Help needed breaking the news to my addict wife

Thanks for some feedback, sorry if I offended. It was an attempt at humour but I can be a little insensitive about touchy subjects sometimes.

Anyway, today I went to the Library to try and find some literature on addiction and put in a request for The Addictive Personality in the hope it will provide a bit more insight. Also made another attempt to find out about support groups whilst I have some time off work for christmas. The doctors told me the drop-in centre was the place to get all the info I needed, but it was closed until I was back at work and only opened during the daytime when I would be working. That sucks.

I guess next is try and find a therapist to help me get my head together. I thought it would be easier than this to get help if you asked for it but it looks like it is going to take a fair ammount of effort to get anywhere.

I read some more postings and realised that I needed to start and think about me and the kids, getting my act together, getting my life back and trying to do the best for the kids, hence today's efforts. But I have this big mental barrier in my head that I can't get past. The idea of 'shutting out my wife' is something I find really hard to contemplate. When I said for better or worse I meant it. I keep looking for ways that I can help her, methods of getting through without the need for some big showdown. Deep down inside I don't want to considder that we may have to seperate or move apart if she cannot accept or deal with the fact of being addicted. If it came to it I would back down, I wouldn't follow through. I still love her too much.

Most days she is away from the computer for mealtimes, to get the kids ready for events, or when family visit like yesterday. In those periods I see her having genuine fun in real life. We interact and everything is like normal for a while. She is attentive to the kids and plays them up for a while, occasionally I get an unexpected kiss or hug and I feel happy for a while. I get to make her laugh some of those deep belly-laughs. Then she goes back to the computer and the dark clouds descend again. I heard a line in a song once that I used to think was really stupid but now I start to understand the truth of it.

"Love you too much to leave, don't like you enough to stay"

Man my head is a mess.

I think I'm making a point or have something to say when I start typing but when I re-read it I realise it's like unstructured and directionless verbal diohrea.

Does anyone have any useful suggestions of ways they went about getting their head together and finding a path to walk, as opposed to just randomly wandering the landscape like me?

Today I tried to be stronger. I woke up late after spending too much time here last night, but decided to get on with the day. I set to looking for chores to do and found that despite the fact my wife had been up for 3 hours already nothing had been done. Apparently when I'm asleep she can game without 'consequences'. So I dug in and spent the entire day hard at work. I gave the kids as much attention as I could and kept them organised and tidy(ish) when their friends came round to play. I did the shopping singlehandedly and carried it home in the wind and rain on my pushbike. At the end of the day it felt like a small acheivement that I had concentrated on what needed to be done and had not spent a single moment in a depressed stupor. My children had a happy day today, I'm proud of that.

And through all of it my wife barely left the computer at all except to help putting shopping away and make tea. I made it my mission to be elsewhere in the house and kept the kids away as much as possible too. If she is going to chose IT over us I want to try and make it obvious she doesn't get to have both.

I started building a new accounts package on the old laptop this evening, but I set myself up in the kitchen with some soothing background music to drown out the wind and the sound of those incessantly tapping keys! The kitchen became my own little haven and I managed a degree of clarity and concentration that is normally lacking these days.

I don't know where I got the strength from today, I felt less powerless than I have in a long time even though nothing has really changed. I think for the longest time I have thought of this as something without end, a new state of normality. I am finally starting to realize that there is an end to this road, whichever way it goes, after which it is possible to pick up the pieces and heal. Knowing that an end is out there waiting I find myself suddenly a lot more eager to start the journey so as not to prolong the agony.

I think you guys are to blame for that dawning realization, so thank you to everyone that has taken time to reply or has posted their insightful comments on other forum posts, it all seems to be helping.

I went out my way to give the kids more time today, played some games, talked, went out in the shed to tidy up and had long lazy hugs. Then my sister came round with her daughter and we all had an evening together playing games (even my wife). I kept myself busy and kept the focus purely on the kids, I did not spend any time trying to start conversations with my wife but was polite and responsive when she made the effort.

