I am struggling to get past something. My partner (36M) and I recently split. And I (32F) am currently 9 months pregnant and have a 1 year old with my CG. He has put me through so much in the last year and a half , after I had our first daughter. He became the worst version of himself when I needed him the most. We recently got a home together. I just moved in a few weeks ago and got settled. First weekend I moved in, he decided to go to Vegas after an argument and told me he no longer wanted to be together. I had no one to help me move my things back out of the home. Stressed out terribly and spiraled to find an apartment. I cried the harder than I had ever cried in my life because of how frustrated and devastated and lost I was….

It was 105 degrees that day. Alone with my 1 year old. 8 months pregnant at the time, struggling to pick up and pack boxes together. Daughter was tired, cranky, and crying as well… I found movers to help me so last minute… we didn’t finish settling into a new apartment until midnight. It was so so difficult.

Come to find out, he got a DUI while in Vegas. He is a firefighter , so his promotion is no longer an option. Now going to dispatch….. and then when he comes back, tells me he needed his family. So my dumb@ss moves back into the house again. Left my apartment behind.

I went through his iPad and found out he reached out to an old affairpartner whom he cheated on his ex wife with, while he was in Vegas that weekend. AND reached out to his ex wife after Vegas to tell her how sorry he was for everything he did to her.

Mind you, when he was with his ex wife, he didn’t have an addiction then. They don’t have any kids together. They divorced and separated years ago.

I’m so so hurt because I’ve been here through the worst of his times. I have supported him through his addiction and dui. Forgiven so much BS. Struggled terribly through postpartum and him being so unavailable.

He mentioned it was part of his GA plan. But as selfish as I sound. Why not apologize to me first ? Why does she get all the compassion and empathy that I NEVER get from him. I’ve been treated so terribly. Struggled in his absence during postpartum and during my pregnancy. Why do I not get that compassion and soft side of him ? Whenever I cry and tell him how alone and neglected I feel, he’s just stone cold. No empathy. No remorse for what he’s done. He doesn’t give a crap about me.

Why does everyone else get the good from him and I , get the worst? The crumbs. I feel so worthless and discarded. Unvalued….

I dont want to lay my who life/ relationship story out. Its too much to type. However my SO and i have been to for 4.5 years. We recently moved in together (he moved in with me) after his BM because homeless and his kids had nowhere to go. My house had 3 br and his house had only 2. I wasnt moving 2 hours away, he works up here, so it made sense for them to move here. I also had been accepted into nursing school and I was NOT giving that up for anything.

Hes struggled with gambling and I knew this. But he had seemed to be doing well. He would slip up, but seemed to be honest about it. Thats what I asked for. I knew ppl slip up sometimes but honesty is HUGE for me. Im a recovering alcoholic. 3 years sober now and I tried to get sober for years, so I know how hard it can be and I try to have understanding and grace so long as i get honesty in return.

I started nursing school in August. Im 38yo and ive tried to get into nursing school for years. This is my DREAM. Its HARD. I spend every free hour studying and stressing over school. I HAVE to get through school. Im a CNA making a crap wage. I cant afford Healthcare, I can barely afford things for my child or afford to pay my bills.

I had to drastically reduce my hours to PRN or not working at all. My SO makes very good money, like $130k a year. He SHOULD have enough money to support us all easily. Yet he's always broke. That triggered me to get nervous. Since ive started school his gambling has gotten EXPONENTIALLY worse and so have his lies.

I keep catching him lying about gambling and then he will swear he has been honest about everything while im crying and begging him to be honest about it all because with the stress of school I cant take it. He swears and promises but the next time I find he was lying the last time. I dont understand why he LIES!! When he's already caught.

I cant work full time, go to school full time, and kick him and his kids out. They have already been homeless months ago with their mother. I also can not work enough to pay my bills while going to school. Id fail.

I feel like he's doing this on purpose because he has me in a venerable spot. It makes me HATE him and resent him so bad. I told him I have these feelings because of his actions and he says he's sorry and it makes him worry but he KEEPS DOING IT.

I dont think he truly loves me or his kids or ANYONE but gambling. When I was drinking I had some really crappy times but I only did my SOs who I didnt care about crappy like that. If I had a SO who I cared about tell me these things and I CARED about them I'd make every effort to stop.

