To consider ending my marriage over this?

[Conflictedandconfused]

In summary, I’ve just discovered that my husband gambles.

I’m 31, he’s 33 and I cannot stress what a happy marriage we have. We rarely argue and are both pretty low drama people. We’ve been together 12 years (met at Uni).

He always liked a ‘go’ on online gambling sites and racked up quite a bit of debt at Uni. Said he was clearing it.

Fast forward: I am finally pregnant after a long struggle to conceive and am 14 weeks pregnant. We both have well paid jobs and a nice home. Our finances have always been separate. He always said he didn’t want me to be responsible for his debt so we just paid half for everything. I have always said that I don’t like the separate finance element but we’ve never missed a bill or mortgage payment so didn’t have any obvious cause for concern.

I started having strong feelings that something wasn’t right. He asked to borrow £2,000 from me to ‘tide him over until his expenses were paid’ and I gave it to him.

Fast forward and I caught him gambling online early Saturday morning and was furious.

He’s confessed that his debts are still at circa £20k and he has been regularly gambling. I feel like my world has shattered. He’s distraught.

Looking back, I have enabled by always jumping in to pay for everything as I thought he was working hard to pay off debt (he pays about £700 per month on a consolidation loan). He won’t admit it but I suspect he gets back to square one by using a credit card to get by after wasting hundreds in a gambling session. He confessed that he does this a few times a week.

By contrast I am cautious with money and save. I always planned to take a short maternity leave (not too short, 5 months perhaps) because it was always in my mind that he we wouldn’t be able to survive without my salary and I would need to use a lot of my savings to cover our mortgage. Talking of which, I have savings of approx £25k. Just trying to paint a full picture.

Does anyone have any experience of this? What on earth do I do now? I feel utterly fraudulent being pregnant, life looking rosy on the outside when in reality, my marriage feels like it’s over this morning.

Hi not sure if someone has already said this but you should set up a Clear Score account or something similar - it takes just a few minutes to set up online and then it'll show everything you're financially linked to.

Every credit card, bank account, loan, mortgage, any CCJs etc etc. And all the balances outstanding on them. It updates itself every month, so you can keep an eye on things!

Ask him to set one up for himself and let you check it whenever you want to, for peace of mind

@Juells People are different. I know people who stopped drinking/taking drugs/whatever with their partners' support and were nothing but grateful to them (and yes, it was hard). The fact that your sister's husband is a cunt does not mean that every addict will behave like that.

DistanceCall There is a massive difference being addicted to drink and or drugs and gambling. Drink and drug addiction impact the addict. Gambling impacts everyone else

I had gambling problems and owed a lot of money. I buried my head in the sand.he needs to stop gambling by self excluding himself from the gambling sites.credit card debt should be paid off first.i would take over his finances as it's very tempting.

I have now repaid all my debts but it put enormous strain on my marriage.

My ex dp gambled on poker sites. I had no intention of living with him so no need to combine money.

Drink and drug addiction impact the addict.

The hell they do. I wouldn't wish what a drug addiction or alcoholism do to a family on anyone. And yes, I've seen it firsthand.

@Conflictedandconfused You can remove the amendments at any time, and providing nobody applies for credit on his file, then nobody will be any the wiser. Amendments only appear when a search takes place. No searches fro credit- No concerns at all. The amendments can be removed just by writing to each agency, and requesting it. It is not a permanent solution or way to kill credit ratings, just a way to stop it happening again in the short term future while he gets his issues in order and reduces his debt.

OP if you give your DH another chance you will be committing yourself to a lifetime of hard work managing his sickness. You say you are losing or have lost respect for him so only you can decide if you wish to continue to be with this man — he cannot change but maybe over time as he struggles to stick to agreed financial restrictions other stronger aspects of his character will emerge?
His aspirations re buying a house and extending it etc could be viewed as not much more than an unrealistic pipedream on a par with his dreams of beating the system and winning his bets. I dare say he has justified his gambling to himself as being a way to pay off his debts and buy you and your DC a house etc.
See a soilicitor re protecting yourself and baby and make plans from there on whether to leave or soldier on for the present and possible long term. I don’t think anyone will judge you adversely for whatever decision you make.
Good luck

