Letters to the Editor
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"You cannot trust an addict. They lie. It's what they do."
Yep!
As someone who has zero tolerance for lying, I could never live with one. Lots of things people can be addicted to though.
Just saying.
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Parenting and legal matters
LW does not mention the legal status of her place as one of the child's mothers. Have all legal niceties been handled? Is partner-in-recovery the birth mother? Is there a genuine adoption in place?
While I don't disagree with respondents who suggest one should run and don't look back, such a move may prove short-sighted for her child if she has not protected her rights as the child's mother.
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I say leave
I was married to a man with a habit. I nursed him through myriad faux overdoses (he'd binge and then say he was trying to kill himself out of guilt), rehab, inpatient stays, blah blah blah.
He knew the drill. Cry, look pathetic, promise to get better, claim he was mentally ill and needed sympathy not "tough love", etc.
Your girlfriend hasn't yet figured out how to look contrite for the court. But if she has a decent attorney, she will learn.
Count yourself lucky that she was at least honest enough to lie - by that I mean she isn't savvy enough to admit it and beg for mercy. It's much harder to leave or set down limits when the addict is groveling and weeping. Instead, she told you she didn't do anything - it's good that you can see she isn't ready to admit she has a problem. Rehab doesn't "stick" particularly well even when they do, but if they don't admit they have a problem, it's a meaningless effort.
Later on, though, she'll have the whole act down. You won't be able to tell real contrition from "whatever you want to hear just let me at your cash/valuables/car so I can get high again".
Yeah, been there and done that. Rehab may or may not work but if you just let her back in straight out of rehab you'd be subjecting yourself and your son to waiting for the other shoe to drop every day, she's late or her cell phone dies or your joint account is overdrawn or she just doesn't seem to be telling the truth . . . and it becomes a gut-churning choice whether to wrench yourselves out of the situation now that you're re-intwined. And a much more difficult "how".
These things tend to escalate. Now it's "wrong place, oops!" but eventually it's locking the credit cards in a safe and trying to figure out how to keep her from emptying your accounts so you can keep paying your mortgage. It'll be wondering whether it's safe to leave her alone with your son lest she dump him with - whomever - so she can go get high.
Leave. It's her recovery. Participate only as feels right to you. And when she gets out of there, let her stay with someone she can't harm as much as she can harm your son, let her prove herself over a period of time, before even considering having her insinuate herself back into your lives only to blow the family apart in a much more dramatic and painful way.
Certainly don't participate if your heart is not in it, simply out of guilt. You're doing no one any favors if you do.
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Apologies
I should have said "your wife", not your girlfriend.
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Walk Now - Not Later
You have done all the 'honorable things" that needed to be done; i.e., you got her to treatment, paid for attorneys, and got her started on a road to recovery if she wants it. Now you can walk away with a clear conscience.
Do not worry about what the family and friends will say, think, feel, or talk about behind your back. Tell them straight up that things have not been all that great, that you cannot continue in the relationship, that you are ending it, and hope that she finds her way out of her current situation.
I agree with Tennis: She will either change her circumstances or not and neither will, or should, have anythng to do with you. And maybe, just maybe, this was her way of getting out too.
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Never stay in a relationship based on "shoulds"
Stop worrying about what friends and family will think. That is a terrible way to live a life! Only you have to live the consequences of your decisions. You and your child.
Why are you so concerned with what others think? Don't make major life decisions based on what you think others think you should do. You're probably distorting what they think with your clearly ingrained urge to please others and your fear of judgment.
Maybe they do disagree with you, and would do differently in your shoes. So what? Let them do as they see fit in their lives, and you do as you see fit in yours. Base your decisions on what you want, not what you think a nice person should do. People who do otherwise end up unhappy and resentful, blaming others for their unhappiness.
Don't give more than you can honestly give without resentment. You owe that to yourself, your child, and the world.
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I was the addict in the (lesbian) relationship
... with a three year old son, so I can relate to your letter.
We are still together. It was rough for awhile. My son is now 14 and I've been clean ten years. I had so much to learn I honestly don't really understand how I did it. The first rule for me was to follow suggestions. I was unbelievably willing. I went from trying to escape with heroin to trying to get out of my problems by using the recovery process - a long hard road that eventually takes you somewhere worthwhile. We are, in reality, a strong and happy family now.
For myself, I would hesitate to be involved with an addict, because in truth almost all of us relapse, and the relapses are awful, often fatal, often destroying family. Torture! If you stay with your partner you will suffer. I understand why you would want to leave. I like (recovering) addicts. I understand them/us, the alienation weirdness creativity. But as a life partner, yikes.
For me, evaluating what you have written, the huge flashing red light is that your partner says she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yeah, right. The only way you can have any hope for the your future with her is if you believe what she says, and see extreme willingness to engage recovery in her behavior. I've heard it called 'the gift of desperation'. If she's not desperate for recovery she's on her way down; don't let her take you or the kid there.
Cary says maybe she's not an addict. I don't agree. The secrecy and the potency and the quest to get drugs: she was willing to lie and destroy her family to get dope. How junkie is that!!