A
female
age
51-59,
anonymous
writes:I'm a 40 year old female so I perhaps should already know the answer to the question however I just wondered if any other readers have experience they can perhaps pass on. My current partner and I have known each other for 21 years, we have an 18 year old son together but spent 14 years of his life apart, we are now enjoying each other once again and both feel we will be in each others lives forever, all very positive so far. The unfortunate thing is he is a compulsive thief, it seems if he wants it he will take it with little regard for the consequences, he has served 9 years of his life in prisons and still he can't seem to stop, I'm an honest hard worker and pay for everything I want and need with money I earn as most of us do, what do I do to help this man? I sometimes think it's an illness of a kind but he really is my first my last and my everything, I don't want to give up on him, I just need to make him understand that what he does makes me want to turn my back on him forever. Any advice aunts and uncles?
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
female
reader, Country Woman +, writes (8 January 2009):
 Hi
Well I can't say that I have ever been in a relationship like yours but can appreciate where you are coming from.
I think you have already answered your own question in so far as to say that you mention it is like an illness. The compulsion to have something he wants and not necessarily perhaps needs is a form of illness. There are many reasons why people do it, some to support a drugs or drink habit or others for the exhilaration of getting away with it. However, he has not exactly got away with it in the past and to serve 9 years you would have thought that he would have learned his lesson from spending that length of time in prison.
I personally think he needs to understand completely where you are coming from and perhaps by continuing to let him know that it does not sit very comfortably with you and you do not want your name hauled through the mud or in fact your son and his son to be associated with his thieving ways perhaps he may listen to you. You could suggest as a roundabout way that you want to help him with some form of counselling - perhaps disguise the counselling first of all by telling him about couple counselling as you want to make a fresh start and get everything out in the open and wipe away the cobwebs of years gone past in order that you can both move forward together.
In this way, you see how he feels about any form of counselling and if he sees that you are fully prepared to go with him maybe later on you could suggest counselling for compulsive disorders or something along those lines. I am sure there are dedicated groups or supporters that you may well find on the internet who are specialised in dealing with that type of counselling for anyone with a compulsion of any sort.
He has to realise that this is make or break for you as you don't want to be without him in your life but he continues on this self destructive lifestyle it will eventually affect both you and your son and where would he be if he ends up being back in prison for another 9 years. By that time his son has grown up and probably washed his hands of his father as he hasn't been a consistent role model in his life and he cannot expect you to sit around waiting for him to get out of prison again.
At the end of the day sweetheart you can only try to guide him but he ultimately has to be the one to take that final step in getting help and if at the moment he knows that you accept him with this fault he will continue, you do in some way to make a stand as things will continue on a destructive spiral unless he changes his behavioural pattern.
Keep us posted eh, it won't be easy but you sound like a very strong and determined lady and the fact that you have asked for advice on this site only means that you do not want to continue leading this type of life with your man.
BFN
Country Woman
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