[SickinSan Diego]

I am getting increasingly concerned about my wife’s gambling addiction. Here is my story. We have been married for 30 years, and I have known about my wife’s problem for at least 22 of those years. At around our 8 year mark is where I was first aware something was wrong, she asked for help in paying off some debt, including credit cards, and I didn’t want to see her paying high interest rates, so agreed to pay those off and had her cut up all the credit cards. A couple years later, I had a large tax refund of around $50,000, and over the next few months, I discovered that was all lost to gambling.
I sent out a letter to all her brothers and sisters to not lend her any more money. She has 4 brothers and 5 sisters. All four brothers are also compulsive gamblers, and one sister also gambles with her husband. Her father and mother also gamble regularly, so it is pretty much impossible to get family to cooperate. Most of her brothers and sisters also make more money than her and me, so they can handle the gambling losses. Up to this point we can absorb the losses, but I worry about how we can continue after I retire. I’m 60 years old, and my wife is 62. She says once she retires, she will stop, but I don’t see how she can control herself if she has even more free time. There are five Indian casinos within 30 to 50 miles from our house, and she visits all of those probably at least 2 or 3 days every week. One casino is constantly sending ads in the mail, offering free gifts to entice more. I always sort those ads out, and throw them away, but she communicates with her sister who is 7 miles from our house (who also gets those ads), and they go over to the casino together to get their free gifts. This is all done during the day when I am at work, since she works the night shift, so we are only together during the evening when she stays home.
So in the last 20 years or so, I probably paid off her credit cards at least 3 times, maybe more, but I lost count.
For the last 4 years or so, I told her I would not pay off her credit cards anymore, so she started paying just minimum on these cards, and about two years ago complained that she needed to pay off her cards again, so she convinced me to lend her money, and keep track of what she borrows from me. She agreed that she will pay me back over time. I set up a budget that she would pay back $400 per month, but so far she has borrowed $80,000 in the last three years, with about $50,000 in just the last year, so it appears her losses are increasing over time. The only way I see getting the money back is to file for legal separation(or divorce), but my state is a no fault divorce state, and we have to split everything 50/50. For us, we would split about $5 million, half in real estate and half in cash/retirement accounts/stock accounts. My hard work earned the vast majority of that, and I’m confident that if she wasn’t married to me all that time, she would be broke today, because she is gambling more than her salary today. I would rather not go that route, and I’m too old to start over, I ‘m just too tired to work much longer.
Outside of a separation or divorce, how else can I keep her hands off the money? I cut up her credit cards before, but she can always get more. Our credit rating is excellent, so it is easy for her to get a new card with high limit. How can I ruin her credit rating to prevent her from getting new cards?

My wife admits she lost too much money, but can’t admit she is a gambling addict. I suggested that if she limit it to a couple hundred a month and only go once or twice a month, I could live with it, and she says she can live with that, but I know she is still sneaking out multiple times every week. She says she knows people that make money gambling on a regular basis. How much you want to bet her friends only tell her about their wins, but silent about their losses. She blames her losses on the fact she has to hurry up to get home, but if she could stay longer at the casino, she could win back the losses, like her friends.
Like I said before, we have been able to absorb the losses so far, but I estimate she has lost over $200,000 over the years. She is getting increasingly bolder over time, and I worry about our retirement, and afraid to retire, because without my income, I can see our savings whittled away over time, and fear running out in the future when I’m old and frail and will need that money for medical or living arrangements. When she retires, she will have even more idle time, so could get even worse then she is now. What do I do? If we separate/divorce, I can lock in my half, and then watch as she implodes, but that is not the most satisfying solution. Even though she would get a huge cash settlement upfront, she might get nasty, and try to get me to pay alimony for a long time, since I have a higher salary than her.
Now some may ask, why did I stay in this marriage so long? At about the 12 year point, I was close to calling it quits. At that time, my wife got pregnant and the birthdate seemed to correlate with about nine months before when we had a vacation and had some good times, so I was convinced this was my baby, and didn’t even have a suspicion that she wasn’t, so decided this could be a new beginning for us. Now wife had a new responsibility to raise our baby, and I was happy to work with her and be a good daddy. Skip ahead 14 years, and my daughter decided that it would be fun to get her DNA tested, since she was half Asian half White, my being White, and her mom is Asian. So when we got the results back, it turned out she is 100% Asian. In case there was a mistake, I ordered a second DNA test with a different company, and results were the same. I also got my own DNA tested, and found there was 0 match to my daughter, so I finally had to admit the ugly truth. Somehow, I figured out the father is likely some guy my wife met in a casino. Up until then, she treated our daughter as mine, but there were telltale signs I chose to ignore. People would tell me my daughter didn’t look like me, but I always tried to find little things to convince me she was my daughter. We still don’t know absolutely who the real father is, and she says the guy she suspects disappeared, so that’s it. By law, since my name is the father on the birth certificate, I am legally bound to pay for the child upbringing up to 18 years old. She is now 18, and starting college.
At this point, I feel I was deceived into accepting a child that was not mine. I do still love my child, but have lost a lot of feeling and connection to her after learning the truth. If my daughter was loving to me it would be easier to accept it, but she often has a nasty and impatient attitude to me, although she sympathizes with my position, and is critical towards her mother for how she treated me. So I feel in some ways she is on my side, and is also angry about her mom’s gambling addiction. The other sticky point to me is, her college estimate cost is $128,000 minimum, and since she is now 18 years old, my legal obligation ends. I feel it would be most fair if my wife pays for her education, since she is technically not mine. Does this sound cynical? I don’t know, but if we do legally separate, I would like to convince her to pay for her daughter’s education from her half of the split. Do I have a legitimate case here?
I also suffer from anxiety caused shortness of breath for at least the last 20 years. I have gone to doctors multiple times, and they always say I have no heart or lung disease, so I feel it is related to my constant worry about what my wife is doing secretly. Would a divorce solve my health problems? Would it free my mind or is the damage to my nerves permanent? It feels like PTSD is described.
A final point I want to make. I read comments that a gambler can only help their self, but only after they hit bottom and recognize they have a problem. My wife’s problem is, to hit rock bottom, she needs to run out of money, and/or become homeless or alone. She has so much support now, that her bottom would end up dragging me down with her, so I feel the only solution, painful as it is, is for me to split everything we have. I have also considered we can legally separate, but still live together. That would take the financial pressure off me, and I could survive fine on my half, but I could imagine her spinning out of control, spending down her half, then come crawling back to me at some point in the future. Then I could tell her, I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen to me.
I know this is a giant rant, but I have no one else to share with, and don’t want my own family to know the whole story. I think the whole story might kill my elderly mother if she knew the truth. She knows about the gambling, but not the cheating wife and non-biological grandchild. She loves my daughter.

[velvet]

Hi Diego

Advice is often what we ask for Diego, when we know the answer but wish we didn’t.

We can only support you on this forum, we cannot tell you what to do.

Of course, your wife realises that you don’t want the casino to be part of your lives but that knowledge is of no importance to her as long as you are willing to accept the status quo. Accepting the status quo is your decision but it is important to recognise that a gambling addiction does not get better without treatment.

I’m not surprised that you wife does not want to separate when she has freedom of access to your joint account – but surely it is what ‘you’ want that should be paramount for you.

I am sure you must realise that your wife is not going to stop gambling by the end of this year or any subsequent year without seeking help; where is her incentive to do so?

Have you seen her cut up her credit cards? Is she doing anything towards getting treatment for her problem? I suspect you know the answers Diego – you just wish you didn’t.

Velvet

• T?t? vastausta muokkasi 3 vuotta, 6 kuukautta sitten velvet.

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