# I'm new and I don't know how my perfect life fell apart



## Sara Scofield

In 2014 I got engaged and married my long time sweetheart. We were blissful and happy. Like the kind of mushy stuff everyone envies and says makes them sick, but really they are just jealous of the happiness they perceive. While we were engaged he lost his job, started drinking too much, but found another job and the wedding went on beautifully. We both drank a lot. Then he lost another job and started drinking even more. Then he cheated on me. Lied about it.

In desperation I took him to his parents and said "please help us - he's lying, cheating and drinking and I need your help to save our marriage."

All he did was continue to communicate with the other woman even after he promised he wouldn't. Didn't bother to hide it, in fact told me about and acted surprised I would be pissed. He continued to see other people I had told him I no longer approved of because they were either heavy drinkers or otherwise a bad influence on our lives. He did it all anyway even though he said he wanted to fix things, make his wrongs right. He said he'd quit drinking but instead just started hiding it and lying about it. Then he waled out on me. Left and stayed at the lake house giving me the full silent treatment for about 2 weeks all the while talking **** about me, telling lies about me to anyone who would listen. Told people I was bipolar, that I has suicidal, that I had said things I never said.

He came back home after a couple of weeks claiming he wanted to fix things, saying he was sorry, that he had stopped drinking, but I kept finding whisky bottles around, even found him passed out on the couch one night with a bottle in his hand. He ludicrously said "I wasn't drinking that."

He invited a ***** to spend the weekend with him at the beach while he was supposedly having a fishing trip 2 weeks before out first anniversary. I caught him trading nudey pics and sext messages with my female friends while drunk in the middle of the night. Some of my girl friends even showed them to me asking "what the heck is your husband doing? Look what he sent me in the middle of the night."

And I found all this out because he left his iPad unlocked. I saw all his text messages.

When I confronted him about it he claimed he didn't remember but was embarrassed and blamed the whisky. So he stopped drinking whisky. And it really seems that he has stopped all liquor this time and things have gotten much better.

I already had lingering PTSD from old traumas and child abuse, but now I have renewed triggers. About half my hair fell out. I had to take leave from work for several months to get my symptoms under control. We started going to therapy and counseling and both have quit drinking liquor altogether - I still have occasional beer or wine, and he has has beer almost daily but not to the extremes it used to be. Things are sorta getting back to normal and I have made sure he has blocked all the offending bad influences from his phone. He deleted his Facebook account. Things seem to be slowly healing. My hair is growing back. I'm managing to go to work without as many nerve pills now. I am not finding hidden bottles or troubling lies anymore.

I just don't understand how things went from so perfect - we shared everything, woke up every morning in heaven - to such utter nightmareland for no reason over night. I don't know what I did to deserve it. And I don't know if we can ever get back to that happy place now.


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## rzmpf

Sara Scofield said:


> I just don't understand how things went from so perfect - we shared everything, woke up every morning in heaven - to such utter nightmareland for no reason over night. I don't know what I did to deserve it. And I don't know if we can ever get back to that happy place now.


It wasn't overnight, all of your problems were always there. The childhood traumata, PTSD, Alcoholism, bad coping with stress. Add losing his job(s) and more alcohol and the situation exacerbates and spirals out of control. 

Your H needs a lot of help and treatment, regardless if things seem to work out for now. You need that too, good that you are already attending counseling. 

Eliminate all alcohol from your household, you should not be drinking either, otherwise you are just enabling each other and one little spark could set the whole house on fire again, because you both have not adopted new coping strategies. Just the stress level went down so you do not have to resort to your old ways of coping (alcohol, affairs, medication etc.). It will be a long way to go.


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## Bluesclues

Sara I am sorry you are going through this. I experienced something very similar. We were that couple too. Perfect to nightmare overnight. Husband lost two jobs by drinking at work. He would drink all day on the weekends and pass out by noon. I was left to watch both our sets of kids and take care of the house and yard alone for years. He would wake up and be mean to me and the kids. But during the week he would be a social drinker with me and we were the happy connected couple again until Friday. After his second round of job loss and second round of detox we both got sober for a year. He found a job he loved that actually paid well. Later that year I found out we were expecting, he turned cold and mean again. I had a miscarriage and came to find out he was having an affair and gave me an STD that likely caused the loss. We both jumped off the wagon to deal with the trauma. He had been seeing a counselor that specialized in addictions since the first detox and it was obviously not helping. We found a new IC for him and she was fantastic. Major changes. He was an engaged husband and father and as we healed from the A and he found his "whys" the drinking slowed (notice I didn't say stopped) to beer and wine.

