In many ways, I’ve had a very fairy tale life and marriage apart from this. There’s always been enough money to do the things we wanted, even if his problem periodically wiped out our savings. The amounts grew smaller as my oversight grew tighter. He gradually started realising he has “a problem” and then started getting worse about hiding it. Or maybe I could even be charitable enough to say better at admitting it?
Even this only really reared up every now and then, maybe once or twice a year in any significant amount. He actually did keep it under control most of the time, surprisingly. And because I’ve always been so quick to forgive (which I do highly recommend as a life philosophy, regardless of this situation pushing me past its limits, I generally feel really happy as a result of not holding grudges), it only affected me for a few hours strongly and then I’d be upset about the lost money, but there’s always more where that comes from. And I fully recognise the privilege of this, of having the savings on hand to cover his losses, and that even though his credit rating is much better now than when we met, he can only access so much credit at once.
Gambling, even compulsive gambling, is very normalised in his social group. He works for the railroad and half the guys on his crew are gamblers.
I asked him this weekend how many of those other guys were married? He thought about that pretty hard, brow crumpled up and everything, and he didn’t answer. I asked again, and he said zero, although one of them was divorced. I laughed and said I wasn’t surprised.
No matter what, I’ll never leave him completely. I know that. He’s my soul mate and I love him more than anything. But if it came to it, I -would- be willing to get a legal divorce and separate our finances, still having his pay direct deposited into my account. All the properties in my name, obviously. So if nothing else, that gives me a glimmer of hope — there exists some way that even if he never gets better, I can still stay “with” him in person if not legally. God I hope it doesn’t come to that.