Alcoholic ex, have I done the right thing?

[MamaBear81]

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.

As a child of an alcoholic- my mum - DO NOT GO BACK TO HIM!! Alcoholics really cause SOOO much damage !!!!

You taken the hardest step in making him leave.

Do NOT let him back. No matter what.

Keep you and your daughter safe. He is not ready to be sober.

He's gone, please make sure he stays gone. Your daughter does not need an alcoholic dad ruining her childhood.

He would not be homeless and broke if he were not an alcoholic but that is neither your fault or your problem to fix. He may not be able to help himself but other people are not obliged to suffer as a sacrifice.

Keep all communication with him to the necessary minimum. That does not include responding to his emotional blackmail. Call the police if he turns up on your doorstep. Do not let him in unless it is by prior arrangement to collect his belongings and you have someone with you.

Accept that drink is a higher priority to him than his daughter and do not try to force him to maintain a relationship with her, it will not benefit her.

@MamaBear81

You sound so lost and bewildered and drowning in the world of pain the alcoholic has turned your life into.

Forget the slander. Ignore his attempts to blackmail. Everyone knows he's a drunk. Disengage, disengage, disengage.

The first thing you have to do is stop in your tracks and tell yourself that the relationship is completely over and you will never have this man in your life again. Tell yourself you are moving forward without him and not looking back. Repeat this to yourself several times a day.

Your motivation to do this and to steel yourself against your toxic optimism that this situation can be turned around is your child. You seem to believe she hasn't noticed what is going on. You need to chuck that denial out the nearest window, and make a promise to your child that you will prioritise her in every way from now on.

That means choosing her over this man - changing your locks, blocking him on your phone, and throwing his belongings out.
That means choosing her over the relationship with this man - I'm talking about never, ever letting him back, getting professional help to stop giving him headspace and allowing him to suck attention and energy from your child, drawing a line under the relationship, and moving on with your life, never to look back.

It is really very simple.
You have a choice.
An abusive alcoholic v your child.

Priorities.... thats all.

He's proved time after time that he loves alcohol more than he loves you and his child.

Block him on everything. Change the locks and be cautious of who youre opening the door to. Youve done the right thing here. Well done for getting out. His life is the culmination of his poor decisions, not yours.

I divorced my ex for the same reasons, but it sounds like even wasn’t as extreme as your ex. Always the same - out ubtil 7am, vomiting everywhere, peeing all over the house and he even cheated on me with sex workers. It was meant to improve after DD was born but when she was 10 weeks old I said enough and kicked him out.

I was the breadwinner, earning 95% of our income, giving him a very comfortable life which was ripped away from him. He had to go live in a house share and reduced from a 3 bed house to a room in a flat with strangers because all his friends are married with kids.

I did feel guilt at first but a lot of therapy taught me, as it would with you, that this is utterly misplaced. These are grown men who have made bad decisions and whose demons ask us to enable them and feed them by giving them a security blanket.

Enough. You would not be helping him, you would be helping his alcoholism. He is not safe for your or your child to be around and he is responsible for his own fate now. You have done the right thing and I promise you a year from now you won’t even recognise yourself x

@mathanxiety that’s exactly how it is, I do feel like I’m drowning with the stress and worry his drinking creates. When he’s sober, he is great with me, great with DD. But it’s got the point now where even during the ‘good’ days I’m extremely unhappy because I know the next time isn’t far away, I spend my time wondering when it’s gonna be, what he’s gonna do and how I’m gonna deal with it. I constantly feel anxious, any time he leaves the house without me because I know he will use it as an opportunity to drink. And I hate leaving the house without him because I know I’ll be coming home to him drunk. I have never left him alone with DD since the day she’s been born, I feel like a prisoner in my own home because he is inadvertently controlling my ability to go anywhere without him. And by that, I don’t mean he tries to stop me. In fact, he encourages it because he knows he’s then got an opportunity to drink. So any time I do go anywhere, I can’t relax because I’m too busy bracing myself for what mess I’ll be going home to. It’s no way to live. He can’t even be trusted to go to work as he then gets drunk on the train journey home. He’s lost his drivers license for drink driving, he’s never kept a job longer than 8 weeks during the duration of our relationship. It’s such a stressful situation. I used to give into his pleads and believe his promises and apologies were sincere. But the more these situations happen, the more hardened to it I have become. My eyes have been opened by the fact that he hasn’t attended his last 4 appointments now. If he genuinely wanted the help, it would be at the top of his priority list for his own sake aswell as mine and DD. What he actually wants is to carry on living the life of a drunk, but somewhere and someone to come back to when he’s had his fill.. until next time, then the cycle repeats. I have made so many sacrifices for the sake of standing by him because he made me believe he really did want to change. But the truth is, he doesn’t. And I will not allow myself and DD to be dragged along in the chaos he creates anymore. We deserve, and are worth so much more than his next bottle of vodka.

@graygoose I did used to feel guilt, I’m naturally a very empathetic person and I know that alcoholism is an illness.. But the longer this goes on, the situations his drinking exposes us to, and his lack of willingness or effort to do anything about it has changed the way I view the situation. He’s had help offered to him, which I said I would fully support if he took it. But he isn’t doing it, so I no longer believe that he’s serious about wanting to stop drinking. It’s difficult to feel any empathy for someone who refuses to help themselves, yet expects me to suffer alongside. And more importantly, DD. He seems oblivious to the fact that his drinking could result in her being removed from my care if I allowed him to stay here while still actively drinking. He says I’m exaggerating the situation, he denies there is any domestic abuse because he’s never physically harmed me. I’ve given up hope now, his actions completely contradict his words, and he has exhausted me. Both myself and DD deserve, and have every right to a normal, healthy, stable, life. And that is not something we would never have with him around.