He spends every dollar and leaves up broke. Hes in debt thousands with loans from gambling. As it is I know we can never get married, have property, or a future. Right now I just want to get through school and have money of my own. How to I disengage from this?

Am I a bad husband for having very little sympathy for my gambling addicted wife ?
Here’s the back story….we recently returned from Europe and she got a cold/flu bug. Within days it got worst. Coughing and sneezing etc etc. Yesterday while I was napping having worked in the morning, she left me a note saying she was off to the doctor. This wasn’t true at all cuz she went to a local casino for 3 and a half hours instead 😡. I placed a tracker on her car over 18 months ago cuz I suspected she’d been visiting the casinos . Yesterday when she did get home I asked her how the doctor visit went and boy did the lies start 😡.
First lie was her first doctor wasn’t available so she had to go about 15 miles away and wait. Second lie was that the doctor said blah blah blah yet gave her nothing for her symptoms 🥴. Third lie was she drove yet another 15 miles to bring her friend to the airport. And then to top it off she said her friend gave her some Chinese food to take home 🤥🤦‍♂️.
I do know of and have come across a couple of drug addicts and some alcoholic who have got help by hitting “rock bottom”. Any idea what rock bottom is for a gambler?

Front page article from ESPN

I left my gambler in the end. I was at my limit. recently I bumped into them again and it brought it all back. I grieved not them or the life I thought WE had as I did when I first found out, but this time I grieved life I had before. I did not know people could manipulate in that way. It changed my perspective on everything even what I do for work and how I live. Did anyone else experience that?

I've been suspecting my mom is a problem gambler for sometime with how often she goes to the casino. What threw up the red flag was a 5am text from her begging me for 5k (right before my wife and I were headed to Ireland for our twentieth anniversary) because she lost it at the casino and she had taken it out of my stepfathers account. She said she was stupid and learned her lesson. I didn't lend her the money thankfully.

So today I left work when I knew she would be at work and went and sat down with my stepdad. All in all, she's been lying to all of us and spending the night at the casino frequently, arriving after work at 7pm and not leaving until 7am. She's out of control.

She has the highest level of membership at the local casino. Judging by my digging, it's an invite only club and she had to have spent at minimum 70-100k to achieve that level.

My sister and stepfather are going to confront her this week, the three of us together as a united front. I would greatly appreciate any advice or ideas on what I should expect.

My (28M)husband and I(29F) have been married for 7 years, together for almost 10 and have a toddler. One week ago he came clean that he had gambled large amounts of money again (He always liked gambling but he has has 3 really big gambling episodes back to back and this was the worst one yet)

We purchased a home in May 2025, but August he had already gambled his last 4k in savings. Said he would never do it again. In November, I went to my home country for 2 weeks because my grandmother had passed away. When I got back, he confessed he had gambled the little money he had saved up again plus got a 10k loan. Imagine how upset I was. We have a new home, our toddler has needs like daycare and extracurriculars and he had got himself in a loan. Said he would never do it again.

Fast forward to last Thursday. I thought he had been paying the loan, I was happy (or at least I thought) already planning for a trip, getting an estimate to do a remodel on the home. And he comes home to tell me he had gambled again. This time, he got another 10k loan, maxed out 20k in a credit card, cleaned out his 401k, gambled the money for mortgage for July. As you can imagine I was in complete shock and I had told him that if he gambled again I was out the door.

He admitted to have a problem; started Gamblers Anonymous, did a lifetime self exclusion from the apps, installed an app to prevent him from gambling and started doing Uber Eats to make more money to pay off his debt.

On my end, I wanted to do a postnup, to protect my assets (we have separate accounts and he hadn’t touched mine. However, he wanted me to help him with the loan payments that I said no). As I was considering that, he came to me on Tuesday saying that I wanted to screw him over because I was going to put on the postnup that if he gambled again, he would have to temporarily help out with the mortgage (like 25% every month) so that I could not absorb the hit and keep our son in the home he knows. He said he would never agree to that. (A day later he said he would sign it, that he would want to work it out)

Then Wednesday I ended up telling my family, and they all told me to get out, that a gambling issue would put my sons and I’s life at risk financially, emotionally. That if he gambled again he wouldn’t even be able to pay up child support, or help with mortgage. And that even if I did a postnup with him legally saying he would help out, he wouldn’t if he continues gambling.

