u/HuniBee7

I’ll start off by saying we both love eachother so much, we have a really strong relationship, we live together have pets together, have talks about marriage and having kids soon, we love each others families, it’s literally all so perfect. Except for his gambling.

We’ve been together 3 1/2 years, he picked up gambling halfway into our relationship for the first time and has been struggling with the addiction since. When it first started to get bad, to where he started lying to me and hiding things, I told him this isn’t something I wanted in a relationship and that he needs to get help and I’ll support him through it. But that if this really becomes an issue I couldn’t stay with him.
(I had close family member that, wasnt a gambling addict, but addicted to money and spending. And that person ended up causing so much abuse and ruined so many relationships in my family due to money obsession. So stability when it comes to that sort of thing is important to me.)

It’s been a year and a half of going through the same cycle- him lying, hiding thousands of dollars of debt, me finding out/him breaking down because he has no money left, him promising things will change and then me telling him this is the last chance. We’ve gone through this cycle probably around dozen times. We have long periods of perfect relationship, but then it gets broken by this.
In January he came clean again saying he won 10k, he felt like he beat the game and that he’s done for sure. He was gonna start the year off clean, no secrets and that they changed the law on gambling that now you get taxed on your loses or something idk. So all that made him decide to stop I guess. I said ok, last chance…again.
Then in March he told me he did it a little and won 2k but that’s it. I was honestly just numb by then so I just said okay whatever, I didn’t want to deal with it.
Now today, he confessed again to gambling all his money away and now is in 7k of debt(after paying off all his previous thousands of debt in February).
I told him this time something has to change and that I’m done going through this cycle, I told him I think we need to take a break to both figure things out, him go to GA, me go to therapy, and just figure out what we want. I knew it would have to come to this but I feel so bad. I don’t want to leave him and hurt him, but he’s hurting me and our future. I don’t care about the money it’s more about the trust being broken, and what will happen when I’m fresh with a baby unable to work so I HAVE to rely on him to care for us. I told him I don’t trust him and I don’t know if I can build that back up. So right now we’re just figuring out what to do. He’s begging for one last chance.
He says he’s worried I’ll leave when we’re done with the break. I don’t know I’m just venting at this point. Is there possibility for a future with a gambling addict? Or is this something I need to just break off completely. I feel lost.

TLDR: Boyfriend of over 3 years is a gambling addict and I don’t know what to do. Is there a future with a partner that has a gambling addiction?