how do you know if you are enabling?
Am I an enabler? I honestly don't know anymore. My AH has been home for a year from about 6 months in rehab/halfway houses. He said he was clean and working his program. I was skeptical as his behavious were not changing (still blaming, raging, criticizing, leaving for a day or two if we got into a fight, spending money irresponsibly, focusing on what chores the kids weren't doing or what messes they were making, etc.) anyway I found out that he has been using for sure a couple of times this year (he stole vicodin from a friends house and stole pain killers out of my purse) and who knows how many more times.
Anyway he left me when I confronted him about stealing my pain killers. He left his wedding ring for me to find and took off without any note to the kids or anything. then called when he couldn't charge food at our health club and yelled at me that he was divorcing me and hung up.
It has been a couple of weeks and he has come over to see the kids and get clothes.
He has been calling me and talking like a normal person. When I ask him what his plans are he talks about moving into an apartment to "get his head on straight".
OK here is my confusion. Am I enabling him when I take his calls, or let him come over and hang out with the kids, giving him money when he ran out of gas? Am I enabling him because I have not completely cut him off? Right now I think he realizes what he has done and by moving out this could be the last effort to actually save our marriage. So if he moves out under the guise of "saving our marriage" and we both agree to this, and come up with a plan for him to see kids, etc. is this enabling, because even though I don't know what his drug intake is, the fact that there has been relapses and he did not tell me about them but denied until he was really caught, does that mean that he is in his "addiction" and really anthing he says is just lip service? I can't seem to get the knack of this. TO cut off completely seems counter to being a "good person" but if I'm enabling, then I know I am doing more harm - so I need help - am I an enabler or not? please help - ps sorry if some of you have heard some of this story before - my thread was lost recently so some of this might be repeat.