I havent had the desire to sit down and type this out for a few weeks now, but I think its time to start telling my story again and get back to getting it all out and down in writing to straighten out my thoughts.
Well, the night that the crap really hit the fan, not the night that everything came out, but the first time we really sat down and I was still on my defense trying to keep my secrets she made me a "deal". I knew it was a bad idea, I knew it wouldnt fix anything, but it was my only choice, my only chance to keep things from falling apart right then and there. She demanded I buy her a breast augmentation surgery. She said she was self concious about all the other breasts I had seen and that hers didn't live up to my expectations due to her having had and breast fed three children. She was wrong, I never judged her against another woman and I never had any problems or complaints or secret desires for her breasts to be "improved". I said OK. I said I wanted to go see a marriage counselor before we made the appointment for the surgery, but I said ok, praying that the counselor would see my side of things and tell her the surgery wouldn't really address or correct any of her insecurities or feelings. He didn't.. he told her to go for it, that it would make her feel better. He also said several other things that in hind-sight were complete garbage.
I took off a thursday and friday for her surgery and for the first time in 4 years got into debt to pay for her surgery through a personal loan. I lost my job the next monday.
It wasn't long after the surgery that she started texting an old guy friend, we will call him D.
One night me and my wife were sitting on the couch watching a movie and I looked at her phone. She had sent text messages about strip teases and her breasts to D. I confronted her. She took the keys to the car and left around 10pm, not returning until about 3 am. I asked her who she was with all night and she told me her sisters, and her sisters friend and her sisters friends cousin. I had a problem with it and she just got more angry at me as if every other woman in the world leaves for all night avoiding her husbands call and texts and it was reasonable.
A short time later, on August 5th, 2011 my wife snuck out at 11:30pm. I heard the back door close and tried to chase her but she had already left. I checked for her in all of our cars, sheds, yard, I am confident she was gone. It was about 4:30 AM that she came back inside. I (angrily) asked her where she had gone to and she told me she went with D, and they went to a park and talked. I looked at her phone again and he sent a text asking "how do I get back to the freeway again?" I told him to take "F*&^* off BLVD" He proceeded to text me and threaten me several times to which I replied turn your car around, I'm waiting and then stopped texting him. I also read the previous texts to and from him that night and saw that he text her at 10pm saying, "don't forget about me" to which she replied, "I have to wait until he falls asleep, the back door is really loud". Her story changed a couple weeks later that she was hiding in the van in our driveway for most of the night and really only spent less than an hour with the home-wrecker.
I hit my lowest spot in life to date at this point.
Lets go back to May 2011. I started meeting with my bishop. I confessed my sins, I asked for his help in moving forward. I was as sincere as anyone has ever been. My life had been on hold for a decade because of my failure to come unto repentance. There was nothing stopping me anymore.
I made as much restitution as possible for multiple wrongs I've done, and got my life on track. I have actually just been interviewed by my bishop and been found worthy to be ordained to the office of Elder in the Mel. Priesthood. I am waiting a call from the stake presidency to set up an interview with them. Two weeks ago I got a conditional use temple recommend for the first honest time in my life. This situation has in a way been the best thing to ever happen to me. It gave me the motivation I needed to get my life back on track. I know that Jesus Christ is my savior. My brother who made everything possible through his atoning sacrifice. I know he is there for me. I know I surpassed my mortal abilities to forgive and be patient months ago. I know he is holding me up and getting me through this.
Back to Auguust.
I experienced some crazy emotions here. At this point I was confident that my wife was physically cheating on me. At this point she actually came out and told me she slept with her sisters friends cousin the first night she left. She told me she had sex with him in the drivers seat of my car. I don't fully understand them, but when I learned about her unfaithfulness I reacted in a way entirely different than she did. I wanted to hold her, I wanted to feel like she was mine. I wanted to be intimate with her. I think that is backwards, I should have wanted her gone, I should have wanted to call her a whore, a slut, a bitch. But I just wanted her to come home and say "I'm sorry, I love you". I felt this everyday for what seemed like a long time. Everytime I got in my car I could only think about my wife riding another man in that very spot.
I made the decision. I made the decision to try and get over my hurt and bitter feelings towards her. I decided to do everything I could to forgive and forget her tresspasses on a daily or more frequent basis.
