unhappy marriage before gambling, and where to start

hi, first post

i have been with my husband 18 years, married for 11, have a 9 year old daughter

this weekend he told me he has a gambling problem and has gambled us into £40,000 of debt. 

we have never had anything, no house no savings, so this is all credit card debts. 

he only told me because i noticed discrepancies with what hes been telling me his salary is. he has never wanted to have joint bank accounts, so hes been able to do this without me noticing. 

basically hes been lieing to me for years about his salary (yet he still wont tell me how long) keeping money back to fund his gambling. he then says last year has been worse and last few months got completely out of control. 

he only told me one hehad sorted out debt repayment etc. whilst this may seem admirable, it felt manipulative, because yet again he made decisions about money about finaces without considering me. im about to be made redundant, i only work 6 hours a week because i am my daughters full time carer. he has made the decision on what he can afford to repay without considering bills i have. 

he is behaving like everything is fine now because he has stopped because he has 'sorted it' and because he has sorted a few weeks counselling. 

we have both been unhappy for years, my happiness stems tbh from his manipulatice and dismissive ways, he has eroded my self confidence and i have stayed because i feel trapped tbh. i feel like ive had a final wake up call. he is a kind gentle man, but he is also selfish, rigid, and unwilling to consider others needs. for years ive felt guilty and worked extra hard to help pay the small amount of debt accrued through me essentially losing jobs because of my health. he has let me believe this was all my fault whilst hes been keeping back money and gambling with credit. 

he has never been there for me emotionally. over the last 10 years of our marriage ive suffered recurrent pregnancy loss - including ptsd with the fourth loss, for which he just complained about the money i spent on a rose bush to bury the baby under. i have suffered chronic health issues for which ive worked really hard to be the fittest and wellest i can be. many people in my position end up on strong meds still unable to function, i cant take meds so have been forced to keep finding other ways to cope, but im still struggling and in pain. and even in january this year he told me perhaps if i lost weight and tried harder id feel better. 

this is just the tip of the iceberg, the thoughts that are bothering me right now with the fact that hes been lieing for so long. how could he be having those problems and then behave like this to me. hes gone out of his way to make me feel like i dont give anything to our family. we had covid a month ago, he recovered quickly and went back to work even though i needed help and even though i dont get paid time off sick, he couldnt understand that i needed help in order to recover. he left me with our high needs daughter when i still could barely move. he didnt care and just shouted at me that his money pays the rent that hes the one earning, essentially my job was worthless - because it doesnt pay any of the bills. but it does, it pays my bills and it pays for our daughters extras. 

anyway, i didnt intend this to be so long.  but essentially he offered to leave when he told me, ive been asking him to leave for 6 months and hes refused, so this offer felt manipulative. how could i kick him out t his lowest, how could i do that to our daughter. as a human being i can see he needs help and i wasnt going to completely abandon him, but there is no relationship here. i dont want one anymore. because i was already alone and unhappy. i cant come back from this. my health is suffering dramatically, and now effectively i feel like the person who has dismissed my health not understood my needs for support and care is asking me to care for him, look after him. 

i still dont see much responsibility being taken, lots of blaming of companies allowing it to happen (i do agree to an extent) lots of blaming boredom, no acceptance of underlying issues, thinks he can just stop. and when i said how do you know you wont do it gain he says because i wont let him. so hes given me the responsibility. hes let me take control of money, but even this feels manipulative with what hes said, its like hes saying well if he does do anything else it will now be my fault for not noticing and stopping him. 

i want him to get this under control and i want to support him to deal with it for the sake of our daughter and her future and future relationship with him. 

but i am trapped in a small house, with a husband who now is seeming excessively happy, after all hes sorted his get out clause even though he will be paying it off until our daughter is an adult. and i havent kicked him out, which equally means he doesnt have to crawl to his parents (which was also a reason i didnt kick him out because they are nasty manipulative people and if he told them the truth they would disown him im sure. they have never supported him or us as a family, and they are also rich and part of the problem)

i am having to share a bed with him because theres nowhere else for him to sleep, and there is a spare box room and its still filled with boxes. we moved here in may and it was a downsize. we have stuiff to sort through, but, and this is his attitude to everything, though it is mostly family stuff, and our daughters stuff, he says he cant do it he doesnt know what to do, so its all left to me - yet he doesnt facilitate for me to have time to sort it, and when i do get time im trying to do it whilst in pain, and he also argues and doesnt support our fdaughters emotional needs. 

essentially i dont know what to do anymore. i dont want to be in the same bed as him, and i dont want to be with him in the long term, but he is back to behving like everything can be solved and fixed because he is blaming everything on the gambling, so if he fixes the gambling he thinks he fixes all our problems. 

how do i explain this to him, how do i get him to see i deserve some space right now, that he has to help in different ways to facilitate that.

and i need to get straight in my head how long i should do that for. support him to recover whilst also acknowledging the relationship is over. i dont even know if im making sense, but im hurting because it feels like this massive thing happened but now he feels ok about it all and eache day is going on as normal whilst i feel petrified of the future, traumatised by the past and all the unanswered questions i have, and trapped with no options. 

btw just to clarify, i have no family support so cant just leave myself. my daughter is autistic and traumatised by the last 2 moves weve had to do. we private rent so i couldnt get somewhere on my own, it would be extremely hard and the impact on our daughter would be massive. there are lots of other complications for her too and worries i have. but its not as simple as leave or kick him out. eg if i was to kick him out then the landlord can kick me out too, he doesnt have to change it to be just in my name, he can choose to evict me. also if he leaves and then he gambles and makes it worse, he still makes it worse for me and daughter.. at least under this roof i can now see his accounts, have reason to expect that. if he leaves then hes no reason to let me see it.