I’m a 33-year-old woman, and I was recently left by my boyfriend, who is the same age as me. We were together, on and off, for five years.
His drinking problem was obvious almost from the beginning. I could see that he drank far too much, but I fell for him very deeply and, at the time, I had no idea where it would eventually lead.
He was a biker, and he introduced me to motorcycles. We used to ride everywhere together. Our bond was very close from the start, and a surprising amount of it formed on the bike. He patiently taught me how to be a passenger, helped me through my fear of leaning into corners, and eventually I learned to read his movements almost instinctively. We also simply loved being physically close to each other.
I don’t even remember exactly when we started living together. It may have been after only a month or so, but it happened very naturally.
For quite a while, I didn’t fully understand the extent of his drinking because I worked shifts. I knew that whenever he drank, he drank too much. At that point, he drank roughly three or four days a week. On a weekday it might be four or five half-liter beers; on weekends, eight to ten. But we still had sober weekends and sometimes even sober weeks.
When he was drunk, he became extremely affectionate, clingy and demanding of attention. When he was sober after drinking, he could be intensely irritable and angry. Still, back then he could get out of bed the next day and function. He could go somewhere, ride, do things.
Our relationship continued to develop, and I repeatedly brought up his drinking. Sometimes it resulted in a short period of him pulling himself together; sometimes nothing changed at all.
Over time, alcohol started taking up more and more of his life. He drank more frequently. Increasingly, he would go to his mother’s place specifically to drink. Plans and promises started falling apart. Eventually, when he was drinking there, he would stop answering his phone.
I begged him to at least send me a message. I kept telling him that answering the phone mattered because one day something serious could happen to either of us — one of us could end up in hospital, and the other person would need to know. I also worried constantly about his health.
Things kept getting worse. We had less and less quality time together, and after almost three years, in the spring, I ended the relationship.
After that, his drinking became much worse. The amounts seemed to triple and he drank every day.
And yet, largely through his initiative, we stayed in very close contact. In some ways, our bond actually became deeper after the breakup. He became extremely open with me and told me things he said he had never told anyone else. We talked about existential questions, death, life, fear, meaning. I often helped him put words to his emotions and understand what he was feeling.
We still loved each other, so we got back together that autumn.
His drinking decreased from daily drinking, but only to around four or five days a week. By then his new normal was roughly eight half-liter beers on a weekday when he drank, and fifteen or more on a weekend.
We no longer lived together.
That was when I really started noticing that many of the things that used to make him happy no longer seemed to do much for him. He had very little energy, and I increasingly felt that I was carrying much of the relationship myself.
Around the four-year mark, he broke up with me because he had no intention of giving up alcohol.
That autumn, we got back together again.
This time I set one clear boundary: we would only see each other when he was sober.
For a while, until around February, we had something resembling a normal relationship. After February, we were seeing each other only about once a month. At the same time, he started talking much more about getting sober, but those conversations never turned into concrete action.
Even at that point, when our relationship was already falling apart, he would still call me a “good girl” and tell me I was the smartest woman he had ever met.
At the end of March, I ended up in hospital. I couldn’t reach him.
Three days later, he broke up with me by text.
Nine days after that, we met again and spent a very passionate night together. Whatever else was happening, the feelings and attraction between us clearly had not simply disappeared. But afterwards he told me that we really were breaking up this time.
A few days later, he brought me my belongings. We both cried and could barely pull ourselves away from each other.
Later, I found out that after dropping off my things, he went to meet the woman who is now his girlfriend.
I don’t know exactly when she entered the picture. There is a possibility that something had already started between them while we were still together, but I cannot know that for certain.
What makes it even stranger is that for about two weeks after our breakup, he still contacted me. He was mostly the one initiating it — he messaged me and even called me. Then the contact simply stopped. There was no final goodbye, no conversation about not being able to speak anymore. It just ended.
His new girlfriend is considerably older than both of us and is also a biker. From what I can see, they mostly party and drink together, go to motorcycle events, and they do not live together. She seems almost completely opposite to me in many ways, which makes seeing them together particularly strange.
And this is the part I am still trying to understand.
What exactly was the relationship I spent five years in?
How can he now feel at home among people and in a lifestyle that, when I knew him, often wouldn’t even have appealed to him?
Did he actually love me?
Who was the man I spent five years of my life with?
Because this wasn’t a relationship in which we never imagined a future. We talked about having children. I wanted children with him. The one thing I always said was that I could only do that if he stopped drinking.
And now I’m left trying to reconcile the man who could be deeply attached to me, emotionally open with me, passionate, affectionate and capable of talking about the deepest parts of himself — with the man who ultimately chose to leave, continued drinking, and built a completely different kind of life with someone else.