Her texts continued with D but I don't remember her leaving the house at night to be with him or further physical interaction with him until November.
In October she entered into a relationship with a man named L. Her ex husbands ex brother in law. The guy was an outright alcoholic, had a criminal rap sheet a mile long including child abuse, dishonorably discharged from the military. He was a real piece of work. She text and called him alot. She lied to me and went on an 8 hour long hike with him. I found out through our 5 year old daughter that he went on the hike with them. Let me point out that she deliberately and specifically lied to me about this atleast a dozen times when asked yes or no questions. In early November she told me she was done with L because he was an idiot and a drunkard.
She then started going to her brothers house in the evenings to hang out, de stress, and "get away", ignoring my calls and texts, and coming back hours later than she said she would be (often in the early hours of the morning). I tried to not pass judgement here, thinking that she really was having a hard time and needed to get out. Turns out her brother introduced her to her newest love interest. J. I don't know alot about J. I know he has a drinking problem and has already told her that he looks at porn. I know he has kids he can't see. I know he is officially dating my wife in a "steady" relationship. I know he works nights, and his nights off are Wed. and Sat. I know that every single Wed and Sat night him and my wife have had sleepovers for the last 3+ weeks. I know my daughters talk about him alot. I know my wife told me she loves him and he makes her happy. I know that seeing them on a date. Seeing his car in front of her fathers home where she is staying. Thinking about them every wed and sat, especially when my son is there and I know he is watching his mother with another man. I know that this is the worst I've ever felt in my life. I know that I 've never experienced real panic attacks, not being able to breath, sweating, and generally feeling like I am litterally going to die until then. I know that I can't even describe the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain I feel about my wife being with another man.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Background
I was born into the LDS faith, to parents who divorced before I was old enough to remember.
My first exposure to pornography was when my neighbors invited me and my brother over to play at their house. They ended up on the computer looking at unsavory pages and I left before seeing too much. I didn't have a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ at this point in my life and I dwelt on these images for awhile until my curiosity got the better of me to get on our computer when the opportunity arose. It went downhill from there. Before long masturbation and pornography became an intertwined issue in my life.
Around the age of 17 I went to my bishop. I told him about my immorality and felt the weight lifted off my shoulders. I don't remember how long I abstained from pornography, but girlfriends came and went and church attendance dwindled to naught and soon I was back into my old ways. At this point I felt it was too late. I remembered the words were strongly impressed upon me from a conference address about "the days of the repent and go missionaries are over". And I started living a lie. I told family and friends that I intended on serving a mission. I told them money was the only thing holding me back. I felt it was too late to go forward to the bishop again. As if I really thought that he wouldn't have known my unworthiness if I had ever submitted my application. I became more sexually active. I was in the middle of this giant world of crud and despair when I met my wife. She lived only a few blocks from me, but we had never met.
She was in the process of a divorce and I knew within a few weeks of meeting her that I wanted to marry her, I just didn't entirely understand what that meant and how my actions would affect her.
Due to her recent past with scum ball guys, I put on my mask of a perfect life. I am not going to say I wasn't myself. I acted like the person I wanted to be. I finally convinced her of the goodness of my heart and my true care for her. We started dating officially a few months after her divorce was final in November of 2007.
In February she told me she was going to move out of state because she could no longer subject herself and her child to the situation she was in living with her parent and not being allowed to raise her child as she saw fit. I told her that moving to NYC to live with family wasn't the only option. I proposed to her via text message and she said yes. Our engagement was set for 1 week. We were to elope to Las Vegas the following Saturday and get married. I leaked my plans to one person, who leaked them to my father. My father called me in to speak to him and offered me nothing but support. He gave me a few hundred dollars to help offset the cost of a ring, expressed his love towards my bride to be, and offered us his home as a place to hold the ceremony. We accepted due to the love and support we received but hadn't expected.
The first thing I remember upon returning from our Honeymoon was laying in my room at my mothers house where we were going to live for a few months until we could find a place of our own. She had prepared me a meal of Top-Ramen mixed with Spaghettio's and we lay in our room talking and munching on the food. I was on cloud 9, but the reality of marriage had not hit me yet. We hadn't even picked up our two daughters from the sitter yet. She said to me "If there is anything I need to know about you or your past, tell me now. I can leave now before it gets complicated, only a handful of people know about our marriage and it can save us heartache and embarrassment." At that point I felt like I could NEVER tell her. But I vowed to never give into the temptation again. My secret attempt at breaking the chains of pornography failed. A few months later I sought it out as soon as I was alone and saw that we had an unsecured Internet connection within range of our new home.
