Question and Answer
I am married to a compulsive gambler and have heard the expression "enabler." Could you help me determine if I am an enabler?
"Enabling" can succinctly be defined as "any action that makes it easier for the gambler to gamble." We will outline this often unwitting and well-meaning but nonetheless destructive, response to gambling problems in four categories: covering up and covering for the gambler, attempting to control his behavior, bailing him out, and cooperating with him.
Covering up and covering for the gambler. It is only a matter of time before bad things begin to happen because of the gambler's escalating condition. A spouse may want to conceal the problems from her family and friends, but in hiding the behavior, she is only protecting him from the consequences. It is also inevitable that a person with gambling problems will eventually fray his relationships at work, with friends, or in the extended family. He may miss time on the job for gambling, he may alienate friends or relatives by reneging on family responsibilities, and his spouse may take it on herself to play a firsthand role in patching up these strained relationships. She may call his boss to excuse his tardiness or absence; she may take his side when a family member criticizes his behavior. When she covers up his behavior in these and other ways, she is deferring the consequences of his gambling and indirectly green lighting his further destructive behavior.
Attempting to control the gambler's behavior. It is axiomatic in addiction treatment that the addict himself must hit bottom before he can begin the grueling journey upward. Once the gambling reaches addiction stage, the gambling controls the gambler, not vice versa. People not wanting to be helped will not and cannot be helped. Trying to control the gambling, thus, becomes largely ineffective and even counterproductive. "Most illnesses progress uninterrupted along a predictable path unless effective intervention is applied," writes Mary Heineman. "Because many wives do not know they are dealing with an addiction when their husbands are gambling compulsively, they believe they can control or even cure the problem." Spouses wanting to control the gambling will employ every trick they think might be effective, from hiding car keys, to trying to dissuade gambling friends from associating with their husbands, to obligating their husbands to frequent, time-consuming family affairs, to even withholding conjugal favors. The important thing to remember about attempts to control the gambling is this: They don't work. In addition to giving him the opportunity to blame you for the gambling, you offer him the chance to rise up in indignation at some perceived slight and go gamble away his pain.
Threatening to leave. Even the threat to leave him, although usually coming after other tactics have failed, is an attempt to control the gambling. A gambler in the throes of his addiction would likely see your leaving as a godsend after all, the gambling has taken up residence as the monarch of his life, and its requests are his commands. If he had his druthers, he'd like to be married to you, but if it's between you and the gambling, you might want to take the gambling and lay the points. "If you say that it's either gambling or me and the kids, Coates says, "be prepared to hear, 'Then I'll take the gambling.'" Adds John M. Eades, a recovering addict trained in addiction counseling, "If my wife had left me, that would have been perfect, because then I could have felt sorry for myself and gambled. In other words, everything is fodder for the gambling addict."
Bailing out the gambler. Bailouts come in too many forms to number, but all share the same effect: They relieve the gambler from facing the consequences of his gambling excesses, and thus they arrest his plunge toward his bottom. In order to finally face his condition and do something about it, he must be forced to face the consequences of his actions, painful though they be. When you reap the whirlwind for him, you're only hurting him, not to mention yourself. Bailouts, to, run the gamut of enabling and rescuing behavior. They can take the form of your assuming the gambler's family duties you take the son to football practice instead of him; you take the car in for an oil change instead of him thus freeing his time for gambling pursuits. They may also show themselves in a more recognizable form: bailing out the gambler monetarily, fixing the financial quandaries he puts himself in. To pony up money to pay back a gambling loan, to arrange for a sizable bailout from your parents or to cosign a loan at a bank, to mollify hounding creditors with your personal monies may alleviate crises short-term, but they perpetuate the problem and reduce the gambler's motivation to change. Says Chaplain Killian: "You're not helping them if you bail them out. You're just allowing them the opportunity to go back in there and gamble more. And they will do it."
Cooperating with the gambler. One other way spouses enable the gambling is by directly or indirectly participating in it with him. Not uncommonly, spouses enjoy gambling too, and the gambler will tap this enthusiasm to both compromise the spouse and justify his own activity. If she goes to the casino with him, how hard can she come down on him for his gambling? If the gambler says, "What do you mean, we lost forty-five thousand? Then we both have to go gamble and try to win it back," you should resist the entreaty. On the indirect side, taking gambling-related phone messages or in other ways facilitating, or making easier, his gambling also applies here."
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