[mermaid]

Hi M,
It was good to meet you there again in the group too. And your message was just so lovely. It was just so nice to read. I know we are both in quite different situations, but at the same time there are always things that are similar with having a cg in your life. I can relate to much of what you say and your experience so far helps me too. I think it is true that it helps so much to be gentler on ourselves and firmer with the cg! So often we tend to be the opposite! And it can really truly take time…time to figure out how we personally can and want to deal with it all…and it is a big learning curve because it is the other person who has the addiction and it is often just forced into our lives and then…it is natural to want to “fix it”, I think. I think we need to give ourselves a break for that. Even professionals who don´t have personal involvement and who have been working with addicts, and cgs, for years, struggle to really understand what is best to do. But the self-care thing is a constant!

I am still in that stage of thinking a lot and just wanting to find out as much as I can about addiction and compulsive gambling. I realise there is a time when it just feels too much and one needs to step back, and I now try to take more breaks from it, but that is just where I am at right now. Not wanting to fix it all for my husband, but wanting more knowledge, to learn from the experiences of others. Just to… learn…And also for every aspect of my life I want to learn how to be a better communicator and work out my boundaries. This would also be something I would want to improve with my husband without his gambling. But I completely understand what Jenny is saying. You have 8 years of it…it is definitely time to branch out and be the true you, to make your life how you truly want it to be. He will always be the father of your daughter, and be in your life because of her, but you have more power over your life, and hers, than you ever imagined and there are so many opportunities out there!

I think that if we can both see that, on average, each week is better than the one that went before, that is real progress! 🙂 In the end, the “winning” in this is coming out of it all being stronger, more content people, more true to who we want to be…easy to say in words…but, we can do it! Jenny is an example of that! 🙂

I hope the rest of your week is good there and that you do plenty of things that are good for you. 🙂

[mermaid]

I guess a follow-up to the above is to ask more people like Velvet what kind of rate of success does she see in the recovery of cgs, or has she seen over the years and what seems the most effective. there is much discussion about the poor rate of success of addiction treatment programs. And then the online forums seem full of people who just can´t beat the addiction and go days, weeks, months and relapse over and over. I understand that the focus of this group is the loved one and success is measured in them taking control of their lives, living with less fallout from the addiction, understanding themselves better and what they want, etc., but knowledge over the addiction gives us information to inform our decisions, attitude, and actions.

[mermaid]

So I started reading his blog and then a book written by Lance Dodes, called, “Breaking Addiction. A 7-Step Handbook for Breaking Any Addiction.” The book is written from a career working in addiction treatment in the US. And it is making me think, and re-think. There is a whole chapter on advice for the loved ones of addicts. He challenges the theories of no enabling and tough love, and says that the individual situation/event should be considered and that…which remains consistent…the important part is always self-care for the loved one, doing what they need to look after themselves and remain strong. Then, the tough love and no enabling can be seen more in terms of for the loved ones to protect themselves and make their lives less controlled by the addiction, but not as punishment for the addict and not as anything to make that person suffer. The tough love and enabling have their role also in helping the addict to see that the situation is serious, although in many cases enough has happened that they really know that and it is more a case of admitting it to themselves. He dismisses the idea of addiction as an illness, a disease of the brain, and believes that it is…complex…and a mix of psychological responses to feelings of helplessness that the addict does not know how to control. Therefore any treatment, to have more than a small chance of success should involve therapy to help that person understand the source of these feelings of helplessness and find ways to come to terms with and tackle them in different ways than their addiction. I gaining a deeper understanding of the addiction, its roots and its triggers, then the loved one can better know how to relate to, communicate with, and support the addict, as well as the best strategies to look after themselves in the relationship. I don´t know what you think of this, but this is making me at least rethink tough love and enabling!

I will keep reading and see how I am thinking about things at the end of the book. I would be interested in input from others though. I guess the clear message is still self-care and doing things to protect oneself emotionally and financially in the relationship! 🙂

[mermaid]

Hi, Thanks. I thought it had actually gone under the research articles forum, and intended to hit that one, but somehow must have got it wrong!