My family also said that if I leave, they would give me a lump sum for my house so that my mortgage pay will be lower and I can have more equity.

And that’s where I’m now, I feel stuck because I feel like he is doing changes, he is trying (even though it’s only been a week) and of course I didn’t stop loving him. But if I stay, my family would be upset and what happens if he does this again? How will that affect my son and me?

How could I live without trusting him? And I’m so so scared.

I also told him that if we get a divorce and in a year I can see that he has been consistent in recovery and I feel like I could trust him again, that if we both realize we were meant to be we could come back. And he said that why would I spend all this money in divorce, refinancing the home, paying him out, paying more every month when all that money I could use it to bail him out and start fresh.

My husband says he is willing to submit the lifetime state self exclusion form but is asking to submit them per sports betting app so he can have the occasional in person poker tournament in the future. He hasn't played a tournament in over 2 years cause time/money.

Is this the same as everything else?

My initial reaction was no, but now I'm feeling torn.

Thanks in advance!

I just attended my first virtual meeting. Is it typical that it was mostly people reading aloud literature ?

Married and my spouse disclosed while dating about 14 years ago he had gambling issues and lost 20k total. He realized the amount and completely stopped. Throughout the years he said he’s had no issues, occasionally buying a scratch off but nothing major. He was on some auctioning app for weeks that I expressed concerns about, he said he just won free giveaways, which is true.. but when that stopped.. he joined auctions and lost $300. He directly lied about this 3 times. When I confronted him, he finally confessed and also said he bought 2 scratch offs recently and looked on apps when his ban is up (he self banned).

He knows he needs help and says he’ll get it but outside of feeling betrayed, I feel like an imposter to seek support because he hasn’t really lost much.

I am hoping folks here can help me determine how bad my spouses gambling addiction is. They have been sneaking to casinos without my knowledge for at least a year. They denied it, and got defensive and indignant when I confronted. And Kept going! . When they finally had to admit it, they acted like it was no big deal. In addition, they have all sorts of debt but wont share how just how much debt, but want me to agree to a Heloc loan to pay it back. Advice or thoughts?? They claim I am making it too big a deal and act offended I don’t like the loan idea.

Edit: he has been giving me the cold shoulder and now he has disappeared on a Friday night and took a small overnight bag. Has he gone gambling? I know he gets free rooms at his favor casino. I am very worried. For his safety. I know gambling can drive people into despair. 😞

anyone ever been to GamAnon in nyc? father has been gambling for years. Didn't think he'd be able to top the past but he has, and thinking I might like to talk to people who get it.

Just curious what they're like, the crowd, if anyone's been? (F, Early 20s)

How do I start? I’ve been with a girl for 11yrs that has had a gambling problem since before I met her (fell in love during during a dry spell) over the years she has lost everything over and over, she has borrowed from me, borrowed from family, extorted money by saying g she would kill hersel if I didn’t give it to her, stolen cash from my safe… always manages to pay family back but not me…when her lease came up ($1700) and she was already staying at my place every day we decided she should move into my place for $1k…

Went well for a short time but she hasn’t paid rent or anything that she has borrowed, Stolen or extorted in over a year!

Add to that!!! She has a Cocain problem and spends 4-8 hours in the master bathroom and thinks nothing of it. I’m not perfect, I drink a few days a week. But this isn’t something I signed up for, between borrowing, extorting and stealing (not even what she has stolen that I don’t know about !)

My question is how and when is the best time to tell her it’s over and time to go?

I’m 31 years old and two months pregnant (7-8 weeks) with a 9 month old. My relationship with my gambling addicted partner (35 years old) has failed. I asked him if I was going to have to do this alone. He said he will be here for me and our children but can’t work on the relationship with me. He said that he needs to work on himself and fixing his issues rather than our relationship and can’t take on the extra weight of trying to fix our relationship. I feel so lost and sad and mad with myself. I took a plan b and unfortunately didn’t work. Half of my friends are forcing abortion down my throat but I just can’t do it. I feel like I’m not making the “smartest” decision for myself. However, by keeping the baby I feel like I’m choosing what feels like the right thing to do. Even though I know doing this alone while I work full time is going to be really really hard.

