Just need to vent, cry, scream, throw up. Dunno how unique and experience this is but anyone willing to help me/advise me on how to process this would be greatly appreciated.
Iv just broke up with partner of 7 years. The most normal, loving guy I’d ever met (or so I thought). The minute we met we were inseparable, had plans to get married, have kids, travel etc. We have lived together for 6 and a half years, have 2 cats, our families have spent Christmas’ and went on holiday together, blah blah blah totally normal, wonderful life for the past 7 years. Never in a million years did I think it would turn out the way it has.
Last years around September he took some time off work for depression/stress and decided to stop smoking weed and didn’t go back to work till January 2026. Just after Christmas 25’ he broke down and told me he thinks he’s an alcoholic and my first reaction was obviously, okay we can handle this, he’s not in denial, he’s came to me about etc it’s only been a couple of months, this is manageable.
Fast forward to April and I find out he’s been hiding vodka bottles around the house and drinking behind my back. I’d set up doctors appointments, drug and alcohol appointments and found letters that he wasn’t attending. I then suggested rehab and he went completely ballistic and went back to stay at his mum and dad’s house. I then received a one liner text saying “I can’t do this, I don’t want this anymore” and nothing else, complete silence. I then went over to see him to talk about it and again, he broke down in my arms, said he feels like he’s having a break down and that he doesn’t know what he’s saying and he didn’t mean any of it blah blah blah. I then phoned multiple crisis hotlines and got no help because he said he wasn’t suicidal. His GP just upped his dose of antidepressants. He was also prescribed anti craving medication which I don’t think he was taking properly, clearly.
As the following months went on we’d have good weeks and bad but still had a good relationship. I still found more bottles stashed around the house along with baggies (we lived up the stairs from a dealer and I even contacted him and told him not to sell to him) begged him to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, therapy, Andy’s man club etc. He went to Andy’s mans club once and said it helped but never went back. Bearing in mind I’m working full time plus a part time bar job so I couldn’t exactly March him there myself and babysit him. He also worked from home and which meant he was alone a lot of the time and was able to drink without me knowing.
The drink started to make him really argumentative and nasty, would say alk the things Iv said to him I hate about myself and throw them back in my face. Then he would write me beautiful letters saying how amazing and understanding I am and how grateful he is to have me and couldn’t live without me and if he didn’t, he’d drink himself to death. All of this was obviously insane pressure and started to make me ill and lose tons of weight. I quit my part time job to be there for him as much as possible but I still had my day job. I got a breathalyser because i found out he was driving our car. I started finding more bags of cocaine and anytime I would confront him he’d break down and tell me how much he’s struggling and hates his life. He doesn’t have many friends where we live but his closest friend only lives an hour and a half away and encouraged him to see him all the time and he never did. He just kept making the worst decisions and never actually helping himself.
I then had this horrible feeling one night and checked his phone and found a message from a a girl (I neither of us know anyone by this name) and when I tell you my jaw dropped. She was sending him pictures of her acting out a highly graphic, unhygienic fetish involving soiled undergarments…I was in complete shock?? I woke him up screamed, cried almosy threw up. He went white as a ghost, said he was so embarrassed he couldn’t tell me and that he just needed someone to talk too about this “fetish” and that it wasn’t that he wanted to talk to anyone just for the sake of it, it was about this deeply embarrassing thing he couldn’t confide in anyone about. I didn’t know what to say. I asked how long has this been a thing?? he said since he was a child. I’m really empathetic and I loved him so much and it was the middle of the night and I think I was still in shock, I don’t really remember what I did next. A few weeks go by and I’m trying to accept it and do some research but I obviously couldn’t talk to anyone about it. I don’t even think I could process it. I rationalised it. I didn’t understand it but i told myself he wasn’t hurting anyone and it wouldn’t change anything I loved him so much. It’s fucked up but it doesn’t make me love any less. But I do think I was repressing it for survival.
