I Had to Let Go of My Relationship to Save My Sanity

What are we doing?

We were having yet another argument — a loud one. Like the rest of them, it was pointless. Then, my husband paused for a moment.

“You know that I love you, don’t you?” he asked.

I almost responded with an automatic, mindless yes. But I stopped to think about it.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “It’s hard to believe it when you say things to me…like the ones you say all the time.”

“Well, I do. I love you. What about you? I feel like you don’t love me the way you used to,” he said.

I thought about lying. I knew if I responded with the truth, he might get furious at me. But then I visualized the rest of my life, and I didn’t like what I saw.

“No, I don’t. Things have changed,” I replied.

These were not empty words: I was done with this shit.

At the Beginning

This was a long time coming. For the past few years, we had struggled with our relationship. First, it was his battle with alcoholism.

It happened bit by bit. A beer here, another one there. Then more and more. At first, it was only on the weekends. One day, I looked back and realized he had been drunk every single day of the week.

A little bit after we met, he had told me he was a recovering alcoholic. That he had controlled his drinking many years ago, that now it was just a random thing.

It was true. I saw it. He would drink just a glass of wine or have a beer.

But as months went by, his drinking increased. Soon, there were angry rages, shouting, throwing of things, threats.

The list of things he would say and do while being drunk is too long to share and too painful to remember. Let’s just say it was one of the shittiest times of our lives.

Why didn’t I leave?

He is 22 years older than me. When we met, I was literally a child. I was a 19-year-old girl in love. I had this romantic idea that we could overcome anything. Having endured child abuse, I lacked the emotional tools to respond to a hurtful situation. Not only that, but I was also drawn to men who harmed me.

The pain seemed like a normal thing. I was convinced I didn’t deserve love so, to give up this one person who loved me seemed like a stupid thing to do. That was my MO at the time.

When I replay the choices I made back then, and it’s hard not to get angry at myself. “You idiot! How did you get yourself in a situation like that?”

If a friend came to me end explained a scenario such as the one above, I would tell her to run away as fast as possible. Heck, I would give her money for a bus ticket so she could go to a better place.

But, when it came to my life, I was blind as hell.

Dead in Life

I thought once we had a kid, everything would change. Yeap, like a classic fool… He kept telling me he had always wanted another child — he had a kid from his previous relationship. I, too, wanted a kid, although I was uncertain about the timeline.

Still, we went ahead and did it. We had a baby. Our baby.

But things didn’t change, obviously. I learned that whatever issues a couple has, having a kid only enhances them.

I felt in a deep postpartum depression that made it difficult to relate to my child, and the Binge Eating Disorder I had been battling got worse.

And the man by my side? Well, he wasn’t by my side; he was either passed out drunk or busy screaming at me.

I now look at those days, and they feel like a blur, like time that slipped through my hands.

Somehow, I managed not to kill myself.

Change

The drinking went out for a bit more, and then, suddenly, it stopped. He said it made him feel bad about himself, and that he was worried about the effect it had on his health.

Whatever the case might be, The Drunk was gone.

It doesn’t stop to amaze how a substance can make a person change so much. One moment, he is everything you want him to be. Several beers later, he is the thing you fear the most — the thing you want to run from.

However, now it was time for him to be delusional.

He thought that, once he got clean, everything he ever said or did would disappear, even if he never acknowledged the damage his actions had caused. He quickly learned things don’t work that way.

Actions have consequences, and our words leave emotional scars.

Whatever love I had felt for him was now in shambles. He did not like this at all.

He would get angry, demanding forgiveness and the same adoration I had shown in the early days of our relationship. He wasn’t drinking anymore, but he was still terrorizing me. He wanted me to be the same 19-year-old girl who used to trust him and adore him.

I was not that girl anymore. She was gone, dead.

“I’m not angry and sad anymore,” I told him. “I would spend all day crying if I were. But you don’t get to demand anything of me.”

The Conversation

Soon came the mother of all conversations. He had kept on requiring me to be like this and behave like that.

He was scared I would go away.

He had witnessed how I underwent a complete transformation. I realized that I did not want to die, so I devoted all of my energy to finding out how to battle my depression. I trained my body and mind. I took control of my Binge Eating Disorder. I read about women who had been in situations very similar to my own and had survived.

I changed.

I could see that, although I had made mistakes in the past, I didn’t deserve a shitty life. And I wasn’t willing to put out with it. If this required me to give up my relationship, as much as it terrified me, I was going to have to deal with that.

So, on that particular day, when he once again demanded I became a loving wife, I had it.

And I told him.

It wasn’t a threat. He could see the truth in my eyes; he heard the passion in my voice.

I was done with this shit.

That’s when he knew the love I felt in the past didn’t exist anymore. What was left in its place?

Partners

The next few days were awfully quiet. We were extremely polite to one another.

Then, he finally said.

“It’s all my fault.”

“What?” I asked.

“The things I did. That’s why you don’t feel the same,” he said. “You have changed so much.”

“Did you expect me to be the same person after so many years? After everything that happened?” I asked.

“No, I suppose not,” he said.

We agreed on a truce. We would try to find out whether or not there was any point in being together.

A few months later, he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. What a cosmic joke!

In a way, I suppose we were lucky: we had our most difficult conversations before The Cancer came into our lives. To have them now would be extremely difficult.

Over the last year, we have kept on…what? What are we doing? Are we rebuilding our relationship? Creating a new, completely different one? Jibbity-jabberwocky-mumbo jumbo?

I don’t know.

The only certainty I have is that he is one of the most important people in my life. Anything else? I’m still conducting my research.

I can tell he keeps trying to “fix” things. To repair what he did. But I wasn’t lying when I said I wasn’t angry anymore. To keep thinking about what happened back then would cause the wounds to remain open. Yeah, I have emotional scars, but I have grown around them.

But it’s no use — he keeps trying. I guess this is no longer about my forgiveness, but rather about him coming to terms with his own life, the good and the bad.

I now see his drinking as a symptom of all of the unresolved issues in his life. He is working in more productive ways to deal with them. First of all, he has to forgive himself. I look at him, and I don’t know if he will be able to.

In the final days of his life, I get to be a supportive partner, someone who understands and maybe even provides some guidance. So we both can keep our sanity. I hope we find a way to do just that.