Hey everyone. I've decided to write and post my story of dating an addict in hopes that it might at least be helpful to myself in some way and maybe even others who can relate.
Over a year and a half ago I met a man online through a social media site and we hit it off. We exchanged hundreds of messages over the span of a few days until we finally exchanged numbers and switched to texting. We seemed to really click which is rare for me (I'm quite picky and guarded) and it was honestly a lot of fun talking to him. We started to develop feelings for each other pretty quickly even though we were just texting. We gained each others' trust and I began to open up to him emotionally which is very rare. Before we began to talk on the phone, he revealed to me that he was a recovering pill/heroin addict but assured me that he had been clean for two years and had never been at a more stable point in his life. Both my parents being recovering addicts (cocaine and alcohol), I sort of shrugged this news off and thought it was no big deal.
After months of talking on the phone for hours every night (sometimes for over seven hours at a time!) we finally decided to meet each other. At this point we both agreed that we loved each other despite the fact we had never met and it was time to see if what we had was real or not. He drove up to meet myself and my family in August of 2013-- a 17 hour drive from the states into Canada! I was just barely 19 (and he was 28) at the time and my parents weren't going to let me just fly off to meet a stranger in a different country so we agreed that this was the best compromise. After spending some time together with my family, we drove back to his home and had an awesome two weeks together. It turned out that everything we thought we had over text and phone the past few months was real.
After spending a week with him, he revealed that he was taking suboxone and explained to me that it's a way for him to stay clean but during the last few days of my stay though, I noticed he was acting strange and I confronted him in the airport while we were waiting for my flight home. He came clean and told me he had relapsed and had shot pills a few times in the past week. I wasn't really sure what to do at that point because we hadn't really discussed what would happen if he did relapse. With both of my parents being recovering addicts, I've made a point not to even experiment with drugs of any kind and I don't drink. I try to stay away from anything like that and I really don't want anyone who fools around with substances in my life at all so I had always figured that if he did relapse, I would leave him. But again, we hadn't ever really discussed it (though I wish we had now in hindsight obviously) so I decided to give him another chance and didn't tell anyone about it.
So I went back home and he moved out and got his own place in the city, about 45 minutes away from the small town he grew up in. I know that there's a lot of triggers in his hometown and figured it might be helpful to put a little distance between it and himself. We continued our phone regimen for another two months before I flew in to spend another two weeks with him. Again we had a lot of fun but I couldn't help but be paranoid that he was using again. He was acting really strange, spending a lot of time in the bathroom, having me wait in the car while he'd stop in at his cousin's house every few days, etc. He was adamant that he wasn't even on suboxone anymore though. After finding his belt looped off in the floor of the bathroom closet, I went through his phone while he was out and found texts where he had obviously been trying to set up a deal for heroin. I confronted him again and he swore that he didn't actually go through with it. I tried to forget about it just to make the last few days of my stay bearable and was glad when I got home.
Between our next visit, he totaled his car, lost his job and moved back to his hometown with his mom (how naive and blind was I?!). As always, he swore that none of this had anything to do with drugs and that he had been clean since August. I spent another two weeks with him in February which weren't very much fun with no car and no money.
Not too eager to go back for obvious reasons, we waited until June of 2014 until I went back to see him for my birthday. About a week before I was supposed to come in, he admitted to me that he had relapsed about three weeks prior (so the last week of April) and had been using casually since then. I had been getting the feeling he was cheating on me so it honestly cleared quite a bit up, because in a way, he was! I was heartbroken and extremely torn. The last time he came clean about relapsing, I told him that he would get one more chance and that if it happened again I would leave him. So suddenly with one call I was put in the position of sticking to my guns and leaving the man I loved when I was only a week away from seeing him or giving him another chance. I ended up talking to my mom about it and her advice to me was to cancel the trip, call off the relationship but still be there for him as a friend as I was all he had at the time. Which I did consider but of course I'm stubborn and naive and I decided to go through with the trip anyway. He swore up and down that he would do everything he needed to stay clean this time, that he would get a sponsor and go to meetings, and that we'd have a wonderful time if I still decided to come in.