I think she is starting to notice my lack of attention. Every so often she would come and stand next to me while I was busy. Didn't have anything much to say, wasn't offering to help, just seemed to want me to acknowledge she was there. She would stand there for a few minutes then drift off back to the computer and keep playing. It was kind of creepy being observed by her that way.

This evening I decided to make my life easier. I found out an old wireless dongle and got it working with the dinosaur laptop so I don't have to wait until after midnight when she goes to bed to get on to OLGA and have my time. Means I can get to bed earlier than 2 in the morning.

I have also stopped deleting history on the browser after I have been here. In some perverse way I am hoping she may check up on what I do each night and end up here voluntarily rather than by force. If she reads this post it might be the best way I can get the message across to her of how I feel without the likelihood of an argument errupting that stops her from taking in what I am trying to tell her.

Today had some awkwardness to it. (I am just replaying the day in my head so sorry if this looks more like jumbled thoughts than narrative). I have made a conscious effort to stop pretending everything is alright, which requires effort because I have been doing it for so long. Instead of positive responses to allay her fears I have started to give neutral or honest negative answers where appropriate. But when my sister came round I realised this could become a problem. I think by some of my responses and lack of readiness to back my wife up that it was obvious to my sister something was not quite right between us. Since my sister likes to stick her oar in somewhat and has a skewed sense of confidentiality, I have a feeling that this is going to become common knowledge in my family very soon, and knowing my sister's 'unique' perspectives it is likely to be misinterpreted.

So far I have kept this entirely to myself. My wife has no real connections to her side of the family who live 500 miles away, so my family is her only family. She has always been nervous around them and worried excessively about approval. If she starts to get dissaproval from them all at the same time I don't know what will happen. She has suffered major self-esteem issues from a young age due to never having a father, suffering terribly at the hands of her mother's various psychologically imbalanced partners, and being abandonned by her mum and sent to live at her grandparents where they used religion as a tool to demean her. It has taken most of our married life for me to help her overcome these self esteem issues and we're still not totally there yet. My support and constant insistance that she is a good person and good mother have been important steps in building that self-esteem. Now I'm about to pull that all out from underneath her. Truth is I don't think she is a good mother or wife at the moment, but losing the support and respect of her entire family all at once could do the kind of damage she may not come back from.

I have been thinking this out as i type, and even though I started out this post fairly positive I suddenly find myself immensely depressed at what I may be about to do voluntarily to the person I love.

Thanks for the hugs, suddenly realising how much I need them.

exazzy wrote:

My wife read Co-Dependent No More by Melanie Beattie. I have to admit I thought of that when you said how much you hated putting together her gaming computer, but you didn't say no I won't do that.

Well... It starts today then. Today I was handed an opportunity to say no and mean it, and I took it. Last night we had an electrical storm that shut off the power twice in rapid succession and kept it off for about an hour. I woke up this morning to find that when my wife had attempted to turn the computer back on and get her computer games running again the storm had fried the net drivers out of existence. She had already contacted the phone company and tried downloading new ones but it wasn't working. She woke me up to ask for my help fixing it.

The kids were about to go to church with their grandparents and I had been planning to head to the gym for a while but it looked like those plans were scuppered. I lay in bed for ten minutes thinking about what you had said exazzy and decided this was the ideal time to stand my ground. I got up, had breakfast and prepared to go to the gym whilst I waited for the kids grandparents to arrive then, once they had gone I told her I was not going to fix it and it was unfair of her to ask me to. I told her I was going to the gym as planned and got a frustrated look and the dismissive "Fine, whatever" over and over again to anything I said so I just went.

I must admit I didn't feel suddenly any better or stronger for having done it, just sick to my stomach with worry for what was going to happen next.

When I got home she was out at the shop so I made a coffee and went up into the bedroom to stay out of the way and give her some space to sort her head out. Her way of dealing with it was initially to ignore me and stay out of my way as much as possible whilst going on a complete cleaning bender to try and keep herself occupied.

