When you love a person, the term "enabling" is a difficult concept to understand. You want to help those you love. Supporting their bad habits that injure their health is not really being helpful because you are making excuses for not doing better in the end. I finally stopped enabling my husband and it didn't cause an improvement in his attitude, except he quit drinking for three months at my insistence, but then went back to it thinking that was long enough time to satisfy me. Moving to another bedroom was a good solution for me but then he would come in, wake me, and cause a tantrum about imagined problems. That's when I knew that dementia was happening. He actually liked having the bedroom to himself so he wouldn't have to address his snoring and breathing issues.
I thought he would die any day from his stopped breathing but he only fell out of bed one night and bruised his eye badly. I just learned to live through it all, and avoiding supporting his bad choices, until the end. There was nothing more I could do to help. He ended up in Hospice care for six weeks, never ate a bite, was paralyzed, and on a drug pump. I don't know what the answer is but I know you must understand what "enabling" entails. Dorisena

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