Hi Madge
Yes it all makes perfect sense to me , I have not updated my own thread for months but briefly I have singley raised three boys on my own now aged 21, 16 and 15. I work full time and always have and have coped with an ex husband who is an alcoholic and my ex partner for 7 years who is a CG so I guess I have a sense of just how overwhelming life can be at times !!
What I pick up in your posts is the sheer stress of it all, I am not totally out of the woods yet, but I am getting there bit by bit. The support I have had from here over the last 6 years I think it is now, has been amazing (6 years I am a slow learner!!)
Looking after you I think Is a bit of an alien concept and at first it feels wrong, selfish even but it isn’t it is one of the only defences possible when faced with the addiction to gamble or any other addiction in my oppinion.
I used to think what are they all on about – go and have a bath, do something nice – how is that helpful how does that solve my problems. But now I see that it does, and you are seeing it to.
Boundaries of what is acceptable to you are beginning to appear in your posts and little by little I see you beginning to think – hang on a minute I have needs to!!. More importantly I see your focus beginning to turn away a little from the addiction and you considering what is best for you and your child.
The addiction seems to have a knack of throwing a smokescreen across what is really going on and the distance that you allow yourself will help to let the fog in your mind settle. You have made it clear that he needs to look at the type of relationship he wants with you and the rest of the family and I think that was quite a good way of putting it across to him without having a head on collusion with a squarking addiction.
Your daughter sounds like a bright intelligent girl and the comments you are recieving about her sound remarkably similar to ones that were made about my son. Negative energy in a social group sounds like someone who has been unable to mentally interest or challenge your daughter and has looked in the “Guiness Book Of Labels” for one that appears to fit.
You know what your daughter is and what’s really going on there and she will hang on to the fact that she has a mother that believes in her.
I get what you say about not liking change, I don’t like it either at times, I guess i’m getting old and stuck in my ways a little bit !! But now I look back on a lot of stuff and think, was that really me ? I dare say I will look back on a lot more and ask myself the same question in years to come as well.
Now I quite like being stuck in my own ways, it’s better than being stuck in someone else’s ways.
Keep sitting back, keep spotting those hooks and above all keep looking after you Madge, you may not feel it right now but at some point you will feel a difference.
Jenny x