Had to choose between loaning my brother $800 or telling my parents about his gambling habit

My brother Mark called me last Tuesday asking for $800 to "cover a bill" but I knew he'd been dropping cash at the local poker room in Columbus every weekend. I sat on it for a day then decided to tell my dad instead of handing over the money. Dad went with me to talk to Mark at his apartment and it turned into a three hour argument about trust and addiction lol. Has anyone else had to pick between protecting a sibling's secret or actually helping them?

2 comments

2 Comments

wren21718d ago

...and that's the thing, right? We're all out here playing this weird game where keeping the peace feels easier than actually dealing with stuff. I've seen it with my own friends, like one guy who knew his roommate was drinking way too much but just kept buying him Gatorade instead of saying something. Or my neighbor whose kid was flunking out of school but she kept telling everyone he was "finding himself." We all do it, we pick the comfortable lie over the messy truth because we're scared of the blowup. But with something like gambling, that $800 is just a down payment on a much bigger problem down the road. Sounds like you made the right call, even if it turned into a three hour nightmare.

thea14314d ago

Yeah @wren217, but the roommate thing isn't really the same as enabling a gambling habit though.