Wow, your ears must have been burning, was just wondering about you last week. Glad to hear you're ok.
AS for Smokey - agreed, very very low expectations. I certainly wouldn't ever consider taking him back into your life as a lover. It's good that he's sending money and not being a complete jerk. But he has deep problems that are miles away from being fixed, if ever, and you deserve SO MUCH MORE.
He may also have mental health issues apart from the addiction that are not being treated. I don't know if you remember my now ex-BF (hitherto known as crazy exBF). He'd had a past history of addiction but had been sober for a few years when I met him and seemed to be working his 12 step program very well.
Long story short - his underlying problem is bipolar disorder with mania. His mania isn't a happy mania, it's a dysphoric mania. He only uses when he's manic, and then he's trying to kill himself with drugs. This dynamic only became apparent after a week-long meth binge during which he made no sense (as people on meth are wont to do). When he finally "woke up" and asked for help I told him to go check out of his motel room (to avoid further financial havoc) and meet me at the ER. He did that but smoked up all the rest of his drugs in the motel room first, so he was high as a KITE when he got to the ER - BUT - his mania had subsided so he could still make sense, express remorse, worry about how he was going to fix things in his life etc.
In retrospect he'd been having mild episodes of mania (lasting 2-12 hours and not involving relapse) throughout our relationship that just seemed like a low frustration tolerance level in somebody trying to live life as a "normie". This has been a lifelong problem for him but it was never diagnosed because the emphasis was always on the addiction. His father was diagnosed as schizophrenic. He is still trying to find medications that will prevent his manic episodes.
Your daughters need to understand that their father is much sicker than they realize, and although he would like to be there for them, he's not capable. It's not a choice but an illness he has. Healthy boundaries all around.
