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Hi Sadie
Thanks for starting a thread in the Gambling Therapy friends and family forum. This forum will provide you with warmth and understanding from your peers.
Feel free to use the friends and family group, you’ll find the times for these if you click on the “Group times” box on our Home page. Now that you have introduced yourself you’ll find that many of the people you meet here have already read your initial introduction and they’ll welcome you in like an old friend 🙂
If you’re the friend or family member of someone who is either in, or has been through, the GMA residential programme please take extra care to make sure that nothing you say in groups, or on our forums, inadvertently identifies that person. Even if your loved one isn’t connected with GMA, please don’t identify them either directly or indirectly just in case they decide to use the site themselves.
You’ll find a lot of advice on this site, some of which you’ll follow, some you won’t…but that’s ok because only you fully understand your situation and what’s best for you and the people you love. So, take the support you need and leave the advice you don’t because it all comes from a caring, nurturing place 🙂
We look forward to hearing all about you!
Take care
The Gambling Therapy Team
PS: Let me just remind you to take a look at ourprivacy policy and terms and conditions so you know how it all works!
Dear Ell
Your feeling of tiredness is totally understandable. You are working long hours; you have a child to care for and on top of all that you are still awakening from a long nightmare and finding your world a little confusing.
I hope it will help you to know that I do know very well other couples who struggled as you have done but who are living without the ‘if’s and ‘buts’ and I had someone tell me the other day that they would trust their CG friend, who is controlling his addiction, above anybody else.
My suggestion would be to make the box in your mind as small as possible so that you can tuck it away into the part of your brain that has dealt with any problems in the past.. One day Ell you will perhaps look for that box and find it is gone or maybe you will never look and you will have to take my word that it will have disappeared.
Don’t be afraid of the feelings you have or why you re-read your thread. You are re-building and probably wanted to check the foundations and I don’t blame you. You believed you had a wonderful relationship and then your dreams were dashed – it is hard to start again, harder than the when you first started your relationship from nothing. You have a history now that was (and is) unwelcome for both of you. Only you can know how much you love your husband and how much you want your marriage to work. I don’t think you should settle for a relationship ‘in the middle’ and I know I keep saying that only time will give you your answers but that is what I believe.
I believe it is normal to resent a little that a CG ‘appears’ to have a confidence and self-assuredness more quickly perhaps than the F&F had thought possible but in spite of this I believe the CGs recovery is far harder. In my opinion that is the way it will happen – F&F hold back longer wanting more reassurance, often more than the CG can give. There are many things probably that you husband will never know or realise that you did and that you are still doing. I believe it is probably true of so many couples Ell that one is emotionally stronger than the other but this does not make a couple unbalanced because there is more to a relationship than emotional equality. Your husband is showing great strength in other ways.
Ell if there is things you want to talk about more deeply please try and pop back into a group. I have an hour now on Thursdays between 210-2200 hours UK time and I have missed you.
Με αγάπη
VHi Madge
You have not failed. You are working your socks off, doing everything you can to make your family pull together but there is a strong force at work counteracting your efforts and it is something, I think maybe, you are struggling to comprehend.
Your husband is one of two people from whom your children should learn how to lead decent lives and yet his addiction is based on lies, distrust, secrets and manipulation. With one fifth of your family displaying these unacceptable behaviours I fail to see how everything could be tickety- boo.
Of course you do not have to be a martyr and of course you can change. I know because although I would never consider myself a martyr, I felt a complete failure just as you describe yourself.
One fifth of my family has an addiction to gamble but my family is functioning well (and getting better) because ‘I’ have changed. My CG has controlled his addiction but as far as the rest of my family is concerned, I believe it is ‘my’ change that has altered what was dysfunctional. I am now leading from the front and not trailing behind picking up the bits.
Whatever happened yesterday is gone. Your eldest son is still wonderful even if he didn’t make the grade for an Ivy League school. His inner happiness and self-esteem is more important and you are the person who can make him feel great and able to pick himself up and achieve whatever he wants in his life.
Your younger daughter needs positive action from you, action you can give. Talk to her and listen to her, she is at one of the most confused times of her life. When I was 13 I told a boy I was 16 so that I could go to an x-rated horror film – I was pushing the boundaries and I learned as a result of that lie that an age limit on a film is there for a reason – I was absolutely terrified. Your daughter needs to learn from you that boundaries are there for her safety.
There is no ‘need’ for your youngest son to experience failure – I have many friends whose youngest child has broken the mould. Believe in him and enjoy him. While your husband is away, doing whatever, build your life, the life that ‘you’ want it to be.
You have not failed as a mother – you are still there and so are your children Nothing is broken so badly that it cannot be fixed.
What you do today is all the matters Madge. With a daughter in need of guidance and a son in need of reassurance there is little time to waste feeling a failure when you are not.
Of course mothers take the blame but feeling guilt is one step too many.
I don’t believe there is a funny side – I believe it is hard work, strength and self-belief that will win the day for you and I believe you can do it.
VelvetHappy Birthday Dear Berber
You deserve all the attention your husband gave you – well done him.
Such an exciting time – I feel joy generating out of your post and I am smiling and happier for seeing it.
I wish you well in the next few weeks and my thoughts will be with you.
I am having the whole hour again on Thursdays from 2100-2200 hours UK time without the 15 minute entry so I do hope that some time soon we will meet in there again, although I suspect it will be a flying visit as you will have another little life to care for and they do demand attention.
Happy, Happy Birthday
VHi Nancy
I can hardly believe you have been back on the site since November and I have missed your posts – I don’t pop over so much nowadays.
I am so glad to read you do not hate yourself anymore. You have had a lot of ups and downs to cope with, not least the selfish daughter-in-law and your husband’s on-going ill-health.
How is your son coping?
Unfortunately life does go up and down for all of us and we have to learn to deal with it or we crumble – keep posting, stay close and let us walk with you again. You were 8 months gamble-free and feeling good, that 8 months cannot/should not be written off. Slips do not have to be negative and it seems from your latest posts that you have your positive attitude back again.
Speak soon
VelvetHi Bonkers
It is great to see you doing well – successes in this forum bring joy and hope to the F&F forum too.
It would be great to know f you have been accepted by the Samaritans. I think that the understanding you have gained by your addiction and your subsequent fight to control it will be invaluable.
Keep posting
Great post
VelvetHi Ali
Recovery, especially in the early stages can be very frustrating for the person closest to the CG.
I’m not sure about being grateful that he asked your opinion but I do see where you are coming from and at least you know the addiction is still in his head and activating his brain. I also take it that he did not go and gamble and that is a good thing. If his addiction was triggered and he resisted then you must have reacted well
What made you feel he was doing ok? Had his overall behaviour improved?
Unfortunately a CG can gamble in other ways apart from going to the casino – they can play with people all the time just not machines or cards. Compulsive gamblers may stop wagering for money but may continue to make ‘mind bets’. Some newly abstinent gamblers say that what they are keeping track of is the amount of money they have saved by not gambling while their addictive minds are still in action. If this is the case the CG can get excited by the prospect of an actual gamble which they are unable to shake off and it is possible that this is what happened.
Abstinence is not a recovery which is why I am asking about his general behaviour.
Don’t feel defeated, you are doing well. Keep enjoying your Gamanon, I know I did and it made all the difference. Hopefully you well keep posting here and the knowledge you gain will help you cope.
Velvet
