I also related to her update a lot. Feel free to DM me.

In my case it turned out that my now-ex husband was hiding an opiate addiction from me (he also had psych issues but the opiates were the main driver).

It took me a long time to figure it out, but it explained why he seemed to be two different people sometimes and why I seemed to be the only one recognizing that. Sometimes he was this sweet, goofy, chill guy - the guy I had dated and married - turns out that’s when he had access to drugs and was high. Other times he was irritable, full of rage, slamming doors and punching walls and screaming at me - turned out that was when he didn’t have drugs and was going through painful withdrawals.

I wasted a decade of my life in this dynamic and I regret that I did not leave sooner. I thought I was helping him by staying with him, trying to support him in reducing and eliminating his use (after I found out). I mean marriage is a vow to stay in sickness and health right? And opioid use disorder is a sickness. It’s actually a recognized disability under the ADA now. So what monster would leave her husband while he’s in the middle of a crisis like that? Never mind that not only were my needs not being met, but I was dealing with behavior from him like, him talking about how he wouldn’t be able to live if I left him at the same time he was cleaning his firearms. But no matter what I did to try and support him in getting clean, his behavior and addiction just got worse.

It finally got so bad that I asked him to move out to his parents house for us to have a temporary separation. When he was gone and I didn’t have to constantly worry about his safety and my safety, I felt a lightness of being that I cannot begin to describe. I quickly realized that he was never going to be able to do the level of therapy we would need to actually repair it. We spent about a year living apart doing regular couples therapy before I asked for a divorce though, just to be sure and to try to genuinely give him a chance to repair the relationship. He started an outpatient rehab program after a short inpatient stay, but he often showed up to counseling appearing to be under the influence (swaying while standing in place, slurred speech) such that we never really made headway.

It always felt like we were speaking a different language, almost, when we tried to talk about our feelings. I’m currently about a year and a half into a new relationship with amazing communication and I cannot even begin to describe how different it feels. I feel supported and part of a team. We literally have never had a fight because when we do disagree on something or one of us has hurt feelings over something, we talk about it as a team and try to work through the issue as a problem we are facing together, as a team. And frankly those moments have been super rare.

We practice something we call “radical honesty” where we make sure to be super duper clear what our feelings and expectations are for the relationship. This can lead to some conversations that sometimes feel so odd, but at the same time, so amazing and bonding. Like we talked for hours leading up to our first Valentine’s Day about what the holiday meant to us, what our expectations were for a partner in a relationship around the holiday. It was almost weird in a way but at the same time, that was the first Valentine’s Day that I wasn’t stressed about how it was going to go down, and could just enjoy it with my partner knowing exactly how we feel about it.

With him, every day I want to share my day with life him and discuss things. The relationship isn’t this “thing” I have to manage that adds stress to my life, it’s a space for me to retreat to to feel safe and protected from the world. My relationship with my ex was opposite - it was a source of stress, and in retrospect, I never truly felt emotionally safe with him because like many addicts, he used manipulation and subtle put downs to get me to do what he wanted and to distract me from his drug use.

I regret not leaving my marriage sooner, but at the same time, I don’t know if I would have met my current partner if I had because the timing would not have been right (he was also leaving a marriage around the same time I was).

You are welcome to DM me to chat more, I’m happy to talk you through it. One thing I’d suggest is to take a trial break, even a short one for a week or two, and reconnect with yourself and see how you feel. This may not be practical but if you can swing it it might be something to try. You don’t have to even ask for a trial separation officially - say it’s a girls trip or guys trip (depending on your gender) or family thing that would be boring for him, and then see if you can crash at someone else’s house for a while or a hotel/Airbnb and just be on your own. I think if I had been able to do something like that sooner, I might have realized how bad things had gotten faster. But it may not be logistically possible.

You deserve to be happy and to have your own needs met in a relationship. A relationship should not be a project that adds to your overall stress in life, it should be a source of joy that revitalizes your soul. You deserve that.