Partner wants to break up, pls help

#1

My partner has been an alcoholic for 10 years; we’ve been together for three.

Our relationship has never been easy, though we’ve always stuck together, even when things were on the brink of collapse. Yet, we never actually broke up. I’ve been through two of his inpatient detox stays with him. He would always stay in touch during those times, and I was glad he was trying to get sober.

Unfortunately, he relapsed every time and would often verbally abuse me while drunk. There are some things he said that I just can’t forget. I forgave him every time. I have my own faults, too, and often didn’t treat him well myself.

A month ago, he verbally tore into me so badly while drunk that I wasn’t able to take an important exam. He kept getting worse until he eventually expressed suicidal thoughts to me.

I called emergency services while I was with him, and he was admitted to a psychiatric ward. He’s been an inpatient there for two weeks now. At first, he thanked me for getting help.

He is going through detox there at the same time, and he is ENORMOUSLY irritable with me.

He views our relationship very negatively now and is very cold and distant toward me.

I can’t talk to him normally anymore because he constantly claims I’m putting too much pressure on him. He’s getting colder by the day, and I’m struggling to cope with it or make sense of the situation.

Has anyone else experienced something like this?

#2

Hello Lalole, what you are going through is very difficult. I haven’t been through what you have, my loved one uses meth. What I can say is, you should be in recovery too. What groups/meetings are you in? You need to work on you. Have you gotten yourself a CRAFT trained therapist? There are CRAFT groups you can join. Your partner needs to work on himself. It probably is too much pressure to detox and think about his relationship with you. Give him time. Let him work on him and you work on you. My loved one has just hit the one year mark of his recovery (this time around) and we are just starting our relationship again. I’ve waited all this time. You need to let your partner do what he needs to do. He needs to work on his recovery and focus on that. Good luck to you.

#3

I’ve been there. It was terrible. My heart broke a little bit more every day that I was shut out. It’s not fair. Trust me, I know. Feels like you are longing for their affection just to feel like they treat you like a human being and yet they don’t. You’ve got to put the focus back on you right now. That’s my advice. I eventually left my fiancé because he was so horrible to me and he had gotten sober. But he was cruel. Hardest thing I’ve ever done. That man was the love of my life. Probably always will be. But I finally realized that no amount of love could get him to treat me right. And the part about being iced out, I get it. It’s awful. You’ve got to put distance between this and your emotions for sanity. That’s my best advice. It doesn’t mean you don’t love them. It just means that no one deserves to be treated that way. And take it day by day.