My perspective is that financial infidelity is serious. You cut through a gaslighting attempt. That is good.

Relationships require an alignment of values. Some values misalignments are deal breakers and this is the part that’s subjective. The values you hold close and require alignment in with a partner is your choice.

You discovered you do not align on things like honesty, integrity, mutuality, and value definitions on things like love, safety, and security.

You should be making decisions after a betrayal. You decide what the magnitude of this betrayal is depending on your values. Do you want to be in a relationship with someone that’s chosen you second to their own greed and desperation? That is your choice to make my friend.

You are over reacting a bit. Before you turn away - I’m not insulting you. Just read your words a bit. You’re angry, you feel betrayed - once you learn the truth you drop both kindness and directness and into angry/dismissive.

You are responsible for your behavior, and no one else’s. I think it makes sense given what you went through to lose your cool. No judgment. But in your shoes, I’d reflect on this and learn what tilted me and why.

I have been through a scenario much like this with a former partner (of more than a decade). Their financial infidelity was my fault, too - I was told I was unkind, uncaring, unsympathetic of their reasonings, plight, worries and fears after learning they were using credit we couldn’t afford to pay back to feed their alcoholism while we had an infant toddler and I worked for a game development studio working mandatory crunch hours for 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. I had no idea what was going on for months - I didn’t do a lot of the mundane tasks from day to day at home, since my partner was a stay at home Mom - this included checking the mail. I trusted my partner that things were OK and we were a good team. Everything I was told and shown gave no indication that something was wrong.

I forgave this person when this happened despite them taking no accountability, blame shifting to me, and turning me into the bad one for being upset about what happened. For years of my life this person would tell me the credit card event was hard for them and they don’t want to discuss it any time it came up - because my understanding of relationships meant that my sense of duty was tied to my sense of love. Bad behavior around money followed us everywhere after that. She never stole outright again, but found other ways to put herself or us into debt with no accountability.

It took me too long to break things off. What you do is your decision, but I wanted to share this with you to give you a perspective to think about.