Hi Evelyn
I look forward to the day when you look back at these early posts and say to yourself – ‘haven’t I come a long way?’ because I know you will.
Learning about the addiction to gamble will give you power over it. It is important to remember that you do not own the addiction – ‘you’ can control ‘your’ life.
Your partner is not doing this to you on purpose, the addiction to gamble is all-consuming and needs feeding. When you partner is triggered, he will probably say or do anything to make you enable him because he knows how to push your buttons. It is those buttons I hope to help you stop being pushed.
The addiction to gamble is not about money, your partner gambles because ‘the gamble’ excites him, he cannot and will not win because he is an addict.
As long as you enable your partner, he has no need to try and take control of himself. It will take courage and determination to control his addiction and your partner will benefit from you having the courage and determination to support him but if you feel you cannot go on, then nobody on this site would blame you.
I hope it helps to know that I enabled for too many years, I did all the wrong things for all the right reasons – it wasn’t until I stopped enabling that the gambler in my life turned his life around – finally I stopped the madness.
The addiction to gamble wants secrecy to gain enablement. Do the people you are borrowing from know that your partner has an addiction to gamble.
Perhaps you could tell your partner that you are seeking help for yourself because his addiction is affecting your health.
There is nothing for you, or him, to be ashamed about; the addiction to gamble is not something that anybody would choose to own. You do not deserve to have this affecting your life and nor does you partner. There is support for him here. On this site he will be understood and welcomed.
If you are worried that he will recognise you from your posts then speak to our Helpline and they will help you.
I agree that you have invested too much of you in your partner’s problems and I will walk with you for as long as you want me to do so. If he couldn’t change his life, I wouldn’t be writing you but I know that he can. I’m bringing my thread ‘the F&F Cycle’ up for you, maybe it will help.
More importantly for ‘you’, I know you can stop enabling once you accept that giving him money only feeds his addiction which will grow and grow.
Please keep posting. I will leave you, for now, with one of my favourite quotes from Mahatma Gandi ‘you may never know what results come from your actions but if you do nothing there will be no results’
My thoughts are with you
Velvet