After the kids had got back and had lunch I occupied them all in the kitchen with painting so she had as much time as she needed and she eventually went up to bed with a terrible migraine (withdrawal symptom?) We managed some civil conversation in the evening when she came back down and she even joined us on the sofas as we sat and watched a film together as a family. It seems like such a long time since we have all been together like that. But the children are favouring me at the moment so when I went to sit down on the floor our youngest jumped off her lap and came to give me a big snuggle instead, I think that had an effect. It has been happening for a long while and more and more of recent but wrapped up in her gaming I don't think she's ever really registered it or realised the significance of it.

After the kids went to bed I went in the kitchen so I could have the lights on to do more on my accounts as her eyes were very light sensitive. Without the kids around as a safety buffer to ensure I wouldn't say anything she didn't say another word to me. She watched a soap opera on her I-phone (we have no television) then went to bed early.

Thing is, I think she's afraid of the other things I want to say to her, but I don't really want to say anything at the moment. I've said pretty much everything I wanted her to hear over the past months/years of arguments/discussions. Just because she wasn't listening doesn't mean I want to go over it all again.

My biggest fear at the moment is what is going to happen in the next few days. We still have the shell of the old computer she burnt out. For the sum of a new motherboard and memory she can get that working again. The existing PC can probably be fixed by anyone with a bit of knowhow, and my brother is giving me his old but still decent laptop in the next few days as our family christmas present. Whatever happens she is not going to be off the laptop or the game for long, this is only a temporary reprive.

And once I'm back at work she may be gaming extra hard and extra long all the time I'm at work so she can turn it off when I get home and be 'compliant'. And then she starts childminding soon too.

No, today doesn't feel like an achievement, it feels like stepping off the edge of the cliff into the unknown.

*sigh* I really don't know what to say today. I had a lot of trouble getting any rest last night. Between headache and night terrors I didn't get to sleep till 5 in the morning. When I woke around 11 everything seemed calm, the wife was busying herself with chores again to keep her mind occupied, but one of the kids let slip that she had spent about 3 hours trying to fix the computer whilst I was asleep and had carefully put everything back before I woke up. I really think she doesn't understand what I said or what it meant when I told her that I wouldn't do it. I'm sure she doesn't understand the reason why I didn't want to do it. That it has more to do with me than it does with her.

Now she is sneaking round behind my back, whilst trying to appear as if she's accepted it to my face. I don't know what I expected really, but it's different to see her actually doing it as opposed to being told what is likely to happen. I have a feeling she is trying to maintain normality until I have to go back to work and she can have plenty of free time in the day to fix the computer and binge game, ignoring the needs of her children. Apparently the network drivers on the computer that is bust are simply not there, like they were deleted or something. I have no clue how that sort of thing can happen from a lightning strike but I think I can guess for **** sure who is going to get the blame for it.

We went to my sister's tonight for a new years party and came back around 10. There was much joviality, everyone there laughed and joined in. I thought it would be a positive reinforcement of the fact that she could still have a community of people to make her laugh without the need for her game. Probably just served to remind her how much she was missing talking to her gang whilst sat on her own staring at a screen reading lines of text. It's a sad inferior parody of reality, I don't understand how people can call it 'socialising' to sit in a room on your own.

I need to try and talk to her again. It will probably not get me anywhere and I'm pretty sure it is going to be lot more heated than any previous discussion since I became 'aggressive' with her by saying no in a calm tone of voice and walking away. Unfortunately she keeps having evening migraines and I know she can't hold a conversation during those, but I need to keep on trying. We are accelerating now, this is the downslope of the rollercoaster. We can't just pretend everything is alright anymore. It's gathering steam and soon either she will change her mind and then we start the slow upslope,...

Or she goes headlong back into the addiction and the ride derails.

I've never felt so confused or in pain in all my life, how is it possible for someone not to see that they are loved and this is done out of love for them, despite the pain we have to go through and the low chances of success we do it anyway.