I don't think I viewed it again for over a year beyond that. We never established a habit of attending church. About the only thing we did right was I don't think we missed a night of family prayer in the first 3 years of our marriage. I will take the blame for the brunt of this. There were weeks here and there that she would want to go and I would discourage her because it was such a process to get the kids ready and get them to try and behave as we wanted; especially when church overlapped their nap time.
Then we got a new home, we signed our very own mortgage and moved to a place we could really call our own. I shortly submitted myself to the will of satan and indulged in my weakness. I would estimate that over the course of two years I indulged in pornography and masturbation approximately 15 times. I felt shamed, and when I did give into the beast I would not be intimate with my wife for a time. I knew she deserved better, and I wanted her help but I didn't know how to ask for it. We never developed true communication.
Out of nowhere appeared a woman's shirt in our van. I do not know where it came from to this day, but it raised suspicion in my wife and she started digging. When she started digging she found evidence of my pre-marital sexual history of which I had hidden most from her (she didn't think I was a virgin, but she didn't know my whole past).
She asked me about a specific girl several times whom I interacted with quite regularly up through even my relationship with my wife blossomed. I felt backed into a corner, and I lied to her. I told her nothing went on with us. She contacted the girl on facebook and learned of my lies. She also contacted old friends to ask them about anything and everything.
I admitted my relationship with the first girl, but denied other accusations. Before long the flood gates were opened and we sat down at her request and tried to recount EVERYTHING I had never told her.
The problem here is that I don't have a vivid memory of my relationships and the details of those relationships from my past. I tried to fill in the blanks to appease her, and tried to put my emotions and feelings into words, but most of the time it came out wrong, or she interpreted it in the worst possible way. I wanted to work with her and tell her everything, but the fact of the matter is that I couldn't due to the boundaries of my memories of such events. I knew it wasn't typically productive to hash over all the details. I knew it would do little to no more than cause pain, but I felt I had no choice. I had to do what she asked in an effort to establish trust. I know for a fact about how man women I have "been with", and I told her that, but she wanted nitty gritty details and I tried to indulge her by filling in the gaps to the best of my abilities to try and establish trust to move forward. This is the point that I came clean about my struggles with pornography.
We went and saw a marriage counselor. He gave us a few good tools and concentrated on leaving the past behind us instead of trying to move it. She agreed that she would and could do this, but as soon as the sessions were over she would take back everything she told the counselor.
I felt extremely conflicted here, my life was in shambles and things were just bad. She wanted to move out, she already wanted a divorce, but we were trying.
I felt conflicted in that if I had told her of my indiscretions and struggles with pornography that I never would have gotten her heart. I never would have had my son. I never would have gotten the time with her that I did. That time that I value more than any other point in my life, ever. That time that has really augmented my growing up by becoming an insta-dad. Our marriage changed my life and I wouldn't ever take it back. At the same time I know my initial lies of omission and later blatant lies were wrong and she didn't deserve that. It took everything I had to convince her that there were decent guys out there still after her divorce, and that I was one of those guys who could and would take care of her and love her. I didn't see any other way than through secrets.
I think this is where I will stop for now. I apologize that this seems to jump around, as previously mentioned this is the first time I am putting this in writing. One major purpose of this blog is to make sense of my mess of a mind. To sort through it. Sometimes I guess you have to make a bigger mess before you can clean it.
My first exposure to pornography was when my neighbors invited me and my brother over to play at their house. They ended up on the computer looking at unsavory pages and I left before seeing too much. I didn't have a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ at this point in my life and I dwelt on these images for awhile until my curiosity got the better of me to get on our computer when the opportunity arose. It went downhill from there. Before long masturbation and pornography became an intertwined issue in my life.
Around the age of 17 I went to my bishop. I told him about my immorality and felt the weight lifted off my shoulders. I don't remember how long I abstained from pornography, but girlfriends came and went and church attendance dwindled to naught and soon I was back into my old ways. At this point I felt it was too late. I remembered the words were strongly impressed upon me from a conference address about "the days of the repent and go missionaries are over". And I started living a lie. I told family and friends that I intended on serving a mission. I told them money was the only thing holding me back. I felt it was too late to go forward to the bishop again. As if I really thought that he wouldn't have known my unworthiness if I had ever submitted my application. I became more sexually active. I was in the middle of this giant world of crud and despair when I met my wife. She lived only a few blocks from me, but we had never met.
