Parents struggle to do what’s best for tormented daughter.
Dear Abby:
My 53-year-old daughter is an addict. First it was alcohol, then hard drugs and opioids. This has been going off and on for 40 years.
She hit bottom recently. She became homeless and ended up in a women’s shelter in another state. She says she’s been clean about six months. The shelter helped her find a place to live, and she draws a disability check, so she has everything she needs.
She constantly contacts me and her father saying she wants to come home. We have helped her to the point of mental, physical and financial exhaustion, and we just can’t go there again. We know we shouldn’t continue to enable her, but if we don’t, we feel like terrible parents. Any advice would be much appreciated. — Terrible Parents in Indiana
Dear Parents:
You already know what will happen if you cave in to your daughter’s begging to “come home.” From now on, when she asks, remind her that she already IS home, in the place the people from the shelter helped her to find. Her troubles have nothing to do with you. They are the result of the life she created for herself. You already know that enabling her hasn’t worked. The time has come for you and your husband to take better care of yourselves.
Dear Abby:
My ex-wife and I separated after 56 years of marriage. I recently found out she had been raped. Twice. The first was somebody I worked around at the air base.
The second was by her father to “teach her a lesson” for getting raped the first time.
When I asked her about it, she said it was none of my business because it happened before we met, but I think she should have told me. I worked around the first guy. Who knows what he told the other airmen behind my back? I also asked very personal questions of her dad, which I now regret. My question is, was she right or should she have told me? — Upset Person in the East
Dear Upset Person:
I doubt that the person who worked with you on the air base would have spent much time bragging about having raped, so please, stop obsessing about what the person might have said. That your wife was raped later by her own father must have been devastating. Both of the animals who abused her belonged in jail.
That said, although your wife probably should have told you what happened to her, she was NOT OBLIGATED to do so. Your marriage is over. Let it go!