I used to feel uncomfortable about giving my ex partner money to help him through or out of his dire circumstances, but yet on many occaisions I still did it. I think my uncomfortable feelings arose out of the fact that deep down I knew that the money would be used for gambling but at the same not believing the depths or levels of manipulation at play. After all who really wants to believe that someone whom we love and professes to love us is so capable of such elaborate lies and conning us in such a way that indicates the complete opposite – let alone admit it, we too are just as capable of being in denial.
I am with Monique in the sense that it is surprising how many people with this addiction manage to get by one way or another and it is us who fear that they will be starving etc etc I remember worrying about mine for a few months during a separation and under a bombardment of requests for money only to see him and to my surprise he’d put on a fair bit of weight and was far from the starving waif I had imagined him to be, probably because he’d moved in with another women in that time – which he had forgotten to mention in passing conversation !!
The only way to be sure we have not enabled is not to hand over any cash for anything to someone who is gambling, even if you are paying other people back for providing him with food etc it is still a form of enabling – he needs to run out of options before he will consider the need to change.
It is difficult when so much advice is thrown in a negative way, but keeping a distance from the addiction and concentrating on you seems like quite a good idea to me right now
Jenny