[nomore 56]

I forgot to say that my hb completed a third inpatient program. Out of state and lasting 120 days. He has been in recovery ever since.

[nomore 56]

Hi Kristy, I live in the greater Seattle area and am quite familiar with the treatment and help options in WA State. First let me say that my heart goes out to you because my hb’s gambling was an issue when I was pregnant many years ago. The stress had a great impact on my pregnancy and consequently on my daughter. I firmly believe that.
I don’t know anything about the treatment facility you mentioned but the fact that it is close to your home should not be a factor if and when your hb is ready to work on his recovery. Every cg is different and what works for one might not work for another. My hb completed 2 inpatient programs, each lasted 30 days. After the first one he stopped gambling for many years but was in relapse mode instead of being in recovery. The second was a waste of time. Today he says that he firmly believes addiction needs a kind of holistic approach, meaning looking at every aspect of the person’s life, past and present. He attended GA meetings and really didn’t get much out of them. But that is a personal thing, some cgs need the meetings and stay in recovery with the help of fellow addicts.
The most important thing for you right now is to create a safe and halfway peaceful place for yourself and your child. You cannot make your hb do anything and going into treatment because he feels obligated will most likely not get the results you want for him and your family. If you are able to, try to find a GamAnon meeting in your area. Do you have support from family and/or friends? The burden gets a little lighter when you can share it I think.
You can find the Evergreen State Council on Problem Gambling on the internet. The have a lot of resources you could tap into. There is also a list of qualified, certified gambling counselors on their site. To find the right therapist or treatment program is very important because your hb seems to also have a problem with alcohol. Counseling is also available for family members and I believe they still charge on a sliding scale depending on your income.
If you have any questions I can answer, please let me know. I will write more later re. taking steps to protect your finances for the time being.
Take good care of yourself!!
Birgit

[nomore 56]

Hi Shelly,
just like you, I lived with the lies, the deceit, the manipulation, the fear and everything else that is part of cg. My hb is finally in recovery and has been for almost 7 yrs. Our marriage did not survived, we are still married for several reasons and have become good friends. It took me a long time to redevelop some trust and it is not 100%.
My daughter was also 14 when her dad went to prison for embezzling a huge amount of money at work. She had no clue what had been going on for so long and therefor the shock was tremendous as you can imagine. She was upset with me at first for not telling her because she always knew that something was going on.
Kids learn about alcohol and drugs in school and cg should be included imo. It is now part of the social studies curriculum in my state (WA).
The addiction is not yours, it is your hb’s and he is the only one who can make changes. If he sees the need. Telling you that he would do anything to keep you in his life is probably just white noise to keep you hanging in there, at least that’s what it sounds like.
You will get plenty of emotional support on this forum and I just want to list a couple of things you can do right now to maybe make you feel a little more “in control”. I live in the States but I think as far as finances are concerned, the steps are pretty similar in most other countries. Pull both your credit reports and get a credit monitoring service so that you get alerts if your hb applies for cards or a loan. Make sure you are not on his cards and he is not on yours. If you can, have the mail go to a post office box and keep the key. No shared bank accounts so that he cannot withdraw funds you need. Take over all bills to make sure they are being paid. Personally I would even insist that only my name is on the title of the car. If he really wants to quit gambling, he will not have a problem having his pay checks be deposited into your account. If you give him money for personal expenses, request receipts for everything he spends. I found all this to be a good indicator of my hb’s truthfulness. The minute he started to complain, to get angry, to accuse me of having control issues etc. I knew something was up!
I had nobody in my life I could turn to and that was really difficult. Being alone with the pain, the hurt and all the other emotions makes it a lot harder to deal with the misery a cg creates in everybody’s life. It would be helpful if you have a person you can trust and share with what is going on. I attended a GamAnon group for a while and that helped me getting the chaos a bit into perspective.
I wish you all the luck in the world!!!!