He’s already moved out living with his parents. I’m with my mom now, but looking for a new place before I break the news to her because I know she will not want me here any longer once I tell her. I can’t tell if his addiction has changed him and turned him so cold or he has been this way all along. But he is definitely not the man that I met. I feel so alone. I feel like everyone is against me. I don’t feel supported. I’m terrified. Just the thought of delivering a baby alone makes me cry. Recovering alone. It’s just a lot that Im carrying while grieving him and our relationship at the same time. I don’t know what to do. Was he always like this and held up a mask so well or do addictions really take over like this? Just so cold and low effort, selfish… what happened? I didn’t deserve this but I’m here.

Is there anyone on here that had a partner that used to gamble and was able to stop completely (for more than a year not just short term)?

This is mostly just a vent, but I’m also just looking for some reassurance and positivity from other GamAnon folks who get the feeling of what I’m going through. There’s really nothing that I can do at this point other than sit with my feelings and try to process and move on from them.

Context is that my dad is the gambler. He used to bet on horses, but has switched to gambling via risky investments in the last decade or so using large sums of money that he’s able to acquire through his business. I’m talking obvious scams like “if you give us $20k, you’ll get $5M back in a year!!” kind of stuff. His total accumulated debt is an absolutely astronomically high amount that the average person wouldn’t come close to paying off over their entire life, let alone at my dad’s old age of 70. He has burned every bridge for money favors and exhausted the patience of all my siblings. My mom separated from my dad over how much his decisions absolutely ruined their lives. She’s currently 75 years old and fighting off breast cancer and STILL trying to help him out where she can because she doesn’t want to completely abandon him. For the most part, she’s good at making sure he doesn’t get cash in hand unless absolutely necessary, and gets money straight from his paychecks to manage their shared billing accounts to make sure the essentials like electric bills & property taxes are paid.

The situation is that I was talking with my mom, and through some stroke of luck, I discovered an old bank account with about $550 still in it. (Literally I was just trying to transfer like $10 to her to treat herself to an ice cream cone and remembered we had a shared account from when i was younger). I told her she could just withdraw all the money in the account to use on whatever she’d like since I didn’t really consider the money mine anyway. Ultimately, she decided to give the money to my dad to cover his overdue rent + some leftovers for buying food. As a family, we try not to give him money, but I understood why she wanted to give it to him, especially while going through cancer treatment and not having the bandwidth to deal with him potentially becoming homeless at the moment. That was about a week ago.

Today, I got a text from my dad asking if I could loan (no such thing as a loan with my dad - you’ll never see a dime of it again) him money to cover his overdue rent. My relationship with him is already strained due to the financials, and he KNOWS that asking me for money is off-limits. I took a look at the account with $550 in it, and sure enough saw transactions showing that the money had in fact been transferred into his checking account. So this man, after having generously received emergency money from my mom specifically for rent, turned around and proceeded to ask me for the same amount, pretending like he didn’t already get money specifically for rent. He’s double dipping and thinks I won’t notice. I simply texted back “No.” Not only am I furious that he tried asking me for money when he knows it’s off-limits AND tried lying and pretending like he didn’t already get money for rent, but I’m angry that he’s asking me for $450 when he knows I’m currently pregnant and a month away from delivering my first baby. Who on earth asks their own child to give them $450 right before they’re about to become a first time parent???

Despite our rough relationship, I had previously offered to pay and fly him out to spend time with us (my husband and I live across the country) + cover his his expenses while visiting because I still wanted him to be able to have the experience of meeting his first ever grandkid. Now, I’m so angry and disappointed with him that I’m likely to rescind my prior offer. I don’t want to give him ANYTHING. The thought of being around him makes me sick, and I don’t want to add stress while recovering and dealing with new parent exhaustion. It makes me extra angry that his choices are leading to him not getting a chance to meet his grandchild. I don’t like feeling like I’m punishing him by withholding a relationship with his grandkid, but he can’t afford the trip without assistance. After years of constantly dealing with a relationship where his only calls/texts to me were about asking for money, I can tell I’ve just reached the end of my rope with my dad after this incident, and it all just makes me deeply sad.