This seems to be a competition to her, either she wins or I do. WTF? When did we take up on opposite teams? If she thinks I have won what does that mean? What do I win? A bitter and resentful wife who hates my guts and thinks all I want is to control and manipulate her. Is that why she thinks I'm doing this? For a prize like that? The truth is we have been losing for years. Losing the attention, respect and love of someone we care for dearly, and who used to care for us. This course of action is all that is left, but the only way left to win is for her to come back to our team so we can all win together, otherwise everyone loses.

Yah, struggling to hold on to the hope today.

Happy new year to all who grace this place with their wisdom.

Well that was it then. On Tuesday night we talked. We started at ten and finished at two in the morning. We both managed to keep our temper out of it. We both talked and listened in turn and expressed an awful lot of how we felt. I t was very tearful at times and I had a serious breakdown toward the end like I have never had before, an outpouring of feeling that was honest and shocked even me to a degree. I thought major progress was being made.

But I found the strength to touch on the sorest point of all for her, the money. She can explain away or deny the time spent gaming when I'm not there to see it and claim her and the kids have a wonderful time while I'm not around and I can't dispute it without getting the kids involved. But the money she spent she spent. And when I mentioned it she said she didn't do that anymore, then that she did but not much. When I told her I had seen how much she had spent in the next week she was first 'disturbed' that I had checked up on our mutual paypal account and then got all flustered and aggravated, started saying "it can't have been that much" then started to get angry when I pressed on and told me we had to stop because she was getting riled up. We calmed down for a minute then she decided we needed to go about the conversation differently and led it off on a different track which involved me having to admit that she 'deserved' some game time to unwind, that her choice of friends was hers to make, and that perhaps I was overreacting a bit or that we were both equally to blame for the relationship failing. And all of this drew the conversation away from money.

After another hour of talking we were cheering up a little, and she kept drawing the conversation into silly sideallies talking about nonsense and dancing around the issues. She never apologised once for any of it. In her eyes, without her having to say it I was totally to blame.

It seemed like the conversation was drawing to a close when I sat and thought for a minute and realised how she had avoided the money conversation and I found the courage to tell her I wanted to discuss it and was worried by the ammount of stress it caused her when it came into conversation. I told her I thought the ammount she had been spending was an unjustifiably large ammount, especially since it had been hidden from me, and it was my single most unshaken concern which kept leading me to believe she was not in control and addicted.

I then told her about this site and where I had got my information from and she was very worried that I had been talking to people and reading about gaming.

I asked her to think about whether she thought that the ammount she spends is excessive or not. Tomorrow I am going to demand an answer. And whatever the answer might be I think I will need to take over sole control of the accounts as I can no longer trust her.

This morning I woke up early and logged into her chat account, wanting to know what she really felt about our conversation and had told her closest friends.

She had stood her ground against my unreasonable accusations and fought her corner. See what I mean, we're still on opposite teams in her head. Then she asked for detailed advice on how to conceal her spending habits by circumventing paypal which I know how to access. She obviously just wants to conceal her behaviours better so I don't spot them and carry on spending like before. She also told her best friend that during today she would give her a detailed account of what happened. And that she was going to change all of her passwords first to make sure I was out of the loop.

Sure enough this evening they have changed. I know how terrible it is that I stoop to the level of spying on my own wife, but it has allowed me to see the other side of her, the addict, that has nothing but criticism and hostility for me. I doubted for a while she was an addict until I saw the way she twisted everything about me to portray a negative and abusive person to garner support from her friends. Much as I hate doing it and realise it has become my own unhealthy habit, I think if there is any change internally in her thinking it will show up here when the negativity stops. Only now I don't know what she is saying anymore. Her best friend seems quite heavily addicted and has lost her long term partner due to aggressiveness so the way I am described strikes a chord with her. In her eyes my wife is a victim of my brutality and she daily tells her she's too good for me and she should kick me out, divorce me, seek vengeance on me for my behaviour in all manner of creative ways. With that kind of poisonous asp in her ear I think any progress she could make will be stunted or short lived.

