[gamlingtograce]

I sincerly believe I was meant to read your reply the day that I did…

Since my last post, my father recieved a terminal diagnosis. His lung function is very poor and the doctor told us if he contracted any virus or infection, it would be life-threatening. Last week, I recieved a call from my daughters school stating she was running a fever of 102.8. I rushed to get her and went straight to my dads doctor, as my dad had just called for an appointment himself for trouble breathing. His doctor was able to see my daughter right away. While waiting on her flu test, outside of the exam room, I heard the doctor yell to his nurse to get Scott (my dad) on the phone immediately and in for a flu test because his granddaughter just tested positve for it. Hearing panic in a doctors voice is an extremely uneasy feeling. Many prayers later, dad was in the office and thankfully recieved a negative test result. The doctor took precautions and put him on medication anyway and instructed us to stear clear of my dad.

I shared this story because in the time I spent waiting for my dad to get tested, all I wanted to do was pick up the phone and call him to unload my tears and worry on my partner in the hopes of some sort of comfort and reassurance, only I couldn’t. I couldn’t call him because he’s not my partner anymore. He’s not my person, he’s not my rock he had always been, he wasn’t mine anymore. 

Sadly, the ugly side of recovery had too big a presence in what was left of our relationship. Over the last few weeks I’ve wondered if I was selfish in for asking for all of him. If I was selfish in asking that he move back home where he belonged with my daughter and I, the people that were his home for the last six years. If I was selfish in asking that he let me, his partner, support him through this in the comfort of our home rather than him staying with his parents. Ultimately, in the end, I can’t help but wonder if I was selfish in refusing to take a step back in our relationship. While I know its unrealistic to expect him to come back to me unscathed or as a new man, it’s hard to swallow loosing him when I didn’t want either of those things. I didn’t want a new man, I didn’t want him to feel like he needed to hide his scars. I didn’t need him to fake it or pretend to be okay. I didn’t want anything but him… I needed him, his physical presence in the life he claimed to be sharing with me. 

I have had my fair share of heartbreak and loss, but this is different. This is all-consuming. It comes in waves that are way too close together, waves that take my breath away and make me sick to my stomach knowing we are over. He has called and texted a couple times, but nothing has changed. I don’t know if this makes me a selfish person, but I want to be chosen first. I want to chosen above everything else. He tells me he loves me, but that he can’t do anything about it. He can’t come home, he can’t go to dinner with me, he can’t reach out to my dad, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t. For me, I love hard, I give my partner all of me, which is exactly why I feel this is unbearable. 

My mind is made up; I don’t feel as though I can compromise another ounce of my self-worth or chance at happiness by going back to him without getting what I need. He continues to try and give explanations to his behavior, but every part of me (except my heart) is telling me this is just not how someone acts when they love someone. This is by far the hardest decision I’ve ever made, and I guess I am just looking for the slightest affirmation that I made the right choice.

[gamlingtograce]

Thank you for sharing such a positive message. So many stories I have read over the last few months have portrayed such dark futures that may lay ahead and inevitable parting of relationships as a result of compulsive gambling, so it is extremely refreshing to hear a couple come out the other side of it…. as I hope to be as well.

Since my last post, his moods and behaviors have thrown me for a loop. There have been days where I truly dreaded coming home and knowing it would be a tension-filled evening of walking on eggshells or a long night of arguing. Anything could set him off, anything could be a stressor. It got to the point we were fighting more days than not. The weekend before Christmas, I broke down. I needed to breathe without the pulsating ball of lava that was my bleeding stomach ulcer, threatening every fiber of my being. I told him I needed some space. I needed to enjoy my daughters laughter and excitement when our elf would get more creative with his hiding spots every day closer to Christmas. I just wanted to be… if that makes sense. In all honesty, looking back, it was so bad I feel as though I would have asked for that space regardless of what time of year it was. However, he did not see it that way. The day after asking for some space, he called me to end things. He said he knew it had been hard on me, but it took him realizing that it was to the point that I wanted to be apart from him during the holidays for him to see how different he had been. 