Needless to say, it was the worst birthday I've ever had haha. He had promised his mom would let him borrow her car and we could go places but that only happened once. She wouldn't even drive us places (which is understandable as she has no obligation to do so) but she was also his only way of getting to meetings. So in two weeks he only went to two meetings and I got to sit around a house with no tv or internet and waste time basically.
After coming home this time I felt incredibly betrayed and heartbroken. He had relapsed and put me in a difficult position (I know this isn't what he intended to do but it still hurts) and after giving him the benefit of the doubt once again, he had let me down hugely. At this point I tried to break up with him because I just couldn't see anything changing and the relationship was so detrimental to me that I knew I was better off without him. Yet again he swore up and down that things would be different and he would do what he needed to. Being back home and not eager to get into another relationship, I figured I'd sit back and watch what he did over the next few months.
His attitude did change and he did step up emotionally quite a bit. I was so burnt out from trying to be supportive with no results for months that I just flat out told him that I wasn't in a place to reciprocate effort in the relationship but he said he loved me so much and he understood that it was his fault so he was okay with that. He just wanted to show me that he could be better. So he continued going to meetings whenever he could get a ride for a few months and put in a lot of work emotionally into the relationship while I checked out and tried to let myself recover from everything. I didn't really have anything to lose as I wasn't putting anything in and I wasn't eager to start seeing other people anyway so I took more time for myself and just let him do his own thing to see what would happen. He got a job again and actually held it for months which was new since I had been with him. He was always bouncing from one job to another. He said he had money to pay for a hotel room and a rental car for the next time I came in.
Long story short, I went to see him again in November! Stupid me, right? I still wasn't invested in the relationship since last time and I didn't believe that anything would go right. Part of me wanted to prove this to him, to let himself prove it that he really can't be reliable, and part of me honestly just wanted to see my favourite band (this sounds horrible! haha but they had no tour dates anywhere near my city). Again it was an awful trip and a waste of two weeks. He was still going to work while I was in which was fine with me. I was just happy he was holding down a job. But of course I ended up paying for everything as always. He had some story about how all his money was locked in a savings account which he had done a few weeks back when he had been itching to use quite badly. Who knows if that's true or not, I really don't believe anything he tells me anymore or anything he's ever said. So I got stuck with the hotel bill right before Christmas. Lovely!
About two weeks ago he came clean to me about how he had relapsed yet again (the third time since we've been together) but I already knew. No one has such bad luck as for three trips in a row to go horribly. I had looked through his phone the last time once again and the evidence was all through his facebook messages and texts (though of course he tried to lie to me about this when I confronted him). Turns out he had relapsed BEFORE I even came in this time and was using heavily before and after the trip. He says that he managed to stay on suboxone while I was visiting this time I guess. He told me he was going to rehab this time because he really wanted to get clean, that he needed to or else his addiction was going to kill him. The same day he tells me he's going to check into rehab, he gets arrested for third degree burglary and theft under $500. This is the first run in with the law he's had in six years. So now he's in jail waiting to be arraigned and we haven't talked in nearly two weeks.
In all honesty, I'm glad he's in jail now. It's given me time to think about things without being able to lean on the crutch of our relationship. It's easy to fall back into it when you're able to. I do love him as a person. He's the first person I've been able to open up to so fully and he's been so accepting of me and all my flaws. He's stayed with me and supported me through my depression and stayed up with me on the phone when I was suicidal. Despite our age difference, we get along so well and he's incredibly easy to talk to. The only other people I feel as close to are my own family (which is saying a lot as we're very close-- my family are my best friends). He takes a great interest in my hobbies and the things I like and has a knack for remembering little details about me that most people don't care enough to remember. It hasn't been all bad. In fact when our relationship is good, it's really good. He's so sweet and caring when he's sober and I don't doubt that he loves me too, but he's put me through so much already in a year and a half (and I've allowed him to in a way). He's been struggling with addiction ever since he was a teen. I know he has a lot of factors against him as he endured verbal, physical and sexual abuse as a child and it breaks my heart to think that he deals with so much emotional pain that he thinks drugs are the only way to alleviate that. But from the outside, I can see the steps he needs to take to better himself and it's so incredibly frustrating to watch him ruin his life and drag me down with him. The amount of money I've wasted because of him is ridiculous and I'm lucky I've been able to be so loose with it honestly. The situations he's put me in are equally ridiculous and I feel I'm not even able to tell people about them because I know they'll hate him and they'll think I'm stupid for staying with him. I mean he's left me in a car with no heat in the middle of winter for an hour just to get suboxone. He's woken me up with a huge gash on his forehead where his dealer pistol whipped him because he couldn't pay him and begged me for money.