After a few hours of elation at finally communicating with my wife openly as I had been wanting to for years, depression has descended once more. And now my dad has a heart problem and may be retiring sooner rather than later which puts more professional pressure on me at work too. Never rains but it pours.

But then you have to follow through with a promise like that or it means nothing.

I don't think I could kick her out or live right next to her as a stranger in my own house. Either one would be so damaging to the kids to live through. At the moment they are aged 4,7 and 10, so they are not going to understand. And the chances are she will fight for and win custody because she is their mother. The only thing worse than her gaming here in the family home would be for her to be doing it without me there so the children get no attention or love and are improperly cared for.

Oh man, I so need to find a counsellor.

Well it's 4 days later and we still haven't talked. She has been spending more time with me and the kids when I'm around and not even turning the screen on. But yesterday my 4 year old son mentioned our old dead computer, that it was being fixed. My wife quickly silenced him and told him to eat his food, but it had been said and suddenly my heart was racing. I realised that I had been waiting for something to occur, I had never really believed things were actually getting better, it was just her playing a part. I checked in the cupboard and the computer is gone, I assume it's being fixed at the shop, in case her computer breaks again so I can't keep her offline by refusing to fix it. Two of our children's birthdays are coming up and I know we don't have the money spare for this, things are tight as it is.

I looked at one of her online bots and sure enough she has been playing for large portions of the day whilst I am at work despite me asking her not to do it around the kids. Her few days of moderating 'for me' are about done it seems, that didn't last long.

Last night I went to the gym with a friend for an hour or so after work. That was all the excuse she needed to be on the computer all night since I was doing something I enjoyed. She even asked my permission before I went out. I had to really bite my lip and just reply "fine, whatever" as the kids were around listening. I told her later I didn't want her asking me permission as she was an adult and could do what she pleased. I really don't think she understood that this was exactly the same as her asking me to fix the computer. She was asking me to say that tonight it was alright to game, but in my mind it is never alright for her to game. She doesn't even remotely see how much pain she is causing me asking questions like that.

The last time I posted I couldn't get to sleep, and after 3 hours of trying I went downstairs and started typing, hoping venting it all might help me relax enough to sleep. After an hour she woke up and came down to see where I was and was most unhappy at what I was doing. She told me "If it was me down here on the computer at 4 in the morning you would be really annoyed".

And it's true I would. I just couldn't seem to bring myself to sit and type my heart out in the evening when she was glancing over my shoulder, once she had gone to bed it seemed less pressured. If I was feeling sad there was no-one to judge me if I ended up crying again. But I don't know if that's just my rationalisation. I shouldn't really be doing things I wouldn't want her doing. So tonight I've taken the computer up into the bedroom while she games downstairs to get some peace. But somehow I know I'm gonna be up until late becomes early again. Even if I'm not at the computer.

When we talked she asked me if I planned on leaving, or she tried to. I shouted "NO! I'm not going anywhere!" And I meant that. In a positive way too. I made vows which I intended to keep with all my heart. I know that life is going to have it's hard points, that marriages will be tested and undergo hardships, lord knows we've weathered enough of them together already. But when I said that I thought that she might be starting to realise the problem. We were talking for the first time since the gaming began, and she was agreeing the time spent was too much, that she may have been to blame, that things would have to change.

A few days down the line things are not the same as always, they are worse. I'm pretty sure she is playing very heavily during the day and neglecting our son even more. I'm pretty sure she has found new ways to keep spending money we can't afford, and I'm almost certain that when she talks to her friends I am still the enemy.

I'm still not thinking about leaving this family, there is no reason I should abandon all the people I love the most. But I'm starting to think about what Exazzy said, releasing her and letting her go it alone. I think about all the ways to say it, about what the final straw will be for me when I can finally take no more, about how to do it whilst causing the least harm and distress to the kids. It consumes my thoughts a lot. Then I come round after hours of staring into nothing and realise that I have pretty much given up hope on my wife.

