Hi Sjb, let me start by saying that there is nothing for you to feel guilty about. You have evidently tried for a long time to keep the family together and it didn’t work. It was his choice, not yours. Your choice was to take care of yourself and your kids and bring some peace and quiet to your life. His choice was and still is to keep his addiction alive and well, no matter what. I think that we often doubt if we really did try enough, long enough, hard enough and why do we look for happiness when the cg is living in misery? You see, this guilt is what the addiction uses as a tool to keep going. Do you think your hb would have attended the game if he had money for gas? I don’t. There comes the guilt. Your son missed his father at the game and only because you wouldn’t fork over some money. As for the consequences, everyone is different in that department. My hb spent a year in prison for a crime he committed to finance his gambling. In the process, he lost his family, meaning not only myself and our daughter but also his daughter from his first marriage and his extended family. And his civil rights, and his career, his retirement, our house, the cars. You name it, it was gone. Was it enough? No, he relapsed right away and his justification was that now there was no reason to work on his recovery. What the heck, everything was gone, his life was destroyed so he might as well kept on gambling. Just like you I was stunned and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It went on for another 5 1/2 years until he reached his personal rock bottom and completed a longterm inpatient treatment. But not because I made him, not for us, for himself. And it worked. I listened to the daily mantra of nobody cares, who cares, nobody loves me, you are all out to get me, I have no reason to quit gambling, etc., etc. for the whole 5 1/2 years and just wish I would have had the chance to do what you did, chose freedom. I think you did great and your kids will thank you, if not now than when they are older and look back at the insanity that was life with a cg. I wish you all the best, stay strong and hopefully nobody in your family will cave in and throw good money after bad. 🙂