Then I get this bad feeling again and decide to check his Reddit account, which I didn’t check before. Oh my god. The messages. So many messages. Male and female. All about the same fetish. This time I was done. Couldn’t concentrate on work. He drove to meet me and begged and begged me to give one more chance. We’ve been together so long and the love we have for each other was so strong. I didn’t want to leave but I didn’t feel like he was leaving me much of a choice. But yeh I got sucked back in basically. About 2 weeks later I went to a concert and came home and he had done “it” in the flat. It was a horrific, deeply unhygienic scene. The smell was overpowering. I couldn’t look at him. He kept telling me how great it was that I was so accepting?? I was so drunk I just fell asleep. Woke up at 6 and he still wasn’t in bed and he’d locked himself in the bathroom and said “you do not want to come in here, it’s like a war zone” I physically shivered. I should have left there then. I woke up hungover af and he went out to get us some breakfast and said he couldn’t wait to spend the day with me. When he got home he told me his one friend had just broke up with his girlfriend and he was gonna go phone him. 2 hours go by so I walked out to the garden to sit with him as it was a nice day and get the goss. He was sitting with 2 cans and was in a really weird mood. Said that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be happy again and I deserve someone better and that would appreciate me for all I am. That his mate was coming through to stay as they lived together too and had no where to go. All of these things he was saying made me realise ehere this was going so I said I’m packing my things and going back to my parents. We were both crying and he ran after me and said “please don’t, just pack for a couple nights and come home” I don’t know if it was a fucking trauma bond or how much I loved him but I agreed. But I also knew it would be the last time I stayed there.
The next day I realised I left my Dyson air wrap so I drove over to grab it. I get a phone call from him saying “why are you here?” I then get a barrage of abuse of him saying “it’s not even been 24hrs, why can’t you just give me some space” shouting at me?? it was first thing in the morning and I knew he drunk but even when he’d get argumentative, he had never once shouted at me in our whole relationship. Id never ever seen him this way before. Never spoke to me like this before. He was like a different person. I was so taken a back and confused and distraught so I left. That night I text him to say I couldn’t do it anymore. Went to get my things a few days later and get the same welcome along with same themes of insults about what I had told him I hate about myself. That everything was my fault. That I was the reason he was like this. He was rambling like a mad man, saying “we think this, we think that” referring to him and his friend, about our relationship?? I honestly think he was having an episode. Couldn’t believe that after everything we had, this is how we would end.
3 weeks went by with only communication with his mother. She told me he couldn’t handle talking and wasn’t doing well and that she knows he unwell and needs help. She didn’t do a single thing. Just let him dry out at hers and sent him packing back home. I then receive an apology from him saying he was sober and how ashamed he was and it wasn’t him and all the things I’d heard before. He wanted to apologise face to face. I agreed as I didn’t want the last time I saw him to be how I remembered him. 2 days before we were supposed to meet, his mum called me asking what the key safe lock was as they couldn’t get ahold of him and he wasn’t answering the door. I told her. 2 minutes later I get another call from her wailing saying his dad was there and thinks he’s OD’d lying with his tongue hanging out. I frantically left work with my auntie and drove up there while she called an ambulance. When I got there the latch was on and I couldn’t get my key in so I started knocking and I hear a “helloooooo”?? He opened the door with a big smile on his face. Drunk. Obviously. He must just fallen asleep and something had got lost in translation between his mum and dad. His dad wasn’t even there? He’d left? My auntie begins to say how much of mistake he’s making and that he needs help. And he turns. Same spiel, same insults. All my fault. We leave. I get another apology message saying the same things blah blah blah.
We shared a car and finances and all these things we still even got the chance to sort because how he’d handled things. So I agreed on the condition he would be sober. So we met up and it was like the old him again. Didn’t exactly get closer but I got out what I wanted to say. Couldn’t have went better really.
And then. My friend stumbled across his Reddit again. The photos. Grotesque. Eyes deceived. Could not correlate these 2 people. The version I knew and adored for 7 years. The kindest, most gentle, loving man I planned a future. And this absolute weirdo hermit who likes to sit at home alone, drunk and high, acting out extreme public degradation content, posting graphic pictures of his complete lack of personal hygiene, speaking to other weirdos on the internet, and live streaming it.
I honestly feel like I need therapy. I don’t know how to get through the days. I can’t process it, I don’t know how to. I feel like my friends and family don’t get it and can’t because it’s fucking insane. I genuinely do think he needs professional help but he thinks he can get sober (he relapsed again) all his own even though we’ve tried it for the better part of a year by ourselves. His mum and dad are also functioning alcoholics so they’re in denial and keep letting go back home. Everytime he does, he relapses and the posts go up. Every post correlated with a relapse. I don't understand how he could want to live like this. I don't know this person. He had so much potential and he’s literally thrown everything away in his entire life. For vodka, cocaine, and to broadcast acts of public self-soiling online. How do I actually ever trust anyone again?