[nomore 56]

Hi Lost, I have been in a very similar position years ago when my hb’s addiction was at its peak. He used to call me at work, on my cell phone and sent me nasty emails. His way of getting to me because he knew how much it bothered me and raised my already insane anxiety level. Even worse, we used to live in one apartment at the time because we couldn’t afford another household.
Addicts have a 6th sense for what gets to the people in their lives and what bothers them the most. You might want to consider to change your email address and/or block him from email and your phone as well.
As for your son, can you in any way limit the visitation or link it to certain conditions? I don’t know if you have a private agreement for this or if it was court ordered. Anyway, it doesn’t sound like he is really interested in seeing his son because the addiction is much more important. I think your son is old enough to understand that and it might hurt him more then seeing his disinterested father less. Personally I find it outrageous that parents bring their children to a poker game especially when they are a cg. If the children are not properly supervised, all kinds of things can happen, heaven forbid it does.
I am glad for you that you found a way to get better, even if it involved a separation!

[nomore 56]

Hi Three Timer, it seems to me that you already know what is best for you and have made up your mind pretty much. From what I read in your posts, your relationship sounds a bit unhealthy (to me at least). There are obviously more issues than just the gambling.
Cgs scheme and lie and try to manipulate, anything to keep the addiction alive. Recovery is something the addict has to work on himself, nobody can really help, just support the effort. It takes dedication and hard work on his part, the addiction is his, not yours.
I am also a type 1 diabetic, have been for 38 years and I have to agree with you, the disease is brutal. Stress is a big factor in keeping your BS stable and living with a cg can really aggravate the problems. Just like you, I have been tempted to give up many, many times. What kept me going was that my daughter and my pets needed me. When you are battling serious health problems, being in a relationship with an addict can be harder than it is for a healthy person. JMHO of course. Nobody can tell you what to do, that is for you to decide. Listen to your gut and try to do what is best for you and your son. I wish you the best of luck in anything you do!!

[nomore 56]

That sounds really sad Vera. Your hb sounds like a very unhappy man. A lot of men refuse to deal with their issues, my hb did too. Until he changed his life around, he acted a lot like your’s. Always avoiding any kind of communication he felt was uncomfortable for him. Never talking about what bothered him until it became too much and he blew up. Slamming doors and leaving was how he solved the issue. Everyone had to be happy at all times, nothing could be difficult or worth a serious discussion. He always felt criticized. When I made a comment about anything, he would felt attacked. Or apologized. Not easy. He was also socially very awkward. I knew a little bit about his childhood but how terrible it really was, I had no clue. It all came out after he completed treatment and we started to talk about all the stuff that happened.
No, I don’t think that your family would be perfect if not for you causing all the problems. It is seldom a one sided issue. I completed all the necessary courses for substance abuse counseling and worked for a while in an outpatient treatment agency. Addiction and recovery don’t just apply to the addict. It is just as much a family issue. When the addict makes changes, the family often does not because they don’t think they are part of the problem. For many it is easier to deal with the addict than with the person in recovery because all of a sudden everything is different while they don’t see the need to change also. So they want back what they are familiar with. My teachers always told us that a person has a much better chance of maintaining recovery when he/she does not return immediately to the old environment after treatment.
I believe that most people try to fill a void in their life with anything that helps with the pain. Wether it is an addiction, having an affair, shopping, whatever shrinks the gaping hole is welcome. Everyone deals with it in a different way. I was never much bothered by my own personal void and my inability to connect emotionally with people as long as they just left me alone. Instead I treasured certain material things and most of all my animals. With the exception of my daughter of course. Logically the void got bigger over time due to all the losses. I had to let 4 pets go in the course of a year and that hurt me more than anything my hb ever did.
I’m sorry you have to go through all this now and think it’s great that you still have the strength to not give in and gamble. That’s something, isn’t it?

[nomore 56]

It is very hard living in an emotional void, your own or someone else’s. I do feel some emotions, anger, sadness, desperation, are some of them. I just don’t know what real empathy, compassion etc. are, just in theory I understand what it should be. If that makes sense.
Do you really think that something DROVE you to gambling? Has your hb always been this way? Do you think that he, in general, is a trigger for you?
From what I have learned, I firmly believe that every addiction treatment needs to take a holistic approach. Gambling is just one facet of what might be going on with a person. My hb completed a 120-days inpatient program and they dug really deep into his past and what happened over a lifetime. It was painful but a huge revelation. Gambling was his escape and provided a rush at the same time. The roots were laid in his childhood. He often told me that I made him gamble because of this and that. Come to find out that I just symbolized and reminded him of what happened to him when growing up. Not only did he start his recovery, he is a changed man in many other ways as well.
I think recovery is even harder to maintain when you feel the void around you day in and day out. JMHO though.

