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Not sure I can make this clear I'm not sure I can explain this clearly, but here goes....Our family has lots of experience in dealing with addictions and dysfunctional behaviors, we also have lots of experience playing Cleopatra (Queens of De Nile). The latest has me stumped. I've spent time building boundaries and learning how to teach people to treat me. I've made some progress. But now I'm dealing with an addicted sil and my husband is trying to dictate how I am to respond to her demands. I feel like the right answer is to tell the sil to take care of the situations she has created for herself or seek help for her addictions. My husband agrees, except.....he has a much older sister who will step in and kill herself trying to help. I feel pretty strongly that the elderly sister has her own lessons to learn here but my h insists that she's too old and too fragile and rather than risk her health we should enable the other sister. Anyone? At this moment my plan such as it is, is to assure the elderly sister than I'm doing everything possible to help the addict sister while making only the feeblest of attempts. But my gut tells me to walk away and let the older sister (79) kill herself trying to fix something she can't fix rather than be a party of the drama and deception. Thoughts? |
Easeful, Your H wants to help his sister, I feel the best way is to make her responsible for her actions. I feel bad for the older sister, sometimes they just don't get it, or can't believe it. I'm not sure what you should do other than to turn this over to your HP. Keeping you in my prayers |
Even enablers need to hit bottom, easeful, no matter what their age. So your husband would continue to enable the addict, pushing her deeper into her addiction, maybe pushing her closer to death, in order to spare the other one? Would you feel good about participating in this in the long term? If you look back ten years from now, would you feel good about your actions? What about telling the enabler that you're doing what you can, and then doing nothing at all (rather than very little)? Better yet, what about letting your husband worry about this complicated mess that YOU DID NOT CREATE. You didn't cause it, you can't cure it, you can't control it. All you can do is get plunked right in the middle by the involved parties if you let them....and since you asked...I don't think that's at all fair to you. As pjbs said, consider turning this one over to your HP. This is not your battle. My two cents, all polished up for you. Hugs and strength to do what's right for YOU and not somebody else. |
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