Hi OP, i'm sorry you're going through this. I was with a gambler for 7 years, although i only found out about it in the last year. He made all sorts of promises to me, that he'd never take money from me or allow it to affect me. In the end i had to leave as he tried to steal thousands from our joint account. It's no life to live. Even if he does get it under control, you will always wonder whether or not he's being completely honest with you. My ex was a very good liar, even when he 'admitted' his gambling, he never told me the whole truth or extent of it. I ultimately decided to leave based on broken promises, the fact i'd always be having to monitor him and look over my shoulder and the fact he wouldn't be an equal partner to me. Also for my mental health as he really made it suffer. I don't recommend this life, please leave him.

Have been there twice over, OP. You have my sympathies. It's shit.

My advice would be protect yourself financially now and ongoing. Every agency's credit report is now available free and instantly. Get every one and your own. Gambling addicts are notorious for not disclosing every debt and for leaving themselves secret bank accounts or credit cards.

You have to have control of the finances. No ifs and buts. If his work won't pay his salary into your account get a basic one which doesn't allow overdrafts opened in his name. Dh has one with Co-op. I have the card and operate it. He does have the bank card to the joint account which I monitor very regularly but that's all. Everything, savings, house, cars, large purchases are in my name or made in my name but that's something you can look at once you've locked his access to the family finances.

Don't pay his debt. He can work that out for himself. Don't exempt him from paying his share of the bills either. It leaves him free to fritter the essentials.

If he's doing it online registering with Gamstop should block his access to almost all UK sites. The rest will apparently be on by the end of the year. Password protect every device in the house and let him use a non internet brick for a phone.

Above all though bear in mind this is all useless if he's not committed to stopping. He can and will get round it if he's determined to. It does however give you space to judge how serious he is about stopping.

Re respect - When it first came to light I was revolted that he could do that to us and yep, I had zero respect for such stupidity. As time goes by and I see the person underneath now fully present we're back in pretty much normality day to day. I will however never trust him with money again and he knows if he goes near it again I will walk and not look back.

You set the rules here. There's lots of help and advice out there for him (GA, Gamcare, Stepchange, Payplan) Look after yourself. interests Make sure every last one is in your favour

and your interests

The thing is, you only know about this now because you caught him in the act. Its not like he's had an epiphany and decided to come clean, get help and hand you control of his finances off his own back. There's nothing in your OP that actually suggests he's ready or motivated to stop gambling. Has he said he wants help? It seems like he's just expecting you to fix things for him. He says he doesn't want you to pay off his debt, but he's been happy to borrow money from you before. This suggests to me that he's still hiding the extent of his debt from you. The situation is likely to be much worse than he's willing to admit.

He's been lying to you for 12 years and if you hadn't happened to catch him out he'd still be lying and gambling now, he'd still be lying and gambling when your child is born knowing full well that he's pissing their financial security up the wall. He may well be "distraught" but that's because he's been found out.

I would leave I'm afraid. I couldn't bring myself to trust my DH again if I discovered he'd been decieving me for our entire relationship and having his wages paid into my account, dishing out "pocket money" to him like a child and monitoring his every move just isn't something I could cope with.

I used to be incredulous that people stuck with partners with gambling addictions. Then I became... addicted to gambling. Lost £100k
My husband could not have been kinder
I got addiction therapy and an today fully recovered, no debts.

Im sorry for what you are going through but I do think it's quite possible your husband and your relationship can recover.

Gambling addiction is never about the money, it's about checking out of reality.

In my case it was a reaction to trauma and once I had help with that I lost the urge to gamble.

Thank you.

This is SUCH a naive question but please bear with me:

• DH has never missed a bill. Perversely he has a very good credit rating, always has. Are there varying degrees of gambler or does it always end up with them gambling everything they can to get a fix?
• In the interest of transparency we earn just over £100k a year between us. We actually have nearly identical salaries (I think I earn marginally more than him). Yet our money doesn’t go anywhere near as far as it could because he never has disposable cash. Turns out he has £250 a week after bills and mortgage and this includes petrol. Given his long commute this is approx 30 quid a day but he usually works from home 2-3 days a week. What should I do? Have him withdraw this ‘disposable’ cash and I take control of everything else or just give him the minimum in spends?

