Hello K

Thanks for starting a thread in the Gambling Therapy friends and family forum. This forum will provide you with warmth and understanding from your peers.

Feel free to use the friends and family group, you’ll find the times for these if you click on the “Group times” box on our Home page

Read about the friends and Family Online Groups

Now that you have introduced yourself you’ll find that many of the people you meet here have already read your initial introduction and they’ll welcome you in like an old friend 🙂

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You’ll find a lot of advice on this site, some of which you’ll follow, some you won’t…but that’s ok because only you fully understand your situation and what’s best for you and the people you love. So, take the support you need and leave the advice you don’t because it all comes from a caring, nurturing place 🙂

We look forward to hearing all about you!

Take care

The Gambling Therapy Team

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Hello k,
I’m glad you’ve posted on here and hope you can gain some support from it. Much of what you’ve wrote rings bells with me. It’s so familiar, the lies, money, family and the change in personality in particular.
I’ve been with my partner for 5 years and I’d say for pretty much of that time he’s gambled although I didnt know for the first couple of years. It’s such a strain on your relationship and life!
I would try to talk to him and tell him what you said about loving him and wanting to support him but he has to want to get support for this too and suggest ways you could do this together. It won’t be easy but it’s important to be quite firm and tough on what you expect I think.
Unfortunately it seems there is no easy answer to all this but with the right support and tools in place your partner can get there.
Hope it goes well, and let us know how you get on.
There’s some great people on this site who are very informative and supportive. Hope it helps.

Hi K

I hope that you willl gain knowledge of your boyfriend’s addiction before you challenge him with any ultimatums.

The list you have compiled, although understandable, is, in my opinion too long – there are too many conditions and I think you will struggle to get the conversation you want.

The addiction to gamble is the master of threats and manipulation – ultimatums made and not carried through will be a green light to your boyfriend who will see a threat, not carried out, as an opening to indulge his addiction because the threat proved idle.

Many family and friends cope by imagining that their loved ones addiction is a beast in the corner of the room – threaten it and the beast leaps out destroying any, or little, hope of sensible discussion.

Those who love gamblers often say what the gambler ‘needs’ but the only person whose needs you can satisfy are your own – your boyfriend does not have your ‘need’. ‘Your need’ him to stop, ‘he believe that his need’ is to gamble.

I have guests arriving any second now and I am trying to get something out to your quickly but sadly I will only have a few grabbed moments over the next few days.

I wanted you to know you had been heard and understood. Knowledge of his addiction will give you power over it – you are stronger than his addiction but trying to force him to change, will not be the answer – he has to want it himself. I will get this off to you now but I will write again asap.

Velvet     I could’t send this earlier, my friends arrived and I had to stop!