I am breaking up with my girlfriend of almost nine years and I want to hear what reddit thinks of my rational because this is very hard for me and I'm forcing myself to do it. Throughout this post she will be referred to simply as "S".


S and I met when I was 20 and she was 22 and began our relationship shortly thereafter. I am now  just a couple months from being 30 and she is 32. Our anniversary is just before my birthday. I am breaking up with her for a number of reasons, the greatest of which is her alcoholism. S also has diagnosed treatment resistant major depression and generalized anxiety disorder that I found out about after several years. She was initially vague about her diagnosis, using the terms anxiety and depression. Throughout our relationship she was either unable or unwilling to seek professional help intermittently and inconsistently for reasons that I will explain. S was also molested as a child, intermittently for a period of approximately ten years, along with one of her younger brothers, by her non-biological grandfather who her grandmother was remarried to after divorcing S's biological grandfather. I found out about this fairly early on and had great sympathy for S.


When our relationship began she was a much happier person and it seemed to me that the drinking that did happen was not extreme. I noticed that she had scars on her forearms and thighs and she told me that she was very self conscious about them and that they were from when she was a teenager and that she didn't cut anymore. At the time we both liked to party and drinking never affected our employment or friendships. There were a couple times where she was very drunk and would have accidentally caused herself injury had I not been there. I wrote these times off as exceptions since it did not seem to be part of her day to day life.


She is a very smart and well educated electrical engineer, though her sharpness has noticeably declined in recent years. She is creative and even artistic. She has the cutest sense of humor that I've ever found in any person and she is an intense empath. She also has a very dark side that comes out when she drinks that has grown stronger over the years, and it seems that she drinks mostly when she is having a depressive episode. These episodes manifested early on as several days of very low mood that almost never interrupted her work schedule. On the weekend she would sleep for very long periods and drank heavily. The extent to which she drank was not clear to me until much later because she hid it from me. Following one of these episodes everything would return to normal and life moved on. She was back to being happy. At this point in time she was prescribed medication by her PCP, and that was the extent of my knowledge of her treatment.


About three years into our relationship several tragedies struck both of our families simultaneously. I was laid off from work. In a short span of time one of her brothers died in a car accident, and her mother was nearly deported by ICE. Her mother nearly died in an ICE detention center due to insufficient medical attention for her diabetes. That particular story is long and complicated but, to summarize, her mother came to the United States when she was four years old and never became a citizen. She suffered injuries from a car accident and repetitive motion injuries from work. She was heavily medicated and unable to work. She was one of many who was caught selling their prescriptions. ICE never deported S's mother and one day released her without explanation. S's mother refused to treat her diabetes and died two years later from complications. S's other brother, the youngest, became severely addicted to heroin. At this same point in time my stepfather died from cancer and my mother became chronically ill with an antibiotic resistant bacterial infection. My biological father was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis but did not pass away until a few years later. This all occured within a span of four years.


It was during this time that S's drinking increased substantially and in frequency. It was common for her to drink a liter of vodka each night, sometimes two. The trauma was the cause and the loss that both of us experienced fueled this. How could I blame her? I was not the same person during these years and have recovered greatly since then. We both abused prescription drugs during this time, though never became addicted as such.  I had found new employment within months of being laid off. The recession did not make this easy. S held on to her job until she was let go following some emails she sent to management. S had a very hard time finding new employment and acted increasingly erratic. One night she was very drunk and tripped following me outside after an argument. I had gone outside as I often did to get away from her because she would just not stop argueing with me about absolutely nothing and just was being completely belligerent. She face planted into the sidewalk. I took her to the ER immediately. She required several stitches and dental work. This was five years into our relationship and the worst night of our relationship.


I decided I couldn't do it anymore. I loved S and I felt the deepest sadness for her, but I was literally watching her kill herself and I just could not do it. She refused help and I told her it made me sick to watch her drink herself to death, someone that I loved so much. It was like she was two different people. She would argue with me when she drank. Even if I chose not to respond so as to not give her anything to argue about she would just continue and become belligerent. So I made plans to move out. This is when she decided that I mattered enough to her that she would seek professional help and enter a rehab so that she could stop drinking. So I stayed because I had hope. I remember when I brought her to the rehabilitation center the overwhelming feeling of inhumanity. It felt like it was a cage for animals. They assured me that they would take good care of her. I had mixed experiences with the staff.


She spent a month in the center, and it became too expensive since she lacked the insurance from her job. They released her and she did not immediately resume drinking. She entered an intensive outpatient program during this time. It took several weeks for her to relapse. Finally she found a center that would take her that was less expensive. She spent two months at this center and I had no contact with her for that time. When they released her she seemed to be doing much better and I thought I had her back for good. Six months passed  and she relapsed.


She didn't resume the same old pattern from this point on. Instead I would come home from work to find her passed out with an empty bottle of vodka next to her, on random days. Then she would swear that it would never happen again, until it did. One day I was at work and I got a call from one of her friends saying that she'd been arrested and her car was totalled. She'd drank before driving to work and crashed into a telephone pole. The court ordered that she attend rehab, again. 


This rehabilitation center was different. They had a more holistic approach, and I was invited to visit on the weekends. She spent three months there and I think really grew as a person. We both learned a lot. They released her and I felt like I really had her back for a long time. We had some of the happiest times after she left that place. Her license was suspended and she couldn't drive. She had no car. Her career was just about non-existent, but she was happy. This was seven years into our relationship.


Months later, one day she decided to go through my phone, and she found some old text messages between me and someone else from during her second stay in rehab. I had cheated on her. Right as things were becoming good again, she found what I had done wrong, what I had never mentioned because of how my moment of weakness could destroy everything, and it may have ultimately.


A year later I cosigned on a car for her. She started a new job in engineering sales soon after. She still resents me for what I did. One day she brought up that she and her coworkers went and had drinks at lunch. Weeks after this she started bringing beer home. 


Two weeks ago I told her that I can't do this anymore. I've sunk almost nine years into this relationship and I'm not perfect but I have to look out for myself now. She tells me that I need to put work into this relationship if I want it to last and has begged me to stay. She swears she will stop drinking this time. I'm sick of being reminded that I cheated on her every time she gets pissed off. We're both in the wrong and this is just completely toxic now with no chance of saving it. Am I right? Am I just wasting my time or am I throwing away something that I've actually worked really hard to keep, despite my mistakes.