i don't know what to do

[vanillacupcakes]

last thursday my now ex-partner confessed to stealing jewellery from my parents' home over the course of 8 months on occasions when he was left alone in the house. we lived together in my flat but sometimes we would go to my parents for dinner as they live very close and occasionally we would stay over. he has had a gambling problem in the past (well, thought it was in the past) and was tens of thousands in debt when i met him, which he had only recently paid off. a large amount of money had also gone missing from my parents bedroom which he has not admitted to but the amount is very large - thousands - and while it's my parents fault for poor accounting, it seems very suspect, especially now. anyway, the police were called, he was put in hancuffs and we all had to give statements. it breaches his bail to contact myself either by txt/phone and he cannot be within 100 yds of my parents home. our flat was also searched as was his car. in the past he has stolen my debit card and spent thousands. thankfully it was repaid the next day by a loan. i just dont know what to do. i have given him chance after chance. he claims he has a mental illness but he is still a criminal. writing this all down i read it and i think what is wrong with me. why is it that i still love him and want to help him??? i haven't seen or spoken to him since thurs but all i can think about is him. i was even tempted to call him last night. what would you do/should i do? i think i just need to hear outsiders opinions on this.

YOu are young, love. ANd what's more, this fucking predatory arsehole targetd you. A more experienced woman would have spotted the 'Dishonest loser' signals and told him to piss off - he deliberately chooses innocent (in every sense of the word) teenagers from nice, ie wealthy families to hit on.
By the time he comes out of prison his looks will have gone and he will hopefully have a 45.calibre arsehole from 'socialization' in the showers as well, so this should be the end of his thieving career, try to comfort yourself with that and learn from it.

@ .45 calibre arsehole

< wanders away laughing >

sorrento, i was not trying to say that being mentally ill and physically attractive are mutually exclusive if that's what you've assumed. i also meant that it was a silly thing to write meaning me.

but catinthehat, part of me has thought, well, "it's just money" and love>money. he has said things like "don't give up on me". i'm well aware that part of the reason i'm defending him and making excuses for him probably has something to do with the fact I don't want to face up to just how stupid and gullible i have been. oddly enough i really did think I was a cynical b*tch.

i wonder if he did target me. do you think he will go to prison? i really hope he does. court date is the 23rd.

I stand by saying that saying someone is unlucky because their good looking boyfriend is mentally is silly.

that made no sense to me.

I believe that Ted Bundy was rather good-looking...

as was my twat of an ex

he is still a twat though...now an ageing one

"my mother says that she feels sorry for him and that in her opinion he is mentally ill. and that i am very unlucky because from the outside he looks like a lovely guy: good job, good looking, funny."

Your mother said the above. She said you were unlucky because he looks like a lovely guy, etc etc, so it appears very much that she thinks people who are mentally ill are not good looking, funny, etc etc.

"I'm well aware that part of the reason i'm defending him and making excuses for him probably has something to do with the fact I don't want to face up to just how stupid and gullible i have been"

You need to face up to that fact and then move forward from it. You had to date no life experience and he preyed on your naiveity which he also exploited to his advantage. I sincerely hope you have learnt from this and do not fall for such ne'er do wells/bad boy types again.

I would respectfully suggest you now work on you in terms rebuilding your self esteem and worth and give dating a wide berth for a while. Such men (and I would also agree you were deliberately targetted by him) have a very bad effect on their victims and this takes a long time to recover from.

You do not have to compound your past errors by having any further contact with him once the court case is settled.

he wasn't just good-looking, sorrento. he was also well-educated, witty, confident, kind, caring, generous, spontaneous, affectionate, loving and had many other positive attributes. so yes i do feel that i am unlucky because all of this is spoilt by the fact he is addicted to gambling. which some regard as a mental illness.

and yes ted bundy did have a certain je ne sais quoi. the eyes...

Sorrento I think you are being over sensitive and reading to much into what she is written.

It dosen't read like that to me, more like she had the wonderful DH, who from the outside was great and like so many facades he turns out to be a shit.

Her mother also thinks his gambling might be a sign of mental illness.

