Hopelessly Miserable-He Has Sex With Random Women And Refuses To Get Tested For STDs

Hello JoAnn,

I am thankful to have stumbled upon your website in the midst of anxiety and anger. It really calmed me down. My “story” seems to be never-ending, even though I am young and have only been married for a few years. Here goes.

I first met my husband in Chicago, while I was living in a community house. He was touring in a band across America, and his band was playing a show at our house the following day, so I invited them to spend the weekend with my housemates and I. The first time we saw each other, we were in love/lust/whatever. We talked for hours that night, and we ended up having sex. I didn’t know he was in a relationship with someone else, and I was pretty lonely..and on the rebound.

I thought I would never see him again, so it wasn’t really an issue at the time. After he left, we continued talking, and he told me about his extreme guilt about sleeping with me. I tried talking him out of it, and even giving him advice on what to do with his current girlfriend, because I thought we’d never be together.

During the course of the next two months, I would get random emails, texts, or calls from him saying “I can’t talk to you any more, I can’t be your friend, I could never marry you because you’re not Christian, ect.” Then I’d get the opposite. One day he emailed me after two weeks of not talking asking me if I was pregnant, and said he’d be there no matter what. I on the other hand, thought he was the most insane person I’d ever met, yet I was infatuated with knowing why.

Turns out…BINGO! I was pregnant. He was living in Alaska, and me in Chicago, and I was visiting my family down South when I found out. I immediately called him, went back to Chicago, gave away everything I owned, and moved to Alaska after only knowing him for 3 days. Before I went, he told me he had to tell me something, and confessed he was addicted to porn, and had done horrible things to a family friend, and also had been molested and sexually abused in his childhood.

I took it lightly, considering he told me via text..I didn’t think it was really that big of a deal. To me, every guy looks at porn. We got married under rather random circumstances about 2 months later. He started coming home, getting angry with me for closing a door wrong, or phrasing something the “wrong” way or anything, really. I started wondering where this was coming from after I’d already lost all self esteem and confidence…and it came from shame or guilt for his actions.

We went to counseling for months, nothing seemed to change. Every time I would go out of state to visit my family, something bigger than the last problem would come about. He was snowballing out of control. He became obsessed with a stripper that is one of our friend’s friends. He went to strip clubs alone, sober, and paid these women while we were broke and took his guilt out on me. Ruining holidays, parties, dates, anything.

After he went to a strip club and lied about it, I asked him for a divorce because I had begged him for months to get help and he refused. I moved him out of our bedroom into the guest room, and didn’t sleep with him because he refused to get tested for STDs. Months went by, he had told me from the beginning of the summer, my personal life wasn’t any of his business anymore.

When I told him I was leaving and taking our son back to the states (which I never really intended on..I was hoping for a shock factor or something) he started seeing another girl, requested a DNA test without me knowing, and told the girl everything even down to my credit score. He tried to have sex with her, but she wouldn’t, and after he gave me a deadline to get out, I did.

Now that I have been back in the states, he’s been calling me nonstop to come home and he started attending once a week men group…but actually doesn’t even go. I called him yesterday morning, only to find “I have something horrible to tell you.”

My heart shattered. I have never felt so disrespected in all my life. He had sex with a random girl, and kissed one of my friends and had sex in front of her multiple times that night after she begged them to stop and after they had sex on my kitchen counter, couch, living room, air mattress, and my bed that my husband built for me. He walked into the room she was staying in to ask her if she was mad. Then, he went back to it. He didn’t use a condom at all, and now that I’m going home next month I am terrified at his consequences. I got a mere apology, followed by cockiness.

What do I do? How do I even step foot into our home, without imagining them everywhere? Do I try to make this work? Or do I divorce him? I’m miserable. Hopelessly miserable.