Even after gambling difficulties become known, partners and family members often face numerous cycles of gambling, promises to quit, attempts to quit, and gambling again.
Some describe being in a relationship with somebody experiencing gambling difficulties as a rollercoaster. They say gambling takes the person you know away from you, and they can struggle to continue with the relationship during challenging times.
Affected others often do everything they can for the person. For some, it gets harder for them to forgive the person each time they relapse.
His mum took control of his money. He moved back in with her. But then after a few months, he just got all his money back and then just went back to his old life essentially.
I remember my dad saying he wants to quit many times, and he did have periods where he would abstain from gambling and wouldn’t go to the betting shops. And there were periods also where he would define gambling as sort of sustainable, where he would gamble a certain amount, win a certain amount a day and then stop and I think he was convinced that that could work. And as a kid, I was convinced too.
It’s been an on-and-off thing over the last couple of years that we’ve been struggling with it. We’ll go through phases where he’s free of it, he’s doing everything he can to stop himself going back into it and then he’ll have a relapse. It’s been a bit of a vicious cycle over the years. Then when it’s come to this latest bout, it’s been a bit more of a struggle to just forgive it and move on like I have over the years, because there’s a lot more that we’ve got now than we did in the beginning. We’ve got the commitment of a mortgage and we’ve got a nearly three-year-old son together.
It’s quite devastating when it happens. Obviously, I’ll never fully trust him, which is hard and I’m always worrying about money, but I get to the point where I get a bit complacent. I start to feel comfortable and start to feel like our relationship is back on track. If I’m not happy with him, I distance myself but when I am we do stuff together, we spend time together, we’re happy but then when he relapses, it’s like a punch in the stomach. It’s a bit like you knew it could always happen but at the same time he’s doing it again and I’ve not had a clue. It doesn’t matter how many times it happens, it never gets any easier.
It is like a roller coaster because you get with a person because there’s a lot you love about them and that’s still there but this addiction when it takes over, it takes that person away from you. One minute they’re up and they’re happy and they’re doing everything that they would normally do and then the next they are down and withdrawn. They don’t want to talk to you, they get angry at the smallest little things, like they do get a temper and then they just turn into a complete stranger. There’s no way of it ending because you have a need to think you’re strong enough to carry on or do you just get off the ride and that’s it. It’s all or nothing. You’ve got to find strength in you somewhere to deal with it.