Caught him secret gambling AGAIN - WWYD?

[Happymummy22]

I really need some help/advice. I’m stuck with how to handle my current situation.

Myself and my partner have been together 6 years. We have a small & intimate (albeit still costly) wedding booked for next year. I love him a lot & although we’ve had our trials and tribulations like any relationship, for the most part it’s good. We have 2 children together and I have one from a previous relationship (but he is treated much the same by his stepdad, of course).

Now my issue in short is that I’m pretty certain my other half has a gambling addiction. I didn’t know anything about it until I was already pregnant with our first child & we were in the process of buying a house together (obviously it got brought up when he sent his bank statements to the mortgage broker). He promised me there and then that he would stop & it wasn’t an issue.

We bought the house a few months later - all fine. I then found he was being sneaky on his phone and moody/ up and down and quickly realised he was gambling again. Obviously by this point we had a house together so I was even more concerned. We had the emotional chats and yet again he promised he would stop and as far as I was aware he did.

Then comes the 3rd time. I was pregnant with baby number 3 and I found that he was doing it again. This time it was too much, I even called up a counselling service myself as I was struggling with how to deal with it & the impact it was having on me mentally with the baby due any time. I spoke to him again and basically said it was the final straw. That he needed to seek help and if I found he was doing it again - we were done. Ultimately I have told him that it’s unacceptable, that his choices & the results of his gambling affect not just him but me and his family. He signed up to gamcare & blocked all of his accounts. Cried and told me he would never do it again and he was really sorry.

Fast forward to recently. We went on a trip and I was expecting to pay for everything (it was my treat for a celebration). He was offering to pay here there and everywhere when I already knew he had little money. Red flags, I thought he had either had a windfall from somewhere or he has taken out a loan. Last night I checked his phone. I can’t get into his banking but there were lots of those types of text messages where direct debits have been set up for minimum amounts on credit cards/loans (the ones you apply for with bad credit such as vanquish, marbles etc). Also constant texts day after day from his bank saying he’s in overdraft. Then his internet search history “how do I remove myself from Gamstop)”

I’m distraught. obviously I love him a lot but this is massive for me. I was in a bad place with money with my ex (who I had my first child with) and when we split I scrimped and scraped as a single parent for years & told myself I would never be in that situation again. He knows all of this. I work a hard and stressful job to try and give my family a good life (he does too, might I add) but whilst my money is being spent on things for the kids or trying to save, it seems he’s getting us more and more in debt.

What do I do? I don’t want to leave him but I also can’t live like this, it torturing me mentally. I know I need to have the conversation with him but ultimately, I’ve given him the ultimatum last time & here we are again so that didn’t work, but I really don’t want to split my family up so I don’t even know how the conversation goes?! What do I say? Stop gambling or… I’m not going to leave you anyway?!
I also know he’s going to be fuming that I went through his phone & so so defensive that it’s going to blow up and I don’t want that around the kids. But I knew I needed to confirm what my gut was telling me for my sanity.

The wedding is getting ever closer and it’s really making me have doubts. obviously we’re already intertwined moneywise owning a house & having kids together, but the thought of being married and being even more connected financially is scaring the life out of me. On the flip side, due to the current state of affairs (childcare costs, mortgage, car finance) I wouldn’t be able to afford everything on my own even if I did have to leave.

I know he can sense the last couple of days that something is off & I feel it’s starting to affect t the atmosphere in the house so I need to broach the subject sooner rather than later but I’m really at a loss as to what to do next.

I feel so lost. Please help!

Y the sounds of things you've given him second and third chances already. I'd not marry this man and I'd question if I'd want to bring my children up with a man who's happy to gamble and lie

"I'm surprised so many have told you to walk, when you have three children with him. He is still their dad and you can't, or at least you shouldn't just walk and cut all ties. "

Neither my reply nor any I've read advise to walk and cut all ties. Nor to stop him being his children's dad. But yes, advice to walk away from a man who is an addict and as such has become a regular secretive liar? Walking away from this relationship is quite different to cut all ties from a father to his children

He's lied to you repeatedly.
You've already given him an ultimatum. He's done it again anyway. If you don't walk away, all he knows now is that there aren't any consequences for him lying and deceiving you.