I think that is wrong of me. She deserves more warning than that, more compassion. I will be taking everything away from her in so doing. It will destroy her in a way unlike most would experience it. I may do it with the best intentions but I would still be destroying someone elses life to better my own. That doesn't sit well with me.

The problem is everyday it gets harder. Recently it has gotten much harder. My youngest cried tonight after a happy story at bedtime, and he couldn't tell me why. I have this sinking feeling that what is happening here is already leaving it's damaging mark on my children. I struggle now more than ever to smile and be happy and excited around them and retreat from them more so they don't see my sadness. My temper is sometimes short with them when they have done little to earn it. When I realise what i've done it breaks my heart that I am making them suffer the brunt of my frustration and despair. Everyday I try again to be a good father for them, and each day it gets progressively harder and takes more of my remaining strength.

I may not want to deal my wife the final blow but I'm pretty sure I can't hold out like this a great deal longer.

Well, we talked again the other night. It was unplanned but I was struggling to sleep again and when she woke to go to the bathroom I asked what was on my mind about the mysterious computer repair. Aparently it was going to be a surprise for me, even though we have no monitor to use it or place for it as yet. I accused her of sneaking around behind my back and being devious which she denied as a misunderstanding.

It lead to a much longer conversation than I thought it would and once again we managed to comunicate without anger or raised voices and covered new ground. She told me she had been making a big effort to game less around me (which she had) and felt I was always highlighting the negatives of her behaviour rather than thanking her for the positives. It's true, I do this a lot with everyone.

I explained my fears that all the positive behaviours came from a desire to placate me rather than any truly unselfish desire. And in order to justify why I felt that way I finally came clean and admitted I had been reading some of her conversations and that my fears came from seeing the way she portrayed me to her friends. I cited a few examples and she asked me to stop. She apologised profusely and wanted to put all this behind us and start over.

She explained it was simply her frustration at me and she released it by chatting to her friends about it. (I don't see how this accounts for all the times she has outright lied to them about what has happened). She told me that it was all an innocent misunderstanding, and that she had not been sneaky or devious at all. I started to recount a few times when she had been exactly that but she stopped me with renewed pleas to forgive and forget and start again. I told her I honestly didn't think I could do that, it was too much pain for too long to not leave a scar. I offered her a compromise, I would try my best to forgive and start again if she would come here and read the "Is OLGA For You?" page. She has always refused to look at or listen to any literature on the subject but I thought if she sat and read a little it might be the start of something, even if it was only an understanding of why I had been acting the way I had and felt the way I did. She agreed to this and once again I was hopeful.

It wasn't until this morning that it dawned on me just how one sided that agreement had been. In exchange for reading a page she gets to start again guilt free. What do I get? Nothing if she doesn't take seriously what she reads. Just an awful lot of doubts.

I spent today stewing on it and feeling depressed at how easily I had been duped AGAIN!

This evening I asked if she would look at the page with me and she grudgingly agreed. We had to talk about it for half an hour first so I could explain what it was. I could tell from the ammount of fear and trepidation that she expected a Q and A session followed by an online diagnosis "You are/are not an addict." I had to listen to all of her validations about how much better she was doing, how much less time she was spending on the game, all the times she wasn't playing (but strangely, not the times she was) and many other things. Only when she saw that the arguments weren't enough to make me change my mind did she finally give up and say "okay then, let's get it over with".

I loaded the page and nipped to the toilet and by the time I got back she was halfway through the list sounding out resounding "no,...no,....no's" in a semi-cheerful voice. There was just enough time to read the sentance before the next "no", not enough time to really give it any considderation. I knew then that my fears were happening.

She finished far happier than she had sat down, turned off the browser then went and sat back on the sofa, told me very little of that applied to her and had nothing more to add other than to mention that someone else close to me fit the description far better than she did (that is a seperate hurdle altogether).

