It sounds like you have thought a lot about your position. Thank you for the info on what you have been researching.
It is so hard to be in this situation- and I feel for you that you are getting on with life with your son almost without him – this is exactly what I felt I was doing but I didn’t know he was using. So I never ever kept my cool with him. Constant arguments because he was resisting me highlighting his responsibilities he was neglecting – just turned me into being a ‘nag’ etc. There is no getting through to them until they want to do it for themselves.
I wish I’d done what you had done and gathered myself financially. I don’t work due to our children being so young. Though I have a career which I put on hold to have our family. So I was financially dependent on my husband.
Once he turned nasty he cut me and the children off financially too. He really didn’t care either and was quite pleased with himself because it was the only thing he had to use/ hurt me with. I had to start applying for benefits (which I have never done) and my family kept us in shopping and meals. He has destroyed every relationship through his nastiness. I don’t understand what is the drug and what is my husband because I think he has always been a bit selfish but to go from doting on his much younger siblings and nieces and nephews so to basically neglecting his own children is incomprehensible to me.
My family are of the opinion it can’t just be the drug to be so vile and abandon us. But we know nothing about drugs or addiction. And I feel too that I can’t or could never forgive him for his behaviour.
My children are so young they don’t know any different and they barely know him – they know his face but he has never done more than be physically present when absolutely necessary- he has never really played with them, or read to them or taught them anything. I feel like I need to protect them from him before they too get hurt and let down by him. They already have been but they don’t know that.
It’s so tough, you sound strong. It’s something everyone tells me but I don’t feel it. I was really lonely with my husband because we were constantly against each other he would be in a separate part of the house from me of an evening, but I knew he was there. Now I’m on my own completely and it’s hard. Because you think of the good and not all the misery. And I think because I know it’s drugs now part of me wants or hopes he will miraculously be cured and I get the man I married back. It is so hard to accept.