catharsis or waste of time?

Post date: 2018-11-12 14:19:54

Is there value in confronting someone who has done me wrong, or should I just let it go?

Hi everyone - this is a follow-up to my last question here in a way.

I've been to three Al-Anon meetings so far, and I've found it very helpful.

Last night I caught the guy I have been seeing (the alcoholic that prompted me to start attending Al-Anon meetings) in a huge, massive lie. It's certainly not the first time I've caught him in a lie, but it was far worse than anything that's come before, and it came about because he was so drunk that he didn't realize he was saying incriminating things; he basically admitted that ever since I took him back he has been seeing another woman behind my back. Again, I wasn't necessarily surprised given our history, but it still sucked and hurt and made me angry. We got into a fight, during which he gaslit me (he denied that he had ever told me he loved me/was in love with me/wanted to marry me - which he has in fact done hundreds of times, starting on our second date) and tried to turn it back on me, saying that I was yelling at him because I was actually angry at my ex-boyfriend (who I have been split from for over two years) and was projecting on him. Baffling and infuriating.

I stormed into the bathroom to calm down, and then when I emerged, I found that he had passed out on the couch, full-on drunk coma-style. This is not the first time he has passed out in this way. I shook him awake and told him I was leaving but that I wanted to have a conversation with him when he was sober about what he has put me through and I'm not going to let him off the hook and pretend none of this happened. He was so disoriented and drunk that at first he could not remember why I was angry; he actually said "Wait, what's going on, what just happened in the last 10 minutes?" I told him that he was a liar and a cruel person who exploited my love for him to use me for sex/comfort object, and that just because he's going through an acrimonius divorce does not give him a free pass to treat me as if I'm not a real person in this situation. He got very angry then and literally threw me out of his apartment.

Ok, so we're done. DTMFA and all that. This has been insane and bad and extremely unhealthy for me. But, I am 100% certain that he was so drunk that he woke up this morning not remembering what happened last night, and it's infuriating to me that he may just continue on his merry way in his life with no conception or acknowledgement of how badly he hurt and disrespected me.

That's the back story. The question is, what do I do now? I have written several drafts of a scathing email or text message, including screenshots of a text that he sent me two months ago denying that he was seeing the very woman he admitted to seeing last night and getting angry at him for accusing him of such. I want to tell him that to me the lie is worse than the two-timing; I deserved to know if he was sleeping with someone else for my own safety. I want to tell him that denying that he told me he loved me is bullshit, and those words mean something, and it was cruel of him to deploy those words when he knew how I felt about him just to keep stringing me along. I want to tell him that divorce doesn't give him a free pass to fuck with others' lives. I want to tell him to think how he would feel had I or someone else done this to him without consideration of his humanity.

A couple of Al-Anon friends have suggested that sending the message might be good for me - even if he doesn't acknowledge having received the message, it will provide me some definitive catharsis and closure, which will help me as I try to move on and heal from the chaos of the past three months.

Most of my non Al-Anon friends - some of which are people who know him, and some of which only know him based on what I have described about the "relationship" are saying not to send the message because he is not worth the time or energy. Or if I do send him a message, it should simply say that I don't want him to contact me or speak to me ever again - any more would be giving him more importance than he deserves.

I can easily see how both points of view are valid. A small part of me kind of loves the idea that he might honestly never understand why I no longer want to speak with him because he was too drunk to remember what set off this last fight and will take great joy in his befuddlement (whenever he senses me pulling away he tries to reel me back in - and thus far has succeeded - so I'm sure he'll try again and it will be fun to ignore him #staypetty).

But even though this "relationship" was a garbage fire and he himself is also a garbage fire of a person, it did go on for three extremely emotionally intense months, and we were friends before all this went down. And it's that last part - the part where we were friends before this - is what makes me want to let him know how badly he has hurt me. I don't hope to change the situation by telling him that; he's an addict and he's a mess and there's nothing I can do about that. I know he won't change and I'm not hoping that he'll dump this other woman and beg me to marry him again. But I want him to understand that he destroyed our friendship with this behavior, and we can't walk that back, and I want him to own up to his behavior.

I know that neither option will make me feel better, and neither option will "fix" or undo the damage he has done to me. But I am genuinely curious to know from the hive mind which approach makes more sense. It's interesting to me that the Al-Anon community is advocating for me to speak my piece even if it goes over poorly or unacknowledged and my friends are telling me to just write him off without a word. I'm still getting a handle on the Al-Anon philosophy and I have found it to be very helpful so far in terms of codifying what my boundaries are, but I'm puzzled by the split in consensus on what my approach should be.

What would you, my fellow Mefites who have helped me with such kind advice throughout what has been a horrible year bfor me, suggest I do in this situation? Which approach would you choose, and why?

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