Hi Velvet,
Thank you so much for your reply and it´s really nice to hear from you again. I hope you´ve had some really lovely days with your son and his family.
I have read your advice on concentrating on the present…on today in other posts and I know this is good to try to do…the present is all we have. I also often think of the Serenity prayer. Thank you for thinking of me with those. I was wondering where I might get a hold of more of the GA and GAnon literature. I have the 12 steps, in Spanish too, from GA. I have been on their websites quite a bit. There is GA in Mexico, although not where I am, there are for now just a few groups around the country, no GAnon anywhere here. I could perhaps contact them and see if they have any literature they could send me, although I am thinking that it is unlikely they have a setup for payment and sending, etc. I have read a lot on the internet…perhaps absorbing myself in it too much, and perhaps time to take a bit of a step back. I have in the past been on silent meditation retreats and used to use more “tools” but I have somehow let that all drop away, and more so in Cuba where I feel I just let myself get sucked into everything there and also kind of “lost myself”…I am fully aware of that.
At the moment, my husband seems…well…ok. He keeps saying that he will not gamble again…that he is done with it now. Of course he has said that in the past, although each time when he relapses I can see he tightens the resolve a little more and that he is genuinely trying. I keep thinking that he just doesn´t realise what he is up against. I keep thinking that if it were so easy he would have done it in the past…But also like I have been saying, he doesn´t have anything else he could really do except use his willpower and…abstain. And you have said many times that abstinence is not recovery. He could eventually try to make amends for the damage and hurt he has caused with his gambling…he could apologise, etc….but that seems…down the line and with guidance and support, no? I think he knows that I have far more resolve now to not help him at all to deal with the fallout from any of his gambling…that they are his problems and his responsibilities and his alone. I have to keep communicating this clearly to him and explaining to him why I am taking this stance – although I think he knows! For now I feel that his main motivation to not gamble is because he wants me back there and so I am so wary about going back…but that is….the future….and really at the same time it is good that he knows that it was in the end not so hard for me to walk away and stay away and that I could do it again in the future and that things need to change. But I need to change very much too, especially with boundaries and clear communication (and I have read tons on that too…all the NVC stuff….but it is all so much…theory!).