Throwaway account, and generally not familiar with Reddit but was told by a few good friends to try to seek advice on here. Just so you are aware, this will be a long post. There's a lot of ground for me to cover so you can understand my situation.
I have been dating my current boyfriend for about 3 years now. For a quick background, I knew him back when I was 19 (He was freshly 21) and I really wanted to date him back then but he was too busy drinking from the moment he woke up until the moment he fell asleep and having whatever flings he wanted. He ended up dating someone else and I didn't speak to him for 4 years. After 4 years, that girl broke up with him and I had ended a four-year relationship as well. He got back in contact with me, saying he barely drinks anymore and at the time, I thought it just seemed like things perfectly fell into place.
I am a college graduate and I was lucky enough to be able to get long-term gigs I can do from home. For extra money, I also work on the side in retail. I don't care much for drinking - I could go for months and not even think about it. He used to do drugs throughout his teenage years and eventually stopped after a bad acid trip. Now he regularly just drinks. All of his life, he has worked at his father's business. This has given him the freedom to sleep off hangovers and call in whenever he's wanted and it's also given him the freedom to drink at work.
He got a DWI when he was around 17 and was banned from having a license until he was 21. And, well, when he was 21 his focus was on drinking and nothing else. He's 28 and never got his license back. Never got a car either.
And, sure. He doesn't drink nearly as much as he used to. At 21, it used to be nonstop liquor and beer and whatever else he could get his hands on. Now it's *mainly* a nightly ritual of at the very least 4 tallboys (24 fl oz drinks at 5.6%). I'd say 3-4 nights per week he keeps it limited to that amount. He usually goes over it though, and drinks all day on his days off. In my opinion, he has little to no coping mechanisms other than drinking....as soon as something even slightly annoys him or makes him angry, he needs a drink and a smoke. Usually life revolves around his ability to drink. We never eat anywhere he can't have a beer at. We can't be out for long before he needs something to drink. We go to the movies, he has to mix a concoction of liquor and seltzer. I stop at my house to see my mom, he gets annoyed and says, "I should have brought a beer in with me." Sometimes we're about to step out of the house and he opens a beer just to get a few last-minute swigs in.
His schedule is pretty predictable. He works a six hour shift at his job then gets excited to go home to sit on the couch and drink and play video games all night. He usually falls asleep around 5 am and then goes to work in the evening. When his ex girlfriend broke up with him, he had an apartment with her. They canceled their lease and ever since he's been living in his father's basement. For the past few years, at different times I've pushed for us to get an apartment together, but he thinks it's a stupid waste of money. So I tried to convince him to maybe make upgrades to the basement to make it seem more of a living situation. Three years have gone by and he has finally recently laid wood floor down and has slowly been putting together a living room for us. All this time, we've been mainly confined to one room together. I've asked him many times before if he wants to work for his dad forever. He says he wants to flip houses with the money he gets from his inheritance (his grandparents are pretty loaded). Otherwise, it seems like he's okay with not doing much else.
When he's sober, he's very nice and sweet to me. Once he starts drinking, I never really know how every night is going to turn out. Usually he gets pretty illogical - I could say one thing and he'll start arguing with me over something it seems like he conjured out of thin air. He's never been physically abusive with me, but there have been nights where he drank so much, he would call me stupid or lazy and a terrible, mean girlfriend who doesn't do anything for him. I'm the one with a car and a license - most of the time I drive him to work (when I can) and I pick him up from work every single night. He also doesn't have a bank account and usually has to ask me to put money on my account so he can order things online. I kind of really go out of my way for him with things that....people our age usually have. He gives me gas money, pays for some of my groceries, and usually cooks dinner for us once a week. If he helps me out with something, he'll drink and then hold it over my head as if it say, "You OWE me, so you can't have a problem with me and what I do."
He'll throw various things my way and I'm like, "Wait....what? Where did this come from?" For example, he doesn't like the fact that I have an instagram account and is uncomfortable with any form of social media, saying people just try to hook up with each other on there. Sometimes after some drinks, he gets on my case about having social media and how only stupid people have it. Sometimes he accuses me of hiding things from him and talking to other guys (which I never am).
When he was making upgrades to the basement, there were nights he was drinking all day and all night working on it and he's start yelling at me about how he's only "doing this for me" and he "doesn't even care to upgrade the basement" and then turns on me, saying I pester and bother him to do things he doesn't want to do.
Other times while he's drinking, he'll say things like, "No other guy would do the things that I do for you." and "You know I love you more than anyone ever will." My father passed away a year ago and he likes to tell me that he knows my father would be happy that I am with him and not some "stupid guy."
I've been extremely unhappy and depressed for a very long time now. I recently found the login for an old instagram account I used to have when I was dating my ex-boyfriend. Now, while my ex-boyfriend kind of sucked and I had my reasons to break up with him, it seemed like I was a lot happier. I went to the gym often, went out and did things like hiked and kayaked and other simple things like go to the park. My current boyfriend doesn't want to do any of these things. I've gone to the park with him before, sure, but we get there and it's as if he's thinking "Okay, we're here, gonna hang for ten minutes to make her happy and then get going." I've noticed in recent years I've been less encouraged to be productive and do things. I'm sure some of it can be attributed to depression but I'm not sure if dating him is part of the blame.
A few months back I was on the verge of breaking up after he had one terrible night of drinking and he spent hours and hours yelling at me and accusing me of things that aren't true. He also gets on my case about politics (he's the type who thinks he's right and everyone else is completely wrong and stupid and will rant about it for hours on end.) I told him he needed to stop drinking and tried to talk to him about getting help, but he doesn't think he needs help. He claims he drinks because of his anxiety (he likes to tell me his anxiety is a lot worse than mine - that I wouldn't know how to deal with his anxiety because I never did drugs) In his opinion, talking to a therapist is pointless and if he went to the doctor, anxiety meds would "do worse damage to his liver than the alcohol does" and if he's doing damage to his liver, he'd rather do it drinking. He did however offer to cut the drinking down to 2 tallboys a night and then drink non-alcoholic beer. He did that for about a month (all the while getting angry at me often and saying he's making this sacrifice for me and that I should be more appreciative about it). But eventually he stopped and slipped back into the regular drinking habits. I don't know what to do. I know I can't make him stop. Recently I've sought out my own therapist to talk to and try to see if I can salvage anything from this relationship.
I try not to judge him because I know he has a disease. I just don't know what to do about it. It's so frustrating. I do love him but oftentimes he is a difficult person to love.
tl;dr my longterm boyfriend is an alcoholic who I have tried talking to to get help but he won't do anything to help himself.
Submitted November 03, 2018 at 03:47AM by UsefulSandwich3 https://ift.tt/2DkMBPi
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