I’m glad to hear you’re staying strong – I know it’s so hard when you care for someone.
That’s one thing I struggle with – when they say they don’t have a choice. While I am understanding that an addiction is an illness and their mind is telling them things that just aren’t true, there has to be an element of free will in there, or nobody would ever recover. While I’ve accepted my partner was ill, he was also acutely aware of how badly I was suffering as a result of what he was doing (and he wasn’t at any point nasty to me – just leaving me to deal with just about everything including a house move while he was out spending all of our savings and his full wage is bad enough!). He needs to know what he’s doing and how it’s affecting you and that’s there’s consequences or his head will keep telling him “it’s fine, she’ll forget about it in a couple weeks” and this gives him an excuse to continue. My partner admitted to relapses in the last year and I supported him, and he had a few weeks of going to meetings then right back to the addiction because nothing had changed, he still had me and his home so in his head, why bother?
I have good and bad days. My partner is still out of our home (that we only moved into in December) and won’t be back for a while – if I ever feel comfortable having him back here. He’s made amazing progress, he’s is coming up to a month’s sobriety and is going to meetings everyday. He’s also got mental health working with him. He has put us through so much and that can’t be fixed in a few weeks of sobriety, though I know he’s desperate to come home. I fully believe if I didn’t boot him out and let him hit rock bottom he would never have pulled himself out of this. Sometimes I can see a light at the end of the tunnel for us, but at same time I’ve so much anger for what he’s done. Has your partner tried meetings or sought any help for what he’s doing?