Dear Phil,

I am currently 20 years old and working while trying to make it through my last 2 years of school. BUT my mother did pretty much the same thing to my family. My older brother is 24 and my father feels the same guilt that you do. The difference is my father was the last to know. Ever since I was probably 7 my mother has had a gambling addiction and over the past 14 years she has made my brother and I both accomplices in her lies. All under the pretense that my father was to weak to handle the truth (his own father committed suicide).

It was not until recently when she went on one of her gambling binges that I revealed to my father the severity of her addiction. She refused to come home after being gone 4 days and as usual my father became distraught and drank heavily to sleep, crying in his waking hours, and trying to understand why she would not come home. When I told her that if she put my father in an early grave by not coming home I would NEVER forgive her, she responded with "Transfer some more money for me to play." THAT was the final straw.

As you can probably guess being consumed with addiction and all I have had an absentee mother, and so my father became everything to me and to see him suffer by her selfishness tore me apart. So I spilled the beans BIG TIME. I told him about all the money she had stolen from me, her own daughter, her son, and how she made me falsify the pretenses of a loan from my father to me to keep her out of jail. Turns out I almost spilled the beans too late. Over the course of 14 years she has lost in funds that are traceable close to $100,000, but due to all the cash my father guesses it closer to $200,000. Pretty much my parents' entire life savings everything my father had worked for his whole life to save and provide for his family she lost. One of his dreams had been that when my brother and I bought our first houses he would be able to provide the down payment to make our lives better than his was but now that is gone.

She also refuses to admit she has a problem, and because of her actions she has been cut off from everyone's funds. To protect ourselves we all had to close out our accounts and open new ones and then watch the mail like hawks till all of our new debit cards, checks, and deposit slips came in. She even threatened to take off and leave all for the sake of this crippling addiction and for once none of us backed down from her and she realized she was caught.

Since the initial blow ups and compromises (meaning if she slips up and goes down there EVER AGAIN she 86's herself from all of them and all of us will go to watch her to it) glimmers of who she used to be have begun to surface. Sadly almost too late for a long time I did not have a mom and now she tries to play one when I am nearly 21. I don't need her as much anymore and I think she realizes what she missed out on. But through it all my brother and I knew and in telling my father we realized he is not as weak as she would have us believe. Things have been tight around the house and from time to time my brother and I have to help pay bills but I am still going to school and my brother is still applying to graduate school.

Your kids are a lot stronger than you think. Yes, they will be angry. Yes they will be hurt. BUT if they have any good sense they will buck up and pull themselves up by their boot straps and do everything they can to help. Your wife may not admit she has a problem at first and she may struggle to deny it but the more of her close friends and family know about what she has been doing the better the chance you have at an intervention. It was hard for my mother to look dead in the eyes of three ugly mirrors of truth when confronted with her addiction.

Even though I am still angry with her and I don't like her most times, I still love her and I am glad to see her making the effort to try. I realize you think you are protecting your kids, believe me I thought I was protecting my father but in the long run it serves no good because addictions affect EVERYONE whether you suffer from one yourself or it is a loved one. Do NOT blame yourself. An addict is an expert at hiding how bad their addiction is. I myself knew merely that my mom gambled occasionally but it turns out occasionally was the lie she told my brother and I we had no idea how bad it was.

It is always easier to stare down this kind of demon as long as you have a support system. Both of your children are in college i.e. they are both adults. Trust that you raised good kids and that they can be there for both of you. It is true what's done is done no use dwelling on the past but how your proceed starts with finding the stability and support that your family needs by telling the truth. I wish I would have followed my gut a lot sooner than I did, but I made the mistake of trusting my mother blindly and did not give my father the credit he deserved.

Sorry for being so long winded, but I hope this helps.