I don't see what your issue is and why rip op to pieces?

vanilla

You were taken in by a charming facade (these men can charm the birds from the trees) but he still ripped you and your parents off to the tune of thousands of pounds. You chose poorly and you need to ask yourself why exactly that was.

Hope you were being ironic as well with regards to your last sentence. He murdered many women.

thanks, attila, your words are much appreciated. i don't really have any friends i can talk to so it means a lot having others take an interest and try to offer advice etc.

it's what i thought tbh but feels good to have it confirmed and reiterated.

building self esteem is easier said than done though.

I knew someone with a gambling addiction once, he had been wealthy, he was nice (gave me a free lift in his Taxi home from the station once). But I wasn't his wife or daughter (nearly the same age a his daughter btw, which I think I reminded him of). I enjoyed his company for a casual chat etc. but I would never have wanted to be involved.

It is an addiction, and unless they are really serious about getting "clean" you cannot trust them. They do act just like drug addicts. Look up gambling addiction to understand, and then stay away just like you would from someone with a Heroin problem. Get counselling if you need it, but its not you its him.

One mistake is fine, just be wary of any more like him.

thanks emmyloulou, that is exactly what i was trying to get across. he definitely had this amazing charisma that could charm anyone attila. well maybe not anyone, but certainly me.

Vanilla

Rebuilding your self esteem is indeed easier said than done but if you truly want to avoid such extremely bad news types again you will have to work on your own self here and rebuild you from the inside. You've certainly learnt some harsh lessons here; lessons you must learn from.

My guess is as well is that he lied to you from the very beginning and that's another hard thing for you to accept and face up to.

BACP have a list of counsellors and they do not charge the earth. I would respectfully suggest you seek counselling from them (or some other counselling service) for your own self to help rebuild your own self worth and esteem.

HI Vanilla, Be careful of this man. If you contact him you could look as if you are his accomplice. You should feel horrified at what he has done. Your reactions are more like someone who was in it with him. Now that you know what he is capable of, you will be enabling him if you condone it. He has an addication just as if he was on drugs. Of course he seemed lovely, he had to fool you and your parents some how. Get some counselling. I am beginning to see how some women write to mass murderers when they are in prison, and even go on to marry them. Find a decent bloke.

I know someone whos 'loving partner' emptied thousands from her bank account while she was in hospital, post traumatic delivery. He litterally was stealing food from their new daughter's mouth! He stole for years, defrauded benefits, credit cards and so on. And still she made excuses for him.

A thief is a thief, dont care what their motivation is. Run a mile. And why are you referring to him as an ex partner? It doesnt sound like you have left him {hmm}

Being in a relationship with someone who has an addiction - be it alcohol, drugs, gambling or whatever - can be completely overwhelming. The highs and lows tend to be higher and a hell of a lot lower than in a normal relationship. It's not that the highs are particularly special, it's more that by comparison with the lows they feel special. It is so very easy to lose touch with what "normal" relationships are like, where things like trust and respect are a given.

You're not the first person to have been taken in by a charming, lovely con artist and sadly you won't be the last. It has been an awful and painful experience for you and it will take a while for you to get over it. That's ok. The important thing is to learn from this experience, to identify the warning signs that you missed first-time round and to promise yourself that you won't make the same mistakes again.

After that, work on forgiving yourself. It's not your fault he stole from you and your parents, it's his. It's not your fault you believed his lies, you were simply making the best decisions you could at the time with the information you had available. You now know differently but you didn't then. It's a chapter of your life that is very near the end if you want it to be. It is entirely possible for you to start a new, fresh chapter a little older and a lot wiser.

I'd also recommend some counselling. Your GP may well be able to help organise that. I'd also very strongly recommend a book called "Co-dependent No More" by Melody Beattie. It's written specifically for people who have found themselves in, and overwhelmed by, a relationship with an addict. You don't have to buy in to the whole co-dependency idea to get an awful lot of benefit from the book.

Steer clear, you know the answer already.

My Sister had a BF who did this to my parents (but on nowhere near such a scale I might add - how the fuck have you let it get this far) and she was equally clueless and naive.

You are 20, you should have grown up a bit by now, but there is still time, hopefully.

Move on girl. Enter the real world.