[nomore 56]

Just saw your post, Vera. I am not and never have been able to relate to people on an emotional level. And I mean never, as in not even as a small child barely aware of her own existence. Not my parents, certainly not my sister, nobody I can think of. I feel with my brain. I do not like any kind of emotional closeness being put on me by others either. That includes my romantic relationships. They were never about what one would call love. Hard to explain. Security, safety, stability, routine, predictability, that were always my most important needs. I have heard more than once that I might have a touch of Asperberger’s syndrome. If I do or not is of no concern to my anymore. It all goes back to not being able to truly and really feel and connect. People are not important to me, other than the minimum of contact one needs to make it through life. For someone like me, material possessions, and I don’t mean being filthy rich, are very important. Doesn’t have to have much value, just the things I cherish for some reason mean so much that it hurts so bad to lose them that the pain becomes almost physical.
When people tell me that home is where the heart is, I have to disagree. My heart is where the home is. Can’t explain it any better, sorry.
I am very proud that I was able to raise my daughter to be the person she is under the circumstances, that’s for sure. Funny though, my mom, my daughter and I are pretty similar when it comes to emotions and being close to people. Not only because one raised the other, sometimes it’s funny and very amazing how we think and act alike.
Well, there goes another week of nothing, lol.
I think you are doing a great job.

[nomore 56]

Vera, I don’t have faith of any kind, don’t believe in a higher power or praying. I respect you greatly for having these tools to help with your recovery. A lot of people have problems to understand that any kind of emotional concepts are alien to me. I believe only in what I can see or touch, always has been this way. It is one of the reasons I often feel like an alien on the wrong planet. Yes, I do have some emotional scars but most of them have to do with other things I have lost. The most important one being my home. As pathetic as it sounds, that is the biggest scar of them all. It was the one thing that gave me some sense of security, safety and the knowledge that I was finally not dependent on others anymore. The fact that my hb took away my xmas ornaments, that I lost my beloved car and my home hurt me more than everything else. I know it sounds terrible but it is the ugly truth.
He knows about my pain and accepts it because he knows about my issues. I am more desperate than angry. Forgiveness, whatever it is, how it is done, what it is supposed to do will not help. It will not bring back anything. Will not make me like my life any better. I deal in facts only and we often talk about it. My hb is ok with the life he is living now, thankful for what he was able to accomplish and recovery is the most important thing for him. I’m glad for him but at the end of the day I’m still lost and broken.
Thank you so much for taking an interest.

[nomore 56]

I don’t understand what forgiveness means. That is one of the emotional concepts my brain will not process. I feel with my brain so to speak and if something is not logical, I don’t get it. In the very beginning I accepted that my hb has addiction. I supported him as good as I could and eventually we moved on. What I cannot accept is his relapse. He was gamble free for 11 years and the first trip to a casino was a conscious decision. He agrees with me on that one.
I could not ever forgive some of the things he has done. He took everything away from me that I cherished. All the while knowing what it meant to me. He was very well aware what was important to me in my life and took it anyway. When he went to prison for a year he left me to deal with the destruction by myself. To this very day I have no idea how I got through all that. I was humiliated, ridiculed and judged. For what HE did. The whole story is book material, trust me. Then he came back from prison, continued gambling and expected me to welcome back. And it all started all over again. Because of our situation (felony, age, health etc.) we were never able to undo even part of the damage. There was no picking up the pieces, moving on and rebuilding. What is there for good is that everything is gone.
We became friends because we had to. It works, we get along ok and since none of us has any family or friends we are our only support system in many ways.
But at the end of the day I just wish I had chosen Flight. Because the Fight did me no good.
Have a great weekend!

[nomore 56]

My hb’s gambling has certainly changed me. My trust in people -never great to begin with- has completely vanished. I show signs of PTSD due to a lot of very ugly and scary events that stretched out over many years. Nightmares, being thrown back in an instant into situations long past, the whole list of symptoms of trauma, all there.
Funny though, just like you, I have dealt with depression and anxiety since I can remember, always been my normal. The kind I deal with now is slightly different. Depression is mostly reactive and the anxiety is based on lifetime experiences. I tried therapy and meds, nothing has helped. Because no therapist or pill can change the facts. They can’t bring back my family and friends, they can’t get me out of this hated place or undo the past that is haunting me in many ways. Not so much emotional but rather situation wise.
You mentioned that you feel like the odd one out in your meetings and that is why I quit going to GamAnon. I could not relate to them and vice versa. All my life I felt like I was living on the wrong planet. I can’t wrap my mind around how others feel or think.
For many years now I have not lived but just existed. Most of the time I will not allow myself to go to certain places in my head because the pain is unbearable. So I shut that off as much as I can. It all leaves me tired and exhausted.
Cleaning out my garage could be therapeutic but then you have not seen my garage. Wouldn’t know where to start, really. 🙂
Yes, I have changed. The wounds are not bleeding anymore but the scars are there for good.
Good luck with everything!