I am mortified to share our income because it is obscene that he wastes the opportunity we have for a very comfortable life.

But surely the reason you don't have much money is because he's spending it and trying to offset debt?

Yes, he gambles because he’s trying to get a ‘big enough win to pay off the debt’.

But that's what every gambler says, OP. They are doing it for the big win and then they'll stop. Ironically if he'd put that money into premium bonds he would've had more chance of winning and he'd still have the money.

While he has that mindset, you're screwed.

It's a complete denial of the adrenalin rush he's getting when he gambles. It's a denial of the risks he's taking and of the secrets and lies involved. If he won a million, the first thing he'd do is work out how much he could gamble.

No he doesn't gamble because he’s trying to get a ‘big enough win to pay off the debt’.

He gamble's because he is greedy and because he likes to.

He earns, what £2600 after tax?

How much are your mortgage and bills and his petrol?

My dear OP, I’m so sorry to read about your situation. This should be such w happy time in your life and now everything has been ripped apart.

Pleas get some RL help for yourself. Do you have friends or family that you can confide in?

I think you need to prepare yourself for more shocks as you investigate this. I suspect that your H earns a lot more than you think and that you have been funding his gambling for years. Also that his debt is a great deal more than the 20k he’s admitting .

I’m so sorry, you and your baby deserve better than this.

My situation is different in that my stbexh had alcohol issues but gambling but one of the things for me that made me end it was lack of trust.

For me living a life where I was always wondering if he had drunk and waiting for the next issue that would cause him to have one.

If you stay with him you potentially need to manage his money for the rest of your life. And that doesn't work - I did that and he just took his passport to the bank to get cash as I had the card. He could get a credit card you wouldn't know about or a payday loan - how would you know until after?

There are definitely varying degrees of gambler. As with anything, some can do it moderately and know when to stop. Others become compulsive gamblers. My DH had gambled very occasionally until the stress of the breakdown of his first marriage led to a bout of depression ( that he didn’t really admit himself). It was this, I think, which triggered the compulsive gambling.

When I discovered the gambling, my husband agreed that
A) he would put his bank account in joint names so that I could see everything
B) I would transfer salary out of his account and leave him with a small amount to cover petrol, minor expenses. I think I did this monthly, but you could do this on a weekly basis and only give him what he needs for the week.

When he started going to GA regularly and things were under control, the amount he had rose slightly, and this increased over time. Nowadays, my name is still on the account and I can see what’s going in and out if I want to. However, we are sufficiently far down the line that I don’t need to check up on him. However, I still have control of savings etc.

OP - I know how hard this is. If you take nothing else from this thread, just try to be kind to yourself and don’t make any rash decisions either way.

Approx £1,200 each inclusive of mortgage and bills.

Yes, he gambles because he’s trying to get a ‘big enough win to pay off the debt’.
That's the excuse he uses anyway... for the last 12 years.

I had to come back to this thread OP as I have been thinking about it and you all morning.
I'm going to say something blunt, and other PPs have already said similarly. I'm sorry it hurts to hear it, but I wish someone had spelt it out for me.
The problem you have here is that this isn't a new situation or a new turn of events. It has something that has been going on for longer than 12 years. That's one hell of an addiction to break.
Also, it means, that you might think you have had a happy 12 year relationship, and i'm sure on the surface you did, it has been utterly based on untruths and deceit. All his talk and promises of your future and looking at rightmove were based on lies because he knew he was sitting on this mountain of debt and that he was continuing to grow the problem. He has literally been lying to you for over a decade. The debts he had as a student and was working so hard to pay off - you now KNOW were rubbish. And it is now at such a breaking point that he is having to borrow £2k to tide him over. He knew how you felt about money, what your plans were, and has worked against you and them with his behavior and his deceit.

I'm sorry OP to lay it out so bluntly, but you really need to be as honest as you can be with yourself if this is behavior you can forgive or go forward and live with. As I said before, the most telling thing that is missing from all your posts, is his desire to change or to stop. An addict will only recover if they want to.