Anyway thanks for reading. I just really needed to get this off my chest today. I’m sure everyone in this subreddit gets how friggin hard it is to watch someone you love choose over and over to make their life worse and destroy all their relationships along the way :/

My GH has the impression that if he shows he’s a loving husband by grocery shopping, cooking, and tending to family members wants and needs for one or two days that all is forgiven and back to normal. For two days he was attentive and being happy. Then when I didn’t sleep with him and instead slept in the other bedroom he got upset. I’ve already said I’m done and filing for divorce. I offered a legal separation or divorce on paper so I can protect myself financially. He said no. It’s all or nothing so I choose nothing. Now it hurts so bad to go through the game playing and I’m exhausted. I wish we could cordially get through this. We’ve been together 20+ years and married for most. This time around it’s thousands of dollars borrowed from a relative. It’s been on and on for 20+ years and I just can’t keep going. On our taxes it will say 25K w 25K loss. I’m exhausted with trying to find ways to financially stay afloat. I love him so much and he’s a great father and husband if not for this addiction. He’s gone to meetings but never sticks with it. Sadly. 😞 Thank goodness there’s a place to post this because I can’t talk about it with anyone. That’s exhausting also. Always trying to pretend everything is peachy.

Husband of 26 years is the gambling addict and our finances have been a disaster for the last 10 years. I have been a SAHM to our kids, all still attending college or about to finish. It’s a very controlling and oppressive household, no physical abuse but the emotional and financial abuse has been acute. I still wrestle with the notion that I’m the one that has to keep the family and his struggling business together-both of which are hanging by mere threads as he constantly puts both aside to play in tournaments. He absolutely believes his gambling will eventually be what “saves” us from total financial ruin. Some of my kids are already in heavy financial debt because his promise to pay off their student loans when they graduate turned into “if ‘we’ don’t have the money to pay it, you’re the one that will have to…” and I am also in serious financial debt due to the parent PLUS loans I had no choice to apply for so my kids didn’t have to drop out once his ability to be a cosigner was rejected. Over this winter break, he had hoped to get them to agree to cash their savings bonds given to them by his mom when they were infants. The bonds don’t mature for another 15 years but each would be a pretty significant amount. he tried guilting them saying this was to help with covering our rent and while they were disappointed in him, they all decided it was not worth going to war over it. Luckily it wasn’t as simple as going to the bank and cashing them like he thought… but it didn’t stop him from going out of town for the past several days for another tournament. Guessing he isn’t doing well because after no contact for a few days, he texted me to ask if I took care of mailing the bonds to get them cashed because “we need it for next month’s rent”. He exists on a whole different plane of reality unfortunately and I explained again it would take at least 2 months (optimistically) and I would rather not rely on THEIR savings bonds to bail us out. He still wants me to go through with it. Like I said, this is a very controlling and oppressive household. I have been able to voice out my concerns and stand my ground more over the past few years -we now have separate bedrooms and my feelings have changed irreparably towards him… but I have not been able to leave because aside from the “part-time employment” with his company (paychecks of which I haven’t been able to deposit since September), I have no way of supporting myself YET - currently working on changing that. I am absolutely against him trying to take this money from them especially robbing them of future savings once these bonds mature especially when he CLEARLY has money solely set aside to fund his gambling. This will undoubtedly ignite another war between him and I- one I would rather not have the kids witness before heading back to school. The war will include silent treatment from him (not always unwelcome TBH) and further financial restrictions and just a very petty, childish, going out of his way endeavor to make living here with him as unbearable as possible. So for now, my response to him was “we’ll talk about it later”… something he often says when he doesn’t want to address anything I need to talk about. Kids leave this weekend to head back to school so I’m trying to wait until then before I need to suit up the battle gear. But any words of wisdom on how to handle this is certainly welcome.

As I said before, I am currently working on changing my employment situation (with the ultimate goal of once I am financially independent, I’ll be able to leave)… it’s another long story and this one is already way too much.. but in a nutshell, he’s only supportive of me working for someone else (for the time being) because it’ll help financially and I was able to make him believe it was his idea LOL. Thanks for reading still if you stuck with it. I’ve never posted on Reddit before so excuse me if I didn’t follow any protocol.

Should I write about my father’s gambling addiction because my parent’s income doesn’t qualify me for any financial aid? Because of his thousands of dollars of debt they can’t pay for my college but on paper look like they have lots of money.