treachery revealed

Today is officially the day I have survived one year.  It is hard to believe I could.  Although the pain has died back, I can still remember how his news stabbed me like a knife straight through the heart.  Til death do us part, I promised and meant it.  Somehow his definition of "parting" and mine were different.  He has a name, but I now refer to him as "Mr. Man".  I'm getting ahead of myself...let's start at the beginning of this story.


We were married for seventeen years, sixteen of which I spent as a stay home mom and housewife.  It was a difficult thing for me to give up my career in science, but I knew I wanted to be home with my children and husband.  And that's what he wanted too.  So, I embarked on a new adventure and loved being home.  Mr. Man traveled quite a bit for his work and we moved several times.  Our marriage wasn't perfect, I don't know many that are, but I loved him dearly and knew we could work through anything. 


Fidelity was a difficult thing for him.  To the outside world, Mr. Man portrayed himself to be an upstanding Christian man; devoted to home and family.  It was just a costume he wore.  He had a hard time being faithful.  It started early on in our marriage; making out with a security guard at work, pornography, that sort of thing.  And over time it escalated to "gentlemen's clubs", prostitutes and internet porn.  For a while, Mr. Man would confess to me and ask forgiveness.  I always forgave him.  I loved him.  After the prostitute though, I begged him to get counseling (which he said he would and did do) and HIV testing.  After that, he didn't confess anymore.  I foolishly thought that meant he was cured.  Not true.  He just got sneaky.  It was easy for him to get away with this betrayal since he traveled so much for his sales engineer position.


In December 2008, right before Christmas, Mr. Man took a two week "business trip" to Minnesota.  Not atypical for him to travel for work, but the length of time was a bit unusal.  He justified it by saying he was spending the weekend with a soccer refereeing friend studying for the National Referee exam.  Mr. Man's avocation is soccer refereeing and coaching and he had positioned himself to move to the rank of National Ref.  I believed him.  As I look back on it now, it is amazing to me that so many people trusted their kids to the nice Mr. Man, unaware that he was an adulteror and internet porn addict.


When he returned from Minnesota, he was secretive and distant.  He kept busy finishing his National Ref application.  With the benefit of hindsight, he was acting guilty.  Guilt over hiding the surgery for one thing and maybe guilt over lying on his application about the number of games he refereed.  He didn't have enough high level games to qualify him, and so he made some up.   


After the holidays were over and the kids back in school, Mr. Man made a lunch date with me.  It was a favorite way for us to have some together time and no interruptions from the kids.  He came home earlier than I expected and said he had something to talk to "his best friend" about.  That is when he plunged the knife into my heart.  His news:  the trip to Minnesota was to a vasectomy reversal clinic.  He had his surgery reversed and planned to "have more children with different women" and have more "romance" in his life.  Our children were not enough for him.  He needed to leave "his legacy in the world by having more children".  (For health reasons, I am no longer able to have children.)  But, he said, he wanted to continue living with me and the children as a family, but invite new women into his life and have new relationships and more children.


I was shocked.  Pain enveloped me.  I begged him to enter counseling with me to save our marriage.  He declined.  I asked him to leave so I could have some space to get my thoughts together. He did.  That was the first day on my journey toward being single again. 


The first parting


It was surreal. I could never have dreamed of divorcing Mr. Man. Was this true? Was it real?




I cried tears I didn't know I had. I didn't leave my bed for days.


I tried to explain what had happened to the children so they would understand why I was so sad. My teenage daughter said she knew it was coming. She had seen texts on Mr. Man's phone from "other women" during the summer and she could tell what was up. She reassured me I would be better off without him. My son was glad to have Mr. Man gone. They had always had an adversarial relationship. For him it was a relief to have Mr Man out of his life. He could live in peace and not fear the threats of beatings anymore.


My family supported me and loved me through. They cried with me. My brothers offered to come down and "have a talk with him". It is good to be loved.


Fear filled me. How could I live without him? How could I support myself and my children? I had been out of the job market for 16 years. How would we survive?


Mr. Man started his first of many text campaigns. "I miss you" "I miss the kids" "I've made a terrible mistake" "Please take me back". I desperately wanted to repair my marriage. My heart was shattered and any trust I had for him evaporated when he revealed his deception. I prayed, then I agreed he could come home after we entered marriage counseling. A few days later he was home and we were in intense counseling.


