Hi Logic
I heard you putting the ‘flesh on the bones’ in your second post and not a bit of ranty anywhere. I think disjointed is the way it would come out if we were talking and as such I found it easy to follow your train of thought.
I was told by a CG a long time ago that when his addiction was active, what ‘he’ wanted and needed was to gamble and that what ‘I’ wanted and needed didn’t matter one jot – it brought me up short and helped me to make some sense of a lot of what had gone before.
In a battle of wills I’m afraid the gambling addiction has the upper hand because it is the master of manipulation and you are not and nor do you want to be. Addiction doesn’t do logic and reason – it defies sense, which is very hard to accept when a person loves a CG but in my opinion, it is better to know what you are facing.
I am interested that you have found that fun activities away from gambling can be a distraction for your other half although sadly you say that even these can fail. It is one of the hardest; if not ‘the’ hardest thing for a CG who determines to live in control of his addiction, that he feels there is a void that cannot be filled because the addiction has often alienated friends, family and other interests and hobbies which would only have got in the way of the ‘gamble’.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘finances not being a concern’ but I imagine he has possibly earned enough to cover his gambling debts – so far. The addiction to gamble though is not about money it is solely about the ‘gamble’ and it is the ‘gamble’ that alters the personality and can make the kindest of people behave intolerably – money is the tool of the addiction – not the goal.
If your other half is a compulsive gambler then, in my opinion, you setting boundaries is unlikely to have any effect. The addiction can be controlled but not ‘cured’ and abstention alone is not enough. If there was a magic pill or a simple guide to controlling a gambling addiction then this site, GA, etc would not exist. At the risk of being disjointed myself I am returning to your paragraph about the colleague who seemed to be the cause of your partner caving in after three weeks. Your partner did not know how to handle his colleague or the way his addiction made him feel when his resolve slipped – but his colleague was not to blame.
It takes time to process all the information about gambling addiction but I’m not going anywhere so please keep posting.
Velvet
