I left my partner of 3 years last night. Technically I haven’t left the house yet, but I plan on doing so this weekend.

Basically our relationship started out when she had already been in recovery for two years. I figured she did the meetings, and stayed sober, so she deserved a chance. Things were great until the end of her first year of grad school, when she decided her internship supervisor was crazy and out to ruin her life. I had just moved in with her and was already experiencing stress because of her demanding program. So one day I came home to an almost empty bottle of tequila.

Ever since it’s been a loop of “I am so ashamed of how I acted when I drank last night. I’m going to stop drinking” to “I can handle this if I do it in moderation, my limit is one bottle of wine a day, two days a week” and then not sticking to that and starting all over again. While I have empathy for her, as she has the worst family I have ever encountered, everything that happens to her is terrible. Whether it is her mom, her sister, her aunt, her boss, her friend, etc, she gets a free pass to drink all the time for everything and anything.

Then she started hiding interactions with a toxic ex. How did I discover? Because I accidentally glaced at her phone when she was ignoring me. That was strike one. Then she told me to move out because she needed to focus on school. That was strike two. When she asked me to move back in, after me begging and pleading with her to get help, she decided she was fine to drink in moderation again. Except her idea of moderation was not sticking to the agreement, lying about “Hey, what’s that smell?” Her response “Oh, it’s the hair product I use.” No, it was her breath skunked in alcohol and hiding it from me.

Strike three.

At this point I decided I’m not living with her. I just moved back in with her and now have nowhere else to go. At this point homelessness is better than living with her. She has absolutely no desire to quit drinking. She lies. She manipulates. She has taken advantage of my trust and good nature.

That’s what brought me to the point of breaking up with my alcoholic. It’s a lot less than what most will put up with, but my mother was in the same exact situation with my father and left him so I wouldn’t have to grow up with it. So here I am, a grown up, and I’m not putting up with it.