Finally broke up

I don’t think people realize how exhausting it is to love someone with alcoholism until they’ve lived it.
I spent almost three years with a man whose life revolved around vodka and video games. Most weekends started with shots before noon. Sometimes it wasn’t just weekends.
Once he started drinking, I barely existed. I’d get two or three texts the entire day if I was lucky. If we had plans, they didn’t matter. I’d spend hours wondering if he was passed out, drunk, or even alive.
He went to rehab twice. He did counseling. Then he stopped. Nothing really changed.
The last year of our relationship was already over—I just hadn’t admitted it yet. We sometimes only talked once a week because disappearing while he drank had become so normal that I stopped expecting anything different.
Almost three years later, I asked him one question: “Do you still drink?”
“Sometimes.”
When I told him his drinking had been the biggest reason our relationship failed, he told me I had always exaggerated it. Then he wished me “good luck finding the perfect man.”
But that’s not what stayed with me.
What stayed with me was realizing that I don’t carry that fear anymore.
I no longer spend weekends wondering if today is the day someone calls to tell me he’s dead from alcohol poisoning. I no longer stare at my phone trying to decide if his silence means he’s sleeping, drunk, or lying unconscious somewhere.
I didn’t leave because I expected perfection.
I left because I realized love shouldn’t feel like waiting for a tragedy.
Looking back, the saddest part isn’t that he chose alcohol over us. It’s that I spent so long believing it was my job to worry enough for both of us.