We’ve been dating for the better part of 4 years, and we moved in together in May of this year.
I always knew she was a gamer, and that’s never bothered me. I know, too, that she’s got ADHD / hyperfocus tendencies (though never she’s never diagnosed with anything we have mutual friends with ADHD who insist that she’s the same brand of neurodivergent as they are).
Her gaming hadn’t really affected us before now. We have different work patterns and so different sleeping schedules (we both work at home as freelancers, but her main client is in the US so she tends to get up and go to bed much later than me).
She confessed to me a couple of months back that she thinks she has a gaming addiction, specifically to a particular mobile game. At the time she’d spent a lot of money on this game — thousands of pounds — and had freaked herself out by blowing through most of her savings on it. She’d gotten herself into therapy and was addressing it but didn’t want to just go cold turkey on the game. Instead, she switched from paying for the game to playing it for free, which was hard but seemed to be working.
But after a stressful couple of weeks at work, she’s now confessed that she’d linked her credit card to the game and nearly maxed it out. That freaked her out again and she’s since disconnected the card. Last night she confessed this to me, having hidden it from me for the last couple of weeks: not only had she nearly maxed out her card but she’d also come close to running out of money until someone paid her for something she’d sold on eBay. She was down to just having a couple of ££ in her bank account at one point.
Our finances aren’t joint, but she does own the house that we live in and is the sole payer of the mortgage. She gets paid well, and up until now has never worried about money too much, but she tells me that if she were to continue spending at the rate she spent at in early December, she’d run out of money completely by April and would be putting the mortgage payments at risk.
When we talked about this, all I wanted to do was support her. She’s in therapy still and her therapist seems wonderful, and all I wanted to do for my GF last night was hold her, reassure her that I love her, and try to make things seem less scary for her. I’m working through therapy myself for my own codependent tendencies so I was very clear about this not being something that I could change for her, and that I couldn’t do the work that she needed to do, but I wanted to be as supportive as I could.
In the cold light of day, though, I’m scared. I’ve still got a flat, which I’ve been trying to sell for the last few months, but which part of me is now thinking I should hang on to, just in case. I don’t want to leave her — she told me last night that she was giving me the chance to leave if I wanted to — because I love her and I don’t want to just ditch her over this. But I don’t really know what boundaries I should set with her (and myself).
I’ve had too many relationships in my life where I made myself into the rescuer and it cost me deeply. I’m scared of doing that again here.
How can I maintain healthy boundaries *and* help her? What’s the best way forward for me now?
**TL;DR:** My girlfriend has admitted to a gaming addiction and has blown through most of her savings and is now in danger of putting her mortgage at risk. I’ve got codependent tendencies and I’m scared that I don’t know how best to help her or maintain healthy boundaries with her.