5/5/2026
My name is Mavia, and I’m a co-founder and Technical Business Manager at Gamban. I have lived experience as an “affected other.”
Today, an estimated 4.3 million people in Great Britain are classified as "affected others," people harmed not by their own choices but by someone else's. They are invisible in the data, and they don't show up in the headlines.
The World Health Organisation estimates that for every one person experiencing serious gambling harm, an average of six others are affected.
This is for the others.
My father was a senior banker in Pakistan. Respected in his profession, well regarded by those around him.
At home, he was far from the man people knew professionally. When he arrived home from work, he would make excuses and leave the house. Sometimes he wouldn't come home at all. I'd ask my mum where he was, and she didn't always have an answer.
When I think back, I feel a sense of fear and emptiness, but at the time, I couldn’t put into words what I was experiencing. I remember the empty chair at dinner and the muffled arguments after bedtime.
I was experiencing what psychologists have termed “pervasive loss”; it wasn’t just the financial instability, it was the loss of trust and safety.
I was carrying a weight I hadn't chosen to take on.
When I was nine years old, my parents had a serious falling out. My mother took us to my grandparents' house on the other side of the city, and we stayed there for five months.
The change was overwhelming, and I felt torn apart.
I missed months of school, I couldn’t see my father, and I didn’t know exactly what was happening, but I was aware this had something to do with my father’s gambling.
Looking back, I remember feeling envious of the other children going to school and coming home to both parents.
After five months, things went back to normal for a while, and the family was reunited at home, but I was still trying to make sense of what had been happening. What was my father up to? Where was he going? My father wasn’t a smoker, but whenever he came back, he would smell of tobacco. What was more important than spending time with his family?
I followed my father to a nondescript building just off a residential street. I couldn’t make out what was going on inside this building, but I got a glimpse of people playing cards with piles of cash on the tables. I saw him go through that door many times.
It transpired that places like this existed openly because of who protected them, people in positions of power who ensured they were never touched.
When I was eleven, I confronted my father, and he told me this was somewhere he went to “see his friends.” I didn’t believe him. I knew deep inside he wasn’t just seeing friends.
I didn’t want my father to leave, so I used to stand in front of the door to stop him from going, but eventually he found he could get his way by giving me money to play at the gaming shops, where I would sometimes play into the early morning.
My father’s addiction had quietly begun to create an addiction in me. My grades dropped, and I was disappearing into screens the same way he disappeared behind that door.
At eighteen years old, my parents divorced.
My mother, one of my greatest role models, held the family together.
At twenty years old, I found valuable mentorship while working at the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation. This helped to fill a space my father had left. I watched how they worked, how they led and how they carried themselves under pressure. I discovered the qualities I wanted as a man.
When I was twenty-one, I started a design agency called 4Slash.
I was determined to channel my energy and the skills I had developed from my mentors at the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation. Growing my business, helping clients and offering employment energised me as a person and a professional.
At its apex, 4Slash had a total of 27 employees and supported more than 200 clients.
One of these clients was Jack. He had a prototype for a basic hosts file MacOS app that restricted access to gambling and needed help in turning it into a product that other people could access. Other products existed for Windows computers, but nothing worked on MacOS.
I didn’t quite understand the scale of what he was looking to achieve with Gamban, but I did understand the need for it – both the person struggling with addiction and the child in the next room.
I’ve always believed that if Gamban helps just one relationship between parent and child, then I’ve achieved something that I can feel proud of.
I found my purpose, but I never found my father. We never properly reconciled. To this day, our conversations, when they happen, are purely superficial. We share no references or family memories.
I have two children, aged six and seven, and there is nothing in this world I want more than to be part of their lives. That feeling, that pull towards your own child, is what makes my father's absence so hard to reconcile. He had the choice. I understand now, more than ever, what it costs a child when that choice goes the wrong way.
If You're Reading This, Dad…
This isn't about blame or shame.
I know addiction is not a simple choice. I know there was a version of you that wanted things to be different. What I want you to know is that I took everything I carried growing up and turned it into something. The missing years, the distance, the weight; all of it became the reason I do this work.
Every family Gamban supports is where your story and mine meet.
I don't hate you; I never did.
And to anyone reading this who recognises their own life in mine: the weight you are carrying is not yours to keep forever.
If you or someone you know is affected by gambling, visit gamban.com