She was in the process of a divorce and I knew within a few weeks of meeting her that I wanted to marry her, I just didn't entirely understand what that meant and how my actions would affect her.
Due to her recent past with scum ball guys, I put on my mask of a perfect life. I am not going to say I wasn't myself. I acted like the person I wanted to be. I finally convinced her of the goodness of my heart and my true care for her. We started dating officially a few months after her divorce was final in November of 2007.
In February she told me she was going to move out of state because she could no longer subject herself and her child to the situation she was in living with her parent and not being allowed to raise her child as she saw fit. I told her that moving to NYC to live with family wasn't the only option. I proposed to her via text message and she said yes. Our engagement was set for 1 week. We were to elope to Las Vegas the following Saturday and get married. I leaked my plans to one person, who leaked them to my father. My father called me in to speak to him and offered me nothing but support. He gave me a few hundred dollars to help offset the cost of a ring, expressed his love towards my bride to be, and offered us his home as a place to hold the ceremony. We accepted due to the love and support we received but hadn't expected.
The first thing I remember upon returning from our Honeymoon was laying in my room at my mothers house where we were going to live for a few months until we could find a place of our own. She had prepared me a meal of Top-Ramen mixed with Spaghettio's and we lay in our room talking and munching on the food. I was on cloud 9, but the reality of marriage had not hit me yet. We hadn't even picked up our two daughters from the sitter yet. She said to me "If there is anything I need to know about you or your past, tell me now. I can leave now before it gets complicated, only a handful of people know about our marriage and it can save us heartache and embarrassment." At that point I felt like I could NEVER tell her. But I vowed to never give into the temptation again. My secret attempt at breaking the chains of pornography failed. A few months later I sought it out as soon as I was alone and saw that we had an unsecured Internet connection within range of our new home.
I don't think I viewed it again for over a year beyond that. We never established a habit of attending church. About the only thing we did right was I don't think we missed a night of family prayer in the first 3 years of our marriage. I will take the blame for the brunt of this. There were weeks here and there that she would want to go and I would discourage her because it was such a process to get the kids ready and get them to try and behave as we wanted; especially when church overlapped their nap time.
Then we got a new home, we signed our very own mortgage and moved to a place we could really call our own. I shortly submitted myself to the will of satan and indulged in my weakness. I would estimate that over the course of two years I indulged in pornography and masturbation approximately 15 times. I felt shamed, and when I did give into the beast I would not be intimate with my wife for a time. I knew she deserved better, and I wanted her help but I didn't know how to ask for it. We never developed true communication.
Out of nowhere appeared a woman's shirt in our van. I do not know where it came from to this day, but it raised suspicion in my wife and she started digging. When she started digging she found evidence of my pre-marital sexual history of which I had hidden most from her (she didn't think I was a virgin, but she didn't know my whole past).
She asked me about a specific girl several times whom I interacted with quite regularly up through even my relationship with my wife blossomed. I felt backed into a corner, and I lied to her. I told her nothing went on with us. She contacted the girl on facebook and learned of my lies. She also contacted old friends to ask them about anything and everything.
I admitted my relationship with the first girl, but denied other accusations. Before long the flood gates were opened and we sat down at her request and tried to recount EVERYTHING I had never told her.
The problem here is that I don't have a vivid memory of my relationships and the details of those relationships from my past. I tried to fill in the blanks to appease her, and tried to put my emotions and feelings into words, but most of the time it came out wrong, or she interpreted it in the worst possible way. I wanted to work with her and tell her everything, but the fact of the matter is that I couldn't due to the boundaries of my memories of such events. I knew it wasn't typically productive to hash over all the details. I knew it would do little to no more than cause pain, but I felt I had no choice. I had to do what she asked in an effort to establish trust. I know for a fact about how man women I have "been with", and I told her that, but she wanted nitty gritty details and I tried to indulge her by filling in the gaps to the best of my abilities to try and establish trust to move forward. This is the point that I came clean about my struggles with pornography.
