Hi Nm
Well I got muddled between the threads last night and had to move my reply from one to the other this morning, so I hope we can stick with this one.
It is very common that CGs do not share because they do not think that F&F can understand them. I don’t fully understand the addiction to gamble but I have studied it enough to know that knowledge given to F&F helps them cope and when F&F cope better they can do the right thing for their loved ones. In shutting you out, your boyfriend is denying you the ability to understand anything and that is not helping you – or him. Possibly if you had a crystal ball you would be able to relax but as you are being kept in the dark it means you are still very much on edge.
The point that is often missed is that most CGs do not and cannot understand F&F and therein lies the problem. He thinks you don’t understand so he won’t share with you. You would be able to cope better if he let you in because you can understand when things are explained.
Communication is so important in recovery and your boyfriend is not communicating.
When he is calm maybe you could ask him what brought his anger on so quickly and was there anything that could have been done to prevent it. Unfortunately I suspect he may well tell you that it was you that was to blame which again makes reasonable conversation hard. If he does say that you are to blame then maybe you could suggest that he puts the situation that occurred to the Helpline here, or to his rehab and ask them what they would have done in the same situation.
I can only make suggestions Nm, I cannot tell you what to do or that everything will be alright if you do (a) or (b) but if my CG had behaved as yours did I think I would have held up my hands up and said ‘whoa – this is the reason I want you to talk to me because I don’t understand what is going on here and this is hurting me’.
Do you have family that you can share this problem with?
Keep posting
Velvet
