Line in the sand

[mustardseed]

Copy of my last post on my previous thread:
I haven't spoken to a lawyer yet, but I am starting to gather names. Oh man, I really don't want things to have to go down this path, but I realize that I have to learn to grow a back bone.

I am slowly starting to discuss my financial concerns with him. He seems responsive, but his MO was always to say yes than flake on things later. I am trying to be careful to keep things to one topic so as to not unleash all of my harbored resentment at once, because I am just now realizing how much I have been resenting how he had handled money in the past. I am being forced to face things I have chosen to ignore for so many years. This is where the DB get's tricky. Because I want to continue to DB but at the same time I want to make sure he doesn't flake out on financial responsibilities and I am also so tempted to just tell him exactly how I feel about how unfair things have been due to his carelessness (or maybe it was selfishness although I still have a hard time believing he was being selfish, just clueless).

But now I am realizing what a wimp I am. How for 14 years I have avoided conversations that would stress him out or make him think that I was criticizing or nagging. And here we are, financially screwed because I decided to ignore rather than deal with things because I hate confrontation and he still thinks all of those things about me that I thought I was avoiding. I acted like a child for too long. He already doesn't like me so why should I care about calling him out on his BS now? What do I have to lose at this point? But for some reason I still feel like I need to stroke him rather than laying out the truth. The truth is that he has pissed away so much money on--from what I can tell--a lot of vices and carelessness. I took over the bills to make sure we stopped the cycle of always being behind in everything while the accounts still got drained, I separated my paycheck so that I would know that I had the money to buy groceries when I needed it, rather than finding out at the check out line when my card was declined. And his reaction to that was why is he paying more for the bills then me. Not even acknowledging the fact that only 50% of his income is going towards supporting the family where as 95% of mine is. Not even realizing that he blows through the other 50% with nothing to show for it (except maybe that explains the stacks of scratch offs I find in his closet and the car). I'm so angry that he is accusing me of gypping him when he has been so careless and never felt obligated to put bills and expenses before his daily fixes. He is dealing with one vice, but the other two are more expensive IMHO, and also more of an addiction. I know I am an enabler by always ignoring and cleaning up his messes, and I want to stop doing that now. But I don't know how to do that. But I can't say this to him. Not now. He hates me as it is so anything I say will have no impact except to make him hate me more. So what do I do?

This is definitely a growing experience from me, but why does growing need to be so uncomfortable?