Anonymous wrote:I appreciate all of your replies. I forgot to mention that the main reason I didn’t break up with him immediately is that he’s had serious issues with depression in the past, including inpatient mental health hospitalization, and I was afraid this could trigger him to do something dangerous.

But I now realize I can’t control anyone else’s behavior and I have to look out for my own health and safety.

Anonymous wrote:Maybe this will help: He *does* care about you, he just cares about his addiction more. You get to decide if the amount of care he's showing you, and the ways he's showing it, works for you. It doesn't.

Personalizing it and framing it as "if only he loved me more, he'd..." is manipulative, likely co-dependant, and most importantly: useless. Regardless of how you see it, or how you wish he saw it, the facts of the situation are what they are: He's an addict who isn't willing to actively work on his recovery, and that's incompatible with your relationship goals.

Feel your feelings, grieve what might've been, and then make the next right choice. You know what it is.

Anonymous wrote:Most of the people commenting have never been through what you are going through. Addiction is a disease and like all diseases there is a chance of recovery.

Addiction is the by product of mental illness. You need to have boundaries and understand you didn't cause it, you can't change it and you can't cure it.

No matter how many times he tries recovery, it won't work until he is ready.

I speak from the position of someone who has a child in recovery for their addiction. Until we stopped enabling, and even the smallest amount of enabling is bad, and until they want to get well, you have to end everything with them. No contact. Maybe they recover maybe they don't but it's not up to you or anything you can do about it. It's a hard thing to go through.

Most people do not understand addiction and think it can never happen to them and when it does they go into hiding and don't talk about it. Mental health is finally being talked about and you would be supposed how many of us have a close on in recovery or dealing with something like this.

I am not telling you what to do, that's your choice. Our choice was to stop all contact and everything. Fortunately things are going well many years later and continued treatment. That's a key component that many don't continue with.

Anonymous wrote:I’m married to an addict (alcohol/drugs). The only reason he stopped is I caught him one time and made it EXTREMELY clear there would be no second time. I would not monitor him, I would not play mommy, but if it happened again we were done, and I would absolutely not help him deal with any consequences (such as driving him if he got a DUI and lost his license).

When we got married we signed a prenup and keep finances separate so if he does relapse, I can leave quickly and there’s little mess.

That’s really the only way to handle addicts. You can’t help them by finding meetings, encouraging them to go, etc. They really only understand consequences, and the consequences have to be severe. The pain of using had to be stronger than the pain of not using.

Sometime the most caring, loving thing you can do for a person is let them be an adult and run their own lives.

Anonymous wrote:OP the fact that you went on a second or third date with this guy means you need to take a break from dating and spend the time on extra therapy sessions.

Anonymous wrote:Forget about him. You need to join a codependent anonymous group and go to at least five meetings. Stop focusing on and complaining about him now and forced and focus on what matters—your own issues.

Anonymous wrote:Forget about him. You need to join a codependent anonymous group and go to at least five meetings. Stop focusing on and complaining about him now and forced and focus on what matters—your own issues.