also highly, highly functional. But he was a bad drunk. Lots of fights. Lots of him making accusations. Lots of long nights. Lots of bad nights. Lots of him resenting me and our daughter. Lots of me having to pick him up and dust him off after a bad night he had on his own. Over time the booze got harder and more voluminous until he started pills. That went on for a few years.
During that time I guess I was kinda DBing without knowing it. I went to school twice. Got my BA and some certifications. Lived my life. Removed myself from him as much as humanly possible. Fighting never really got better. Pretty much only got worse. We had both moved out and moved back in several times. We had a very very bad night. Things got physical. That night was apparently his bottom. Or I should really say his first bottom. There was another move out and in. He started to get clean. And I really thought if he got clean things would get better. But it just made his mental health issues more pronounced. He's bi-polar. He got clean but refused to participate in a 12 step or any kind of AODA counseling, not even cognitive behavioral therapy. He did each, once, and determined he hated them and they were a waste of his time and quit. I disliked him just as much clean as I did when he was using. But I was determined to keep trying.
He was clean for about a year then the gambling started. Money was disappearing faster than it was when he was on the pills. Then he reintroduced drinking. Smaller amounts but still. About a year after that we went to a wedding and I cried the entire time. I couldn't stop. I spent the whole night in the bathroom bawling. The idea of spending the rest of my life with him made me want to hurt myself. Not figuratively. But I never really loved him. Not the way a person should if they want to spend their lives together. Not the way I should've considering what I let him put me through. I never felt the way about him the way I feel about my H or even how I felt about my high school boyfriend. I got pregnant and decided ok, this is what it is, I'll make it work. I can make this work. And continued to shove that square peg firmly into a round hole for years. Eventually I figured out I couldn't make it work based on sheer force of will. I moved out for good a month after that wedding. He went into a depression. He eventually hit bottom again. Got clean again. About a year after I left met someone. Became a much better version of himself than I ever knew him as. And then in a manic phase cheated on her and left her and the city we live in to be with that OW. He's still drinking. He's still highly functional. He does very well for himself. But the mental health issues are getting so bad my daughter won't spend more than a few hours with him on the weekend.
I wasted more time on him than I care to think about. But I was, like now, trying to keep my child's family intact. But then I was needy and co-dependent for a lot of that relationship. I was honestly barely an adult for a lot of that relationship too. I pushed all my abandonment and anxious attachment issues on our relationship. He is a narcissist and when we met I was perfect for that ego of his. I stopped being that and things between us were permanently altered because I messed up his ideal dynamic. However by that point he was co-dependent, so he hung on. I was also broke and had no where to go for a lot of that relationship. So we circled the drain for years and year longer than we should have. It took a lot of therapy and time to deal with all the hurt I caused myself by trying to hang on and letting him hang on. Also what I thought was to get me in place to stop choosing broken people...as we can see I may not have gotten an A on that part of the therapy, lol .