You are already fairly entangled, but I wouldn't marry him and get any more entangled.

I would also be aware of the possibility of him trying to take out loans or credit cards etc in joint names when he runs out of capacity in his own name, so be careful of that. I would not have any joint finances with him - if you have joint savings or accounts, separate them ASAP into ones he doesn't have access to.

It is an addiction. So if you can't face breaking up with him at the moment, I'd investigate what kinds of help there is available in your area. Are there therapy or 12-step groups? Gambling support charities? Can you insist that he contacts his banks, etc to get put on awareness lists so that they don't give him credit or approve spending on gambling etc.

The only possible way he'll change is if he engages with these kinds of support and wants to change, but if he's googling how to get round Gamstop, it doesn't sound like he's there.
So if you won't leave, all you can do is keep your own finances as separate as possible from him, keep your cards and wallet away from him, and make sure his bad choices have the least possible impact on your life and future.
And be really aware of what this behaviour may be teaching your children about money.

“I'm not sure if I would have called myself an addict”

“Once an addict always an addict? Not true at all. I am proof”

I wish you well. I hope you live a long and happy life never feeling the need to gamble again, nor feel the need to close yourself off due to watching what was bet on unfold.

I thought my brother had recovered. God know we worked hard enough to find and pay for excellent treatment. For 15 years it look like it had worked. We had long relaxed thinking it was over.

But it wasn’t.

And I know we are nowhere near alone in being blindsided like that. I did a deep dive after his relapse (which was so much larger scale than the initial issue) trying to understand how we had missed it. I had professional after professional telling me that gambling is one of the hardest addictions to beat. Perhaps because we still don’t know enough about how to treat. Perhaps in part because of the growth of the betting industry. I did my absolute best to get through to our mother. But she wanted to trust and believe. After wiping out his own family, a few years later he relapsed again and took our mother down with him.

Like I said, I wish you nothing but well and a finished recovery from a problem, that will never cause you issues again.

But with the best will in the world, I can’t advise another person and their children to leave themselves wide open to the high risk of relapse knocking the bottom out of their lives. No matter how low you believe the risk to be, I know from personal experience just how sky high the stakes are for the people around the person with the issue.

Been there, ended up being presented with a £10k tax bill that he had gambled away and then told me I needed to go back to work in order to pay it for him - I had a 4 week old baby in my arms. I know you think you can fix him but believe me, you can't.

If the wedding is paid for, they can still have it.

Just don’t sign any official paperwork

Wedding, fine.

Marriage, not so much.

And yes, signing over the main assets to protect them from being borrowed against, if possible, is very much a good idea.

You clearly aren't ready for the bigger picture- split up, remove children, cant afford it etc etc. The whole thing is terrifying.
So break it into smaller more manageable chunks. in the first instance you need to talk, he needs to be open and honest so you have the full picture.

You need not to go ahead with the wedding - postpone it

The thing about ultimatums is that you need to carry them out - if he's gambling again he needs to move out - does he have a parent or mate to go to so its low cost for now at the least?

You feel that you cant afford to do this alone but you could end up far worse off living with a gambling addict and if he's the good man you say he is, you should get financial support from him,

As a pp says, addicts need to hit rock bottom before they can recover, you standing by your ultimatum could mean him hitting that point, you accepting apologies and promises will just kick the can down the road

He won’t stop until he has destroyed you. It may not be deliberate but it will happen. Please think of your kids in this OP, are you happy for them to grow up with a father who puts his family in this position? I know things aren’t black and white but sometimes they need to be in order to see the wood from the trees. I would at least postpone the wedding and potentially have a trial separation. You’d see from his reaction and his actions following that how he really feels about you.

He has and will continue to take you and your kids down with him. If you want to stay with him (and those reasons you have do not stack up when scrutinised) that is your choice but your choice will affect your children as well. Marrying a gambling addict is madness. You are codependent snd by staying you further enable this dysfunctional relationship to continue. You are aldo very much caught up in the sunk costs fallacy and that causes poor relationship decisions

@Happymummy22 sorry but IT IS black and white. You say " I don’t want to leave him but I also can’t live like this" well those are the two choices.

