I haven’t been on here for a while. I have gone to post on here a couple of times when we have been going through a good patch but couldn’t quite figure out what to write. Now I am needing some support.
I found out 2.5years ago that my husband (then of 8 years) had been online gambling since we were married. We then had 3 children and now have a fourth (which wasn’t planned). He had mortgaged our house to the hilt and gone through a substantial inheritance without me realising.
The good side of this is that he has been gamble free for 2.5years. We go over our bank accounts and budget on a set night every two weeks. We have been to lots of counseling together and he is A LOT more involved with the children and the decision making about how we run our family.
The not so good side is ME. I just can’t get control of my anger. Most days something happens that causes me to remember why we are in the situation that we are in. For example, I am fed up with trying to feed a big family on little money. i no longer have the option at the end of a busy day to say hey ‘lets just get takeaways tonight’ (I know not everyone has this option in the first place but we did and it is because of my husband’s actions that we no longer have that option). I feel like it is me that has taken the brunt of the consequences of his actions. His life has just carried on minus the gambling. I am the one that has to answer the kids demands for things we can no longer afford and answer their questions about why we can no longer do the things that we used to do.
As well as the anger is my inability to trust. Most of the time I am fine. However, every now and then he does something out of the ordinary and my alarm bells go off. The other night my daughter called out from the back of the car ‘hey there’s Dad’. He was driving in the opposite direction to what he should have been and was home from work earlier than normal. So, for the half hour or so before I saw him I was racking my brains to figure out what he might be up to. I was feeling stressed and angry. When he turned up he said he had an overdue library book that he needed to return. We also had parent interviews to go to at school so that is why he had come home a bit earlier. I think that he is probably telling the truth. HOWEVER he LIED to me for 8 years of our marriage. So, when my alarm bells start going off I start recalling those lies and I am so unsure now of whether to believe his stories. I so want to believe them, I so want to trust him but I just don’t know how. I am scared that I will never get that trust back. If I am not able to get it back ever, then I think I might as well leave him now. I don’t want to be wondering what he is hiding from me, or to be wondering if the stories he tells me are true or not. I sometimes come to the conclusion that I would be better off on my own. Then I see the kids smiles and joy when he walks through the door at night and i think I just can’t be responsible for splitting this family up. I feel real anguish over deciding what would be best for the family as a whole.
So, I suppose what I am asking is…does anyone have any tips on dealing with the anger and the lack of trust that I am confronted with in the aftermath of my husband’s gambling?
Thanks for reading my post.
Swan269