The crappy foundation from which it was built
After dating seriously for about 6 months, we stopped using protection. We had been seeing each other a total of 15 months now and if we were going to have a child/children, I didn’t have forever to decide. I was in my mid 30s, and didn’t want to have a child after 40.
At this time time, I worked a salaried job that sometimes required flexible hours and days. Not often, but occasionally I worked a Saturday or worked an evening. It is social services and people have lives outside 8-5. I was moving out of that position (the hours and travel were too much) but on the way out, I was helping a client with learning a new job that suddenly put my schedule into a tailspin. Douche Bag put pressure on me to not show up (you are leaving that job anyway! They should figure it out!), and made passive aggressive comments about what I was really doing.
I quickly put him in his place; If you don’t trust me, we don’t have a relationship.
One Saturday, I took his car to work because my (larger car) allowed him to run an errand to Home Depot. The tags were expired but I wasn’t too worried about it as I was just running across town. I met with my client, helped him learn his job at this grocery store he was working at. My boyfriend was supposed to exchange cars with me at some point, but didn’t. I called… and called… and called, with no answer. I couldn’t take my client home in a car not insured to me and with expired tags, so I ended up paying for a cab.
When I got home, he was “past the point of thinking clearly” drunk. He hadn’t been this drunk since before we started dating. I was seething angry. He had left my client stranded. This was not only my job, but also my responsibility for this person’s safety and I had trusted him to follow through and he didn’t. We had a huge fight. The kids were with their dad that day. He kicked a coffee table over and broke it. He accused me of cheating. I told him to leave. He still had a lease on his own place even thought he stayed with me most nights, but he refused. I called the police who told me basically that he was an unofficial tenant and I couldn’t force him to leave unless I pressed charges for property damage and had him arrested. I really didn’t want to press charges. He was a drunk ass and deserved it, but he was also waiting to get a felony expunged from 7 years ago and new charges would interfere with that. I wasn’t ready to destroy his life over a broken table but he refused to leave. I did lock him out of the house (illegally) and he pounded on my door past midnight. It was December and below freezing. He was too drunk to feel the cold and I was worried about his safety but refused to give in and let him in. At some point, the police were called back for a noise disturbance as he was hollering outside the house and the convinced him to go home. They threatened to charge him with public intoxication. They were sympathetic to the fact that he was completely out of control.
He called me at 5 am. He had sobered up some and he agreed to stop drinking entirely.
After our baby was born, I asked myself, why I had given him another chance after that day. I loved him, but I wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t how good relationships start. My niece, who stopped over that night, was angry. She told most of my family about his behavior that night and just about everyone didn’t like him.
But he seemed honestly remorseful and ready to change and it was our first real fight.
Christmas came and went. He continued to not drink. Two days after Christmas, my period was late and I got a positive pregnancy test.
I started my new job on New Years Day. He got a ticket that day for driving with expired tags. He initially lied about the ticket but eventually over the next month, the truth came out. He had been drinking. It was the first day he had a day off where I worked and what does he do? He drinks. He got a ticket for the expired tags and an open container. They tested him for DUI but he blew lower than the limit.
Of course I was angry that he lied. That he drank the first day I wasn’t there to “babysit him” and that he probably thought he would get away with it.
Maybe, because I grew up in a family of addicts, I have poor boundaries. Maybe, because I work in social services, I am too understanding. Maybe I have daddy issues, (who is also an alcoholic turned drug addict). I don’t know, but I still didn’t use words like alcoholic at this point. He had drinking problems, sure. But full blown alcohol? He could go days with out drinking. He held a job, paid his bills, and although was irresponsible about some things (like re-registering his damn vehicle), he was a functioning adult. Addicts were people like those in my family that could not keep a job and ruined themselves financially. It wasn’t someone that liked to party on the weekends.
By April, things were… better. We had some growing pains as a family and as a couple. I had some health issues with my pregnancy and my thyroid and was not in good health and he picked up the slack at home. He was overly doting at times and very excited about becoming a dad. He did go back to drinking but only got drunk maybe twice over the next several months. He would have a few beers a couple times a week and I thought things were going well. He was more than a little disappointed that my health and chronic pain put a serious dent in our sex life, but I think we were both hopeful that it was temporary.
Things got worse after the baby was born.