[mermaid]

M, thank you so much for your response. You are so sweet and so supportive. Ok…let us both do what we can to boost our faith in ourselves! What will that be?! I chose my situation here, really. I didn´t think it would be quite so isolated, but I am staying with someone who is only an acquaintance and who is quite judgemental about my situation (but a kind and caring person) and he literally only sleeps in his house. It gives me the space at the house, which is also nice, but means I don´t talk to a live person just about ever, really, at the moment…perhaps I exchange a few words a week. But, I do use Skype and that is really good. And I do have people to chat to online and I reach out to them. I decided not to be with my family in the UK so as to avoid their opinions, even though I know they want the best for me,and I just wasn´t ready to leave that far from Cuba and my husband. And I have been nomadic for years and years. That was a big part of the draw to just take the leap and “settle down” in Cuba….but in the end it wasn´t very settled! The dealing with difficult circumstances and feeling strong…I almost feel that I have been weak to “take” all that I have and that I am being weak by planning to go back to Cuba and that the stronger option would be to walk away and I have no friends or family who don´t think I should leave my husband. I know it is my own decision and I do really feel that I haven´t really tried to make it work for me so far because I didn´t have the information even two months ago that I have now. I do love my husband and we tell each other we love each other all the time, but I am old enough to know that love does not conquer all! 🙂

So, every day I think to myself what can I do to make the day a bit nicer for me. I try to eat nice food (which is still such a treat after time in Cuba where there is such a limited choice of food). I love being outdoors and had hoped to go camping more with people, but it hasn´t happened. I am in a very urban environment, but there is a beautiful big park near the house that I walk in for at least an hour every day. It feels wrong though to be wanting each day to pass and just to be happy to go to bed at the end of the day. We only have one life and it is short and it feels so wrong to be wishing it away and feel so in limbo.

I know what you mean when you say that your head was full of gambling for so long and what a waste that was. It is crazy really how it sucks us up into its drama and before we know it it dominates our lives. Then we have to really work hard to free ourselves from it. We are both still working at that.

We never know what will happen in our lives, from one moment to the next really or one day to the next. Things can take us by surprise, but for many of us the norm is a feeling of some kind of security. With this addiction so much can come crashing down from one moment to the next, at least that is how I feel. It just takes my husband to go and gamble once and the earthquake strikes again.

But for now things are calm! And I will try to learn all I can and how to change for the better. And your words truly do help…thank you so so much. I look forward to hearing how you go this week, what you are feeling and thinking and what opportunities the coming days bring you and your daughter to appreciate this crazy wonderful life.

[mermaid]

I have just been re-reading M´s reply and it is so heartfelt and supportive, just really lovely to read! Living with this addiction in our lives seems to teach us patience. We definitely need to learn patience, and to step back and sometimes just let things go their course….very much the Serenity Prayer! I have been finding it particularly hard in the past few days. I have now been in Mexico for over 6 weeks, and they have been days very much alone, day after day. When I arrived I really wasn´t sure for how long I´d stay, or even if I would return to Cuba. But I had left Cuba very hopeful, ad thinking I might even return within 2 or 3 weeks, the final few days there with my husband had left me feeling really hopeful that he was really trying to tackle the addiction, that he had hit his low and that he had realistic options for supporting himself. I was going to go away to see how he fared by himself and to give myself some time and space. And to eat good food! The previous weeks and months had been truly terrible and then before that it was a year on my own waiting for and tending to him in prison. In the first few days he told me he was behaving well so that I would come back quickly and that he hadn´t gambled at all…nada…and then after about 10 days his voice was different and then he got angry with me on the phone for an insignificant question and in my gut I knew he had been gambling again. Then a couple of days later a cry for help, desperation, shock, needing money, the admittance of lies. He had got through everything I had left, money I left with his mother 30 km away, money he had earned, money from selling the last few things of value I had left, at least $800 all in 3 nights of poker. And so….I decided to stay longer here and give it more time. That was now a month ago and it seems he hasn´t gambled since, perhaps also because he simply hasn´t had the money, but he keeps saying…no, I won´t do it again, and as I have written, I do see his resolve increase each time even if he has nowhere to turn for support. Even if they are small steps, they are going in the right direction, there is a change. He is much clearer now that he can´t continue to live how he has and that it won´t work for us.

