It’s finally over

Hi everyone,

About half year ago I moved to a completely new region to live with my partner.
It was a huge life change for me. Besides leaving my old life behind, I also had to adapt to becoming part of his family life with his daughter.

One of the biggest struggles was boundaries. I often felt that there wasn’t enough space for our relationship as a couple. His daughter regularly slept in our bed, and I found it very difficult to create healthy boundaries between the three of us.

Whenever I tried to express my needs, I often felt misunderstood or made to feel guilty.
My partner has struggled with alcohol for a long time, before our relationship.
And one day he confessed me while crying that he had an addiction.

When he drank, his mood could change dramatically. I often felt that my emotions and needs disappeared because everything revolved around his addiction or the consequences of it.

I spent a long time trying to understand him, support him, and be patient, but I rarely felt truly seen or understood in return.
He was blaming me because I wasn’t supportive enough with him, I haven’t pushed him to stop drinking, while I was telling him that it’s not my responsibility, even if he knew that I would be supportive and caring about it.

Eventually, fight after fight, tired to spend all the evening with his drunk state and massive couple problems, I decided to move into my own apartment without any ultimatum. He treated me like garbage and I moved out in 24h.
Not because I wanted to end the relationship, but because I hoped that living separately might reduce the tension and give us a chance to rebuild our relationship in a healthier way, and I was genuinely looking for my peace back.

During those weeks we both said we wanted to try again, he had reduced massively his drinking assumption, most of the puffiness and inflammation went down. I was proud of him but still for me 7 weeks of it wasn’t enough for believing in him. Also because he had relapses. And he was so furious about that, trying to make me fell so deeply guilty

And we agreed not to date other people while we figured things out. I continued spending time with him and his daughter and genuinely tried to rebuild trust.
Later I discovered that he had created dating profiles without telling me, which left me feeling deeply betrayed.

Recently he told me that he stopped drinking “for me” and “for our relationship,” not for himself. Instead of making me feel loved, this made me feel uncomfortable because it also came with the message that I should be grateful for his sacrifice.

This places responsibility for his sobriety on me rather than on his own recovery.
Throughout our relationship I also experienced situations where I felt that the truth was sometimes bent to fit what was easiest or most comfortable for him, leaving me questioning my own perception of events.
I get a lot of moral support from my colleagues, from family of them. They offered me a safe place
to say for a month while I found my new apartment which I will move in next week.

I’m so grateful that it’s finally over and I will start to build up again my life and mine security.

This relationship left me a deep scar because just now I understand how much manipulation was involved into our relationship, how much he tried to push me down in his black hole.