Mary and John have been married for 19 years and have two teenage daughters together. Mary, who says she still loves John, however, is now in the process of getting a divorce from him. She says she needs to do so in order to maintain her sanity.
“I love him but I had to love the girls and myself more. I couldn’t take it anymore, I was not sleeping at night, I was stressed and I was feeling like if I didn’t move on I would have gone mad,” Mary told the Sunday Guardian.
The reason Mary, 43, decided to leave John was because he did not want to get help for his gambling addiction.
“The thing is if someone is not willing to get help then there is nothing you can do for them, and sadly that was the case with him,” Mary said.
“So since I could not help him I had to help myself and my daughters.”
Mary said it was a hard decision but one she had to make.
Mary said she and John were “big limers” but that stopped when they had their daughters.
“He is a limer, so he would go to the casino and lime with friends, and when they went to the track and bet on horses he would go too, he would play a little Play Whe and Lotto every now and then but it was nothing serious,” Mary said.
But then a few years ago, the gambling which John said was relaxing started to become more serious.
“Now it has become a runaway horse,” she said.
Mary does not know what caused John to get heavily involved in gambling.
“I remember once he and some friends went to lime a Friday and he said he was playing some card game, I don’t know how much he betted but that night when he came home he woke me up and said he won around $6,500. He eventually spent that money to take me and the girls to Margarita (island) for a weekend a couple months later,” Mary said.
When the fun stopped
But as time rolled on, something happened and John no longer gambled just for fun.
He started to gamble more regularly and not only when he went out with friends, Mary said.
Mary said she still did not think much of it.
Then one day she realised that things were spiralling out of control.
“We each pay different bills and then one day he came to me and said he needed to borrow some money from me to pay the mortgage,” Mary said.
Mary said she had no problem forking out the money and did not really think too much of it.
Then the borrowing became more frequent.
Mary said John maxed out his credit card and borrowed from her as well as other family members and friends.
John never had money to do anything, she said.
When Mary asked John what was going on with his finances he got angry and resentful.
He told her he had everything under control.
Mary realised that this was the furthest thing from the truth.
“The thing really hit the fan for me when I saw a letter from the mortgage company in the mail and it was saying that we had arrears owing,” Mary said.
Mary confronted John and that conversation escalated into a big argument.
“I had to end up borrowing money from my father to pay off the mortgage, you know how shameful that was,” she said.
Digging a hole
Mary said she realised John was digging a hole he could not get himself out of.
“So I called around to find out what help I could get for him, I organised a meeting and he got angry with me for that saying he not going anywhere,” Mary said.
Mary said that hurt her.
John became more and more unpredictable and was moody at home.
“I started to become depressed, I felt hurt and angry with him and it was affecting everything in my life. I almost had a mental breakdown in work, once I had to just sit down in the ladies (washroom) and cry for a while,” Mary said.
Then one day, about a year ago, Mary took her daughters and went to stay at her parent’s home.
She eventually told John she was leaving him for good.
To his credit, Mary said John told her for the sake of the children she could move back in the family house and he would leave.
Mary now pays the mortgage for the house.
“I have all these extra expenses now, but my father has been helping me and I had to cut back on some stuff,” she said.
Within the time they have been separated John has changed apartments on at least three occasions.
Mary said she hopes one day he would find the strength to realise that he needs help.
*Mary opted not to have her real name used in this article to prevent any embarrassment to her husband and her daughters.