I won $25,000 in the lottery, and my girlfriend still has no idea. I’ve spent about $10,000 so far, a little at a time. I’ve made the extra spending look like I got a bonus at work or my parents helped me out. She hasn’t asked where the money came from. I’m the one who keeps thinking about it.
At first, keeping it to myself felt easy. There were things I’d wanted for a while, and I liked the idea of buying them without thinking too hard about what else I could do with the money. I could go out more and enjoy myself without watching every dollar. I’d won enough that I could do that for a while and still have a decent amount left.
I figured if I told my girlfriend, I’d end up spending a lot of it on her or on things we could do together. I love doing things with her. I also wanted the fun of deciding what to do with the money entirely on my own. The funny thing is, she’s never demanded that I spend money on her. I’d already decided how she’d affect my plans without giving her a chance to say a word.
We aren’t married. I bought the ticket, and I don’t think being in a serious relationship means I automatically owe her half. That was a pretty easy argument to make to myself when I first won. It gets a little harder to lean on now that I’ve spent thousands and let it look like the money came from somewhere else. If I told her today, I think the part that would bother her most is how long I let her go on thinking everything was ordinary.
There’s $15,000 left. I could tell her now, while most of it is still there. Part of me still wants to keep it to myself and enjoy the rest the way I planned. I thought spending it slowly would make the whole thing easy to live with. So far, it’s just given me more time to think about telling her.
