How to cope with his lies?

The three Cs of AlAnon: I didn’t Cause it, I can’t Control it, I can’t Cure it.

He’s gambling because he has an addiction and he’s using. Giving him money or taking on his financial burden simply frees up “his” money for gambling.

The exact why he has an addiction is less important, some sort of escape or self medication. What’s important is to separate what’s yours from what’s his. He places the bets, he decides if he’s going to do what it takes to overcome or if he’s going to continue as he is. Such are his choices and within his exclusive control. Your choices are about what you say or do, about what you tolerate or allow or permit, about what you seek out in a life partner (mothers clear up their little boys’ mess and that’s normal but it becomes dysfunctional when it’s supposed to be an equal life partner). For you, the gambling behaviour is as it is, your choice isn’t to stop it but rather focus on yourself and how you want to live your life. Short term, protect yourself financially. Joint savings are gambling funds.

Trust should always be based on experience and not blind faith. The experience is that he gambled and lied about it, so don’t expect any other, certainly not financially. However, there may be other areas where he is more reliable and it is appropriate to trust. I don’t trust my husband with money but he has always been completely reliable about the children.

To accumulate that much debt and pay day loans in five months sounds unusual. My husband gambled for years before I realised it, it sounds like the damage that you discovered in March had taken more than five months to create. It’s worth your time and energy to educate yourself about gambling addiction, it’s part of protecting yourself.

Your last question is interesting because at one level it sounds rhetorical but it isn’t really. There’s obviously nothing wrong with working towards your own future, it’s what we all do and it’s part of making decisions about how we want to live our lives. However, you working towards his future as defined by you, the future that you know he wants even if he doesn’t quite know it, that becomes quite wrong. That’s about you making his decisions, it’s about control and it’s codependent. And it’s probably based on a fantasy. The reality is that he’s the sort of person who will gamble behind your back, pass the blame to you and manipulate you into allowing it. Why is this - unfixable - future a future that you want?

Move your focus to you and keep it there. As ever, the best advice is to protect yourself financially then start regular GamAnon and CoDA meetings (Al-Anon if he’s also drinking), so that you can learn how to look after yourself.

CW

Hi there,

You’ve already got some wonderful advice by CW, agree to the last letter, and I just wanted to add a few thoughts and examples from my experience to support her advice and hopefully help you overcome the idea that you’re a bad person or have any fault at all in his addiction.

In the earlier days, my boyfriend would tell me things like ‘Oh we fought and I was upset so that’s why I went gambling’; “Oh I was sleeping and after you called I couldn’t fall back asleep, got bored and went gambling”; “You shouldn’t have given me cash/ let me keep my card, it’s like giving drugs to a drug-addict”... etc. etc. Ridiculous to a rational person, right? That your boyfriend dared to tell you you work too much and leave him alone for too long is just about as ridiculous as anything else they come up with to deal with their guilt and shame. It’s nothing to do with you, the situation of your relationship - it’s just classical textbook addict behavior.

But just like we try to draw hard limits for our gambling partners, we have to be just as hard on ourselves. You need to be prepared to deal with your feelings for him, your disappointment, then leave and be alone, either for a short time or forever, doesn’t matter - rather than be in a relationship with an addict. Everything you’re doing to help him that would come across as love and care to a healthy person - is just making his situation and illness worse in the long term. My boyfriend says he hates himself after he gambles, it’s an embarrassing secret he’s ashamed of even if it’s fun in the moment. If your partner is also like that, you need to make it a hard condition that he works on his addiction first, before coming back to you. He must build up his own self-respect before he’s able to respect you or anyone else. I don’t know you, your relationship - but something that occurred to me recently is - it might happen that once a gambler does that and his addiction is in remission he might no longer want to be in a relationship with somebody who has seen him at his worst and was willing to put up with lies, who was willing to pay his bills and would give up on plans and dreams because of something that he himself was ashamed of. He might want a clean slate as well. Point is - you’re not doing anyone any good by sacrificing a cent of your money or a minute of your time in order to help him live more comfortably with his addiction. As CW also said, make it clear for yourself what you want in a relationship; inform yourself about what serious recovery looks like and what steps he needs to take to in order to get rid of his addiction, assure him you’ll be there to talk or provide emotional support if he needs it, and your emotional work ends there. It’s much better spent this way than wondering about how to live with someone you can’t trust.