How could i be so stupid & naive.???

Hi Bali

Your final question has me well and truly stumped

what is the difference between love and hate?

Shelly

Bali, I know we have spoken on the chat a couple of times, and I do feel for you immensely, I have punished my wife in the same manner as your husband has you. He will only stop when he really wants to and from what I hear you say he is nowhere near that stage, so with that in mind and the anger you have you are making the right decision, you have stood by your husband through so much but unless he shows willing you must stand by your convictions, and I really have an idea how hard that maybe.

I have a lovely wife who has stood by me, and the posts by yourself, Shelly and others provides me with an enormous amount of extra will to beat my problem into submission.

Life may seem dark to you right now, but I can assure you that it will get better, as the old saying goes....."it is always darkest just before dawn", take care.

Phil

x

Thank you Phil, this forum is a bit of strength for me and chatting to you too. I can't believe how many mirrored storied that there are.

I just wish i knew what the right thing to do is, resulting in the best choices for our two children.

I don't matter, but they do.

Although my husband left me in November, our channels of communication remain open. We talk like friends and he spends Saturday afternoons in our home. He still has a door key and for me to stay in my post of employment, he needs to stay overnight when i am on a night shift.

He takes the kids to out of school activities in the evenings & on alternate Sundays.

I am going to post todays email to him below, so that I can share my communs with him. Maybe someone else can answer my questions, after the bombshell of discovering last week that he borrowed money from his mother.

Today's email

Please don’t get angry, but DD asked me last Thursday whether I could start taking her swimming on a Wednesday night. I chose to leave the remark, following the argument that you had with her in the car on the way to swimming on Wednesday. I really don’t know much about what the two of you said to each other.

But this morning she has mentioned it again. She is the most loving and sincere daughter I could ever have hoped for, so your subsequent actions of ignoring her on Thursday were saddening. Please don’t ruin her future. Our son is definitely struggling too.

I just don’t understand how to move on without all of this destroying the children.

Wednesday evening, discovering that your parents gave you £22000 at the end of November, to cover your deceit is just mind blowing. I keep asking myself, how long would it take for me to save that amount of money. And that is without looking at all of the other numbers. Do your parents know that it went into the bookie's account or do they believe that it is still in the bank? It was supposed to be in the bank, but when did they get the truth about it being in the bookies account?

I can’t describe the hurt that each lie causes me.

How can you do this to your parents??

I can't try put myself in your shoes, because each lie is a physical pain for me. Honesty was one thing that i really thought we had.

You still haven't clarified your comment Nail it on the head. What did you mean by this? What were you referring to?

There is so much that needs to be sorted and I now find myself with so many questions, in order for both of us to move on. But questions that need honest answers. No more lies.

The one good thing out of this, is that your parents have a carer, which is so needed. But paying a full time live in helper would have cost a mere fraction of the money that has disappeared over the last 18 months.

Names and company names taken out for privacy. He probably won't answer.

But you do matter!!

Hard to believe when you were not in any financial crisis.

I suppose everyone here is in completely different circumstances.

Those who are on benefits, low income, middle income and high income. So trying to put your case forward is always going to be difficult in the eyes of someone with less or more.

I have a home that i love, it isn't a palace and it isn't large, but it is our home and where our children grew up. Why risk the one thing that was safe??

Continuing to gamble using the knowledge that you have a home that could be endangered is horrendous.

I am the slave who continues to work , so that there might be some money to keep us going whilst he just puts his debt onto 0% credit cards. At some point this will end.

I discovered there were 6 credit cards in December , NOT just one. £30000 on them. What were the interest charges on those alone?. I have no idea, as statements went to his place of work and no longer exist.

When was i supposed to find out?? How much longer was he going to hide it.??

The lies the lies.

Only last month did i receive this comment. I can't see how someone believes that losing over £70000 in 18 months is an investment.

