trailrider

I don’t do these things. I don’t join groups and I don’t share personal stuff. I have never told my story, I’m not even sure I know how. I have two lives and like it or not I guess they are both my story. I have three teenagers. I have always homeschooled my kids because I always believed I could do a better job than the public school. My odest daughter is a senior. She is smart, compassionate, opinionated, brave, moody, and hard to read. She has a chronic health problem and I believe struggles with mild depression. My second daughter is all of those things as well but where her sister plays it close to the vest this one lets it all hang out. She has never liked school, but she is a great dancer and that is what she loves above all. She is a reactor so it can be a challenge to reign her in. My youngest is my son. He is to smart for his own good. He is doing work four years ahead and will need college work next year. He understands math and computers like Mozart knew the piano. Consequently the two of us do not have much in common but he’s a great kid and I love to hear about algorythms because he loves to tell me about them. He also deals with chronic medical problems. They are articulate, well mannered, and very involved kids. They are my story. I have, for all intents and purposes, raised them by myself. That wasn’t what I signed up for but I didn’t sign up for my other life either.
Life 2: I have been married for almost 20 years and I hate my husband. We met after he came back to the states from a mission trip to India. I was 17 he was just turning 20. I was always the good girl. Helpful, quiet, and dependable. I always believed you do the right thing simply because it is right. In hindsight all of the warning signs were there but I was young and didn’t have any real support system apart of my life. My husband was always a charmer with a very passionate personality. We met and were married in the evangelical church. We did the premarital counseling and were apart of a great home group of young couples. Our “vision” was to have a good christian family and raise our children with all of the stability and good training we didn’t have. The plan was always that I would stay at home with the children and he would provide financially. It wasn’t long after we were married that the shine was off the rose. I guess he had caught me so what was the use of pretending anymore. He was always moody and angry. Nothing I ever did satisfied him. He has never been content. I became aware that porn was a big problem after our second daughter was born. I didn’t know how to confront him at first and when I finally did he just lied. He’s good at that and I was totally unprepared for it. He can wear a blue shirt, swear that it is black and go to his grave defending his “word” all the while making you feel ashamed for ever even considering that it wasn’t the way he said it is. Even though you can see the color with your own eyes you would still feel ashamed, like you had done something wrong in challenging him. It didn’t take long for this to destroy any ability I had to discern my surroundings. To trust my instincts. The reality of his pornography problem was humiliating. I was trapped. I had two babies 14 months apart, no where to go, surrounded by good christian families, living a lie with Dr. Jekyl, and terrified. It would go on for years this particular cycle. He would slip up, I would be paralyzed with fear, I would confront, he would lie and deflect, more lies about stopping, hide better, and then around we go again. A few times he went for “counseling” which always turned out to be a joke because he just lied the whole time anyway. Life became about trying to diffuse him and make a decent life for my children. We moved and began attending a different church. He became Mr. Joe Christian, getting involved in the men’s group being captain spiritual. He would tell people how wonderful I was and how he knew that I was God’s perfect choice for him. (I used to wonder what it was that I had done to offend God enough that I deserved this.) He took his addiction underground and hid it so well for so long that, in a way, he was two different people. We began attending a different and much smaller country church. He instantly became Mr. Popular there and I started to scold myself. I used to get down on myself because he just never felt right to me. Everyone around me seemed to think he was great and he was putting on a very convincing show so I believed the problem must just be me. I was to critical, bitter, not spiritual enough, not pretty or thin enough. Admittedly my self esteem was already in the toilet thanks to years of trying to cope with his sexual acting out. He had a few episodes of acting out that I caught him at(so probably a million I didn’t) and he went to “counseling” again and again it didn’t mean a hill of beans. Then came d-day. It was a Sunday. I had stayed home from church to work on a history lesson for a class I was teaching for our co-op and it was my daughter’s birthday weekend and we were having a small family party for her that day. He came home way to early without the children and accompanied by another man from the church. I knew before he got to the living room what it was about. It was the strangest thing. At that time I had really no reason to suspect anything. He