I was mildly stunned. I had expected omre questions, maybe some discussion, but she had already dismissed the questions from her head and couldn't remember any of them to discuss whether they applied or not.

After s few minutes silence conversation moved on to lighter topics and it was obvious that she had now done her duty and dismissed all my worries as useless twaddle.

Now I don't know what to do again. From our increasing levels of comunication I thought that perhaps she was having some doubts, and that providing somewhere to read up and talk to others in a similar situation it might help her make her mind up one way or the other. It would appear not. She told me that her life is about to become more busy (starting childminding) and if the game's requirements are more than she has time for she will just quit, but that she would rather do it for her own reasons and in her own time.

Does this actually ever happen? Do people sometimes stop without ever admitting that there is a problem there, without help. Does it ever really last if they do or does it just transfer to other things instead (her I-phone for instance)?

I have already told her that the only person who can ever truly know if they have a problem is the person with the problem (rather inelloquently put I fear) and I have a feeling that is going to be used as a weapon against me now. She has decided she is fine so it must be me and my co-dependency issues.

I have a feeling this is going to get far worse than I ever thought possible.

How is it possible for someone to be willing to comunicate, to hear everything you are saying and give relevant responses, to listen to you express how you feel, and still not understand what you are trying to tell them?

Well, it's been a while, the trail has gotten old. Time to get things up to date.

A large portion of my lack of posting has been down to my wife's unwillingness to leave me alone around a computer anymore. If I am on late in the evening she will repeatedly urge me to come to bed or else sit on the sofa doing nothing but wait, sending the clear message that if I want to sit and write I have to do so under the pressure of her gaze. It's offputting, all the more so because I know she is really tired and is using guilt as a weapon against me. "I'm tired and you're keeping me up". I think perhaps she is afraid of some of the advice I have had from here and doesn't want me to get those sort of ideas into my head.

Anyway, last time I had shown her this website and told her I posted on it and chatted. She went on and read the postings and then tearfully apologised for not taking the "is OLGA for you ?" page seriously enough, but nothing more came of that.

She started actively avoiding playing on the game whilst I was up or around and stopped spending any money and did more family things, though sometimes I could tell her heart wasn't in it. She began playing early in the morning for brief stints and whilst I was at work in the day. She also started resetting the computer and therefore wiping the data that would show how long she had been playing for. Skype moved over almost exclusively onto her phone which became grafted to her hand and followed her to bed, into the toilet or shower and everywhere else she went. It was constantly buzzing and I had to ask her to set it on don't disturb at bedtime as it would wake me up buzzing at all hours of the night.

Everyday life had the sheen of improvement for a long time. I completed our accounts package and we began planning the year ahead to get out of the bad financial position she had got us into and prepare for two of the childrens birthdays in february, complete with fantastic birthday parties. We worked together and evony did not intrude much for a good month or so. I knew it was still going on but out of sight out of mind.

Then at the start of february I had to start building my daughter's vanity cabinet for her birthday. It was a very big project done with no budget in the evenings once the kids were in bed so it took a lot of time. I was out in my shed working till 11 or 12 at night almost every night for 2 weeks. It was the perfect excuse for her to play more without upsetting me. There was always a film playing on the browser and when I ccame in the game quickly dissapeared but as I repeatedly had no reaction to seeing the game window it came out more and more.

After that it started to happen again in the evenings after tea. She would sit at the computer and "watch soaps", which required lots of typing and clicking of mouse. I got the kids off to bed and there she remained all night at the computer again. Now it is almost back to the way it was before. The only thing that was really any different other than the increased secrecy was the lack of spending money.

When we changed the accounts we switched to cash and agreed a tenner a week for each other to spend on whatever we wanted, no questions asked. I assumed this would get spent on the game but to my surprise it was saved toward clothing and some used as a treat for the family. This was a marked improvement as money had been one of the more pressing concerns. Now that we were working together at the accounts on a weekend and deciding on expenditures together our finances were slowly climbing back up even despite the birthdays.