Counseling was difficult. Our counselor was terrific, but the sessions left me physically spent. We attended sessions several times a week for several weeks. Looking back, there was a pattern to the sessions and it all seemed that Mr. Man was trying to manipulate my feelings and put across his agenda. And, worse yet, to have me buy into his delusion and give him permission to live like that! In our last session, he went off on his twisted rant of how "biblical" it is to have multiple "wives" and many children with many women. He gave mulitple examples of women in the Bible who gave their handmaids to their husbands for procreation. He needed to have many children to leave his legacy behind when he died. No way around it...this man was delusional and needed serious help.


Mr. Man traveled for a few weeks, and while I continued with the sessions, he never returned after that bizarre session in the end of Februrary. A harbinger of something to come.


The Final Parting


In mid March 2009, he left for good. Mr. Man didn't even have the decency this time to tell me first. In a truly twisted move, he told our teenage daughter he was leaving us, and that she and her brother were not enough for him. He even filled her in on details of our intimate relationship! Disgusting. Later that same afternoon, he gathered us in the family room and shared the revelation with the rest of us. After he finished, I simply said "We will be leaving the house for a couple hours. Pack your things. Take what you want. And don't be here when we return." I'm not sure where that strength came from, but I'm glad it was there!




When we returned home, it was with a sense of relief. Although I had hoped counseling would restore our marriage, it was obvious that his heart was not in it. I had no idea how true that was for several more weeks when I began to uncover even more layers of the deception.


I did a few things very right in the following days. I called all my family and my best friend. I called my pastors. I called the counselor, who encouraged me to now widen my circle of support and tell the rest of my friends and trusted people. It was excellent advice. Prayer chains prayed for us and we had support for the scary road ahead. I had a circle of love surrounding me and my children.


I held on to something else my counselor told me. She said it wasn't me that was broken, it was him. He had serious delusions and was in the middle of a classic mid-life crisis.


One of the most amazing things happened April 5. My mother-in-law called the house. This was very unusual as we were estranged. She was concerned that she could not reach Mr. Man on his cell phone and was worried for us. After dodging her questions, she finally demanded to know what was going on. I simply told her Mr. Man didn't live here anymore. With gentle prodding, all the pain and details came spilling out of me. It seems Mr. Man had been telling his Mom that I disliked her and vice versa, very effectively splitting up our relationship. Quite cruel. She has since become a confidant and friend.


Becoming my own Private Detective

An important thing to remember when you walk out on your marriage: change your computer passwords! After the initial shock had worn off, I was angry. How dare he treat me like that! Who does he think he is? Why get mad...get even!



I web searched his name and found multiple email accounts; all with...you guessed it...the same tired old password. A gold mine of information! Now I could read emails from all the women he was farming on the internet!


He joined Date.com on January 12...the day before we entered counseling and he moved home. The very day he was telling me he had a change of heart. He even updated to the Gold Membership on the day we celebrated Valentine's Day. Nice move. He had multiple women on a string on that dating service and was busy setting up "meetings". He joined Pentyoffish.com, too. Lots of available women out there! All the time Mr. Man was "divorced" on his dating profiles, he was intimate with his wife. And to top things off, the picture he used on his profile was from our 15th wedding anniversary!


The truly good find was when I found the correspondance Mr. Man had with a desperate woman in Omaha. Wow was he smooth. And she believed it all! She even slept with him on their first date...which I should say was a week before his final departure from my home. Even after he finally told her we were seperated and filing for divorce (which was also not quite true at the time), she still continued to sleep with him. I am sure she thought she was the "only one", but I have read the emails to know she wasn't. Mr. Man was busy "sowing his seeds and having more romance with many women."


Turns out she is clever on one count. She did manage to get pregnant by him. After having picked him up off the internet in March, she was pregnant in June. She had her "man" and he had his baby factory. A match made in...well somewhere. We now refer to her as Rosemary. Rosemary is due to deliver March 12. Mr. Man proposed to her, managed to get his company to open an office for him in Omaha, moved to Omaha, and they will be married...as soon as he is divorced. We'll see how long that lasts.


I think I have uncovered all his deceptions. It is good to have them out in the open. It has helped me understand how manipulative he has been and how truly delusional he is. It has helped me in my healing.