I know it seems so stupid of me to let myself go through this and I feel quite stupid writing this out and looking at everything in hindsight but it's hard to abandon someone when they need you. But I guess that's just the nature of addiction-- I can't be the one to save him. I can see the steps he needs to take but that doesn't help anything unless he can figure them out for himself and actually take action. I don't see him changing and I don't think he's taken his recovery seriously while he's been with me and that's hurtful. I've given up a year and a half of my life believing that he was serious and that he did want to build a life with me. I know he probably doesn't want to be an addict but that's not good enough. There comes a time when you have to draw the line and walk away for yourself. While part of me is heartbroken that he has been through so much in his life, another part of me knows that's no excuse. My mom suffered the same traumas and she's been clean and sober for over 20 years now.
I don't know, I'm still working a lot of things out so I apologize if this is choppy and a tad incoherent. I've just read a lot of stories from here and thought it might be a bit therapeutic to share my own. I'm still really torn at this point. I know that best case scenario is he gets rehab instead of jail time (though he's already been to rehab twice in the past), I let him get clean and we wait a year before resuming the relationship and we try to build a life together with a high chance of him relapsing again. It terrifies me to read stories of people relapsing years later when they're married with kids. I never want to be in that situation and honestly I think that answers a lot of my questions right there. It would take so much to salvage our relationship after everything anyway. I have absolutely no trust in him and he's hurt me so much that I have a lot of anger towards him as well. I'd like to be optimistic but I think that would only be stupid at this point.
Anyway, thank you to anyone who actually takes the time to read through all this. It really just feels good to get everything off my chest and organize my thoughts all in one place. It'll be interesting to see what the future brings.
thank you for sharing your story, it is always good to be reminded of the hurt and pain we cause to others while we are in active addiction- i hope you make the right decision and wish you the best of luck - thanks again-
I really don't know where to start but I can relate to your situation. First of all you seem to be an amazing young woman who has her head on right.I fell in love with an addict not knowing what addiction was. Seems there is a lot more pain and suffering when you break up with one. I love my girl very much and really thought things would change when she gave birth to our beautiful daughter. Well I was wrong once again it all fell apart. You are young and you have just learned from a mistake. I know it's very hard and everything is easier said than done but we all need to get over it and move on somehow and don't dwell on the past.Rely on your family for support you're lucky you have them. It's hard to be strong when you think your world fell apart but you gotta keep trying.I honestly don't know what I'm going to do I know that I'm hurt really bad but I also know I'm not lied to every day anymore and don't feel betrayed. Not knowing, I tried to compete against the addiction and lost and don't really know what was real. YOU have a lot of life ahead of you. You lived and learned you need to move on you deserve much better.
Thank you both for your replies, I really appreciate it.
beingme: I'm so sorry to hear about your situation. That's heartbreaking to hear and I know how difficult they make it to be the father in that situation. My uncle's wife is an addict and he's had so much trouble trying to get custody of their two little girls so I can only imagine how you feel.
I'm quite lucky in the way that our relationship is really all I share with my boyfriend. While I think I probably knew a little more than the average person about addiction when we started dating, I do wish I would have done my research a lot earlier and learned a lot more. I think that I'm also lucky in a way because I feel like I've been preparing for this since June. The fact that we were long distance helps too just because I have had to have my own life apart from him so it's not like I'm completely starting over from scratch. By no means does it make it EASY, but it does make it easier. It just sucks because it feels like a break up that neither of you want and that you didn't choose. I always want to be that friend that people can count on to be there for them no matter what they're going through and I want to be that person for him because I know he really doesn't have anyone else...but there's a reason he doesn't have anyone-- his addiction has pushed everyone away. In fact his grandmother's husband is the one who signed the warrant for his arrest this time around as they caught him stealing from them.
