Hi Velvet!
Thanks for replying to my post. It does help just to be able to put my thoughts and feelings out there instead of holding it in, for sure. I try to be very conscientious about how I communicate with my SO. So I try to let my initial feelings happen internally, so I don’t just say the first thing on my mind and then be hurtful. So it’s nice to now have a place that I can let those initial thoughts/feelings out so I can process them and be very thoughtful in my communication with my SO. It’s one of the things that is our strongest trait in our relationship is our ability to communicate without blame, criticism, and judgment.
You made some very good points that I’m going to definitely ponder. In particular these 2:
“Finding the words or actions they don’t recognise, in your case, ‘might’ be the different approach required.”
And
“I don’t think that bargaining or contracts make a scrap of difference.”
You are absolutely correct, she knows all the right things to say, and so do I. I would be curious to hear from you what your ideas are on what words I could use that she wouldn’t recognize?
And you are also correct in that none of the contracts we’ve made, none of the agreements we’ve had have made a hill of beans worth of difference. The bottom line is she has to want it, and so far she’s wavered on that.
The thing I hear most often is she wants to be able to manage this. On one hand she enjoys the recreation of being able to go into a casino for a little while, like you and I would enjoy going to a book club or doing crafts (not that you like these things, just trying to make a point…) But the problem is she can’t control her behavior while there. She always spends more than she plans to, usually to the detriment of being able to pay her bills. She never stays as long as she plans to. And the thing of it is, she knows she has a problem. She’s told me she does. I hear 2 different things at the same time. I have a problem, but I want to manage my behavior. So, in terms of step 1 of GA, she’s got the “admitting I have a problem” part down, but the acceptance of it, and the acceptance that she can’t actually control this is where she’s in denial.
To answer your question, yes she’s expressed many times a desire to stop gambling. We’ve talked about the things she needs to do and the things she needs to put in place in order to do that, but it comes down to wanting to actually follow through on it, consistently over a long period of time. And that’s where it breaks down for her. Yes she has been to GA meetings before but she doesn’t go regularly. In fact we were going together at least to the open meetings that are near us. the closed meetings, where they actually do the step work happens at a different GA meeting location that is too difficult for her to attend, both because of distance and time. It conflicts with her work schedule.
There was a time, where for almost 90 days she didn’t go to the casino. She was doing very well, I was feeling more secure and trusting. Things were going well, and then one day she somehow convinced herself that maybe she could go and gamble like normal people. That she could go in there for recreational use and not get caught up in the compulsive nature of it. But the first time she went in there, was it. As they say in GA, the first bet is the one to avoid right? Well it’s been an up and down rollercoaster ever since.
She realizes that she needs to go back and do what she was doing in those 90 days. But getting her to do it, and getting her to keep doing it is the challenge.
One thing I do want to mention, she may be one of the rare cases where she knows what her triggers are. There was a time when she could walk into a casino and just play recreationally. Spend only what she planned to spend, stay only as long as she had planned to stay, but there came a point where the switch was flipped and she’s never been able to get back to that place again. And I think that’s where she’s stuck. She feels that since she did it before, she should be able to do it again. But the truth is, I think for those who have moved into an addiction, you can never go back to that place and that’s the part I think she has a hard time accepting. If I did it before, why can’t I do it now?? Ya know, that’s the lie they tell themselves. That’s the lie that the addiction will tell them.
But, most of what I’ve written has been about her. I think for me, the support I need is just to be able to have a place I can express my most raw emotions about this. I’m sure you know that it’s very hard for those on our side of the fence. There is nothing we can do to make this stop. There is nothing we can do to make the person we love quit. Even though we know that, we still try anyway. I know I can’t make her stop, I know I can’t even make her want to. And that’s frustrating. And it’s painful. I saw someone else’s post on here that the gambling for us is not even the primary issue, of course it’s a huge issue, but the bigger issue for us is the being lied to, the being manipulated, the broken trust, the dishonesty. For my SO and I, we have worked hard to just be open/honest about her going. I’m not nearly as mad at her for going when she tells me the truth about it. But she adds the lying and deceiving and the sneakiness about it on top of going, then that is what really angers me. She has no reason to hide this from me, at least I’ve never given her any reason to lie or sneak. But I know it has nothing to do with me, it has to do with her and her guilt and shame about it all.
So I guess, given my long verbose response, all I really wanted to say was even with the little bit of communication I’ve had on this site, I already feel a little bit of relief. I don’t have family or friends that I can talk to about this. My family doesn’t know and I don’t plan to tell them for a number of reasons. Her family knows but plays the ostrich with their head in the sand thing about it, they have another child going through alcohol addiction recovery. I believe there is a genetic component to this in their family, they have a family that has had many addicts of different sorts through several generations. And I can’t search out local counseling because she knows everyone in that field so I have to be careful not to put her in a compromising position with her job. And I can’t share it with friends, for the same reason (not that we have many right now, not because of the gambling, but actually just because we both moved back to our hometown recently and lost touch with a lot of our friends so from that front we’re sort of starting over). So it’s nice to have a place I can go to really let some of this stuff out, and it’s already been a little bit of relief, and I’m sure more is to come.
So thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to respond!
onajourney!