Recently, in addition to attending 12 Step meetings for sex addiction, my husband has started attending Debtors Anonymous, a 12 Step for those with compulsive debt problems. I'm a bit skeptical of this myself; while we do have an overwhelming debt problem, I'm not certain that it was the result of compulsive behavior. I do know it's the result of a family history of money trouble, poor money management skills, depression, sex addiction and the aftermath of dealing with all of the above.

Mark and I started our life together in debt and hounded by collection agencies, but these were not of our own making. Both of our fathers did that addicty thing, taking out loans and credit cards in our names. They couldn't take out their own loans or get their own credit cards, their credit ratings were shot. Instead, they ran up debt we didn't know about or told us not to worry, they'd pay us back. And we spent those first years out of college struggling, not only to pay our own student loans, but the debts of our fathers. My first year out of college, I was contacted by a collection agency. They informed me that, unknown to me, I had defaulted on a debt that was the equivalent to nearly half of what I made a year. And let's just say that, 15 years later, Mark still can't get an American Express Card as a result of a scheme of his late father's.

When we first moved in together, I took care of the finances for both of us. Eating pasta for every meal, balancing the checkbook before each grocery store trip and paying interest plus more than the required principal on every debt. We were engaged for several years to give us enough time to save a few thousand dollars to pay for our wedding. It took years, but before our son was born, we were debt free and saving each month.

Then our son was born, and I quit my job. I fell into post-partum depression and couldn't handle the task of keeping track of the finances anymore. Money matters were so stress inducing to contemplate, they'd send me reeling, when I felt I was struggling to survive amid the panic attacks, and the migraines, and the sleep deprivation, and the baby boy who cried day and night, and the dishes, and laundry, and cooking, and home repairs. I tried, good codependent that I am, to control everything, but something had to give: the money, eating, breathing, something...

So, control of the money slipped away from me, and my husband, who was lost in the height of his sex addiction, more concerned about hiding the money he was spending on Internet porn and other women than balancing the checkbook, couldn't step in to help. But we had that savings we built up before my son was born and did ok, even with no one monitoring things. Then I got pregnant (unexpectedly) with my daughter, my son was diagnosed with autism, my husband quit his job and came clean about his addiction and in the space of a few months, my whole world spiraled away from me, finances included. And more than four years later, I'm still reeling from that loss.

We burned through the savings when my husband was out of work and then it seemed like everything required money. There were therapists upon therapists for my husband and my son and sometimes me, and there babysitters so we could see the therapists and each other. I knew the money was slipping away but I couldn't keep on top of it. And whenever I said, "We can't afford it." My husband's response was "we can't afford not to." It seemed we had to spend money or our marriage would fall apart, our son would never eat, our lives would fall apart. And I was just too overwhelmed to fight it.

I tried to hand off the job of paying bills to my husband, but when things didn't get paid, I took over again, but didn't do much better than he did. About a year ago, I told him I couldn't handle what few shreds of the finances I was still clinging to. I just couldn't get on top of things, and I couldn't control his part of the spending. He needed to see for himself where we were. So, I stopped paying the bills, really stopped this time. I told him all of the bills that usually paid automatically from our checking account were not going to be paid unless he went back and activated them himself. And, then, forced to look closely, he finally saw clearly what was happening. As many times as I had said the words, I hadn't been able to make him understand, but he was able to see: tens of thousands of dollars in debt and more money going out than coming in every month. We were living on credit and running out of credit fast.

So, he's going to DA meetings these days and continuing to refine a spending plan and learn how to manage the money. Is our debt a compulsive thing? I personally don't think so. Still, 12 Step is a comforting structure for Mark, and he is learning from people who have been through what we have been through before. And that's the beauty of any 12 Step program: not feeling alone and ashamed anymore, but working with people who understand to improve your life, one day at a time.