poker no more!

Hello everyone,

It's been ages since I've been here, but I felt like I shouldn't leave without "ending the story", sort of. The fact is that Josh is no longer playing poker, for... more than a year now. The game was forbidden in our country, so all major sites are down. New laws are being made about it and trading has already become regulated, now belonging exclusively to a national company (with terrible rates), which means people are also abandoning it. Not that Josh used to do trading, but... with poker the future is unknown.

The last time we spoke about it he was asking me to use my credit card (again) to restash, and I said no. He got angry, I stood my ground, and he never asked me for money to play again. That was a long time ago.

So, for the time being, he isn't playing. He's been focusing solely on his antique business and I'm glad to say it's going pretty well. He deals mainly on antique lamps and decorative pieces (like italian glass, ceramics and some paintings) and he sells to stores, which later resell them for twice their price. That's how it works here, if you have a store, you can ask for those prices. But having one is a big step for Josh and a risk he's not willing to take in our economy. Oh, he had a partnership with a friend that I talked about on the previous post, but that didn't work out, so he took all of his stuff out of the store and began to sell it on his own, which worked a lot better.

Our dog Frank is doing fine, we've been fine. I'm still working at the same company and life seems... stable now. No kids though. Josh's temper and my insecurities play a big role here... I think we're not ready (or if we ever will be) and I've just turned 32, so... who knows. Our relationship is still a bit bumpy, but nothing like the nightmare I lived in before. He actually took me to Italy for my birthday as a surprise gift! That was like "whoa", so not like Josh, it seems like he finally learned to appreciate me.

So... yeah that's it for this little update. This past year has been very good compared to what came before and I'm hoping and praying things keep getting better.

Hope you guys are doing good. I would like to thank you for the interest and all the positive comments and emails I received, thank you for your patience and for being open-minded enough to understand my dependency and inability to leave when everyone was telling me to do so. I started defending myself more, creating boundaries (and keeping them up), not allowing abusive behavior, not doing anything I though he was capable of doing by himself, and saying no. That was the recipy to make my relationship work.

Hope this blog can continue to help women who are going through a similar situation, I will check this email from time to time, but if you need some urgent advice, leave me a comment and I'll get a notification on my personal email account (as you know this isn't my real name and I use a different mail for this blog).

Thank you for being there! I wish you all the best and good luck at the tables :)

xoxo
Andrea