Hi BL
I have taken so long to write my reply and now I see that Lily has already replied – but as I have to go out I will send this unedited even if we are almost certainly saying the same thing.
I don’t know where your husband is staying but the principle behind a rehab is to remove a CG from their loved ones and the environment in which they indulged their addiction, thus allowing the CG the space and time to think solely of themselves and what they can do to change something that is so ingrained it feels impossible to change – of course, this time apart also gives the loved one time to agonise over the future and what is possibly going on.
Your husband probably isn’t working on his marriage as a priority – he is working on himself and it will be very painful for him but if he doesn’t do this work and do it properly you will get the same man back and no amount of loving or caring will make any difference.
Before my CG eventually chose rehab, he estranged himself completely from me – I didn’t know anything about his whereabouts or what he was doing and I fretted and worried just as you are doing. In fact my CG was not gamble-free as your husband has been for a month and he spiralled into an abyss with no hope. Even from this abyss though there is always hope and for some reason, unknown to me, he became determined to change his life. He was in rehab for 9 months and for 3 of those months, he told me, he blamed me for his addiction. I didn’t speak to him for all of this time and in fact I didn’t see him for a further 6 months. In retrospect I am glad that this time apart was not in my control because I too was a carer/fixer – I believed that more than anybody else in the world I was the one that could ‘help’ my CG because who could love him more? Knowing what I know now I realise that hearing him blame me would have triggered responses from me that would have ruined his hope of recovery whereas, thanks to the separation what I didn’t know didn’t hurt me – and those who were supporting him understood why he was saying what he did.
You are supporting your husband by using this forum, by seeing a counsellor and by working on being yourself – the woman your husband fell in love with. In my opinion if the person who loves a CG sits back and does nothing, while their loved one digs into their very being to find answers, then she will be the same when they meet again. I was not the woman who took my CG to the rehab 6 months earlier – I could not have given him the right support, I was too close. I had learned that I cannot judge anyone else, that I have to understand me and why I do and say things I do. I learned that my need was not his need and although I never made sense of the senseless I was ready to listen and understand rather than trying to talk him into my way of thinking.
I found the strangest thing about my life, post-active CG, is that my CG had to learn to trust me more than I had to learn to trust him. If I had not changed, our relationship would not have survived. I know this to be true because during the first 2 years I doubted something, I hung on to it until it built up inside me and I told him, believing that it was the right to do. He told me that my fears were unjustified and indeed they were. As a result I was fine but he wasn’t. Fortunately he had support behind him that he could turn to because he reasoned that, if ‘I’ didn’t trust him after all the work he had done on himself, then what hope had he got. During early recovery a CG is very vulnerable but I didn’t know how vulnerable and for those 2 days of doubt I was, in effect, the same woman who had taken him to the rehab a year earlier – it apeared I had learned nothing.
You write that you have forgiven him and moved on but for me that took about 2 years. I am not sure that your husband could know so early on that you have truly forgiven him and that what has gone before over so many years has been really put in to the past. He must still be so vulnerable because guilt hangs heavily round their necks for a very long time.
If your husband is one month gamble-free I don’t believe that you are the only one working towards your relationship. Although I said earlier that your husband will be working on himself over and above your marriage then that surely is working on (and for) your relationship because with an active addiction he cannot be the man you want him to be or the father you want for your children.
If any of this doesn’t make sense I hope you will fire straight back at me. It would be great to ‘talk’ in real time on a Thursday between 20.00-21.00 hours UK time – it is so good to feel understanding across cyber space and it works both ways.
I wish you, your husband and your children well at this difficult time
Velvet