So it´s only been a month since then, and the time in between our communication has been dominated by his stress over paying his debt from his last gambling. I resisted and resisted and then helped him, but it really will be the last time, and I understand all about the enabling and even more so now. The payment was delayed and delayed and so he suffered more, checking for it every day, being hounded by the guy looking for his money, him being on parole, and really I knew that I wanted this. I wanted him to…sweat. I wanted him to feel more consequences and to have to deal with the situation without me around and to know that I was standing firm and not offering other options. I know I enabled one more time, but I have remained much stricter in my communication with him and resisted several of his requests for various forms of help. Cuba is so complicated and the situation with the economy and our own money dynamics even without the gambling and me having supported him for over a year and a half now, most of our relationship, is very hard. But he has the minimum he needs to live each day. And of course he would have much more if he weren´t a cg , and he knows that.

I have read so much on this forum. Hours and hours each day. Sometimes it just feels too much. So much suffering and so much frustration. People searching for how to truly change their lives…change themselves. Maybe I really need to step back. It feels so intense. But I also feel I have just these few weeks to be able to read and learn and have to make the most of it. And then I am spending all day every day alone and don´t know how to fill the hours. I know the social isolation is bad for me, but I haven´t figured out yet how to change it, and am also trying to spend as little as I can. And then all this questioning…what really is love…how selfish is it for one´s own needs…how much is it its own addiction….who does it really serve….what purpose…aren´t there so many ways to love and so many people “out there” we could love? I have no children, I am in the early stages of my relationship. Why don´t I want to just walk away now? What is it that makes me want to stay and support and journey through this with my husband? I am in love, but that passes too…life goes on. Is it just now that I feel I know more and have more tools and can “do things better” and want to try another way? And me missing my life in Cuba, so lonely as it is there for me. It would be so easy to fly back tomorrow. But not yet 🙂 More days, one day at a time…but if I keep thinking so much, my head will explode! 🙂

[mermaid]

Hi M,
I just read your post (it can be cool and rainy here in Mexico too and I am stuck indoors dying to get out to the park and sunshine!) and wanted to thank you so much for writing and for all your kind words of support. Thank you!!!!!!!

I read your post and it just must be so hard to have your daughter to think about in all of this and her affected by your husband, but at the same time I know (as you have said) that she also fills your life with so much that is positive and that helps you get through all of this. Like all of it…always…in life…the trick is to try to focus on the positive! So easily said! 🙂

What really resonated in reading your post was how you write about your husband changing depending on how much of a hold of him the gambling has. I find this too with my husband and it is so so hard…it confuses and manipulates us, it truly plays with our emotions! One minute you think you have your old husband back, the one you loved and you go all…soft…and the next he is someone you don´t really know at all…and don´t want to, who you don´t like. It all brings up so many confusing emotions. I can imagine it must be even more confusing for the cg…if they care to stop and think about it. This makes it so hard to know how to relate to them, how to react. I was reading something Velvet had written on a post, and although it sounds a bit formulaic, it might also work…to have planned responses written out for certain situations and certain things that the cg says, or ways he acts…because it is so hard to respond clearly in the heat of the moment. I haven´t got any of this worked out yet, but was thinking to perhaps try. If he says such and such…I can respond in this way…and then I know…I know that the emotions of the moment will have less hold on me. I think this could perhaps help. I think it would be trial and error and learning by mistakes…next time I will say such and such…but maybe it would help. We can only learn as we go along 🙂

It is so hard to think sometimes it is just hard to get through the day, but it sounds like things are getting better for you and you are getting stronger all the time. I don´t think you are making mistakes and definitely don´t beat yourself up in any way…we are all just learning along the way in very challenging situations. I think I might try writing down sometimes how I responded in a situation or to something my husband said and then how I would like to respond in the future..and hopefully make some progress! Do you think that might work for you?

Take good care there and I hope you and your daughter have a lovely weekend. x

[mermaid]

It all feels so deeply personal and I realise that I don´t even know where to turn for support. I find a lot of comfort in reading other posts on here, although each situation is unique, there are many patterns in common…many. With my cg, the addiction seems to suddenly take over him and seize him, sweep him up…and away…and he changes and is controlled by it. But at other times….he is completely “normal”…a kind and gentle person, who is known as someone who has a big heart (but who has always been crazy with money…). It is impossible to know when these waves will hit, although there are patterns, triggers…arguments between us (especially over money…a vicious circle…), him being on his own, him having money, him feeling stressed or even just bored, but often very much it seems when he feels there is pressure around money and he wishes he could fix it and we could have more (which will never happen with gambling, and it is only his addiction that tells him otherwise at the time to spur him on). He is aware he has an addiction and that it can control him and make him feel powerless against it and I see him in a kind of shock afterwards, like a kind of ghost possessing him has left him. He has passed through that stage and admitted he has a problem and that he wants to fight it and change, and says he wants that more than anything. But it is still so hard to know the tools that he has at his disposal to go on that journey, and also those that are available to me when I am in Cuba. I feel I will only have what I am learning in these few weeks here. It would be nice to have things to read over and over to remind me when I am there. It feels all still very much at the beginning and that there will be many trials ahead (but I am not focussing on those 🙂 ).

