I recently gave my wife an ultimatum. It's a new step for me; I've never given anyone I love an ultimatum before and frankly, it hurt my heart to do so. Nevertheless, I think it was the correct thing to do in this situation. I'm not sure how important the actual issue is to my problem but here's a paragraph or two of background in the event that it is:

I quit my job and began working for myself a few weeks ago. The new job requires me to be out of town and my first foray into this new employment, I was scheduled to be gone for five days. On the morning of the fourth day however, my wife failed to make our scheduled 7am call. Nor did she respond to my calls or texts. I can't over state how incredibly out of character this is for her - she blows up my phone incessantly, even if I have told her that I am too busy to get calls or messages.

Hurrying home, six hours away, I had someone go to the house to check on her. Failing to get her to answer the door, I asked them to enter the house to look for her. They found her in a meth induced psychosis hiding in the bedroom. She had been clean almost two years. She is also on parole and a dirty UA has the potential to send her back to prison for life without the possibility of parole.

So, still under the influence when I arrived home, I waited till morning to have the conversation. I told her that while I loved her very much, that if she chose drugs over me, our marriage, and our lives together one more time, that I would leave. Then I did something unprecedented for me, I gave her my word.

She assured me that this was the last time, that this time is different, etc. I know that she believes what she is saying but I am an addict myself, albeit one with over twenty-five years clean, and I know a thing or two about addiction. I know that if nothing changes, nothing changes. I know too, though she has forgotten, that she said the same thing last time she relapsed and the time before that, and the time...

I believe that she will relapse again. It may take a year, two years or even three, but she is not doing anything different. She is just hanging on by her fingernails, not adding any tools to her toolbox. Eventually, without any new tools, I can see no other end game but her picking up again. Which brings me to the dilemma that I didn't see coming when I gave her this ultimatum:

I find myself in this state of limbo where I feel like I'm simply waiting for our relationship to be over. I'm feeling reluctant to invest in it any further because I believe that she will use again and then I'm going to be forced to leave. So what do I do during the interim of the next two years or so? If I am right, then any further investment in 'us' is lost.

I feel like I've one foot in the relationship and one foot out. I'm thinking, for the first time in our relationship, about what my life would look like without the relationship. I'm thinking about the direction of my life going forward without her and almost nothing about the direction of our life going forward together. I am finding myself becoming resentful of the time I am giving up waiting for an eventuality that I cannot see us avoiding.

I am certainly not ready to preemptively leave, but I am in uncharted territory, feeling alone, confused and uncertain. I would welcome thoughts.