I’m a family man – I love my family but I’m not helping anyone in this family any more by allowing our life to carry on as it is. It’s my fault – I should have spoken up sooner. Instead everything is my fault and there is no way through that. I support, care and love everyone in this house – I work to make life better for everyone and provide everything that they need financially. However I’m lacking in areas. My love life has been on hold now for 10 years – I have zero drive for intimacy outside of sofa cuddles and that has had a profound impact on my other half who craves more. I think there are many factors for this – I think naturally I don’t feel the ‘need’. This is where my faults have crept in and silently built up walls. Alcohol is involved and recreational drugs on both sides however my OH is on a slippery slope quickly with alcohol. I know we are going to get to the point in the evening where everything is going to be on me – and my silence has created a situation where there is no interest in hearing anything from my side. I’m living with someone that is intoxicated through one way or another every time I see them other than the first 5 minutes in the morning. It’s depressing – I think I am depressed. I love this person though – I’ve loved her for 20 years – we’ve built a life and a family. We have the most amazing little girl – she’s 11, she’s clever, beautiful and so emotionally astute. I dread the thought of crushing her with this problem as the only way out I can see is to leave. I think my OH needs me to leave to seek the help she wants – I’m the blame for the overuse of substances on her part. On mine she needs to seek the help she needs. I’m also then enabling this – the call comes we need some weed, or we do the weekly shop – how many bottles of wine this week – 7 – knowing full well that when Thursday comes I’m going to the local shop to pick up more. This isn’t shared – it’s a one person consumption and it worries me and I don’t find it remotely attractive.
I’m the packhorse in this relationship now – the person that goes out to work to provide, comes home to the requests for something, time, money, emotional support and I’m tired! I’m tired and I’m unhealthy. I pick myself up in the morning and I do my day in the knowledge that the cycle will be the same as yesterday. I also blame myself for not breaking the cycle. How can I have let this get to this point, why haven’t I done something, why do I feel that I’ve got no voice to raise these issues so instead I just get on with it and let them fester within me. I’m trapped in a relationship with someone that I love to the end of the world but neither of us are happy here now. I say that – 90% of the time we can appear to be happy with each other but we both know there is an underlying issue that is going to rear it’s ugly head again and again and it’s an issue that I seem to have been completely incapable of sorting out. I’m a manager of 15 people in an office – I can sort out the issues there standing on my head but I can’t sort this out at home and it makes me feel week, immature and a failure.
Then we get to my daughter. How the hell do I tell this person, this person that I love seeing every day – that I want to sit by and witness her life growing up, that I don’t want to miss anything for that it’s not that we don’t like each other – but we’re in an incredibly unhealthy relationship with only a very faint light at the end of the tunnel which gets fainter day by day. How do I do that to her and how do I do that to me. Do I think I would be a better dad and a better person if I wasn’t here – I don’t know. If it was a yes maybe it would make the prospect of doing such a thing seem a lesser event but I don’t.
I don’t know what to do but I do know that I and we can’t carry on as we are. We are going to end up resenting each other and for two people that love each other and have done wholly for a long time that seems criminal to let it go that far.