[mermaid]

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!).

[mermaid]

Thank you Monique. I appreciate all of this. I don´t think that the comments are harsh really at all and they are helfpul. It is more..well, the situation is…harsh! I think to myself that I am not so wrapped up in my husband´s life and well-being and then at the same time, I think that I am! Even if I am less than I was. I have removed myself a lot from the situation and the emotional turmoil, just by not physically being where he is. I don´t doubt his determination to stop gambling, but I know that I feel that it will be much harder than he seems to think it is. Of course, he hasn´t had any exposure at all to anything like this forum, all the information on the internet, or discussions in any way with other cg and so completely lacks that perspective. I have totally different information than he has, and well, just much much more of it. And he has broken my trust, I have not broken his. I just have to let him do his thing and see how it goes. And I have tried to do this for the past 6 weeks now and it feels hard to keep doing it, but I know it all still needs more time and I am not confident of my own confidence, so to speak. And my inner voice is quite confused, or just very wary at the moment and yet at the same time impatient to go back to life in Cuba and just to see…I obviously miss my husband and he keeps telling me how much he misses me and he never wanted me to go away, of course. But there is still so much that feels very hard. This site is very helpful, though. Thank you!

[mermaid]

Thank you so much to both of you for your thoughtful replies. Sometimes, yes, it does feel like focusing on the negative a bit, but I guess in the end it is all a result of loss of trust and that is very hard to rebuild and can only be done so by actions over time. Then with this loss of trust come skewed power dynamics in seeking to control situations where there is no trust – since the desire to control comes from lack of trust. It is definitely hard! For now, I sent my husband the money to organise the contract for the house as he said it would be lost otherwise as other people wanted it, and really I believe this. He already picked up the money yesterday. It was not a lot of money, but, yes, it is a risk. He does have a roof over his head and food as he is at his uncle´s house (but they have very little too), and I wanted to be here in Mexico away from him also so that he would feel more consequences of his gambling, that he would be more on his own to deal with them, and I have told him more often now and more firmly that they are his problems and his responsibility to sort out and that I didn´t cause them. I am trying to concentrate more on my own well-being, but also here is the place where I talk about things related to my husband and his gambling. I am also in a strange situation as I am quite in limbo as I picked a place to be away from him that is not around friends and family and is only very temporary. But really, like many of us experience, it is a matter of time and waiting and seeing how things go. And for now, things still feel with my husband like they can go any way any day, even if he himself tells me I don´t have to worry anymore that if he says no more, it will be no more…time will tell and also at the moment he is more motivated not to gamble because he wants to see me go back to him in Cuba.

Patience… 🙂

[mermaid]

Hi Monique, It is so nice to get your response and I very much appreciate it. It helps a lot. It just helps to have these things repeated (and repeated…..), it really does. I do know the theory, but it is obviously hard to embrace it and then even harder in situations “when the pressure is on”. So I think the more repetition, the better! 🙂

