[Barb518]

Hi Hannah,

I just joined this site and already I am feeling a little better having seen two messages that describe my current experiences. My husband has a terrible problem, the casino is the only thing he’s interested in. He has been through terrible times having been laid off from his job 4 years ago, he thought he would retire from there, was making a good salary and it all ended abruptly. He is now on his 4th job in those past 4 years, not because of his gambling, they just weren’t a good fit. He’s pretty stable with this current company, but at the age of 60 he just wants to retire and realizes he won’t be able to for at least another 8 to 10 years. He has always been sort of anti-social, mostly because he has to talk to so many people all day long. When we first started dating I mentioned that we go to a casino for fun one day and at that time his feeling about casinos was pure disgust. How things have changed. One day, we happened to be walking through a casino on our way to a concert and he threw some money into a slot machine and won $500 on the first spin. That’s when things took off. It started with us going once a week with $200 and trying to go home with that same $200 and if it was more, we were very excited. His problem progressed over the past few years by going into the high slot areas and winning a few times. Then we were staying at the hotels for free and one day we ended up with $9,000 in the hotel room safe. When I saw how quickly that money disappeared over the weekend, my own realizations started to kick in. I enjoyed it less and less, while he enjoyed it more and more. It is now into the multi thousands of dollars that he spends without a thought to things that need to be done around the house. And I get questioned about every penny that I spend.

Let’s skip up to current times. Our marriage is now pretty much a life of existence with each other. He has gone through admitting that he has a problem several times only to continue going to the casino again the following weekend. The final straw for me was when I was caught several times at the grocery store and my bank card was denied. The embarassment and anger that I felt was the beginning of the end. I worked full time all of my life, most of it as a single mom so I had to be on top of my finances. He took all of that over when we started living together. When we were dating, I was still working full time but was laid off from my job and collected unemployment for about a year. After that, I took a part time job for a year and a half – this is when his gambling problem was starting explode. I ended up quitting that job after I realized that he was just using my salary to finance his gambling!! 

After 8 years of being together, I finally insisted that I start keeping track of our finances along with him. I never saw this new side of my husband until that time. The nasty, dark side of a man who I thought was so easy going and thoughtful and kind, my best friend, has turned into an unfeeling self-centered monster. Our fights are terrible, he has a very crafty way of throwing the guilt back on my shoulders. It’s like dealing with a child who wants to do what he wants to do whenever he wants to do it and no one can stop him. He is obsessed with the idea that he will one day win the “big one” and we will be able to live comfortably. It’s like he even expects me to file for divorce one of these days and he doesn’t seem to really care. My feelings are non-existent to him. He is the one who is busting his butt working 60 hours a week so I should just let him have his fun.

Sorry this is so long, I guess when you first start putting things out there you just can’t stop. We have no social life although I have become quite close to a part of my family whom I discovered about 5 years ago after working on my family history. They are my social life thank goodness. And yes, they know about my husband’s problem although I don’t actually discuss it with them. 

So Hannah, don’t feel alone. I am just starting now, right here, to try and get some help for myself to try and deal with this. If you read this, thank you for listening. This has already been a little boost for me to try and get my husband some help which he doesn’t think he needs.

Barb

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