UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who commented it was really helpful! I started attending GA meetings, posting daily on GA forums, currently looking for a counsellor & will engage in the 12 step program once covid is over. I had a very transparent converstion with my sister & she wants to be my support buddy. I have started paying my ex back and I'm starting to see that maybe the future has hope for me.

Today is the two week anniversary of our breakup & I know I'm the reason why we broke up & that I messed up, all I can do is try to make an amends and work on my recovery. It's a very hard pill to swallow, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night & the enormity of what I did hits me and it makes me so sick. I can't believe that I was capable of doing such a horrible thing.

Today is hard, I know that I have no right to be upset because I'm the reason we failed but I still feel broken & shattered. We were ttc & talking about getting engaged and I've flushed that all away like it was nothing, even though I've literally been waiting years for someone like him.

My sister has arranged for him & l (with her mediating) to talk about what happened, how it happened, paying him back and everything else that comes with it. I've been told he wants to support me in my recovery but deep down I know if he wants to stand by me as a friend that it will just break me even more and I will over think everything he said and does. Every morning I check my phone to see if he has messaged me but I know it's wishful thinking and it was all just once a dream that I turned into a nightmare.

I hope that I can move on and accept that he no longer wants to spend his life with me, I don't blame him but damm it still hurts.

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I am a recovering gambler, my partner who I have been with for almost two years knows this and I had some relapses last year which caused us to break up but things got better because I put barriers in place and I saw a counsellor. We made an agreement that if I had urges to tell him but deep down I felt that even sharing that I had an urge made me a failure and it made me feel so shameful.

During covid my partner transferred me a very large sum of money as he needed it to be in my bank account. It sat there for a while and due to having alot of free time I decided to dabble in the share market first it was my money, then his and I lost a few thousand. I should have stopped at this point and told him but I've always been afraid of how he reacts and how angry he gets that I decided to see if I could win it back through another means, which was betting on horses. I put a plan in place that should have been full proof but as an addict when under pressure you make stupid irrational decisions and I couldn't control the stupid amount of money I was losing. What I mean by that is it's not as simple as just stopping although that sounds rational, any addict would know what I mean. And I'm not using this as an excuse but at no point did I ever think, this is insane just stop! I was in fight mode and wanted to fight by undoing the damage. When things did get worse I did ask him if he wanted some of the money back (didn't ask why) or if he wanted me to give it to his dad to hold onto and he said no.

Over the space of the few months he received a few thousand back and I ended up losing the majority of it! I told him on Thursday and I knew he would tell me to leave the house but I thought he would sit down for at least two minutes to hear me out. As soon as I told him he got very verbally abusive, called my family members and called me every word under the sun. He told me I never loved him and I was using him and I must do this to all my boyfriend's. The whole neighbourhood heard what he said and he stopped himself as his fist almost hit my face. I was scared and I didn't know how to react I went numb and it looked like I had no remorse but I've never been the best at expressing myself. So he kicked me out and i left with garbage bags of clothes. I went to my parents and been here for the past couple of days. Yesterday I picked up more things and he was taking his kindness and we talked a bit but he got angry and wouldn't let me finish. Everything I would say was a lie to him and he was even talking about me on the phone while I was there! I did tell him I was sorry and I know I messed up and have broken his trust and what I did was disgusting and that I never meant to break his trust but this addiction it got the better of me. And I don't blame him for how he reacted but some of those things shocked me.

Ladies I've been trying hard to fight this demon on my back for over 10 years, it has already destroyed so much and now I ruined the only chance of happiness. I have been waiting for over 10 years to find someone like my partner and I messed up. We were TTC and we had made future plans.

Today I realised that my fear of not telling him before I lost too much was pure selfishness, that in my fear of losing him I had already sealed my grave. What I did was disgusting, descriptive and I haven't slept or eaten in days as I'm so angry and appalled at myself. And I will pay back every dollar and I have already started.

I love this man and I don't deserve him but a part of me wants to still try and fight for him. Two of my friends have said to me that he put temptation in my face that he knew I wasn't even in a years recovery and he dangled a gold carrot in my face and he is to partly blame, I can see how they would think that but I can't accept it because it was my actions that did this. And I'm now banned from the places where I gambled and I will start going to GA meetings online.

Ladies, gentlemen - please tell me if there is any way I can get him back. I understand it might be a long shot, I don't even know where or how to start with winning his trust but in desperate. When we broke up I thought maybe this is what I need a clean exit, but today I realised that was just me protecting myself and that I love him and I want to be with him. When I was over getting my stuff yesterday and he would walk past I would think, gosh his handsome, look at those eyes 🙈

I know it's important to work on myself and I have started, actions speak louder then words but I don't know what actions will show him that I am sorry and I did/do love him. Someone said to me if he truly loved you then regardless of what you did he would try to find a way to make it work, given that he knew about the addiction. But a part of me knows his already closed his heart and made himself believe I never had genuine feelings.

I feel so defeated, an almost 40 year old living at her parents, sometimes I think that God made a mistake when I was born, that I'm this big waste of space that has caused too many people hurt, that all my good is out done by what I did.

I told him while he was finishing work & by the time he had come home, where he didn't allow me even two minutes to explain myself had already messaged my bro & sister to tell them what I had done. He goes they had to know why we broke up. It hadn't even been anymore then 10 minutes from when I told him & he told them. I'm not saying they don't deserve to know but he did it to be spiteful cause he knows too well the deeply scarred relationship I have with them & how sensitive it is, i guess he wanted to plunge the knife in my heart to.

I keep asking myself how I let it get this messed up and I can't find the answers.

Any advice would be great.

Please be kind, I'm not in a great headspace.