Thank you so much, all of you, for your replies and caring empathetic words. It is good to be back! So many times in Cuba I wished I could access this site, but I stayed away just in case it might affect my husband, even when it got to the point where sometimes I didn’t care and I believed that he deserved more time in prison. It does still feel very unreal and I wonder so much about what really did happen and what others told me was happening. What I actually experienced with him was terrible enough, but then there are stories and stories, such as him leading a double life for many months with a 17 year-old and some of the money he got out of me for supposed gambling debts going to support her….it all feels very surreal. I feel this could all happen because of so many lies and all the deceit surrounding the gambling behaviour. It sucks you in to such an unreal world and you end up questioning everything, and often your own sanity.
I went back to Cuba determined that I wasn’t going to give him any more money or things he could pawn/sell for gambling or pay his debts. Straight away he greeted me with debts and trying to force me to pay and find ways to get at money somehow and responded with extreme anger and sometimes disappearing if I didn’t. When I did manage to keep funds from him to go and gamble he always found a way and it wasn’t until I split with him that he explained how he had debts all over town as he would go to people and ask them for money to start the gamble and then at the gambling places he would continue to borrow money, large sums. So each time I finally gave in and paid his debt believing it was all the people who ran the illicit gambling places and had their big black men heavies come to the house…it was always several debts all around town that they would not have pressured him to pay in anywhere near the same way. I guess, in the end, he always found a way and would always, and the more money he lost, the more he chased.
The world of lies and deceit is so so destructive. The abandonment over and over. The empty promises. The withdrawal and moods. The complete manipulation. I think some things will come out in the wash over the coming weeks and months and from afar I will learn more about what happens with my husband…and I do want to know. I do want to understand what parts of it were lies. Because in the end, when he saw my “understanding” for his gambling, how I forgave and forgave, everything was about the gambling, and it seemed he had no problem in revealing it to me…and I still don’t know if some, maybe quite a lot wasn’t, although I do know that he was and will gamble in any way he can, and has done since he was a boy, that it completely consumes his life. I was a gift from heaven for him and his gambling compulsion and fed and fed it for over 2 years. But now I have left and Cuba feels very far away.
I am trying to sift through it all bit by bit and rebuild my life and the worst is definitely behind me. I will need to accept many things I will never know. I do wonder how I could have been so stupid, so trusting,so forgiving and so lacking in care for myself, but I know that is all past now and I just need to try to grow from it all.
So so nice to be here! So lovely to read your replies. Thank you! I will gradually catch up with people here and start posting as I get a little more settled. I feel a little “needy” for now and that perhaps I am in a place where I am looking more for support than I can give to others, but hopefully with time…