I still remember the moment I met Jake – handsome, strong, middle-class Jake.

It was like the scene in a rom-com when the protagonist meets the man you just know she’s going to marry.

He was charming, funny and had this incredible energy about him that drew me in – all the while being just ordinary enough not to come off like a player or a narcissist.

I wouldn’t be exaggerating to say he was the man of my dreams.

Our relationship moved fast – in hindsight, suspiciously fast. But at the time it didn’t feel like he was rushing me along; instead it was exciting.

For the first time since splitting from the father of my two sons, aged seven and 10, I felt as though I had met someone I could share my life with.

But this isn’t a rom-com. It’s a horror story.

I didn’t know it when I moved across the country for him, and I certainly didn’t know it when I married him, but Jake was a drug addict.

And he was hooked on the worst kind of drug, the drug that turns normal men like the one I’d married into jealous, depraved, paranoid monsters: meth.

I know you have an image of a typical meth user in your head – that pock-marked, twitching, gaunt zombie shuffling on to a bus, screeching at the other passengers.

But my Jake wasn’t like that.

Yes, he was a little bit of a party boy and dabbled in cocaine on the weekends – like so many young Australian men do – but it wasn’t like he was a junkie when I met him.

But now I realise the man I fell in love with had secrets; he was a functioning addict, as they are known, and it was only a matter of time before he unravelled.

Before I go on, I’ll take you back to when the cracks first emerged.

I’m a hairdresser who has always worked for myself. I’m independent by nature. So when Jake told me he wanted a fresh start on the other side of the country, the idea of leaving everything behind to embark on an adventure in a new city excited me.

I packed up my life in Melbourne and we moved together to Darwin.

Looking back, his spur-of-the-moment decision to move interstate should have been a red flag. What was he running from? How could he so easily drop everything and leave? Of course, at the time I thought it was all terribly romantic.

I was confident we were about to build a future filled with love, adventure and happiness.

Soon after we arrived in Darwin, Jake’s secret – his drug addiction, which he had hidden well at first – began to surface.

It started with messages from his former friends, people back home who had distanced themselves from him and said they were trying to warn me.

They told me he used drugs. At first I wasn’t too fazed – lots of people like to party. Then came the devastating blow. No, he’s using ice.

He had taken to smoking meth after cocaine just wasn’t exciting enough for him. It was so terrible I didn’t want to believe it.

I confronted Jake. ‘Have you ever used ice?’ Unbelievably, he didn’t deny it; I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. But he assured me he was clean (‘clean?’ isn’t that a word only addicts use?) and insisted it was all in the past.

The truth hit me like an avalanche only weeks later. Jake’s drug use was not a thing of the past; it was about to consume his entire life – and mine.

After that initial confrontation, I tried to forget it all. After all, he said it was over.

But then I started to notice alarming changes in his behaviour. He would lose his temper over nothing and accuse me of things that made no sense – like speaking to people I had never met or spending time at places I had never visited.

Most worrying of all, he would disappear for hours and not answer his phone.

I thought it was the stress of moving, that he needed time to adjust – but I know better now. Me confronting him had stressed him out, only accelerating his ice use.

Things got worse. Jake’s drug use, I later found out, wasn’t sporadic or a stress response. It was regular, dangerous and escalating.

And it wasn’t just the meth I had been warned about. He was drinking excessively – at home and at pubs and clubs. And he was a problem gambler.

Ice, drink and gambling – the three most destructive addictions, all wrapped up in a man I’d thought was my future and safe haven.

In my desperation, I reached out to those same former friends who had first raised the alarm. They told me Jake had been using long before we met and his downward spiral was well in motion during our whirlwind courtship and marriage.

How could I have missed it? I must have been blinded by love – or he must have been an extremely skilled liar.

Meanwhile, his erratic behaviour, mood swings and paranoia – all the product of the hell ice was wreaking on his mind – kept getting worse.