Fast forward to now. We were 28 months past DDay and doing well considering. I started to feel things were off. He was working from home a lot on days he should be in the office. Started drinking vodka again and having it for breakfast on the weekend. Last week he called in sick multiple days because he was hung over and would drink again to "even out". He finally said he needed help but he refused to go back to detox or do AA. He wanted me to help him. Well I can't do that - we tried that before and failed. Not only because he has to do that for himself, but because I have my own alcohol issues that I need to admit and deal with. We took him to his doctor who prescribed him somethings and he has been detoxing at home since Monday. And honestly so have I, minus the drugs that make it easier.

We have an appointment with his doctor this afternoon to see how he is doing health-wise and discuss a plan for sobriety moving forward. I would like him to go back to his IC - come to find out they only discussed his cheating during all their time together, no other aspects of how he has been self-destructive in life when things go well. I need to deal with how I have enabled him by selfishly wanting to continue to be able to drink myself. 

So my advice would be to stop the beer and wine completely. It gives you a false sense of being "normal" people who just enjoy a beverage (or 12.) You should both get into IC. His drinking and cheating are separate issues. 

PS. And yes, you can be happy again. I have PTSD too and triggers abound but it gets better. Even living through this hell again this week I have felt love and joy. And I have hope.


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## Diana7

I am afraid that you have married a man with no morals, no decency, no sense of responsibility, no integrity, who is very immature, and will make a bad husband or father. I suspect there were red flags before but you chose not to see them. I think that you may need to accept that you have made a terrible mistake by marrying him.


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## Sara Scofield

DDay meaning divorce? I'm so sorry. I have been divorced. I really really really don't want to do it again.


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## Sara Scofield

Diana, we were together for 16 years before marrying. I never saw this side of him. I don't know what happened. It was like he turned into a monster overnight.


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## Sara Scofield

Okay, one of the redacted words in my original post was another word for prostitute and I didn't mean it as an insult, but rather he actually was talking to a prostitute, a woman who has sex for money. Yeah, his morals went out the window and I don't know why. He was never that type of person until he just ...turned evil one day.


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## jld

Our true selves emerge under stress. You have now seen what he is capable of.


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## jorgegene

wow.

sounds like you've both been through hell.

i agree, both you're husbands need individual counseling and maybe for you both also.

and also agree, no drinking.


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## Herschel

gtfo


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## 225985

Please go to your local Al-Anon support group meetings.


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## chillymorn

file for divorce and tell him if he gets help you can try to reconnect but don't stop the divorce.


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## Bluesclues

Sara Scofield said:


> DDay meaning divorce? I'm so sorry. I have been divorced. I really really really don't want to do it again.


DDay = discovery day of cheating.

I have been divorced before too and really don't want to do it again either.


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## Sara Scofield

Bluesclues said:


> DDay = discovery day of cheating.
> 
> I have been divorced before too and really don't want to do it again either.


Ah, discovery day. Yeah, there are some dates I cannot seem to forget like that. PTSD does that to ya...

:frown2:


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## Sage90

I'm sorry this is happening to you. We all carry deep scars that sometimes only come to the surface when we're under deep pressure. So even after 16 years together you would never have know. Even a 'perfect' love can't heal hurts and traumas which have been buried for decades. Life can be hard on all of us, no one deserves it yet that's what it is. You now have to make a choice to do better. It sounds that you'd made your life and happiness revolve around your relationship. That's never healthy, and part of dealing with the unfairness of life is learning to find joy as an individual and not in circumstances and what people - even people we love - do. All the best.


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## Mclane

rzmpf said:


> It wasn't overnight, all of your problems were always there. The childhood traumata, PTSD, Alcoholism, bad coping with stress. Add losing his job(s) and more alcohol and the situation exacerbates and spirals out of control.


Exactly. It's plain to see in your 2 or 3 paragraph summary of your life that there were red flags all over the place before you got married, you chose to disregard the red flags (most of us do), you got married anyway and you ignored the problems as they gradually got worse until it totally blew up on you.

Even though things are relatively quiet at the moment, given the history and all the factors in play and the lack of proper treatment, there's a high likelihood that it's going to happen again.

Some have suggested divorce, yet you "don't want to go through it again". Well, if you didn't want to get divorced again, then you shouldn't have gotten married again. The odds are poor for subsequent marriages, even without all the cheating, and the alcohol abuse. 

I'm sorry but it's only a matter of time, you're better off cutting your losses now, rather than later, you'll have that much more time to rebuild your life. 

And stop getting married.


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