What You Should Know About Loving a Gambler
How a Gambling Addiction Can Ruin Lives
Do you love someone with a gambling addiction? Here’s what to expect.
You lie on the bed, eyes wide open, unable to sleep, anxiously waiting for the sound of a familiar car engine or a key turning in the lock of the front door. You toss and turn, praying to fall asleep, praying that he would come home and that maybe he’d just forgotten to call, and was out with some friend. You continue praying desperately. Finally, you stand and peer out the window and sigh…nothing. You go back to bed, careful not to wake your sleeping child. You shut your eyes, willing yourself to sleep or doze off.
Did you doze off? You can see the dawn breaking and look over to the other side of the bed. No, he’s not home yet. Thoughts come to mind — is he dead? Did someone finally kill him? Or will he come home with some excuse or another about why he didn’t have the car, or why his phone was left unanswered.
That was life with my husband. A good man, but weak. WEAK. He had a serious gambling addiction. He was a compulsive gambler. No amount of promises to stop, not even the birth of his son could stop him from gambling — even with money that wasn’t his.
I was ashamed. Ashamed because I had known even before we had gotten married that he had a gambling problem. But, like the fool that I was, I believed him when he said that he could stop. He asked to be banned from the casinos, and he would call me to check in every night. I thought love could conquer it all! How naive.
I don’t remember when it changed. Soon after our honeymoon, he asked me for a big amount of money because he claimed he had been asked to deliver the money that belonged to his office, and somehow it had either gotten misplaced or was stolen, and he was expected to pay that back. He always came up with such good stories and knew that I would believe him. Yes, I enabled him simply because I wanted the problem to go away and didn’t know what else to do.
After our son was born, he promised that it would stop ( again! ). Yet, the nights when he wouldn’t come home continued, his cell phone would mysteriously disappear or get stolen, and money that he’d promise for rent or some other bill would never come.
After thirteen years of marriage, I’d had enough. It didn’t matter anymore if I still cared for him or that my son adored him. I just realized that it would never end, and I was afraid of my son growing up just like his father. I didn’t want to be burdened with his gambling debts, not having enough for rent or food because he couldn’t keep his job. I had been keeping that burden to myself all those years. I knew his friends probably knew because he would try and borrow money from them, for one reason or another. I knew he used me as an excuse — it eventually would circle back to me from a friend. But I couldn’t let my family know. Why not? Divorce was unheard of in my family. I was too proud to let them know that I had made a mistake, that my husband was a flawed man, although in retrospect, they probably already suspected since he couldn’t hold down a job.
Thirteen years….I held on to that hope that my love for him, his love for me and his son would help him change. When I finally applied for a divorce, it was a huge effort not to break down in front of the clerk. The minute I was out of the courthouse I just started sobbing. I knew it was for the better, but it still hurt. I’d finally given up hope for our relationship, but I chose instead to make a new life for myself and for my son.
That’s MY story. Maybe yours will end differently. Maybe they’ll choose to get help and not deny that they have a problem. Ultimately, how you choose to deal with it is YOUR own story. But don’t keep the problem bottled up the way I did. Seek help or support from your family or friends. You need it as much as the other person does.
