Hi lj
I understand your anger and disappointment but please don’t take his behaviour personally. He would not have thought about the consequences of his gambling because his judgement is clouded by an addiction that he neither wanted nor asked for. Nobody would choose to have a gambling addiction. Neither of you are to blame.
When his family gave him money. they were feeding his addiction – but they were not to know. You are getting knowledge now that they do not have and I hope you will share it with them because there is no need to feel guilt or shame. Your husband appears to have family members who care but they don’t know what to do. Maybe you could all get together and discuss forming a united front. Many people do this and find it successful. It stops individual members of the family doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons. The gambler can also feel the power of the united front, willing to support, whist refusing to enable.
Accepting an addiction is a big step and I hope he goes to his counsellor with a determination to change. It is important, in my opinion, that he knows he can live a gamble-free life. It will take courage but he can do it – if it wasn’t so I would not be here writing to you now.
I understand your feeling that you may need counselling. Harbouring feeling of anger, guilt and aggression will eat into you, they will wear you down leaving you unable to cope. I know because it happened to me.
I hope this will help – I lived with a gambler for 25 years. When I became aware of the addiction and what it meant, I thought I would need counselling but talking to people who had ‘been there’ and not only been there but come out the other side, gave me the strength I needed. I am not alone in saying that this dreadful experience has made me a better person – I was determined that the addiction was not going to take any more from me, it was not going to define me. I am sure that makes no sense to you at all at the moment but I am hoping that in time it will.
Would you be willing to take over the finances? A gambler who really wants to live gamble-free will often welcome this support. Money will almost certainly not mean the same to your husband, as it does to you. Money provides the means to gamble and the ‘gamble’ itself is the goal – sadly your husband’s addiction means he cannot walk away from the gamble until it is too late. He will always lose.
Please keep posting. Think about what it is that ‘you’ really want because ‘you’ matter.
Velvet