had taken his addiction way underground and had convinced me that he wasn’t struggling with it. He had been attentive and we had just taken the children on a few day trips where he was Mr. Fun and of course he had become one of the go to guys at church. Still as soon as I saw his face their was this split second of stillness filled with a raw clarity, a knowing. Then the world dropped out from under me and I was falling and falling fast down the rabbit hole. He had had an affair. With a barely 18 year old girl from the church. His intention had simply been to “help” her since she didn’t have a good relationship with her father. So, he set up a secret e-mail account so they could communicate and then he would call her while he was at work. Funny that since he never had time to be a father to his own kids but why get caught up on details? He started meeting her in a park after he dropped our children off at youth group and then he started having sex in his car with her. I was assured it was only oral because that matters, right? No moron, it’s still sex. He had broken it off with her the week before and had planned to quietly move on with his life except she went to her parents and told them it wasn’t consensual. After the police questioned everyone she admitted that yes it was. He was caught. They were waiting to confront him when he got to the church that morning. I was assured that my children didn’t know anything and that someone was taking care of them. What happened was they were left without a parent in the sanctuary while their father was being found out. His girlfriend decided this would be the perfect time to cozy up to my children then ages 11, 14, & 15 and tell them about all of the things her and their daddy did together. They never told anyone. They spent the whole day in silence, never saying a word about it until I told them there father wouldn’t be living with us for an undecided amount of time. They had many more details than I did and it was embarrassing for all of us. We lived without him for two months and in a lot of ways it was the best two months of our lives. My girls wouldn’t have anything to do with him but my son decided to see him every week. He was the best father to him in those two months than he had ever been. I truly believe he was appalled at what he had done to his family and in that
time I believe he wanted to change. He went for an intensive
ministry time and he and I actually communicated honestly for maybe the first time ever. He moved back because finances made any other decision impossible. I agreed to work on a reconciliation. Slowly things started to slide back to where they had always been. One thing had changed though, me. During those two months apart I remembered something, I mattered. My whole life was a lie and I was in a free fall and I had three children clinging to me for dear life. But we did it, we lived life well on our own and I will never forget that. I put up with his acting out two more times, then came the last time. I recently caught him watching porn on our computer. Honestly on the list of despicable things I have caught him doing this one is low on the totem pole but it was the straw that broke my back. It was the cavalier nature of the offense. It was only a miracle that I happened to be the one who caught him and not my daughter. He was so into what he was doing he didn’t even realize i was there. I took his house key and told him to get out. The next day he called crying to come home. He had made an appointment with a therapist that specializes in sex addiction and he wanted a 7,221 chance. It is not what I wanted but I allowed him to come home. I had made him leave the night before at bedtime and while my oldest probably knew something was up the other two didn’t and I was not prepared to bring their world down on their heads again. He had his first therapy session this week. So what?
I am tired. We can barely afford therapy for him so it is out of the question for me. Thankfully my best friend is a psychologist though she lives 6 hours away. I read a lot. I do not think I suffer from PTSD but I have come to understand that I deal with a myriad of trauma issues. I do not have a support system, all of my friends are good conservative christian women and the topic of sex addiction, pornography, and adultery don’t really come up. We no longer attend church, I do not have a problem with God I just do not have the heart for it. It has been 18 months since that Sunday and he is no farther into recovery now than he was then. He is allowed to be here as long as a program is put into place with his therapist and he works it hard. Honestly, as of now, if he were “cured” today with a signed guarantee from God I don’t know that it would make a difference for me. I wish I could afford to live and support my children without him. I was busy doing the right thing, being the good wife and the good mommy. I kept my end of the deal and now I am trapped and my children with me because I could never begin to earn enough money to support us. I would have to destroy their lives and take everything familiar from them. I can’t do that to my kids, they have been hurt enough. I guess that is my story. It is difficult to try to write a Cliff Notes version of a 20 year addiction but I am sure anyone who takes the time to read this will understand.