I'm just looking for a little venting and some thoughts and insights from others who have experienced life with someone with an addiction... The last couple weeks I've been thinking about leaving my alcoholic partner. We've been together-ish for about a year and a half (committed and living together for ten months).

At the time we became friends (and for a period of time friends with benefits) he had been sober for over a year with the help of AA, but during the first year we knew each other he relapsed and began drinking regularly again. As his friend, I expressed concern about him falling off the wagon, but I didn't press the issue as I felt like his sobriety was his responsibility. When he decided to become sober again, we became closer and I gradually started to return the feelings that he had harbored for me for most of the time we had known each other, and we became a couple. Through circumstances of life, we ended up living together a few months later. In the initial stages, we were both very happy and have often talked about our desire to one day get married.

But alas... his last stint of sobriety ended shortly after we moved in together. It began with just moderate amounts of alcohol every few weeks or so when he would go out without me, enough for me to freak out a little bit and tell him that I wouldn't be able to stay with him if he continued drinking. I came from an alcoholic home, have dated an alcoholic in the past, and although I do out to bars for the social aspect (as does my boyfriend even when he's sober), I resigned myself some time ago from ever being able to carry a relationship with anyone who drinks heavily. He initially made very strong promises to make sure the slip-ups didn't happen again, but it just got gradually worse over the last six months and over the last month or two he's been off the wagon pretty hard. I haven't left him because I still cling to the version of him that I fell in love with and know that deep down he wants to change.

But, he is different now, and our relationship is different. He's established a much larger network of friends in recent months, most of whom regularly invite him out. He's become more indifferent to our relationship, and towards me. Whereas we used to spend as much time as possible together, our time together seems less valuable to me. He makes less of an effort at communicating with me. The harder I push to make things better, the more he pushes me away. There have been nights where he goes out when I'm not able to because I work in the mornings and he'll stay out until 4 or 5 AM; which means I basically don't fall sleep on those nights and just feel emotional and exhausted at work the following day. We've been in a continual cycle of him over-drinking, doing or saying something stupid that hurts my feelings, me being pissed off the next day and him apologizing and promising that he's working on it, and then things will be fine for a week or two with modest efforts at making his sobriety stick, it starts over again. Although he'll sometimes make efforts to prove otherwise, when he's in that party mode mindset, there's a very pronounced attitude that I'm not a priority and he himself will tell me that while he needs to work on his drinking, I need to work on my co-dependency (something he's not wrong about; as someone who is traditionally kind of a loner/introvert, it's hard for me to be in this position of constantly worrying and being upset by another person's actions. And I am sometimes begrudging about sharing our limited time together throughout the week with other people, but I do make an effort to be okay with him seeing his friends and having his space and not be controlling).

I almost moved out of our apartment this weekend after he started drinking at an event with his softball league. I was just tired of the anxiety and feeling insecure in the relationship, and after all of the previous reassurances and false promises and tear-felt apologies, it was the first time he actually said to me that this is just who he is and I have to accept "occasional" drinking if we're going to stay together. So I left the party, texted him to let him know that I'd be staying at my cousin's house that night, he went on to drink all night and didn't even go home, and when we met at our apartment the next day after I got off work prepared for the break-up, he had a meltdown and started bawling in bed with me about how he wishes he didn't have all of these problems, he hates himself, he doesn't deserve me, I don't deserve to be treated this way, etc, and although this was a much more intense moment than anything I've experienced with him before, it was a lot of the same promises I've heard before. In the end, he asked me to please not go away and said he doesn't want me gone, and even though I imagine I'll probably be in this situation with him again soon, I agreed to stay.

I'm sort of lost with this. I've questioned myself and my own values over the last few months; wondered if maybe there was something I could do to come to peace with his condition and accept that he might not actually get better. I wonder how much of our problems are related to the alcoholism and how much of it is normal couple stuff that comes up within the early stages of living with each other (loss of emotion, petty irritations, etc). I wonder if we're at different points in our lives (he assures me we're not). I think he's serious about his sobriety this time, but again, I've been disappointed several times before. He's made good initial steps, but I realize they are just steps and ultimately making sobriety stick beyond a week or two is a totally different animal. There's this constant sense of tug-of-war between wanting to hang out with him as much as I can and being supportive of him, but also distrust, uncertainty, and feeling like I should begin detaching and giving us both space. He's been discussing his problem with me candidly over the last couple days and he's re-affirmed a few times that a lot of his recent detachment towards me has been a result of his addiction and knowing that I interfere with him getting to do what he wants to do even when he knows it's self-destructive. However, while he said he still wants to be with me and to try to make it work while he deals with the addiction, he also admitted to the slight fear that he still might not feel that strongly about the relationship even after a few months of sobriety; this is something that worries me a lot. Like maybe I'm waiting to get my boyfriend back but he might not be there even on the other side when he comes out of all of this. Despite everything, I still very much love him.