Funny how I can understand, accept and deal with so many truths and yet keep finding things I am completely in denial about. (And yes of course I know there are deeper issues, these are superficial things but I'm just making some realisations about them).

For example, the A has all of these "bad habits" (lol) that I haven't accepted and let go of because I still think of them as "stages" he is going through that I have some influence over. Wrong wrong wrong.

When I met him, he was messy, sometimes gross, but he would get to a point once a month or so where his mess bothered him and he would have a huge clean-up and be obsessive and clean for a while. But the mess gets worse, more disgusting, now it is not mess but utter filth; I've described the room he plays and sleeps in, it's horrific, a mattress on the floor surrounded by rubbish, rotting food and cans and bottles piled about a foot high,  he put one of my doona covers on my old doona 18 months ago and hasn't changed it since, the same sheet and pillow case for over a year too, icky I keep waiting for him to swing back into "clean" mode but he won't, this isn't a stage, it's the progression. Duh.

He used to go through stages of poor hygene but then he would shower, wash his clothes, shave, get a haircut and look and smell good again, now he showers once a week if that, he has 2 sets of clothes that he sleeps in, he washes them once every 2 or 3 weeks and refuses to take his boots off at all, even sleeps in them so his feet don't stink out the house, the beard and hair are so unkempt and he looks like a bum, I feel embarrassed in public with him, and keep dropping hints that he might shave, get some new clothes that don't have holes in them, because I'm waiting for the "stage" to end but it isn't a stage, it's progression... he doesn't clean his teeth because they are so rotted and sore so he gargles with whisky and believes this will "get rid of any germs". He really looks like he sleeps under a bridge, not in a nice neat home with all of the facilities and plenty of healthy food etc.

Physical intimacy used to go through good and bad stages, now he has no interest whatsoever unless he is drunk and that's no fun at all, this isn't a stage that's going to end either, it's more progression and he's too grotty anyway and can't be bothered cleaning himself up for the occasion. No point holding out for any improvement there either and it is NOT a reflection on my own attractiveness, I'm just starting to realise that too.

So, there's no real point to this, it just dawned on me earlier, that I was waiting for these "stages" to end and thinking I could still influence them by example, with comments here and there, but I can't. He treats himself like garbage and he might forever. When I started to stop enabling, I stopped hunting for his clothes so I could wash them. I stopped cooking for him because he was always so rude about it so he just eats rubbish if he eats at all. He seems more comfortable with that. He talks so often of how old we are (we are both 37); recently I told him I'm not content to live in a non-physical relationship and he tried to tell me I have to accept that I am old now, as if at 37 I have dried up and shouldn't be considering sex as those days are behind me; I was hurt and outraged at the time but that isn't about me at all, it's how he sees himself, an old man who is filling in his "twilight years" by drinking and playing computer games.

None of this has anything to do with me; now that I don't "help" by cleaning his things and feeding him it becomes more obvious that he really doesn't care and there isn't a single thing i can do to change that. And when I don't comment on his behaviour or try to get him to make changes,  he's actually very pleasant to me and life in my home is good; he just stays in his room with the door shut and rots. When he gets in his nasty moods, it's when I try to get close or talk to him about it. 

So, it's not worth analyzing any further, these are just my observations today, now it's time to let them go. I can be sad for him all I like; it won't make a shred of difference.

I am reading these posts and remembering AH#1...by the grace of creator, i am not ever in that again......

his hygiene

his nastiness

his drinking to access

always losing jobs due to drinking , what else??

dunno if he had any attachments to other women

Mari, I don't blame u one bit......u could end up being stuck w/an unemployed AND stinky person  and the emotional attachment to another woman??? omg....

one thing i can say about my A brother closest to me....he is clean......the younger one??? he is b.o. on two legs.....just awful.....even when he is as "clean" as he is ever gonna be...uses drugs now instead of booze.....i mean drugs on TOP of his prescriptions for his ptsd and anxiety......and his hygiene, i don't know how the 1/2 way house which is a church puts up with his smelly icky bodily odor.....I can't be around it...i literally retch when i smell nasty , dirty, body odor......one of the reasons i shop at krogers/tom thumb  rather then walmart....

i am not ocd on cleanliness, but i MUST have my bath when i get up....and when i go to bed.....i make my own organic toothpaste and i use it 2x per day.....hygiene is a BIG thing to me and i know this goes back to my A mother who  "let herself go" and STANK....also AH#1 and the youngest brother......i just cannot even fathom how one can let themselves go like that...like Tasha said,  alcohol takes their dignity and soul......so true and i on my knees thanking universal creator i am   #1, not an A in that shape          #2, not with any A anymore.......its almost like i can "smell"  the red flags and i listen.....

sending  Melly and Mari strength and good energy..........life IS better than this, girls....I know.......program changed my "who i let in my life...who i keep away"  big time.....

I feel great compassion for one who has lost his/her soul to the drink, but I aint gonna live with another one.....

i remember my mother,  unbathed for DAYS and running around the house naked, shrieking and screaming, attacking us kids with vacumn pipes or brooms, or even knives....I would "disarm" her and watch her stagger around condemning me for taking away her weapon  then passing out so undignified anywhere the floor decided to welcome her and we kids, dragging her dead weight body UP the stairs and pouring her into her bed which stunk like she did...........

sober, i hear she was clean, but she was just not sober enough for me to remember it.......she ended up drinking herself into the grave....she took a bottle of wine on the yacht and locked herself in the head by the bow and sipped and passed away.....offender found her body the next day and while HE goes for the police, he makes my 16 year old brother stay w/the body........who leaves a 16 year old child w/a dead body and its his MOTHER....

i remember looking at her in her coffin,  and not knowing what to say to this now deceased woman who brought me in the world, but wreaked such havoc on my life.....i just gazed down at her and wished her good luck in the afterlife.....(i understood that she would have to experience  the karma she visited upon her own children)    

i looked at her and really didn't feel anything...no sense of loss....like i had totally disconnected from her and most likely it was waaaay back......i shared that w/my best friends who accompanied me....i thought i was weird, not being interested in her in life and now in death.....now i understand.......she never gave me cause to have any bond with her...unless u want to call it a betrayal bond....when in the beginning, i tried to win her love, to win her acceptance and wanted her to want me,  then that all went away by the time i was 10 or so.....i just didn't care anymore.....my grandparents were my parents until that lovely family who came into my life at age 12 and embraced me as their own.....

I CAN love  I CAN bond....i DID bond w/the family who took me in...embraced me and fought so hard to adopt me......i adored them.....my mom G. was my idol....i loved going in the car with her and grocery shopping.....she would take us for a drive, the long way home from the market and tell me great stories and we would get some  fried clams and cole slaw, fries and ice cream  at the dairy....that was one of our many mom and daughter rituals we shared together.......i still miss her....(she passed in 2004) ..she was my only mom....

sorry...didn't mean to get carried away on Melly's post....this just brought up a lot of memories.....

Hi Melly, great share, I can so relate to this. My ex rotted also and I like you thought it would pass and get better, I waited 20 years and it never did. Sex was one of the first things to go because I realised it took my self respect away because it was only about his needs and only while drunk, disgusting really. Your awareness is so clear, next is acceptance and you are clearly working this program, well done. Its not easy, when I got aware and began accepting everything in my life got better but I have to be really careful because I tend to re-think myself into believing things can change again and again. I have no power and its such a relief. Good on you Melly.x