He came over the next day for us to say our goodbyes (mind you, this is almost 7 years together), and I saw him cry for the first time ever on that day. Fast forward to Christmas day, my dad surprises my daughter and I with a puppy from santa. My daughters reaction was very emotional and she wanted him to come meet the puppy. I called, he came. We stayed up talking late that night about how we ended up there, in a place neither of us wanted to be, but couldn’t manage to get out of. He posed a question to me that I had never considered: what had I done in all that time that I was “staying with him” and “supporting him through it,” what steps had I actually taken in this recovery process that I claimed to be a part of? I had always told him to see a therapist, try medication, go to a support group, self-exclude, etc., but never had I said, “hey lets go do this,” “I have these concert tickets we can’t let go to waste,” or “lets cook and invite so and so over since we haven’t visited with them in forever” etc. I realized I wasn’t as proactive in his recovery as I could be. Since that time, I have attempted anywhere from 5-7 times a week to do something with him to get his mind elsewhere and everytime has been rejected. As a signiifcant other to someone recovering from a gambling addiction, rejection is an especially difficult thing to swallow because of the time spent feeling unwanted or unloved during their gambling.

To add fuel to our fire – this past week was a different kind of breaking point for me. Five days ago, he attended his first gamblers anonymous support group. I was so very proud of him; I did everything I could think to show support of this. I offered to go with him, to be an ear for him to vent if he hated it, or to build him up if he loved it, etc. Since that meeting, he’s barely spoken to me besides telling me he liked it and plans to go back. The afternoon after he attended the meeting, he went and visitied with his family, next day he went and hung out with a friend he had drifted from, day after he drove hours to visit an old friend from when he worked offshore. On Wednesdays of every week, my daughter stays with her grandparents so that’s at least one night during the week that is usually guarenteed the house will be quiet because he has to go to bed early for his 3am shift. So on Wednesday of this past week, when I got off work, I went straight home and started cooking one of his favorite meals in the hopes maybe he’d want to come over for the first time in days. I still hadnt heard back from him from when I had texted him during my lunch break or when I had gotten off work. I tried again when I got home and had the food going; still no response. I called and no answer. A little while later he called back, sounding frustrated that I had been trying to reach him because he was visiting with an old buddy from offshore. I told him I felt like something was off and that I was just trying to spend time together. After we hung up, he sent a photo to prove his whereabouts, and that should have been it. That should have left me at peace and calmed my concerns. But it didn’t. I felt, more than ever, rejected yet again.

On his way home, he called me back. He asked what was wrong and I told him. I apologized for possibly being insensitive, but that I’m happy that he is going out and socializing again, and making an effort in just being his old self, but that I long to be included in that too. His next statement baffled me; he told me that in his meeting, it was communicated that it would be better if he not stay with me anymore and that our relationship is doomed to fail because of the recovery process gambling addicts must go through is hard on couples. I understand I can’t ask about what goes on or is said in the meetings so I am trying very hard not to push for more information. But with a Masters degree in psychology, I have taken my fair share of classes in addiction so for the life of me I cannot fathom how it’s healthy to tell a recovering gambling addict to stear clear of his partner? 

I would understand if our relationship had been a casual thing prior to the addiction, but we’ve been together for almost 7 years, lived together for 4 years, and he’s been in my daughters life since she was 2. We had been waiting to get married until I finished my Masters, which I did in May of 2018, but that time unfortunately turned out to be the peak of his addiction so everything has been put on hold. I am in this with him, for intents and purposes, I have considered him my partner for life. I have not bailed, with the many times I’ve wanted to, I’m still here. But I feel like he’s not. This addiction has condemmed the man I love into an angry, resentfull shell of a person. I feel like he’s fallen out of love with me and wants out, whether its his subconcious or not, because I feel as though he’s utilizing every excuse to not be with me. From a little girl and her puppy being too loud for him to be able to fall asleep on the couch in the evenings to my dads supposed judgement of him staying with me without paying the rent (even though he paid the rent while I was in graduate school, so to me its right for me to pay it now when his entire paychecks are going to paying back his gambling debts). And now his support group is telling him he shouldn’t be staying with me. 

I guess I assumed that emotionally, the hardest challenges through this would be during his gambling and the start of his recovery. He hasn’t gambled since the summer of 2018, but I still don’t feel like he sees me yet. Daily, I feel like I’m in a relationship with a person who is no longer in love wjth me, but I don’t know how much of the things that make me feel that way are because of his recovery process and therefore are temporary, and how much are actually genuine. 

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