As I was catching up on your posts, I started to formulate my response to what your H is doing right now but as I continued to read, I noticed that everyone already pointed out everything I wanted to say. This allowed me to go further in my thinking and maybe offer you something to mull over:

You say your H wants you to do all of this checking up on him and that you never did it in the past. Now maybe we can just assume he doesn't want to take responsibility for his actions and wants you to be his mom but what happens if we don't use that assumption...

What is your H getting from you when you do this? What need of his are you fulfilling? Perhaps when you check up on him, it makes him feel that you love him and care about what he's doing? It's almost like that story you quoted from Relationship Rescue about how each person got something out of the destructive behaviour pattern. What are you getting out of this pattern? Perhaps fuel for your "fire" - the fire being your pain, anger and distrust at this point?

Maybe it would be better to dig into the deeper reasons underlying this pattern to find out the needs and then, once you've identified them (which is more than half of the battle) try to find some better ways of fulfilling them.


-Calystra