How to break up with a nice person who has serious problems?

How can I go about breaking up with Ben without crushing him? I dunno, how can he go about being addicted to painkillers without crushing you? Oh, yeah, he just does it. He is not your responsibility, you've given him ample time and support to clean up, and you can leave even if it crushes him. besides, he might not be crushed. it happens sometimes.

You have to ask yourself if this is the kind of relationship you want your child exposed to ... probably not. Get out, get your kid out and don't look back. You have wonderful things ahead of you, a flourishing career, a home of your own, a good life for you and your child. Don't let this man weigh you down or guilt you in to remaining not one moment longer. Go, live joyfully and pursue healthy relationships that enrich your life.

You know what? You were having the journey of addiction and now you are not. Therefore, it is difficult, no, impossible for you to continue to intimately associate with a difficult journey you are no longer on. This is Ben's journey, not yours anymore. I used to live someplace with a majority of dysfunctional folks. Some of the folks who are more normal and still live there (because it is a damn beautiful spot!) occasionally invite me back for dinners or parties. I like see to these folks out and about, but I never go back to my old place because of dirty icky dysfunction. And despite what the more normal folks think, the dysfunction does effect them just by virtue of proximity. I see it. You gotta do what's right for you. This is not your journey anymore. Whatever penance was necessary, you've done it. I get that you don't like confrontation. Contact his parents and tell them to come get him. Or some variation on that. I don't think you owe this person much of an explanation. Put your decision in an email if you like. Set an end date. Notify his parents of the end date. Stick to the end date. BTW. Congratulations on your new life!

Do you really have time, energy and emotion for 2 kids? Your child needs your full attention, not that attention divided by a drug addict. Why are you letting him any where near your kid? Breaking up with him should be the least of your worries. Sorry to be blunt, but your priorities need a realignment.

It sounds like part of your problem is merely practical. (Not all of it, but part of it!) You seem pretty worried about where he will end up. From your post, it sounds like you don't feel like you can break up with him so long as he's still living with you, but he won't move out until you break up with him! It also sounds like you feel a little trapped, so long as your plan to break up with him depends on him finding somewhere else to live, given how poorly he's been handling that task so far. So, can you move out? Just do all the preparations and plannings so you can say, "The apartment is yours. I'm moving out. Bye." And be gone? I don't think you can expect Ben do be in any way proactive. I don't think you can expect him to be mature or at all helpful in the breakup. That sucks. So, you need to make a plan that depends on him doing anything as little as possible. Extract yourself from his life, rather than putting yourself in a position where you have to wait for him to extract himself from yours. I guess I don’t want to be “mean,” which is really dumb, but there it is. The real advice for this is, see a therapist. That will help you live a happier life. The silly advice is this: watch a marathon of "Intervention." What you'll see over and over again is that the family members who don't want to be "mean" are, again and again, the ones who get abused the most and do the most damage to the addict through their enabling. Watching it reinforced in so many episodes that hanging around just for the addict's "good" is actually harmful may help your heart (where you feel mean) catch up with your brain (where you know you're making the right decision).

You're going to break up with him sooner or later, because things are definitely going to get worse, as they always do with addiction. There's no benefit in waiting. As for being nice, I totally understand. You want to be supportive and show faith in him. But an addict doesn't get help until after they experience huge losses: they lose their job; their partner, friends, and family turn away; their health deteriorates; they can't pay for housing, etc. Right now he's rationalizing that he can't be that bad because his life is norma and you're still therel. So you're really not helping him by staying. It's impossible to have a real relationship with an addict. They will always choose their drug over you.

OK. I don't say this to make you feel guilty, but to maybe help orient you toward understanding the true gravity of your situation. You're clearly empowered enough to know that you CAN choose to leave if you do in fact choose to, and there doesn't seem to be a level of abuse or control going on that disenfranchises your ability to choose to get the hell out. So here goes. You are, right this very minute, teaching your daughter that it's ok to stay in a relationship with someone like Ben, someone who doesn't even treat you with the bare minimum of respect. She is a smart little sponge, watching you and seeing the pain you're going through, and she is seeing your choices to stay in that utterly respectless relationship. If you stay in this relationship with a person who "is really nice" but apparently can't even afford you the respect of honesty and trust and safety (if that's a "nice" person then I'd hate to see a mean one), then you're teaching your daughter that that's what relationships are like/should be like. What do you want to be teaching and showing your daughter? Truly, there are so many reasons to leave this guy, but you really only need one--and you've got her right in front of you, depending on you to help her understand how to relate to others healthily in her own life.

i went through a similar thing- even the timeline of breakups and makeups is similar. he wasn't on pills, but he was having trouble with drinking too much and smoking too much pot. anyway, like you "our" place was really my place, so I couldn't just leave, I had to get him to leave. and like you, i was codependent and he was extremely manipulative/ persuasive. I knew he had the power to talk me out of it if we were face to face, so I had to be gone as soon as it was over. Here's what I did: When I was home alone, I put everything that was valuable to me in my car. I didn't THINK he would fuck with my stuff after I broke up with him, but I wasn't sure enough to find out. So, everything important went in the car. I made plans for somewhere to stay after the breakup. Then, I did it. I told him we needed to break up and he needed to move out, like, now. I did this on a Friday, I told him I was going to be staying somewhere else and that he had until Sunday night to get his stuff out. I knew it would take him that long for it to sink in (meaning, I knew he wouldn't believe it, he'd wait around for me to cool off and come home.) But I didn't. And once he realized I wasn't coming back to talk to him, he started begging and pleading through texts and I just stayed firm and told him I had made my decision and he had to leave. It was pretty hard- he got really upset and said some really horrible things to me. But I just refused to give in and finally he started moving out on Sunday. Just to be on the safe side, I couch-surfed for a few more days, then sent one of my friends with my keys to make sure he was gone. He was. Hopefully you won't have to go to quite the extreme I did- I knew my ex got mean and angry; yours sounds like he at least tries to be nice. Which is good, but it's entirely possible he'll lose that composure when you break up with him. The only other thing I did several months later, and regretted not doing earlier, was blocking his number. If he's as manipulative as you think, you may want to consider it- my ex texted me all kinds of shit in the months following our breakup, from how much of a bitch i was, to how much he loved me, to how he was going to kill himself, and then finally how had a new girlfriend. i got to the point where every time i heard the little text-message noise on my phone, i felt sick and scared. I guess in my case, the reason I didn't block him at first was I was afraid of him figuring it out and actually trying to come back to the apartment to talk to me. After a few months I couldn't deal with the constant fear that he was going to keep trying to contact me, so I moved, and after I moved I blocked his number. It was totally worth it- I wasn't able to move past that relationship and its messy end when I was still living there, now I'm like a whole new person, it's a relief. If you think he's the type who won't leave you alone, maybe you should consider moving and blocking the number so you don't get sucked back into his shit.

holy cow! Ideefixe is right, and I don't care if it is blunt. You are a parent who is responsible for your CHILD. Even if you were still madly in love with Ben, it isn't fair/right/loving to have an active addict in the house with your child. It bugs me that you only mentioned your child in passing--come on, what other reason do you need to get out of this? Now go plan and do what you know you should, what you know you want to do, and what the needs of your child requires you to do...