I absolutely understand what you mean. On one hand it's painful not to be able to be with the one you love and to have such conflicting feelings about them but then on the other hand it's almost peaceful?? It's exactly how you put it, you know you're not being lied to anymore and you're not allowing them to hurt you anymore. It's a horrible feeling to question how truthful and meaningful a relationship was to the other person. A small part of me can't help but feel that he was only using me for money despite the fact I tried extremely hard to be very strict that way and the only time I ever got weak with that was when I was in to visit him.
Thank you, I think everyone around us knows that I deserve better (not to sound conceited-- this would be a different story if he weren't an addict). I've never been in any kind of trouble and I've always been very independent and self-sufficient. I work hard and everyone around me expect a lot from and for me so it's actually kind of funny to think 'hey, Aubrey's boyfriend is in jail'. I just never saw myself in this position in a thousand years hahah.
His mom actually just messaged me to tell me he had court today. He has to go to rehab and stay out of trouble for a year or else he goes back to jail. Part of me wishes he would have gotten jail time instead. I know he'll be contacting me a lot sooner now than if he would have stayed in jail and I know it's going to be really hard for me not to fall back into the relationship. I have such a hard time enforcing space even when I need it because there's always that tiny chance that things could work out and I do love him. At least I still have some time to prepare myself to have that conversation with him and to make sure I stay strong this time.
beingme: I'm so sorry to hear about your situation. That's heartbreaking to hear and I know how difficult they make it to be the father in that situation. My uncle's wife is an addict and he's had so much trouble trying to get custody of their two little girls so I can only imagine how you feel.
I'm quite lucky in the way that our relationship is really all I share with my boyfriend. While I think I probably knew a little more than the average person about addiction when we started dating, I do wish I would have done my research a lot earlier and learned a lot more. I think that I'm also lucky in a way because I feel like I've been preparing for this since June. The fact that we were long distance helps too just because I have had to have my own life apart from him so it's not like I'm completely starting over from scratch. By no means does it make it EASY, but it does make it easier. It just sucks because it feels like a break up that neither of you want and that you didn't choose. I always want to be that friend that people can count on to be there for them no matter what they're going through and I want to be that person for him because I know he really doesn't have anyone else...but there's a reason he doesn't have anyone-- his addiction has pushed everyone away. In fact his grandmother's husband is the one who signed the warrant for his arrest this time around as they caught him stealing from them.
I absolutely understand what you mean. On one hand it's painful not to be able to be with the one you love and to have such conflicting feelings about them but then on the other hand it's almost peaceful?? It's exactly how you put it, you know you're not being lied to anymore and you're not allowing them to hurt you anymore. It's a horrible feeling to question how truthful and meaningful a relationship was to the other person. A small part of me can't help but feel that he was only using me for money despite the fact I tried extremely hard to be very strict that way and the only time I ever got weak with that was when I was in to visit him.
Thank you, I think everyone around us knows that I deserve better (not to sound conceited-- this would be a different story if he weren't an addict). I've never been in any kind of trouble and I've always been very independent and self-sufficient. I work hard and everyone around me expect a lot from and for me so it's actually kind of funny to think 'hey, Aubrey's boyfriend is in jail'. I just never saw myself in this position in a thousand years hahah.
His mom actually just messaged me to tell me he had court today. He has to go to rehab and stay out of trouble for a year or else he goes back to jail. Part of me wishes he would have gotten jail time instead. I know he'll be contacting me a lot sooner now than if he would have stayed in jail and I know it's going to be really hard for me not to fall back into the relationship. I have such a hard time enforcing space even when I need it because there's always that tiny chance that things could work out and I do love him. At least I still have some time to prepare myself to have that conversation with him and to make sure I stay strong this time.