Then she started updating the accounts midweek whilst I was at work, cutting me out of the loop bit by bit and taking it over again. She never did get round to showing me the passwords to our accounts. Now even the password I did know to Paypal has suddenly changed, and money is pouring out of our bank and into the game again, but not from her pocketmoney, she gets to have that too. And now things are pretty much exactly as they were before, only neither of us trusts the other anymore.

I still love her. Fully half the days are good days. Either one or both of us will be in a good mood and life seems almost normal. We will play together as a family, hold hands when we walk and talk about things as friends like we used to do. We have been making love occasionally too which for us is no small thing.So to say it is all doom and gloom seems wrong. I looked back over my posts tonight and realised I never mentioned the other half of our lives where the game does not enter and things are fairly good between us. And sometimes it is. But there is no trust there anymore, for either of us I think, so the good times inevitably do not last and the emotional rollercoaster continues it's unpredictable course.

But several things have happened which have helped me to clarify things a bit in my head.

The book "The Addictive Personality" finally came from the library and I sat and read it twice. That shed a little light on some things, like why despite us making love I don't feel much intimacy occuring. It explained how addicts confuse intimacy for intensity which made a lot of sense.

I discovered I wasn't the only one suffering these kinds of problems in my area. Although it wasn't someone I could talk to often or in great depth it was still an encouraging contact.

My daughter wrote a short story for her school competition entitled "I Have An Evil Mother" and read it to me in her bedroom one night before bed. It was largely made up from other examples of bad parenting in films she had seen but it included a description of how the mother would ignore the children when they got home from school and keep playing on the computer, then, just before dad got home her phone alarm would go off and she would jump up and start cleaning and making tea and suddenly berating the children for the mess they had been making over the last two unsupervised hours. There was more of relevance but I didn't hear it and had to struggle to fight back a tear and congratulate my daughter on her masterful piece of fiction. Thankfully she wrote another one for the competition and that one never saw the light of day, but it has stayed with me. Whenever I remember it it gives me a perspective of what is happening every day that I never get to see.

I have started to recognize symptoms of acute anxiety in myself whenever I have to deal with anything related to the game which has made me realise that I really need to so a cousellor for guidance. I contacted one several weeks ago but she was going out of the country on sabattical for an extended period and had no-one available to replace her in the meantime so for the moment no help is forthcoming.

I keep trying to change the focus back onto me, doing things with a friend or remaining active around the house but I only succeed in short bursts before falling back into the same old routines of negativity and pessimism that comes to me so naturally

. So. Yeah. It's taken me 3 months to get my way back to where I was before. Only now I'm much wearier than before.

Well, I finally got hold of a copy of co-dependent no more so we'll see where that leads, but I have high hopes it may be beneficial for me.

Oh, and Istarted on a sanctuary for me yesterday. I built acomputer desk up in our bedroom so I can now have my own time to type whenever I want. This is only a small thing but it seems like step in the right direction.

So hopefully I will soon be able to post more actively and maybe even attend a meet.

Well, I only managed to get Codependent No More as an audio book but it has meant I can listen to it whilst I work and I have listened to it twice in the last two days. It does not speak strongly to me on all fronts in terms of how I deal with my life and situation but there are definately some things in there that I DO identify with. I am a little codependent I am certain, but my wife seems to fit the criteria FAR better and in many more ways.

Is it normal, I wonder for an addict to also be a historical codependent before they became an addict?

And yes, I did catch what Melody Beatie said about two codependants living together and the havoc that could wreak.

But regardless of how much or little I do the things a codependant should do, the suggestions for getting back to a healthy state of being are great, and the section on dealing with anger really spoke strongly to me. I am going to get a paper copy of the book and a notepad and start doing the work properly, taking the time to think carefully about the questions posed and see if there are things within me that I can't /don't want to see.

My thanks to those who repeatedly suggested this was the book I needed, your repeated urging was the reason I finally went in search of it and I am so glad I did.

Hopefully my following posts will have a change in focus, back onto me and what I CAN do.