Hi Adele
You did better than me in my first group and I didn’t try again for weeks – well done on coming in to Community Groups so quickly. I know my rusty typing skills increased to a rate my teachers would never have be***ved me capable of! Another good thing I have wrested from the addiction.
If you did things wrong you did it for the right reasons. The addiction to gamble ****** on us not knowing how to cope with it – why should we? We are bound up in honesty and trust with someone close to us.
I don’t think you will – but please don’t apologise too much – you were being decent whereas he was not.
I am also not a person given to tears but I shed my fair share over this addiction and probably more as the realization of what it was all about, sank in. I think maybe we allow ourselves the luxury of tears when the fighting without understand stops.
The depths of his bad behaviour are not surprising. I read your paragraph about your husband not being manipulative or conniving in nature because he is not creative enough and yet he found ways. I t seems to be saying that he has diametrically different characteristics and this I understand and I be***ve is what those who are looking in, do not understand. It is why the analogy of creating a separate entity for the addiction appeals t me as someone who loves a CG but is not recognised professionally. Of course the addict has the addiction – they are not really separate. There is no cure, our loved ones will always be CGs.
I also know the ‘hurry up lets talk’situation and then the knowledge that you are defeated by ‘whatever’ it is that is going on. It is symptomatic of the addiction that a CG will behave as though past behaviour has not happened and so they wait for the non-CG to speak. As soon as a conversation is started the addiction is ready to blame the non-CG and *** about everything to protect itself. My CG said that when he said ‘give me time to get my coat off before you start’ what he was really saying was ‘she is going to give me a hard time and I need my addiction to be ready’.
Your husband had nothing he could say, to assuage you – his addiction was manipulating the conversation, protecting itself, trying to weigh up how serious the attack was and how it could side-step the arguments – he was gambling that you would give up.
Might I suggest you encourage him to contact the helpline as he appears to be getting something from this site, and/or start a thread of his own – if he is confident in his addiction, what has got to lose? CGs know other CGs better than we ever will. We have many good threads running – a recent one is by Uncontrolled called ‘The Journey Starts today’ and another is ‘Anniversay’ by Colin in Brum. They are only two in many but both of them were in danger of losing everything, until Uncontrolled came to this site and Colin to GA.
Your husband is a good age to weight up the wreckage he has left behind him. You are regaining your confidence and self-esteem and you will not be part of the wreckage he has to deal with and that will support him tremendously.
Without our recovery the CG has the greater struggle. Our recoveries take a long time but only because I think we go on a learning curve that takes us into every part of our lives with what we learn. I am not the person I was before the addiction came into my life; I am certainly not the blob I was when the addiction was in my life.
I will be back next week although I have a group tonight if you want to hone your typing skills again.
I am not seeking to put a dampener on your hopes but talking about doing something and actually doing it is a big step, until he ‘does’ something rather than talking about it, keep every barrier up and trust nothing. Trust take a long time – I cannot give you a length of time. I trust my CG to look after his recovery – I can do no more. all I can say is that he is doing well. As far as this forum goes, however, I be***ve it is the fact that I am doing well that ****** and of course I can move mountains!
Velvet
You may never know what results come from your actions but if your nothing there will be no results – Mahatma Gandi
