I wrote this when I first started my blog. I fully intended to post it at the time, but when it came to it, I bottled it. Its such a personal post and I decided against posting it. I was talking to another blogger today on Twitter and she inspired me to bite me lip, close my eyes and just hit publish. So here goes…
When I was 20ish, I met this guy.
He was funny and always the life and soul of the party. He was different from my usual type – the brooding bad boy type – and I figured he would probably be a better long term prospect than that type. Long story short, we got together, and eventually got engaged and I really thought at that time he was a keeper.
I was so wrong. As we spent more time together, I realised he was the life and soul of the party because he was always drunk. I was young and stupid and figured this was no big deal – life’s about having fun right? We all drank too much then – we were at that age were we went out a lot.
As we grew up, the rest of us (myself and our friends group) grew up. He just got older. We all settled down a bit. We still had nights out obviously, but he still drank everyday.
By this point it was obvious to me that drinking had gotten a hold on him. But I was in by then, I’d made a commitment, and I felt I shouldn’t just walk away from it.
I thought he’d change, it would just take time. I was still naïve enough at that point to think there could be a happy ending. We’d beat this thing together and live happily ever after. My mistake was in assuming he wanted to change. He didn’t, but of course I couldn’t accept that.
It was painful to say the least to watch him on this spiral of self destruction.
Everywhere we went he was drunk – he showed me up in public so many times, and my life became a constant circle of cleaning up his mess, apologising to people for his behaviour, and of course making excuses for him.
I could see the pity they felt for me, and I think that was the worst part. I became that girl people felt sorry for. The girl they talked about on nights out. The girl no one wanted to be. Yet still I didn’t leave.
We fought a lot. I left and came back. I became someone I didn’t want to be – nagging all the time, crying too much, avoiding social occasions – and I couldn’t see a way out. I gave him ultimatums, he ignored them and then I’d get the apology and how it would be different, and of course I gave in.
By then the love was gone.
Some days I actually hated him. We spent less time together because I couldn’t stand to be around him.
By now you’re probably wondering why I stayed. I would be if I was reading this. At that point, I didn’t have an answer to that – I couldn’t even explain it myself yet.
For certainly the last year of the relationship, maybe more, he was an alcoholic. I hate to say that even now, but it’s the truth. He was.
Things eventually came to a head when we went on holiday with some friends. I realised how far out of control he had become and I left again, this time for good.
I became me again. This nagging, down trodden woman was gone.
I look back over that time and realise I never want to be that person again. Ever. She was weak and wet and if I met her I would want to shake some sense into her.
About a year after that, a friend of mine went through something similar. She left and felt really bad about it. We were messaging about it one day. At the time, I thought nothing of it, except from her point of view.
A while ago, I was looking back over some old messages, trying to find a date (like a date something had happened – I wasn’t trying to stalk friends into a date night!) and that thread was still there. I was curious about it as I don’t really see her anymore, so I had a look. One of the messages I’d sent to her said:
“You keep hoping that one day, you will be more important to him than the next drink”.
Newsflash – that wont ever happen.
It was the ones after that got me though. I sent her a message saying:
“Leaving doesn’t mean you have failed, and you are not a bad person for not wanting to stay”.
And that was when I realised. I had stayed for so long not out of love, not because I seriously thought he would change, not because of the commitment I had made, but because in my mind at the time, to leave meant I had failed.
It was only when I told someone else they hadn’t failed that I realised it was true for me too, and that’s when I finally let go.
Now, I’m working on not letting past mistakes affect my future.
Have you ever stayed in a destructive relationship because you didn’t want to fail? Let me know in the comments 🙂
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I went through this EXACT scenerio except my ex's issue was weed and boy did it cause some drama! I wrote about it briefly when I first started blogging you can read it here:
But after reading yours, I feel because my situation was so serious, I should really go into more detail as you did, to make people see how alcohol and weed can really affect people and relationships. Thank you so much for sharing this with the world, it'll make you feel better for getting it out, but it will also maybe make people in similar situations realise how bad their relationship is and hopefully leave before it gets too dangerous.
Very proud and well done! 🙂 <3
Thank you for your kind words 🙂
I love the dark humour in your post!
So glad we both got out of those relationships, and congratulation on finding a man who deserves you 🙂
If posts like these make even one person realise they are not alone, then they are worthwhile.
Hi Debbie,
Thanks for putting the link to this post on my blog. It is strange isn't it. Sometimes when we are in relationships we push the bad stuff aside, try to block it out, try to forget it and live in our own fantasy world where everything is okay. Then it gets too much. There is a day, an event, an argument, an incident, something that just makes you realise that it is wrong, the relationship is wrong and you can't be in it anymore. I am glad you had that day, however painful and difficult it was. You are in a much better place now. xx
When I read your post it struck that for all our situations were quite different they were also eerily similar. You sum it up really well in your comment, I did try to pretend everything was ok, even to myself, because it was easier than admitting it wasn't.
When that day came it was truly awful, but I'm glad in a way it happened because it pushed me to walk away. You're right I am in a much better place now and I am so much happier! I hope you are too 🙂