wow

So my husband says he’s an alcoholic and a drug addict…and I had no idea. Just this past Monday I told my therapist he wasn’t when she asked. I said the same thing to my mom last week. I explained away his blackouts, told her that he was far from drinking every day, that his father is an alcoholic, but he is not. Only he is. How the fuck have I lived with someone for 5 1/2 years and had no idea that he’d never been sober for more than a day? That if he isn’t drinking he’s smoking pot, or taking xanax or vicoden or something else. That I’ve never had more than a glimpse of a sober man. That I wasn’t fucking crazy every time he was acting "off" but swore he hadn’t been drinking. How did I miss this?????

He told me all of this last night and my ears starting ringing again. He said he understands now how I could say that I’m not in love with him anymore. That he’s been hating me for it for these last several weeks, but he realizes I wasn’t married to the man I thought I was, and that living with a lie, even one I believed, could obviously have pushed me to that. Holy freaking cow.

Here’s the thing….one of the biggest reasons I’ve pulled back from guy #2 (who, btw, totally has a name, but I feel like I better not lay that one out on a silver platter for any clever internet stalkers I may have. In any case, this guy #2 shit is driving me crazy, so I’m giving him a fake name. Guy #2 now equals Matthew. Just to be clear – not his real name. Okay, moving on) is that I know he is an alcoholic, and a drug addict. But, funny story, none of that is news to me. I’ve always know that about him, or that he uses those things to get through his days. But his life has always been pretty shitty in the present moment too. John has a super dark past, but our life together was kind of hearts and flowers if you look at it on a day-to-day basis – not anything that should drive a guy to need to escape and to lie about it. Matthew’s life is…well let’s just say he goes through pretty heavy shit, and it seems like it’s on a regular basis. He chooses the wrong girls. Or maybe I’m biased, maybe his issues just blow up faster because he’s out in the open with all of his alcohol/drug pitfalls, unlike my super sneaky husband, but I know those girls he dated were absolutely shit ass crazy. Anyway, so I’ve pulled back from Matthew, thinking that I need to acknowledge that I can’t save him from that stuff, that he would be bad for me, that he needs to pull his shit together before I would ever know if we would work together. I’ve been looking and comparing the two of them, and I’ve had to admit that John has his shit more together, even though I believe in Matthew and that he could be anything he wanted to be if he cared to be it. Ahahahahaha….he’s exactly like my husband, but with fewer lies.

Now to be fair to John, he’s acknowledging this stuff and trying to deal with it, whereas Matthew is going along with business as usual. But again, he now has all of my shit piled on top of the big dog pile of crazy that he was already dealing with. He and I were good friends, he and my husband were good friends, and now we’re just a fucked up love triangle and he’s down two members of his support system. Yeah, I’d like to be drunk every day too with all of this shit, but I can’t function like that.

So anyway, now all my reasons that John is so much better than Matthew: out the window. They are more or less the same, except I’m married to one and totally over him, and the other is one of my best friends and I’ve obviously fallen in love with him. Shit. Back to square one. I can’t leave John for Matthew, or it will just be a huge vicious circle. We all need to fix our shit, separately, so we can figure this out. But I think Matthew has closed himself off to this pain, and there’s no way he’ll put himself out there right now by trying to change who he is for me. Not that he should change for me, he should do it for himself, but that kind of change is scary, and leaves you very vulnerable, and he has zero support system. John is changing (or says he is) because he’s decided he needs to, and in part because he wants me to stay. He may actually go through with it. But do I even care? Don’t get me wrong, I care about him, I want this for him, but our years together were built on lies that corrupted our marriage from within. Do I stay and give him a chance? Try to fall in love with John 2.0? Try to forget that I love and care about someone else and I’m leaving him without a lifeline? I’m really not delusional. It’ not my job to save Matthew. I really don’t believe he needs saving, I just think he’s got to figure out for himself who he wants to be and go for it, and that things will fall in line for him. But John will not tolerate me keeping Matthew as a friend, and I don’t know if I could be just friends with him. 

The only reason I haven’t had sex with Matthew is because he’s stopped me – twice directly, several times from instigating. I am crazy attracted to him. I don’t think we could possibly go back to being just friends. Every day I want to see him, go dancing with him, go drinking with him, and forget all of this. Twisted and fucked up is what I am. I want to escape. I want to be like them. I want to stop being so fucking mature and put together and do whatever the fuck I want. I’m not good for Matthew, because it would be a struggle for me to help him and support him rather than just fall in line with him. Ugggggggghhhhhhhh. I have to stop. I have to function today, I have to be present mentally at my job and not just thinking about this shit all day long. I’ve got to go.

Thanks for the listen.