I (30F) have been with my fiancé (29M) for over 12 years. We have known each other since middle school. We began dating our senior year of high school and got engaged about a year ago - just after I finished grad school. Our wedding is about two months away. We have already paid for everything, sent out invitations and are in the final stages of setting everything up.
I feel like I need to give some context. We both grew up in households that were rampant with parental substance abuse and parental mental illness. My father was an absent alcoholic, we have not has a relationship since I was 10 years old; and my mother struggled with prescription pain killers while I was in high school after a bad car accident (she is since sober from pain killers)
His father was a life long alcoholic and coke addict his entire life, until he died about 3 years ago from alcoholic cirrhosis very suddenly (he did not go to the doctor, and none of the family had known he was in end stage liver failure until he was in the hospital on life support). Throughout my fiancé’s entire life, his father was very paranoid (at times would stay up for days due to his drug use on the living room couch holding a large knife convinced someone was going to break into his home). Despite this, they had a very close relaitonship much of my fiancé's life. Up until the last few months, right before he died when my fiancé had told him that he needed to stop drinking/using or he could not be around him due to him trying to work on his own sobriety. At the time that his father had passed away they hadn't spoken in about a month. My fiancé carries a lot of guilt for this, and though it has been three years has still not truly grieved the loss of his father.
My Fiancé's father introduced him to coke and alcohol when he was only 15. He has struggled on and off with substance use since. He did not graduate high school, mainly due to family issues, but partly because he would rather sell and smoke weed than go to school. About a year after he would have graduated, he stopped selling weed and got his GED/Associates Degree. Throughout our entire relationship he has struggled with binge drinking which would in turn lead to coke use. This was especially difficult during our early 20s. At one point, I left him for about 6 months due to the binge drinking and substance abuse and moved to another state to be closer to my family (just before his father had passed away) we had gotten back together when he let me know that his father was in the hospital and asked me to come back and I did.
In the year after his father passed away the drinking and drug use had gotten worse. I believe this is because he never truly grieved the loss of his father, and to cope with the feelings of guilt he had for not speaking with him leading up to his death. The drinking and drug use had been every few days, then slowed to only on the weekends, then slowed to once a month. When he uses, he often disappears - to the point where I will go to the bathroom and turn around and he will just be gone (I cannot find him anywhere). I had gotten to the point where over the years I go through his phone, I check his location, I use his Apple Watch to reach his texts when he disappears to see where he is or what he is doing. I log into the car app on my phone and check the location of his car, and then I drive there.
I have found him using drugs in park-and-rides, in hotel rooms, in video viewing booths in the back of sex stores. I have caught him contacting sex workers, sending them money, him claiming that he has gotten blow jobs and done drugs with them because they are the only people awake that will do drugs with him at that hour. If I don't hunt him down, he will stroll in the door 12+ hours later, full of shame and regret. When he sobers up the next day he will often say he goes to these places because he doesn't want me to find out he is using, and he is convinced in that moment that if I am not around him he will be able to get away with it, without me finding out, even though when he is sober he knows that is not the case.
Over the last year he has finally admitted that he has a problem with drugs and alcohol. This was difficult for him to admit because he often viewed it as; well I don't drink or do drugs every day so Im not as bad as "other people." He also viewed it as well, my problem isn't as bad as my dad's so it can't be that bad. He functions very well at work and is very successful professionally. He also functions very well in his interpersonal relationships with friends and family. He hides his drug use from almost everyone else in his life, by disappearing and doing it on his own once he is out of control. My biggest fear is finding out that he got bad drugs and overdosed somewhere by himself.
In the last year he has begun attending SMART recovery meetings weekly. He was sober for nearly 8 months, and slipped up about 2 months ago- when we spent time with a high risk friend he has a history of using drugs with. Since then, he did have two more instances of drug use. One being two weeks ago when he went on his bachelor trip in Las Vegas- his friends purchased coke, then while at the casino he wasn't able to find them so he left, rented his own hotel room and did all of the drugs by himself.
Upon return, I gave him an ultimatum (which typically I do not like to do because I believe that true changes needs to come from within but I am not sure what else to do at this point); I told him that I will not marry a man that does drugs or contacts sex workers and if he does not commit to individual therapy and consistent groups and stay sober I will be calling off the wedding. It is a bit of a difficult situation because we do already own a house, our entire lives are enmeshed and I know that he is early in his recover journey and relapses do happen.
He scheduled an appointment with a therapist without needing me to ask again or remind him and he attended his first individual therapy session ever this past week, he left the session very dysregulated, called me and told me about how difficult the session was and the feedback he had gotten. He struggled with being completely honest with another person for the first time, and the therapist explaining that he has difficulty recognizing and coping with any emotions. The therapist also explored with him his difficulties with his identity, and how he only views himself in terms of goals and productivity. After the meeting he called me and told me he needs a drink, I pushed back and said that wasn't a good idea and he told me that I was treating him like a toddler, and that he really wanted to stop at the bar next to the therapists office but figured drinking at the house was a better idea. Once he got home he apologized, he did not drink that night we talked about how difficult the appointment was, watched a movie and went to bed.
The next day he had prearranged plans to play poker at our home with two friends, I cooked them dinner while they played and then fell asleep on the couch (in the same room they were playing in). I woke up at 2AM, after they finished playing, music was still on the speaker but everyone was gone, his phone was sitting on the table but I couldn't find him. I looked out the window and his car was gone. I logged into the car app checked the location of his car, saw he was at the same sex store I have found him at in the past. I drove there and waited for him in the parking lot for about 2 hours (they do not allow women in there unaccompanied, he came 2 hours later out and saw me, said he was sorry let's go home, and we both went home). When we got home he went upstairs into our room and I slept on the couch. The next afternoon we talked; he was the most honest with me he had ever been in the past, told me that he had coke hidden in his closet since he slipped up two months ago, that he was testing his "will power" because if he could walk past it every day and not do it then he had beat the problem, but that he decided to do it after everyone had left. He said that he had been craving it since his therapy appointment, and was just waiting for the opportunity. He went to the sex-store because he can typically buy drugs from someone else in there because that is what he had done in the past but that he finished what he had and no one he could purchase from had come in so he decided to leave. Since this incident he has attended a SMART meeting every day, and moved up his appointment with his therapist. Though this was only 3 days ago.
I am having a difficult time balancing supporting him in his recovery, and protecting myself with our wedding being such a short time away. We have so much history, and I truly love him. I have a lot of difficulty myself recognizing how big of a piece this addiction is of him because our relationship is usually very good, he is kind and attentive and there are so many good things about him. I often view his addiction as separate from who he is, but recently that he been getting more difficult. I am in my own therapy working through this but am wondering what others who may have been through something similar have to say. I am wondering also if anyone has seen this through, from either side and overcome the addiction together.