Vanilla you need to move on from this guy. You also need to take a good look at yourself to figure out why you got taken for a ride. Learn from this so that you can avoid repeating this mistake. Some people turn being taken for a ride into an art form unfortunately.

I know one girl who has never been involved with a non-criminal. One guy stole her mum's car while they were dating. He has served time for knife crime. He is in a gang. And yet she still got together with him again a few years later and would leave him babysitting her daughter while she went out. THen found out he was seeing someone else. The two women spent days arguing over who was going to have the 'privilege' of taking him to court. He was being tried for beating up his ex while she was pregnant with his child!

This woman chooses these men time and again, and the whole family is losing patience with her now. Our sympathy has been stretched so far that we can't deal with it any more. You can't be blamed for making this mistake it's just important that you learn from it rather than repeating the same mistake ad nauseum!

mummytime he has been to ga classes before (supposedly, but I do believe him about this). i would have placed heroin addiction much higher than gambling in terms of severity, wrongly so perhaps. you are right - he was just as prepared as a drug addict to hurt his own and another family, betray people that care for and love him and do some seriously deceitful things. he keeps looking for people to blame too, making me feel guilty, saying that as im so stingy he would be too embarrassed to ask me to borrow any money if he needed it. my dad bought the tv he bought for our flat off him for quite a bit of money and he said he had put it into a savings account which he later admitted to be untrue. i have given him hundreds for nights out on 2 occasions and also bought him clothes. so although I am stingy in general life, he cant say that I haven't made any generous gestures and he could have saved the money i gave him for nights out if he was really struggling financially. also, he says that going to private school was part of the problem. having wealthy friends presumably. but i and many others who do not have gambling addictions were also in this type of environment.

thanks baggyagy, didn?t think of that. i guess i have played the part of the ?enabler? in the past.

FFS Vanilla you really need some counselling so you don't make a mistake like this again. This was not a 'great love affair'. This was a con artist, a totally despicable and entirely selfish individual who picked on you because you were young, sheltered, naive and had a rich family. You also had, and still have by the sound of it, low self-esteem - there's a bit of you that thinks you should be 'grateful' that this handsome charming man noticed you and that you somehow didn't 'love' him enough to fix his problems and stop his theiving. No one can fix him. FOrget him and fix yourself.

Well said SGB

perfumedlife ? that's scary. i don't want to be that person. and downright disgusting to be honest. you know, i think that would be me actually. if he could he do that to me he could do it to our children if we had anyway, which thankfully we don't. a thief is a thief... true words. i think i just need to have a good cry and wash my hands of him. in fact i know i do. i could tell you so many more things that hes done. ?yes I have put that £150 back in your bank account? ? statement arrives, no he hasn't. give him my card on a night out and say the nights on me, and he will spend £900. the more i think about it the more i think he is a parasite and couldn't possibly have really loved me.

snorbs ? thank you so much. you are so right about the highs, they are just normal couple things that many people probably take for granted but I will think aww... how nice he has done that for me. im talking about things like taking me to mcdonalds or getting me chocolate from the petrol station or picking me up late from somewhere. things like that. although he did save up and pay for a holiday for my birthday once. but then who knows if that was just bought on a roulette win? i could cry at what you've written. hindsight is a wonderful thing. i need to face facts. i cant change him, even though i thought i could.

Vanilla , I think some of the posters have been a bit harsh on you. Yes you have been naive but haven't we all believed in men that we shouldn't have. Unless you have had a relationship with an addict it is hard to understand how manipulative they are.

I had a bf who was a gambler,liar and did cocaine. He would lie about anything and would always charm his way out of situations but after 2 years I got sick of it and we split and he moved 400 miles away. He did that. moved around the country to meet new people as he had no friends or family left that he hadn't conned , lied or stolen from. It took time to realise what a shit he was and by then I loved him although was under no illusion, he was not a man to marry!

You are only 20 and have plenty of time to meet decent blokes, you just need to make sure , you don't repeat the pattern and draw up a mental list of what you expect in a partner. I split from my waster ex and did just that I am now happily married , but that is because I stopped looking for love and made sure i wasn't dating knobs and then love developed.