Gambling Addiction Series #8

Only after marrying did I find out that my wife had a debt of 500,000 yuan from cryptocurrency trading before marriage. I refused to be the scapegoat and insisted on canceling the engagement and asking for the bride price.
Last August, someone introduced me to my current wife. I was 33 at the time, and during holidays and festivals, relatives kept pressuring me to get married, which was very stressful. Plus, my grandmother was diagnosed with late-stage cancer, and I really didn’t want her to leave worrying that I hadn’t married and left regrets.
At that time, I was chatting quite well with this girl. She was also pressured by her family to marry, and we hit it off immediately. We met in August and got married in September, just without a wedding banquet.
She always said she didn’t care about money and just wanted to live a stable life, but two days before getting the marriage certificate, she brought up the bride price, asking for 120,000 yuan. She told me it was required by her parents and was a local custom. I hadn’t bought a house then, and I felt a bit guilty, thinking I shouldn’t treat her unfairly, so I agreed. The 120,000 yuan bride price was transferred directly to her.
I’ve only been in one relationship before, dating back to when I was 20, back in university. It wasn’t really called a relationship—more like holding hands. After graduation, we went our separate ways. I sent her a few messages but got no reply, so that relationship just faded away. After entering the workforce, I got a job at a state-owned enterprise. Since there were no women in my department, I didn’t date anyone. As I got older, I became more anxious.
In the beginning, everything seemed normal after we married, with no issues. Until January this year, my grandmother passed away. She had been undergoing conservative treatment but ultimately couldn’t beat the disease. Before she died, she told me one thing: “Be young, have a child early.”
After her funeral, I brought up the idea of having children with my wife. I hadn’t bought a house yet, but I had saved 400,000 yuan, enough to raise a child and handle risks.
But she immediately replied: “We can have a child, but you need to help me relieve my pressure first.”
I didn’t know what she meant at the time, so I just agreed casually, saying as long as it didn’t touch my bottom line, I would definitely help. Then she confessed that she owed more than 300,000 yuan in debt.
She said that back in 2023, her so-called best friend dragged her into virtual currency contracts, and she got trapped. She initially owed over 500,000 yuan, but later wanted to quit, paying back 70,000 to 80,000 yuan from her salary. The 120,000 yuan bride price I gave her was also used to pay off debts and fill the坑.
She still owes about 300,000 yuan. She told me that as long as I help her pay off these debts, she wouldn’t mind having a child or any other requests I might have in the future.
I didn’t believe her at all. I felt things weren’t that simple and even suspected she might be using my money to support other young men. Seeing I didn’t believe her, she showed me her online banking and virtual currency transaction data. Maybe she thought I couldn’t understand, but I saw that her last transaction was just a week ago, losing over 1,900 USDT, which is over ten thousand yuan in RMB.
Honestly, I wanted to help her pay it off, even if not in full, I could help her pay in installments. I work at a state-owned enterprise, earning about 20,000 yuan a year, so I could fully pay it off if needed. But she shouldn’t have lied to me. She claimed she had been sober from gambling for two years, but the data doesn’t lie—she was still gambling. I hate being lied to the most, so I couldn’t forgive her.
Then she mentioned divorce, probably as a threat. I agreed immediately, probably catching her off guard since she didn’t expect me to agree so readily. She then apologized and admitted her mistake. She said she could slowly pay off her debts with her salary because most of her debts were owed to acquaintances. She said that as long as I agreed, and if we bought a house in the future, her name would be on it to give her security.
That’s wishful thinking. Even if I buy a house in the future, I won’t add her name. If she hadn’t brought it up, I might have felt more reliable, but now I think she’s even less trustworthy. I feel things aren’t that simple. No matter how well she talks, her gambling addiction is real. Our workplace once had a senior who was fired for leveraged stock trading, borrowing money from colleagues and not repaying anyone. I worry my wife might go down that path too. I don’t want to take risks because our family is simple and has a clean background for generations. I don’t want this marriage to drag me down, so I insist on divorce.
Seeing my firm attitude, she said divorce was fine, but the bride price wouldn’t be refunded because she had already used it to pay debts and couldn’t repay me. I didn’t want my hard-earned money to go to waste. Since we couldn’t reach an agreement on a peaceful divorce, I had to find ways to recover my losses.
Thanks to my job, I’ve made many friends in the GJF department. I told her directly: if she wants to make a fuss, I’ll go along with it. I won’t sue her for civil damages but will pursue it as fraud. Not only do I want my money back, but I also want to send her to jail.
We agreed to only refund 100,000 yuan of the 120,000 yuan bride price. I’m not completely unreasonable—if the loss isn’t too big, I’ll let it go. The total cost of our marriage was about 10,000 yuan, and I also paid her 500 yuan for phone bills. On February 4th, she finally gathered the 100,000 yuan, and we registered for divorce. We got the divorce certificate in March after the cooling-off period.
Some men seem to have never seen a woman before. Knowing their wife is a gambling addict, they go into debt to help her. Thinking they’re sacrificing for love, burning themselves out, but in others’ eyes, they’re just an ATM. Some marriages are worth fighting for. If my partner had no bad habits, even if she got sick and needed hundreds of thousands or over a million for treatment, I would do everything to save her. But gambling? Forget it. The blood and sweat money earned through hard work is better off donated for a good reputation.