Partner confronted me

Hi Shaun I know it's hard but I was not told before I married my cg. His father had bailed him out so we could pay for wedding and honeymoon. They didn't tell me until I was pregnant with my second child. You should not enter into financial agreements like a mortgage, without telling your girlfriend. It will help in the long run especially if you hand over control to her. This is not a short term phase, this is forever. If I had known it would have saved a lot of the damage and we wouldn't have had so much debt. I would have known what to look out for. Don't deny yourself the help. Please don't enter into a lifelong commitment to her without telling. She's suspicious she's asking questions, don't continue this deceit. Trust me she'll start looking, finding out is worse. Confession shows honesty. The only person you are deceiving is yourself. You can't assume how she will feel. You're just protecting yourself. GA is about honesty, making amends.

Hi Shaun

I think you know what the right thing to do is and that is to tell your partner. It is an incrediby difficult thing to do though and you will come up with every reason under the sun why it is better not to tell her and that you are doing it to protect her. If you are honest with yourself it is the shame and fear of how she will react.

Telling her will allow her to support you through this - giving up gambling on your own is incredible difficult because you will think things through in your mind and a gamblers mind is not a rational one so you will make the wrong financial decisions like trying to gamble your way out. Your first thought when you were short of money was to try and win it - that is not a normal thought process for non-CGs.

Not telling her risks her finding out herself which will be worse than telling her as you will be seen as deceitful, starts your life buying a house together based on lies and does not give her the opportunity to make any informed choices.

Yes, she will be shocked and devastated but not telling her and risking continuing to gamble behind her back and rack up a load of debt is going to be worse.

Sorry if this is all a bit blunt. Obviously you will make your own decision and this is only my view so take from it what you will. Telling my wife was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do so I do understand how difficult this is but despite the utter shame and despair I felt after telling her, I would do it again if I had to make the same choice.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do and keep posting.

Muststop123

Hi Shaun,

As compulsive gamblers we lie so much not neccessarily to protect ourselves but to protect our addiction. This is why its hard for us to give up as deep down we know it means we cant bet again and we resist this.

Also we have a huge ego, I was the same, no way I would tell my partner as in my mind she did not need to know due to my extraordinary arrogance. But of course she did deserve to know the truth, its the basic foundation of any healthy reltaionship but I choose to keep it from her until it was too late adn then i had no choise but to do it as bills were going undpaid and I had built up considerible debt that she knew nothing about. Despite this disgusting behaviour she understood that I needed help and stood by as she could see I was serious about my recovery and my weekley GA meetings. She is in control of the money and has access to my CLear score account so I cant take out silly loans without her knowing. But our relationship is in a much better place now i have stop the lies and am totally honest. I am not saying its an easy thing to do but it will be worth it in the long run if you really want to beat this addiction.

Shaun, it will crush her when she finds out that you've kept it from her all this time. Being completely honest with you I think you need to tell her and tell her while she's in the position to leave.

I never done this and it's a bigger regret of mine than anything else I ever done gambling.

Getting through a gambling addiction is tough enough but if your girlfriend finds out through different ways then trying to rebuild trust is even harder.

It might sound pretty harsh but it's what I experienced after keeping stuff.

You need to tell her mate I lied to my gf when she asked me was I gambling again and then told her about it 2 days after,the worst thing for her was that I lied about it when she asked..it eat me up for so long not telling her that she seen it in my face,she's supported me since I'm now 17 days gamble-free and she has control of my bank card,it felt good to get it out and be honest although I was s******g myself at the time.bedt of luck whatever you decide to do mate it's your decision at the end of the day.