These days you don’t ever have to leave home to gamble. Online casinos are increasingly popular as they have no dress code, they don’t require you to spend money on food, drinks, or hotel stays, and the casinos are ready at any moment, sitting there on your desktop. You can even gamble from your phone.
With this new level of convenience, it’s possible for you or your spouse to develop a gambling problem without ever leaving home, though the guilty party will be glued to their computer or phone. But this convenience also means it’s easier for a gambling problem to cause tensions in your family life. Watch out for these warning signs that might point to a gambling addiction – if someone in your life is struggling with a gambling problem, you’ll need to consider the whole family in determining the correct course of treatment.
Cash Flow Problems
People with gambling problems gamble even when they don’t have enough money to be doing so. If you’ve begun to notice overdrafts on your bank account that can’t be explained or that your spouse tries to cover over with poor excuses, they may have a gambling addiction. Addicts also feel the need to lie about their excess spending, so poorly constructed lies also point to an addiction your spouse doesn’t want to discuss.
Moody Mates
Are you or your spouse excessively irritable or aggressive if drawn away from gambling? Addictions of all kinds tend to be associated with mood issues – depression and anxiety may develop as someone falls deeper into a gambling addiction or they may be the emotion fueling the addiction in the first place. Addicts may also use their gambling behavior to improve their mood, getting a high from participating in the activity.
Poor Problem Solving
The allure of gambling can produce a problem unique to this kind of addiction. Specifically, since a gambling addiction typically will put the addict and their family in debt, it also has buried within it the potential for financial payouts. Trying to recover money lost by gambling by pursuing the same activities is a sure sign of addiction. As they say, doing the same things twice but expecting a different result is a sign of insanity – well, making the same bet twice, and then again, is a sign of addiction.
Ongoing gambling problems can cause stress in the home, leading to marital problems and even divorce. If you see signs that yourself or your spouse is headed off course with their gambling behavior or acting oddly about money, you should address the problem immediately. Coming together to find the addiction is the only way to save the relationship. Ignoring the problem will only make it worse.