Walked away a year ago from my boyfriend. I loved him more than anyone. We'd been together for a few years. When we first started seeing each other four or five years ago, it was occasional and sparse, and usually I'd run into him at shows that I'd go to. He was often drunk, but I figured it was because he was out, and as a shy person that helped him to be social. Fast-forward a few years, and we are in a serious relationship. I'm integrated in his family and social circle, we see each other every day, but he won't move in with me, and doesn't seem to want to build any kind of a future with me. January of last year I ask him if he is high and he says he isn't, and then when we are making out I find a bag of coke in his pocket. He starts crying and flushes it down the toilet. He'd done drugs in the past, but had told me he could take it or leave it, and had told me that the wasn't doing that anymore. I foolishly believed him. After that, we tried to make it work, but I didn't trust him anymore. He'd fall of the face of the earth for hours at a time, and would not be reachable. When he'd finally pick up, he'd be slurring his words, or he'd be driving drunk, or he'd act angry and defensive and start berating me. We started fighting a lot, because he wasn't willing to admit he had a problem, and I wasn't able to take care of myself emotionally because I was investing so much energy in worrying about him. Walking away was really hard, especially because I worried about (and still worry about) his physical and emotional well being. I don't think the jealousy or feelings of betrayal will ever go away. I still feel that he just didn't love me enough, or he would have changed -- but I have to remind myself that that's probably bullshit; that he's probably an addict. And I cared about him too much to be an enabler. As much as I threw a fit about his behavior and habits, I take comfort in thinking that maybe he does hard drugs slightly less often because of me, or maybe he thinks twice before getting into his car drunk because he knows what I would say if I was there. Sadly, I doubt it really crosses his mind. It's hard to let go of the potential of what could have been if things had been different. The important thing, though, is to take care of yourself. Only after extricating myself from that relationship did I realize how damaging it had been for me. It still feel like I'm crawling out from under the shadows of his addictive behavior and his lies. The final straw that broke us up for good was this: We had tickets to see a band together in a nearby city. My grandma was in hospice, so I had to fly down to see her and be with her. I held her hand while she was on her deathbed, and then went back to my hotel where I was staying. I was a wreck. I called him multiple times, and he didn't pick up. He finally called me back at 2:30 or so in the morning and could barely form a sentence. He'd bought tickets to see the same band in the city we lived in, and hadn't bothered to use the ones I'd bought to bring a friend or at least sell them; but he still had decided to go without me. He was so drunk on the phone that he was just not there for me in the way I needed him to be. He was emotionally not present. My grandmother died the next day. Her death made me realize how much I loved her, and what real love should look like. The best thing I could do to show him that I cared was just to walk away.