I am trying to think what ways I can better approach in general communication and actions around money with my husband. It is incredibly challenging because of the Cuba context. I do not have much income and it is not consistent,but it is so much more than 99% of people could ever earn in Cuba, including my husband. I have completely supported him since the start of last year, also because he was in prison for a year and now is on parole. He can´t go back to his old work and he can´t work to earn any kind of income that would be more than 1$ day and now this seems not an option because he can´t have money in his hands (and that is what is needed to buy things to resell, organise transport, etc.). So he is incredibly frustrated that he has no income and has to rely on me (since he left home when he was 12 to earn his own money and always had until he met me). At the same time he likes to spend money and has never learned how to save (although he says he wants to) and so he also has a lot of demands on my money. I say “my” money now as I was willing to share it all in the marriage, but then with the gambling and his ways of spending so much anyway, I needed to control it and separate it and it also feels more like mine as I am the one working, the savings were all mine, and my family were sending me money. It would of course feel very different if he weren´t a cg and hadn´t gambled tens of thousands in the past 18 months. If we can reduce the friction around the theme of money in general, with every day things, then this will reduce the stress for both of us, and definitely for me, and make things much easier. Often, the stress my husband feels, and also ensuing arguments, are a trigger for him to go off and gamble. I realise that if he is truly embracing embarking on recovery then he would accept all the control of finances, and be willing to work with me on it. And he is trying, I think, but he finds it very hard, and I do too. I don´t like the power dyamics, I don´t like feeling I need to be so in control, and I also know that I still resent it when he seems to be spending more on things than I do/would for myself and yet has lost so much of the money we would have had (I am working on this and he is trying to be better with money). I don´t want the focus on money, I want it to be on emotional well-being (and…yes…focussing on peace), but I truly struggle with our communication around this. I will need to “police” the money and only give him small daily amounts (whatever I seem to give him he spends it all!) and also hide/lock away anything that he could pawn or use as collateral for a night of gambling. He is aware of this, but he is also so used to just being in charge of all of this in his life and so he finds it incredibly hard too. We then both struggle with all of this and the tension is there. It is of course a very different situation than him having a job and money being able to be paid directly into specific accounts, and those which his access to can be controlled. I am…the bank and the credit card companies! Any suggestions you might have would be very helpful.

Thank you! And thank you again for your post…just so lovely to read and so encouraging.

[mermaid]

I´m going to go ahead and type a few lines…it feels like to myself as this forum feels very quiet and a little bit lonely at the moment (although it was so kind of M to write). I think that is how I am feeling right now. Quite alone in all of this, but…at the same time fairly positive. I have been going through and reading many posts here on the F&F forum and feel I am learning a lot. There are patterns. There are general things that help across the board…the personal growing, the self care, better clearer communication and boundaries. I can very much relate. And the people here go through such harrowing times. And then many of them sound strong, or their strength grows with time. But it really helps to hear their stories, see the things in common, learn from them. But also I feel quite alone, the forum quiet, but also that my situation is quite different from anyone on here…so I am looking for the things in common, the connections. I know that when…if I go back to Cuba I won´t have this resource (perhaps to read a little, maybe in short internet interludes at the state telecommunications office, but always nervously) and so I need to make the most of it now!

[mermaid]

OK, this is me this morning….On Saturday I spoke with my husband for the first time in more than a couple of weeks. It was a good conversation, it was good to speak to him. He is also in a difficult situation because he has no money at all and was saying he would sell his clothes and shoes…which he has done often in the past and has very few clothes. He is used to just selling everything. And it is also Cuba. I know it is all his own doing, but the situation…makes me feel…sad. His growing up very poor, often without food and needing to go and ask for bits of food from neighbours led to him seeing the potential wins of gambling as such an allure, and just the crazy economy of Cuba. I tell him his situation now is all a consequence of his actions and his responsibility and he says he knows. Anyway, he asked me to send him money for living costs…send me 100$ he said…and I said it sounded like a lot and I couldn´t and it would be like sending heroine and he said he knew that. He also said he really isn´t going to gamble anymore….but…yes….waiting for actions not words. He talked about the house he had found for us and said he needed to sort out the contract and he needed money for this. I don´t doubt him that the money would be for this (and the price is normal) and this is not his way of trying to get money out of me, this has never been his pattern (so far…). (He´s never tried to persuade/trick me to give him money *intending at the time* to use it for gambling, but then if he has money….he has the compulsion and the means. He has taken it by force in the past…taking bank cards without me knowing, selling the car and going on a long binge, selling things when I have not been there). So I believe him there. The risk is that he could then have the money in his hands fully intending and wanting to use it for the house, but then use it to gamble…or even if not gamble…just spend it on something else “urgent” before the house as he is going around with zero money. I agreed to send him 60 Euros…40 for the house and 20 to pay for his expenses and pay back people he has borrowed bits of money from recently to live off. I felt ok about this for the rest of the day, but then yesterday I felt very uneasy. I just thought…what if he spends the money…and I am giving him the temptation…the alcohol, the heroine…I did it badly. I battled in my mind between letting it go and waiting and seeing if he “passed the test” and thinking no, I have done it all wrong and am enabling and giving him the temptation. I wrote to him that I had sent the money and that I was waiting here in Mexico to see how he went and that I hoped he wouldn´t mess it up and afterwards I would make my decisions about if and when to return to Cuba. But this felt wrong to…like I was imposing too many “if you do this I will do that and reward you´s” so to speak. I felt uncomfortable. So last night before I went to bed I wrote to cancel the money transfer and this morning had to argue a little with their customer service to cancel it as they had already processed it and ignored my email (and had changed their processing to how they had it on their website so the money had gone out automatically). But finally they cancelled it and I plan on sending him 25 Euros to see how he goes and just so he has something to live on. I told him if he is serious about changing then he will understand and accept what I am doing. Ideally I would send him nothing, but don´t know how best to deal with the situation that without money from me he has zero and really no way of getting any money at all. 25 Euros is the minimum that can be sent. I told him that he can send me all the details of the house and if necessary I will then send the 40 specifically for that and that we have to take it day by day, step by step and rebuild the trust. He knows that he needs not to mess up for me to return to Cuba. This all feels hard! I am even all the time concerned he will be annoyed with me and then how I deal skillfully with that. I keep apologising and telling him I hope he understands! It is such a new situation really for both of us, although he says he wants me to manage all the money (it hasn´t worked for more than 1-2 days before in the past..he has just resented it in the end and “broken out”). I definitely don´t know how to do this well. And yet I feel it is such a good life lesson for me…the boundaries, the assertiveness, the clear communication and messages. Just that still I am really not very good at it at all and this doesn´t help him at all. It definitely feels very hard, yet would help him and me and our dynamics so so much.
……..
And in the end…I thought he´d already moved too fast as he was expecting the money and has been so long with zero. I just got an email to say he had already received the money in Cuba, the 60 Euros, before they could cancel it. But I tried to find out if this was the case and in the end they managed to cancel it without him having collected it. But…the games! It feels terrible. And really it stems from my indecisiveness.