He started to accuse me of cheating on him. His awful accusations pierced me like a knife to the heart because I was the one who was being betrayed.

He would accuse me in front of others, even on Facebook. It was humiliating.

His obsession with me being with other men – and it was always multiple men – was unhinged. He would come up with scenarios that weren’t even remotely plausible.

Now I suspect his mind was poisoned by pornography – which ice addicts consume for hours at a time while under the influence of the stimulant drug.

By now, my phone was no longer my personal property; he was always searching through it and I was too frightened to stand up to him.

His paranoia while interrogating me about my imaginary affairs was so intense that nothing I said or did could calm him down.

Despite all the red flags, I convinced myself it was temporary. That maybe, if I loved Jake enough, I could help him.

But I was shockingly naïve. I didn’t understand ice addiction, nor did I grasp how it was consuming both of us. Jake wasn’t just battling drugs – his mind was deteriorating before my eyes, and I was powerless to stop it.

Now firmly convinced I was cheating on him with every man I laid eyes on, he would disappear for days with no explanation – I suspect having ‘revenge affairs’ – while smoking ice and blowing through what little money was left on gambling machines.

The specifics of his drug use – who he would buy it from, where he would use it – were a mystery to me at first.

But through my own detective work I learned he was using with people he met at parties – ones I wasn’t invited to, clearly – and through other shady connections.

Some nights, he would do it alone, in our house. He thought I wouldn’t notice.

I was still trying to help him, but every conversation ended in a fight. He accused me of trying to control him, and his paranoia would kick in again.

After one confrontation where I burst into tears, he swore up and down that he would quit – but nothing changed.

I even thought about holding an intervention or getting his family involved, but by then, I was too drained to keep trying.

There came a point when I knew I had to leave. It wasn’t just the drugs – it was the constant threat of violence that occurs when ice poisons a relationship.

He never physically hit me, but the non-stop menace, the fear of what he might do next, became too much for me to bear.

The last straw was one night when he lashed out in front of our children during a visit. His paranoia was off the charts. I knew I couldn’t put my boys through that.

So I left, packed a bag with what little I could and caught a plane back to Melbourne.

I had no plan, no money and no safety net. I left behind everything – my car, my furniture, the life I had built with Jake.

I was homeless, couch-surfing between Airbnbs and staying with my brother until I could figure things out.

It was humiliating, especially since my brother had his own family to worry about. I felt like a burden on him, but I didn’t have a choice.

Addiction is a beast. It turns people into someone you don’t recognise, someone they don’t even recognise. But the hardest part for me was realising that I couldn’t save Jake.

No amount of love, support or patience was going to make him stop using drugs. Jake needed professional help – and he wasn’t ready to seek it out.

If I could share one piece of advice with anyone else who’s going through this, it’s this: You cannot change someone who isn’t ready to change themselves.

No matter how much you love them or how hard you try, addiction is bigger than any of us. It’s something that requires professional support, not just a partner trying to hold everything together.

Watching me cry every night and lock my bedroom door because I was so scared of him wasn’t enough to shame Jake into changing his ways.

And that’s the thing about addicts – they have no shame. You can shame and embarrass them to death and it’s still hopeless.

Leaving Jake was the hardest thing I’d ever done. But it was also the most important.

I had to save myself. I couldn’t continue to be dragged down by his addiction, by the constant accusations, paranoia, manipulation and threat of violence.

It’s easy to lose yourself in that toxicity, to start questioning your own sanity. I had to remind myself constantly that I wasn’t the problem – his addiction was.

Somehow, I’m in a better place today.

I have a job I love, my own home and – most importantly – peace of mind. I think about Jake sometimes, hoping he’ll get the help he needs.

But I know I made the right choice, for me and my children. It’s heartbreaking to watch someone you love spiral into addiction, but I deserved a life free from the chaos of ice.

As for Jake, what happens to him now is up to him.

As told to Ali Daher