I have been with my partner for 3.5 years. We have a daughter, she’s 2 next month. My (now ex) partner has had issues with alcohol for around 11 years. He doesn’t drink every day, it’s on average once a fortnight but when he starts drinking, he can’t stop and will be drunk for days. His behaviour while drunk is atrocious, he becomes very verbally abusive and chaotic. He has lost countless jobs, all of them because he’s been drunk in work. He calls me vile names and threatens me in front of our daughter. Although he has never been physically violent. He drinks to the point of vomiting all over himself. His behaviour while drunk has gotten progressively worse since our daughter was born, and for this reason I started locking him out of the house when he’s been drinking. It’s my house, my name on the tenancy and I lived here for 2 months before he moved in with me due to being evicted from his flat. I told him there were conditions and that he was to get help with his alcohol issues, staying here meant no drinking. He agreed to this, but has still continued the same. He did reach out for help, he took disulfrum (a medication that acts as a deterrent for alcohol as it makes you violently ill if you consume any).. after 10 days, he stopped the medication and ended up drunk the next day, on a drinking binge that lasted 4 days. He has since had 3 appointments which he hasn’t bothered to go to.
Two weeks ago, he went to a job interview and took the opportunity of me not being around to get drunk. When he returned, I told him to leave.
When he eventually sobered up 5 days later, he was full of his usual apologies and promises that he will go to his next appointment which was a week away. I allowed him home on those conditions.
However, the day before his appointment, he went to get his hair cut, and again used that opportunity to drink. He snuck 2 bottles of vodka into the house, the first one hidden in a bottle of coke which he drank right under my nose without me realising until he started getting agitated and slurring his words. The second bottle, as he was already drunk by this point, he didn’t even bother to attempt to hide it. He opened it right in front of me, poured it into a mug with no mixer. I immediately told him to tip it out, which he refused to do, so when he attempted to drink it I snatched it from him and tipped it out myself. He then threatened to break my nose, and left. The following day when he was supposed to go to his appointment, he didn’t go. He went away for the night with his friends to drink again.
Since then, I have ended our relationship and haven’t allowed him back home.
He staying with his friends, who are also alcoholics. He has no money, as the £300 he did have was all spent on alcohol in the space of 3 days. His next pay date is 3 weeks away.
Now he is trying to make me feel bad for ‘making him homeless knowing he has no money and having to stay with his alcoholic friends’.
Have I done the right thing? He says I’m wrong and cruel for throwing him out while he is struggling with this Illness, but I have given him so many chances and nothing is changing. He hasn’t been to his appointments, he’s not accepting the help that is being offered to him, and he is still getting drunk creating an unstable and quite frankly dangerous environment for our daughter to be raised in.