Me and my husband have been together for 8 years but only married for 10 months. Throughout our relationship I’ve known he liked to bet, his dad always bets on the horses and him and his dad would sit and listen to the races regularly together. I didn’t think anything about it. When we should have been saving for our wedding I fell pregnant which was about two years ago now. The day before our first scan he told me he owed his dad some money and had took out a payday loan. Me being naive I took a loan out to cover all the money he owed. I never questioned it, I was too busy planning having a baby. A few months later he started missing the payments of the loan that was in my name, I got really stressed and he told me he owed more money. Again I extended my overdraft to as much as possible to bail him out, and stupidly didn’t question anything. My stepdad found out about the loan and decided to pay the first loan off so I wouldn’t stress about him missing any payments. Turns out he carried on missing payments with my stepdad but they didn’t tell me straight away as I was heavily pregnant by then. Things came to a head last year when all our wedding money that was gifted by our family went missing! My husband had taken it, I then opened he bank statement and saw row upon row of betting all transactions. I told him Mum and we confronted him and he promised he didn’t have a problem. At the time I believed him, however a few days ago I opened his statement again on a hunch and again it was the same as before. Over two months he wasted £2500 on betting apps. Now I feel like I’ve been stupid for not realising sooner it’s a big problem. I know he’ll deny it again so I need some advice on how to handle confronting him and not taking no for an answer this time. Sorry for the long post.
Hi char, you are not alone, we've all done those things. You just have to learn not to anymore. Call gamcare ask those questions. It's reasonable to tell your partner it's not acceptable. I had no problem in doing that. Whether he heard or not. He went to GA. He became secretive and went back to it, but I had the finances. There is a list of questions to newcomers on info page. Ask him those? If he can't make payments and he's already had loans paid off for him, it's pretty clear. Find a gamanon meeting? Get support from your stepdad and his mum, talk again. Don't keep it secret.
Get some counselling for you my advice would be to consider ending the relationship I’m in the midddle of doing so it’s tough but the best thing for you you will waste years trying to sort this and failing
Thanks, i don’t want to end the relationship permanently but I do think a temporary break would benefit me. But I don’t want him to start counselling because he’s trying to keep me happy, I want him to realise he needs to do this for himself. Neither of us have the finances to get out of the debt he’s got us both into, it will be a long slow process and that frustrates me a lot because I feel like my life will be on hold for the next few years until it’s paid back. He even had the audacity to tell me to do more hours at work! It’s very difficult to break away from him as we’ve been together since we were 17 and like I said because he’s my husband I feel responsible for him. I will be speaking to his mum again, and hopefully she sees the major problem he has.
It's not stupid to have trusted someone who is supposed to have your joint best interests at heart but now you have started to realise the extent of the problem you will need to secure the finances as far as possible. Once he can't do any further damage you have time and space to think things through and decide what you want. State what you want clearly and calmly and don't engage with the dramatics and manipulation that may ensue.
You can't stop him gambling. You can decide what you tolerate.
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