I can only speak for myself personally. When I met the A I am with he hid his addiction very very well. In the beginning he was sweet, kind, patient, giving and chivalrous.  I was at that time in "need".  I don't think so much as I am craving abuse. I think that I do not go through a negotiation with a potential boyfriend. I commit day one. That can be good in that I am a loyal and loving person but I tend to leave myself out of the equation.  I am someone who gives too much to a relationship and not enough to myself.  That is changing but it is changing slowly rather than overnight.  I have to remind myself daily to put myself back in the picture talk about self abnegation.  I forget my needs have a place too!  I am so used to being last on the list and want someone else to care for me because I don't now how to!

I think as the A's illness progressed he became more irritable, more angry and more demanding.  He was certainly not that in the beginning. What I needed to do in the beginning was to hold back and hold off on making commitments.  I am not married to him and I did not need to make the kinds of commitments I made.  Loneliness is a huge issue for me, feeling deprived is another.  I felt connected in a relationship in a way that I now feel connected to my program.  The program provides that for me now in ways the relationship never did.  I no longer feel I am walking around with a huge hole in my gut all alone in the world.

Boundaries are hard for some of us. I can scream and shout and demand the A does not do certain things.  He punishes me for it in many many ways and quite frankly he continues to go on and do some of the things he always did. Some things did change, his friends stopped being able to use the house as a second home.  That was a hard thing for me. I had to do it all physically when his friends were around I shut the door. I stopped being as people pleasing.

I think the A's promise too they are not all the time bad and awful. My A will go from being really nasty and awful to saying I love you and want to make it work  I think he means it but without some substance abuse program it is fruitless. 

There are core issues for me that have never been dealt with in this relationship. The A does what he wants on the holidays. He will always do that - that is not enough for me.  It has not been enogh for the past 5 years.  I have tried cooking an alternative celebration for him. He shows up in a stupor I just feel used and discarded. So the holiday issue was never negotiated. I would rather sit in resentment over that than acknowledge he does not care about my needs on a holiday and give up asking him to do "something".  This issue was there the first holiday we spent together and will always be there.  For me it symbolic of how I leave myself out. The A gets his needs met, believe me has the holiday he wants. I do not get my needs met and I stew in resentment and toxicity rather than act on my needs.

So I see it as complicated stuff. There is a long long time for some of us around the done issue.  For me the "done" is and was complicated by my huge commitment to the relationship, our pets, our mutual stuff.  It has also been complicated by lack of funds (which is further complicated by the A's total lack of responsibility in that area), illness and much more.  The "done" is a hard thing to get to but in some ways a good bottom line.  I have more bottom lines these days than I used to. Before I had none. There are certain lines I don't cross but I do better when I can hold the boundary gently but firmly rather than I arrive at it in chaos and resentment.

Maresie.

In my situation, I have removed myself from trying to understand my A when he is drinking.  I am now on the outside looking in.  We do not crave abuse, we crave the love and respect we were given before the abuse.  I am so sorry you are having to go through this.

They are capable of love and do love us, it is just that their actions are not telling us that.  I have treated alcohol as another woman, that has no feelings.  

This is how I think when he is drinking, (referring alcohol to her)

He spends more time with her.

He holds her more than he does me.

She has no heart, she has no feelings, yet he can't let her go.

She has control over him.

And with these thoughts, I feel sorry for him. He is controlled by something that is ruining his life, and his family and is blind sided to it. 

You can put a stop to the abuse.  I did. I never thought it possible, but I did.  I was mentally and physically abused.  Very, Very Badly.  Now he does not even speak unkindly to me or even think of hitting me.  I told him I would have him put in jail and I ment it. I took the abuse for ten years ,and until I found MIP, I did not have the couarge to stand up for myself. I thank all the family here for that.  

In answer to why we put up with the abuse, it is because we love them.  We know that inside there somewhere, is the person we fell in love with.  We want that person back.  I am sending you prayers and hugs and lots of encouragement. 

(I don't want to offend anyone ,so if you are not a woman change the her to him, in my illustration.) 

This may not be much help to you, but please know that there are people who care(like me) and you need to know that you do not deserve abuse of any kind. It dosen't matter if you strip off all your clothes and run down the road calling him names, he has no right to abuse you. It took a real long time for me to realize this.  BIG HUGGGGS Jade

We learn that these people are addicts and very sick with a disease.

would we stop loving them, trying to work it out with them if they had brain cancer and they were like they are? or if they had any other disease that makes a person hard, if not impossible to live with?

some people don't hang in. some have to leave.

some don't have a choice cuz the A physically leaves them.

love,debilyn who sadly still feels so strongly about her A, a very very sad, sick man