I've written to this forum a few times about my evolving situation with my ABF.  We were both in denial about his alcoholism until he went on a bender, was arrested for drunk&disorderly on the 4th of July, and then kept up the drinking for another two days (we were out of touch).  We don't live together, but he was at my place half-time prior to the arrest.  He temporarily sobered up, both in terms of drinking and mentally.  He didn't drink at first, and he dropped into AA meetings.  I took a crash course in what it meant to be a partner to an alcoholic by reading AlAnon and Codependency literature, also discussing these issues frankly with my therapist.  Saw how I had become codependent and enabling.  I asked him to stop spending time at my house (both with me and without me) and that was a rough adjustment.  After 30 days, he learned that the courts dropped the charge.  He had also gotten back his job.  Things were ok between us, so he became complacent, and I learned not long afterwards that he started drinking again. After the first time, he said that he was all the more clear on the importance of sobriety and treatment, but I learned ten days later that he was regularly dipping his toe in the water (or should I say, beer).   I reached a point of codependency insanity, weighing whether "a little drinking" was ok, but then trying to get his friends to narc on him to me, and I realized that I needed a break.  I also wanted his decision to go sober and seek treatment to be his own, on his own terms, in his own time.  He coudn't do it "for" me, because we all know how little chance of success there is in this motive.  I asked for it, and while he was sorely upset and despondent, we agreed on a time-frame of 6-8 weeks.  That is the summary of where I last left off these posts.

Before I continue, I need to come clean about two things.  One, in all of this time, even now, I have yet to really embrace a 12-step program for myself.  I have my therapist, I have devoured books by Toby Rice Drews, Melodie Beattie, and Pia Melody, but haven't done much face-to-face.  I am still unsure.  The second thing that I need to come clean about is that from Dec 2013-July 2014, I was having an affair with my so-called best friend, who, himself, is a married man.  I was escaping from my problems.  Big time.  I had no illusion that I could have a legitimate above-board relationship with the married man.  I knew that it was just going to be an affair, but I was lying to everyone about it.  Even to you guys, in my first few posts.  Ending the affair, understanding it, etc., has been my concrete work in the last few weeks.  It has sucked, but it has been the right thing to do.  I found, perhaps not surprisingly, that once I was ready to really address the problems in my relationship with my ABF, the house of cards that the affair was built on began to crumble.  On the surface, the MM had little interest in supporting me through the hard work I was doing with my ABF, and he all of a sudden got sucked into a wellspring of other problems of his own making that I was not involved with.   He was suddenly unavailable.  While emotionally, this hurts, logically, I know that this is a blessing in disguise, and I will get to do my work and my growth on my own.    Maybe this time, it will work.  I also would be arrogant to assert at this point that I have moved beyond the affair.  Humbly, I could just as easily fall back into it, if the MM became more available again.  One day at a time.  Each day I get stronger.  If he ever tests my boundaries, perhaps I will do better at safeguarding them.  I do not like being a cheater.

So, we are back to the situation with the ABF.  We have been on break for six weeks, and we had set a 6-8 week term on the break.  We've been in constant contact, via phone, email, sometimes seeing each other in person, but as friends (with some awkwardness).  Our contact is much less frequent than when we were "together".  At the onset of the break, neither of us defined what would need to happen for us to get back together.  We were both too mired and drained by the chaos and crisis of our day to day lives.  I did not know how to express my needs.  However, as the weeks progressed, and I became more grounded in a solitary rhythm of my own making, getting back into my work and my passions after what felt like a year of neglect, it became clear to me that I had some really basic needs for my ABF.  (1) Sobriety (2) Recovery (3) That he hold a stable job (4) that he maintain a stable place to live.  I expressed these needs to him 10 days ago in an email, so at the 4.5-week mark.  I admittedly had a sense at this time that he had let his stable job fizzle.  My suspicion was confirmed.  He walked away from his one job (the one he had managed to salvage after the 4th) before he got fired for failing to meet expectations.  He makes do by picking up odd day jobs here and there, but I have been with him through long periods of freelancing, and it stresses me out beyond belief.  

On Sunday, we saw each other after more than a week's gap.  He told me how upset he was that I had placed conditions on our reconciliation.  He was already going crazy with the separation, fearing tremendously of the growing distance between us.  He desponded that my setting conditions was "bait and switch", and feared that I had long been plotting to break up with him, but hadn't had the courage to just tell him 6 weeks before.  But, it was also at this time that he admitted that he was "sometimes drinking" and that his inquiry into recovery had stalled.  He had some bad experience at an AA meeting sometime in the weeks before, and that had put him off.  So, silently, I saw that he was not going to meet my expectations on condition (1) and (2).  I let him talk about his feelings, and I tried to listen and support.

It was so hard to see him so raw like this.  He is never angry or abusive, even though he is raw.  He is struggling so deeply.  I hate to see him suffer like this.

But, I set four expectations, and he is failing to meet three of them.

He tried to bargain with me; if I promised to stay with him, he _would_ do (1) and (2), but I was saying to myself, this is not good enough.  One of the points of taking 6-8 weeks off was for him to see if he had it in him to quit drinking and enter recovery on his own, and it appears that he is not at that point yet.  He can't do this _for_ me.  I didn't have the wherewithal to answer him directly on this.  I was just feeling pretty despondent to hear that he had yet to want to take care of himself.  

I had another realization the other day; I asked myself, why is it that I am so hellbent on him going into recovery?  It's not just for him, but is is for me.  I am exhausted being his front-line of support.  Totally exhausted.  Not surprisingly, he doesn't have any friends whom he really relies on, and he doesn't have any support from health-care professionals, not even for physical stuff.  He doesn't ask much of his parents.  I'm the only person he asks anyone of.  If he were in recovery, he would have more of a support network, and the burden would cease to uniquely fall on me.  I am not qualified to help him with his drinking, to help him get a job, to help him stay solvent.  I am burned out.  It cannot be my job anymore.  It needs to be someone else's problem.  So, this is another limitation I have hit.  I can't keep doing this.  

I'm just tired.

Yesterday (and today) were the first days that I've started to make peace with my need to break up with him.  I don't want to break up with him, but maybe I need to.  I not only want to do this for me, but for him.  I know, I know... maybe that's the caretaker talking, but as I watch him fail my expectations, and my heart sinks about our future, I don't want to feed him false hope.  He already is frazzled about the so-called "bait and switch," which means that he had high hopes on our reuniting.  I think that he only was able to agree to the break on the condition that we would get together... but at the time, my own needs were so clouded by my codependency, and by my escape into my affair, that I didn't know which was was up.

I can't be with him, but I am not looking forward to breaking his heart.  I still feel so responsible for his feelings.