Hi JDS,
It’s so good that you are asking questions, trying to get knowledgeable about your father’s gambling addiction.
I did the same about five years ago. To give you a little insight, and hopefully relief that things can change for the better. I want to express it was the support and help that I received here, through my threads and others, and attending virtual groups with Velvet and others that I was able to become stronger, with this also came self respect; finally standing up against my father’s ruthless and selfish addiction.
Yet in the same breath, I will say it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. But I am now living a very happy life. It’s as normal as it can be, the one I imagined living when I was repeatedly taunted for over 20 years.
Your father will say or do anything to get you on his side. His addiction will cuddle you, making you feel special, for the sake of getting what it wants. But watch out if you don’t help, if you don’t give in. Then the addiction changes tactics and demands and lays on the guilt, bringing in the but I am your father card, trying it’s harder to pull on your heart strings.
When you wrote that your father said for you not to tell your mom about helping him financially, he did so because he knew your mother would be upset. But he twisted it to look otherwise. My father did the same thing asking me to co-sign a loan and because I trusted him I did. In the end he never paid it back and I was left with a $50.000 loan that I had to pay. I learned the hard way and hopefully you have learned to never give him money again. He is the adult, if he can gamble then he sure can afford what he needs. No parent should be asking their child for financial help, there may be a few instances. Gambling or anything other addiction is not a legit reason.
I learned through my recovery that tough love was the only way I was going to get out of the mess I was in with my father. He would not listen to reason, or if he acted like he did he would go back to his old ways. I learned that he needed to take accountability and I was not his go to person for enablement. I’m sure you are thinking this must have all came naturally to me but it didn’t. I often felt like a little hopeless girl alone because I didn’t involve my mother because I didn’t want her to take matters in her own hands. In the end when I was finally free. I told her what I went through for many years
and she said she wished I would have told her and that she wouldn’t have done what I thought. You write that you are not close to your mom and I feel your dad may be using this in his favor to pull you in and manipulate you, to use your kindness for his benefit. This addiction likes to isolate it’s enabler. I would talk to her. I’m sure she wouldn’t be surprised.
Your recovery is what is important. Just remember every time you give in to your father you are giving to an addiction that is getting stronger by the day.
Have you thought about putting some distance between you and him? If you want to change your life you must change it.
Take care,
Twilight