How many more times does he have to show you what he is like. he is an addict. you cant make him stop. your kids cant. nothing can - ever.

when will you leave him? when he signs stuff in your name to remortgage the house? when he steals the money you set aside for Christmas? when you cant have holidays because he has pissed it all up the gambling wall? when you cant feed your kids, buy them school clothes?

You have given 3 ultimatums and they have been ignored. because that is the problem with an ultimatum. Unless you have the balls to see it through, then dont make it, its a chocolate teapot otherwise.

He is a liar. He is a cheat. He is a thief. he is stealing from you and your kids, cant you see this?

You are in denial. You have tried everything. either put up with it and prepare for it to get a lot lot worse because it will or leave. thats it thats the black and white binary choice. but, you wont leave you will just give one more chance and then in 20 - 30 years time will be heartbroken when you kids tell you how much living with a gambling addict has affected them.

I’m sorry OP.
Do not marry this man. You haven’t mentioned if he goes to GA so I presume he doesn’t. I doubt he’s ever stopped.
You will be able to manage without him.

I work as an advisor for people in debt for years and have never seen a positive outcome where someone was gambling or someone was still with a gambler.

I dealt with the most terrible situations the mild ones were where someone had run up 10k or 20k of debt in their spouse or partners name but the really bad ones involved not being able to go to work be abuse they owed so much money to all their colleagues, persuading parents to sign over a house because of care home fees and inheritance tax and then mortgaging it and it being repossessed.
Borrowing, stealing from everyone they knew.

If you stay with him don’t marry him. Cancel the wedding and let anyone you care about know why. They need to be protected from his addiction too.
Get credit reports on him and yourself.
His may only give a partial picture of his situation as he may have borrowed from friends and family.
Get him to give you his wages as soon as he gets them or have them paid into an account he can’t touch. Give him back what he needs.
Don’t keep cash in the house.
Educate yourself on the reality of gambling addictions and be as prepared as possible to separate at any stage.

I know exactly how you feel as my husband has a gambling issue. I only found out 2 years into the marriage. We have now been married for 10 years. He still has not managed to stop gambling...he may have periods where he stops but then he somehow manages to start up again.
If you ask him if he is gambling, he will lie about it & pretend he isn't.

We have 2 kids (3 and 7). Last year he managed to stop the gambling for a long period of time so that we could buy our first home. I already own a buy to let property so I didn't include my name in the new house we brought..also I don't trust him enough financially to be tied to this house if anything goes wrong.

I have tried all these years to get him to seek help but he doesn't ever go to meetings or add any blocking to his bank cards..I would advise you to try and get your other half to seek help. Best thing seems to be getting a blocking thing for bank cards. Initially when I first caught my husband out, he allowed me to take away all his bank cards apart from the joint account one. I used to regularly check his online banking (he would log on and I would check them).

But since the last few years he doesn't allow me take all the bank cards & check his bank accounts. I told his family and they had many arguments with him..his mum even stopped speaking to him for a long time but nothing made him stop.

Currently his behaviours are making me think he is still gambling. But I haven't seen evidence of it. But when I watch Youtube on the tv gambling adverts sometimes appear & the last few days Gamcare adverts come on often.

Have you spoken to his family about it?

I would say don't marry him because you will be even more tied down to him.

My husband used to gamble smaller amounts before but before we brought this house, I saw a closing bank statement which showed he was gambling £1k a day. So gambling can get worse...you think now that you will never leave him but you don't know how much the gambling will effect him. My husband's sister's husband is also a gambler (just found out a few months ago) and he has even been cheating on his wife. I'm not saying your other half will do that but once someone can no longer see the harm in gambling, there might be other things that they think are acceptable.

If you knew now that the rest of your life was going to be a goldfish bowl going around and around him gambling u finding out him promising to change again and again would you be happy with that? Cos thats essentially what you are signing up to by staying. No adult should have to parent their partner by managing their finances for them because they have no control. Fuck that, a life of misery awaits if you stay.

My mother was a lifelong gambler - but it was before the days of online betting, her vice was casinos. It destroyed her marriage, her health and our entire family. We lost our home. My poor dad had a heart attack with the stress, but he did what you are thinking of doing - stuck with her, said that she was going to stop and that he had faith that she would.

