Dear Ell
I am packing to go away tomorrow for 2 weeks but I had a quick look at the forum and there you were.
When the danger is coming from another then you have no control over it but if the danger is within you then you can conquer it. Trust yourself Ell, you are very wise.
When we live with the addiction all we want is for the addictive behaviour to cease – nothing else matters, we give no thought to ourselves, we are so ******* up in the addiction of another.
When a true recovery starts for the CG, why does that cause so much turmoil for the person who loves them? It is the fear to trust again after days, weeks, months and years being spent knotted up like a coiled spring. The non-CG is afraid to let that spring go, afraid of being out of control again and that fear is perfectly natural.
It is my firm belief that you and your husband will find a deeper relationship in time. The girl who gave me the greatest support when I started my recovery was married to her CG husband, who was 15 years clear of his last bet. They told me separately of their love for each other. Both of them said that everyday was better than the day before – it was and is, an incredibly deep, strong and loving relationship.
Your husband cannot give you a promise that he will never gamble again but equally none of us know what is round the corner for anybody however much we love them. When we are first married we do wear rose-tinted glasses but thank goodness we do eventually take them off because perfection is not reality. Mr V does not have an addiction but I can’t ‘know’ what our tomorrow will be – I can only trust that we will be happy but nobody can give a cast-iron guarantee for any relationship.
Today on Skype you called him ‘your love’, you haven’t said it for a long time – ‘I love you’ is just going to take a bit longer. Perhaps you could tell me how you feel about him and then see how the words look and feel. If you love him you will tell him when you are ready.
Don’t rush anything, he is waiting for you because he loves you. I cannot put a time on how long it will take you because we are all different. I would imagine it is your mind that is frozen and not your heart which I suspect is warm enough to thaw an ice-berg. When you are ready your mind will thaw but no amount of worrying will make it happen any faster.
I would be surprised if you were not grieving your old relationship – it was carefree. I think it is like becoming an adult and realising that childhood days are gone – there is sense of loss but it can be replaced by a sense of purpose, to make things better than they were before because you have a maturity that you did not have before.
I wish there was a magic wand but unfortunately there is only hard work and perseverance that will bring you what you want. I have told you before that I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know for positive that good can come out of this evil.
It is easy to say that you know you must let it go but it is quite another thing to do it. Yes you are free but you want proof and that only comes with time but you are doing brilliantly. In time ‘what if’ becomes redundant as does ‘if only’.
Just keep going as you are Ell.
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V