[nomore 56]

First I want to say that I appreciate all your comments on the F&F thread. Nobody but a cg can really give eye opening insight on the whole addiction concept.
My hb was successfully treated for the lung cancer. His other conditions are monitored but cannot be improved. SX is not possible for the aneurysm due to his COPD. His is walking a tight rope every day and all we can do is hope that it is not getting worse.
He is still gamble free after 6 1/2 years and tells me that he could not possibly imagine ever going back to the dark side. We do not live together and never will but are good friends now.
Nothing has changed. I still live at the same place and there seems to be no realistic hope to ever be able to get the hell out of here. Just not happening. Not easy to deal with as depression and anxiety are on an all-time high level.
My daughter is doing very well, thank god for that. She is busy with her job, bf, apartment and her little dog. Just got certified for scuba diving as she volunteers at the Seattle Aquarium and studies now to get a BA in fish&wildlife science. I ‘m very proud of her, as you can imagine 🙂
I still believe btw that Flight is the better option for someone involved romantically with a “hard core” cg.
Kudos to you for doing well and trying to support so many others!

[nomore 56]

I am not a cg but have been on the roller coaster ride with my hb for many, many years. Gambling addiction has many faces and “causes”. There is certainly a genetic factor involved and also a cultural one because gambling is more accepted in some cultures than in others. I read in your post that you live in Canada and wanted to suggest that you do a little research re. available help for cgs in your country. If you google “Problem gambling councils Canada” you will see that quite a few websites pop up. I live in the US and we have these councils in almost every state. They are a great resource for information about any kind of help you might be looking for. Just an idea because it is so very difficult to sort everything out when you first start on the road to recovery. Once the finances and everything else start to fall apart, it becomes quite overwhelming and scary. Maybe give it a try and look for help wherever you can get it. I wish you luck.

[nomore 56]

I’m glad to read that you are safe and sound back on some solid ground! I live in the US and the majority of addiction counselors are realizing more that co-dependency is an addiction of its’ own. We are sucked into the world of the addict, just on another level and with different symptoms. Unfortunately, only the addict gets treatment, if he/she is lucky. The loved ones have to find their own way of creating their recovery system. There is a reason why a lot of addicts are advised, to NOT return to their old environment once they complete treatment. Most of the time not possible but it does increase the probability of staying clean. Makes sense to me. It is not enough for a cg to complete treatment successfully and then return where nothing has changed. JMHO of course. Based on my own experience. The first two inpatient programs my hb completed didn’t do much good. The third did the trick. So I do believe that an addict has a better chance of lasting recovery when the loved ones are in their recovery as well. I wish you all the luck in the world! The weather is certainly better in Cuba but better laughing in the rain than crying in the sun 🙂

[nomore 56]

I agree with Vera on this one. Your hb (or is he officially your ex?) is in your head it seems. Looks to me like he is running your life, your day, your emotions, your thoughts. As long as you reply to his texts, answer his calls and react to what he does or doesn’t do, you cannot take good care of yourself and your kids. Of course this is just my opinion, based on my own experience of more than 20 yrs with a cg. The addiction and everything that goes with it is his, not yours. He is like a shadow dimming the sunlight you so much deserve in your life. As for social media, if you and your daughter are using Facebook, it might be a good idea to “de-friend” him and allow only people on your page you want to be in contact with. That way he will not know what you are up to and what is going on in your life. He doesn’t need to know where you are going and what you are doing. It would be better for your daughter as well I think if he has no access to her page as long as he is treating the kids as he does now.
Last but not least I think that as long as you are giving him mixed signals, he will try to mess with your head, your heart and consequently your and your kids happiness and peace of mind. Maybe it is really time to either get a new phone number or block his? Like I said, just mhop but based on my own painful journey.

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