So these are lessons I have wanted to have for a long time and the universe has sent me them! But I feel so upset right now. Everything is so messed up between me and my husband…all the money stuff has just become so hard…the power dynamics around it, everything to do with money connected with the addiction.

I know it´s the actions of my husband that count, not his desires or intentions or words. But I am a mess. I´m no support to him. So much has happened.

I want to support him, and help him feel that he can do some of the “everyday things” in his life he needs to do…organise, but I don´t want to be an enabler. I know I have to focus on myself and sort out myself, but the power balance, trust issues, fixation on money are so hard around this all.

And trying to learn not to let other people´s opinions affect me. I am here in Mexico, very socially isolated, because I decided not to go to England (my father offered to pay the flight) to be with family because I wanted the mental space to think without their opinions (also because I wasn´t ready to take the step to go further away from Cuba and I like Mexico and was based here before I went to Cuba). Yesterday I talked to my mum and I get into negative patterns with her…somehow she brings out me highlighting the negative things too…she says things like: It was him who got you into this situation. When I said I might buy myself a cheap smartphone for Cuba she said: Huh, that will disappear. I then start saying..yes..because last time…such and such happened, I know, and also defending myself.

I am living with someone who is telling me I need to be at least 3 months away from my husband and have zero communication from him and always pointing out the negatives in his behaviour…(so I feel I need to be furtive about communicating with him)…what is going to make him change, etc….people who grew up on the street tend to be very good manipulators and things like that. Perhaps he is just trying to give me a “dose of reality” but it doesn´t help me.

I just have one friend at the moment who is a very good friend…not here in Mexico, of course…who is supportive, always listens, and telling me mainly not to beat myself up.

Too many negatives this morning! Will need to take a long walk in the park! I know the theory….I know!…but it is so hard to put into practice!

[mermaid]

Hi M,
What a beautiful post! Thank you so much! It was/is so lovely to read. Thank you so much for reaching out and offer me help based on your own journey and the empathy and insight it has given you. You sound strong at the moment and that sounds good! I can understand some how it must also be nice to absorb yourself in time with your daughter and focus on the good with her. And it must be lovely to have a friend to share that with. It is so good to hear that this site has helped you.

You nailed it on the head with so many things you said about how I am feeling. I know I need to be patient and wait and become less confused. Part of me so wants to rush back to my life in Cuba and just see how it all feels now. And part of me doesn´t feel ready yet or that my husband is, although he tells me all the time he is desperate for me to come back to Cuba. I need to take it one day at a time!

But really thank you so so much. How so lovely to read your message. Take care you too 🙂

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