Hi Velvet,
Thanks for you kind words and taking the time to reply to this!
The sober month challenge went well initially. He made it to about 3 weeks and caved in on the drinking first. This was due to his work colleages, ironically, betting on him to fail. One of the guys cut him in on the bet if he gave up and had a drink. Once he had failed with the drinking, he saw this as a failure of fhe whole thing and the gambling soon followed. I was really proud about how he had done but so disappointed that the peer pressure became too much.
I totally agree with what you are saying about becoming more informed. That’s why i have reached out to you guys. Really i need help with how to be supportive to him without enabling him. Its such a fine line.
My username was a deliberate choice. I am trying to be as logical as i can be but its sometimes easier said than done when emotions are involved.
I think peaceful happiness would be a struggle in the next 6-12 month and would be difficult but not impossible. I have set boundries for what i would expect (although that hasnt extended to limits on how he gambles as i feel that needs to come from him rather than me telling him). And now things are left in his control. I feel that if he is as desperate to make change as he says he is, he needs to come to a point that he does something about it.
I try to challenge his management of money with little tasks that require some forward planning and allocated money but if they fall through its not a financial concern. Meaning that there are fun activities to aim for away from gambling. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it spectacularly fails.
For him, there is no acceptance of the fact that there is a problem. And that is the part i struggle with the most. It is an off topic matter. He has said that he doesn’t want to change who he and that counselling isn’t something he would ever do. So this is the other problem i have: trying to get him to engage with something like this would be practically impossible.
For my CG, actions really do speak louder than words. And i would want that big change that you talk about before i could live with him. At the minute its almost a battle of wills, how long i can carry on v how long he will hold out on the fact that there is a problem. I’d love to see positive actions but i don’t know how he can get to that place without accepting that there is a problem. Or how we can move forward.
With regards to the families – on my part, my friends just don’t know enough about it and, understandably want to protect me. His family have much more experience with addiction to a point that they are almost numb from it. So talking to either side would be a challenge.
I feel like this is more ranty than my first post and probably much more disjointed…sorry about that but i do appreciate the response.