She never did.

Seriously - as hard as it is going to be for you to leave this man and start again, and I honestly feel for you if you find the strength to do this - if you don't then your whole life is going to be a rollercoaster of him falling off the gambling wagon time and again and believe me... each time it will be a little bit worse, he will lose more money, get you further into debt and your children will more than likely suffer as a result. The memory of bailiffs arriving at our house when I was a child to repossess furniture because my mother had not kept up with the payments due to gambling away every penny we had will never leave me.

Gambling, like any other addiction is a curse and a scourge that destroys lives. Sorry, but those are the facts. Yes, some people manage to kick the addiction - I became a chronic alcoholic for most of my adult life, so maybe there is a lot to be said about addiction running in families - but I managed to get sober and have been that way now for seven years. My poor mother, sadly never stopped gambling and continued right up until her death at 64.

It's your choice, OP, but given that he has done this now three/four times and always gone back to it, I think that you can pretty much say that this is an addiction that has him around the throat, pretty much, and despite what he is telling you, he's not free of it and probably never will be.

First post nails it - albeit in quite a blunt manner. He won’t change, so you have two choices - stay or go. I would strongly suggest you go. Do not marry this man.

This would be a deal breaker for me. But it would have been a deal breaker when you first found out, not after the umpteenth relapse.

Don't make threats you won't see through. You've said if he did it again, that would be it. So that should be it. If you don't end the relationship now, you're sending a clear message that he can get away with this without consequence.

Oh, and if you do leave him, you haven't broken the family up. The responsibility for that lies entirely on his shoulders.

and be honest and tell your family.
The wedding is off because he is a gambling addict.

Don't be part of his deceit system

the sad thing here is that the OP hasnt come back since she realised that no one was going to validate her view that he needs "one more chance" Always think this is the worst part about the forums really because we all know that this is going to happen again and again and pretty soon she will be back here with an even worse tale of woe. just makes you feel so helpless but there you go.

I have a very close friend who had this with her husband. They have two children. She is now in charge of all finances and they have an honest open relationship. He was addicted to gambling partly cos he wanted to provide a better life for them, he loved them and didn’t want to loose them. So it was an ultimatum but he knew what he would loose. Good luck.

Funnily enough, I was listening to podcast with an addiction expert, who said, with gambling, the addiction is money. It isn't (as most assume) the sport, the thrill, the end benefits. It is literally having money and then more money. He said the physical possession of money is the gambling addict's equivalence of the drug addicts heroin fixes. So your friend might not be as safe as she assumes. Be warned.

What ever you do . Do not marry him and link your finances with a gambling addict.. it could cripple you for life.

First steps 'postpone' the wedding for 'family reasons' if asked say you'd prefer not to say. If it's far enough in advance you're likely to get some money back. Tell DP this has betrayed your trust and you can't go through with it.

Then you can collect yourself seek to put in place measures to protect yourself financially. It may be your DP will react defensively but this on him. You are rightly heartbroken. If you stay together then you are at least protecting your children's future.

As harsh as it sounds, previous replies are right. You have 2 choices. Leave - or stay knowing you will have to put up with it forever.

It’s horrible, it really is but he’s shown you that he has no intention of trying to change or at least being honest when he messed up. And yes, it’s addiction but the only person who can change that is the addict themselves. You say you want to make sure you’ve done everything you can to support him and keep your family together..well you have. You really need to realise that you cannot change him and make your decision with that in mind.

As others say, do not marry him otherwise it will affect your credit rating etc.

I say all this from experience. Been there, done that, got the t shirt and got out. Good luck.x

I’d postpone/cancel the wedding.

I’d support my partner in getting help and educate myself in how to do that as I do t think telling an addict to snap out of it and just sort themselves out and then never checking in to see how they are doing is helpful or supportive. it’s not a one and done thing conversation wise.

if you feel you can’t support him and have ongoing open conversations about this then it’s time to separate.

going it alone with any addiction is incredibly tough. if he shows willing the. I’d contemplate another chance but you both need to look into family support for gambling addicts etc.