Hi again Jason!
To clarify my comment that there is nothing you can do to stop your wife gambling, I will reiterate what I said while referring to my own experience.
I cannot , of course speak for any other CG.
In my case, there was nothing whatsoever that my husband could do or say that would have stopped me gambling until I was ready to admit I was powerless and that gambling (not my husband)had me beaten! In fact, the more he tried to stop me ( looking back he really didn’t try that hard) the more determined I became to overrule him. I think like you Jason HE WAS AFRAID! I can identify with your wife’s present behaviour and I can see where you might be enabling her to gamble even more. In order to allow me to gamble I needed three pieces of ammunition. Money, Time and Opportunity. If anybody ever tried to interfere with my access to any of the above, I felt immediately threatened to the point where I would instantly provoke all sorts of irrational arguments to create the smoke screen I needed to allow me to escape.My desire to gamble was like a forceful magnet , drawing me away from real life to a secret world which I believed in my flawed mind was the only place I ever wanted to be. In order to continue my actions, I needed an Enabler and a Scapegoat. My husband fulfilled my needs because he did not know how to handle me. This is the KEY, Jason. Nobody knows how to handle a CG at this stage of the illness. His mistakes gave me all the Opportunity and the Time that I needed. I learned to play him like a fiddle and fine tune every note to keep my Illusions intact! My need for money came later…..
What is obvious from your posts Jason is you don’t know how to handle your wife’s present behaviour. In fact I suspect you might be even blaming yourself for some of it .
This is firing her gambling big time! Taking blame plus your fear is allowing her to continue to gamble. You say you don’t know how to “handle her requests”. These words jumped out at me from your first post because in the beginning I used to ask my husband to drive me to a casino. Why should a person need to “request” to partake in “normal” fun! This shows how “sick” we have become! I would allow him to think he had some say in my gambling and like you, he would wait in the car and it seemed all above board because I was going “with his consent”. What he didn’t know was, that every chance I got I was also going more and more behind his back, on my own and would spend up to 12 hours there doing “my own thing” and I was secretly borrowing huge sums of money and packing those machines with every cent I borrowed! Like I did, your wife has involved you to a limited degree and has even allowed you to carry the blame because that served her addiction at that time.
I will let you in on a little CG secret Jason. My guess is that now her game is almost up! You are an obstacle to her gambling now . That is why she wants you out of the way. She is insulting and verbally abusing you so she will have a clear run to do the only thing she wants to do right now. Gamble! This cannot last Jason!
My guess is she is petrified by her own lack of control. She cannot face her fears so she is running scared! The time will come when she will collapse under the strain. I think that time is near from what you have described. She is both teasing you and testing you because you are her best friend yet her addiction’s worst enemy. Sooner or later things will erupt. Secrecy is very stressful . We can run but we can’t hide forever Jason and it seems the time is coming when she will need you to be there for her. Sadly, when I arrived at that place and “came clean” with my husband it was too late for him in many ways.
Every scenario is different . Velvet will tell you how to look after yourself. I am just sharing my experience to let you know that Gambling comes with a high price tag. Every CG must face the music at some point. While I say there is NOTHING YOU can do to stop your wife gambling, I will say there is a LOT she can do to STOP HERSELF!
Stay strong. She will need your support when she wakes up from this horrible nightmare we call “Fun”!
