From what you have shared, because your father had a problem with alcohol you had to learn how to interact with him around his problem. You wanted to be a good daughter and you did not have enough life experience to know any different than how you managed to have a sense of calm when surviving in an unhealthy family dynamic.
Often not realizing it a person will end up with a marriage partner that presents them with the same kind of unhealthy dynamic. In your case both your husband and father developed the use of drugs to escape from instead of facing and developing healthy skills to work through life challenges.
And you never stopped wanting to be that good girl. So you continued engaging with someone that was not healthy.
Both your father and your husband have some kind of mental health issues and it’s not an easy black and white. Yet while both have talents and intelligence, they developed issues never learning to develop healthy coping skills and chose to escape leading them to developing substance abuse problems.
There is a lot of narcissistic behavior patterns that are practiced when a person has a substance abuse problem. And choosing to stop abusing drugs doesn’t change the problem.
It’s not your job to be this good girl that lives her life around someone that is unhealthy. Yet, this has been your normal for many years of your life. It’s going to be a difficult pattern of yours to break. There are things you are going to notice that are going to make you angry at your husband and also yourself. And you will experience withdrawals because a lot of how you lived became how you grew to automatically navigate your life.
An abnormal relationship has been your normal pretty much all of your life.
Yes, he probably fakes that he will send money, and yet he doesn’t follow through. He has learned how to manipulate. That’s part of his disease/mental illness. As you make an effort to focus more on yourself and your needs you will begin to see things you accepted that were unhealthy for you.
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