He wrote

You’ll hate this but I still see the trading as a viable way of bringing in extra money when it’s done as it should be and how I did it when I was making money consistently. I’ve made mistakes and I’ll be the first to hold my hands up. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing when I first started and paid the price. Even the second time that I started I ended up doing things I shouldn’t do. It was only when I started trading with complete discipline that things started to change. You say it was a lucky run but it wasn’t, I stuck religiously to a strategy and it worked. I’m not a compulsive gambler. I don't feel I have an addictive bone in my body.

I can't get through to him and the numbers so far have made me vomit. Strategy??? He remains convinced that he will make himself a fortune.

Hi Bali ..

The levels of denial are unreal ...my ex betted on horses online and devisied a system with charts and statistics as he thought he had a loophole sure thing system that would enable him to quit his 50k professional job and do betting from his phone from anywhere around the world.

He said it only failed due to his lack of discipline and once he reigned that in it was a " sure thing." these words also made me vomit...at one stage he tried to get his family to bank roll him in a sort of pyramid selling type way ...

He also said that If he had started a business and it failed no one would have batted an eyelid and would have felt sorry for him but with betting he saw it as a business...

My answer to that was if a business was repeatedly loosing money and needing bankrolling to prop up cash flow DAILY ..any accountant worth his salt would say cut your losses and close it.

The levels of denial are unreal.

Xx

There was so much grooming and telling me what he could do. So difficult to prove the spoken word.

Today I went through old emails, hoping to prove that things I supposedly said weren't there. I keep all my emails.

December 2008 highlighted one email that I had forgotten about. Thank God I didn't open a gambling account in my name. Not sure what difference it would have made in my name. But things are still bad, just with his debts.

He wrote

You need to think on this before dismissing it out of hand.

We currently have over £100,000 sitting in bank accounts earning virtually nothing and this is set to get worse as the next interest rate cut appears imminent.

You're going to hate this but my proposition is that we use half of it, open a spread trading account in your name and trade with it.

And then i get this tonight.

There will be no more lies, cover ups or deceit because there shouldn't have been any of those things in the first place and maybe over time we'll both be able to mend.

How can i begin to even believe this. Eleven years of lies and 'trading'. When does a CG begin to tell the truth? But I am wrong , he isn't a CG or even a G, he has a system.

One that continues to fail and destroy the family.

I feel so bad for my mistrust, but time after time seems to have taken its toll.

Hmm, still in complete denial. Don't know what this 'trading' thing is (don't particularly want to know) but it sounds like it gives a veneer of respectively to gambling.

I used bet fruit machines (in pubs) and online slots, probably the most stupid of all gambling, but at least I couldn't ever justify it, not at least to a 3rd party (Managed to kid myself for 16 years though.)

I would think if someone was trying to get back an OH then the starting point has to be 'I've got a gambling problem'.

I have heard the promises before.

He has lost all of his money and he chose to walk away from his children and wife.

The sad part is that he still thinks he can sort out his issues without any professional help.

Just wake up on a new day and put it all behind you mentality, but it doesn't last long.

His only money is his share of our family home.

How long before he loses that and the debt means that my children and I lose our home.?

I can't get a mortgage on my earnings, so I am torn as which way to turn.

What did I do wrong?? Am I to blame???

I hope I can mend, but alone and without him. Too many times, i have heard the same plea. There comes a point when one has to value their own self esteem and go forward alone and with dignity. My husband has just bled me dry. Put his kids through so much distress and still at risk of losing our home.

Would another wife have been put through the same heartache and worries???

Was it some thing i did. Am I to blame????

Well Bali

If you did do something wrong I did exactly the same as you.

And as much as my estranged husband continues to deny it losing our home is a real possibility too.

You did nothing wrong. You were not to blame.

It wasn't anything you did.

I've spent years time and time over asking myself the same question. Could I have done something. Was it something I said. In effect I spent married life on tiptoes treading carefully on eggshells. Making excuses for his arrogance or rudeness to my friends. His temper. Never violent just rude and curt at times. Clearly down to his worrying over lies told and money lost.

Do not tear yourself apart. Pull him apart. If you feel the need to analyse. Analyse him. See them for what they are and nothing more.

Xx take care and keep posting