We went and saw a marriage counselor. He gave us a few good tools and concentrated on leaving the past behind us instead of trying to move it. She agreed that she would and could do this, but as soon as the sessions were over she would take back everything she told the counselor.
I felt extremely conflicted here, my life was in shambles and things were just bad. She wanted to move out, she already wanted a divorce, but we were trying.
I felt conflicted in that if I had told her of my indiscretions and struggles with pornography that I never would have gotten her heart. I never would have had my son. I never would have gotten the time with her that I did. That time that I value more than any other point in my life, ever. That time that has really augmented my growing up by becoming an insta-dad. Our marriage changed my life and I wouldn't ever take it back. At the same time I know my initial lies of omission and later blatant lies were wrong and she didn't deserve that. It took everything I had to convince her that there were decent guys out there still after her divorce, and that I was one of those guys who could and would take care of her and love her. I didn't see any other way than through secrets.
I think this is where I will stop for now. I apologize that this seems to jump around, as previously mentioned this is the first time I am putting this in writing. One major purpose of this blog is to make sense of my mess of a mind. To sort through it. Sometimes I guess you have to make a bigger mess before you can clean it.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Its a long story
We were young when we entered into wedlock, and now it appears like we will be one of the statistics, the ones we knew all about and said we refused to become.
I married my wife about 4 years ago. She was the mother of 2 young children from a previous marriage of hers. I knew she had a lot of baggage resulting from physical, emotional, and mental abuse occuring in that marriage.
I thought I could help her, I thought I could be the perfect husband and be the guy she thought didn't existed. I thought wrong.
Those two children are my own, the oldest was 6 months old when I met her and her sperm donor was locked up for sex crimes. The youngest came into this world with me pacing in the hospital hallway waiting for her first cries. I am losing them.
We got pregnant only a few months after our marriage, and we now have a 2.5 year old son who was born in 2009. Things were great. We got our own place, we had our child together, and we fell into a rutt. It was comfortable, we knew what to expect, but it was not conducive to proper communication or growing into the best friends we should have become. We were *ARE* young, and both of us grew up in broken homes were the way to communicate was to not communicate.
I have dealt with a demon, my temptation, my weakness since about the age of 13. I have a problem with pornography. I kept this from my wife. It took me a year to convince her that i was a decent man. That I was worth it and I never saw the opportunity to come clean about it.
I also kept secret some of my pre-marital sexual indiscretions.
As secrets usually do, they came to light.
I am creating this blog mostly in an effort to vent and as a way to put my thoughts and emotions into writing to better understand where I am at. But if someone comes across this and it can help them avoid making some of the same mistakes or validate someone elses sincere pain, then I have done more than I set out to do.
I don't much feel like writing anymore tonight. Its 11pm and depression is weighing heavily on me.
I will pick up around May 2011 on my next entry; when things took a turn from a normal, yet still suffering relationship into an imminent train-wreck.
I married my wife about 4 years ago. She was the mother of 2 young children from a previous marriage of hers. I knew she had a lot of baggage resulting from physical, emotional, and mental abuse occuring in that marriage.
I thought I could help her, I thought I could be the perfect husband and be the guy she thought didn't existed. I thought wrong.
Those two children are my own, the oldest was 6 months old when I met her and her sperm donor was locked up for sex crimes. The youngest came into this world with me pacing in the hospital hallway waiting for her first cries. I am losing them.
We got pregnant only a few months after our marriage, and we now have a 2.5 year old son who was born in 2009. Things were great. We got our own place, we had our child together, and we fell into a rutt. It was comfortable, we knew what to expect, but it was not conducive to proper communication or growing into the best friends we should have become. We were *ARE* young, and both of us grew up in broken homes were the way to communicate was to not communicate.
I have dealt with a demon, my temptation, my weakness since about the age of 13. I have a problem with pornography. I kept this from my wife. It took me a year to convince her that i was a decent man. That I was worth it and I never saw the opportunity to come clean about it.
I also kept secret some of my pre-marital sexual indiscretions.
As secrets usually do, they came to light.
I am creating this blog mostly in an effort to vent and as a way to put my thoughts and emotions into writing to better understand where I am at. But if someone comes across this and it can help them avoid making some of the same mistakes or validate someone elses sincere pain, then I have done more than I set out to do.
I don't much feel like writing anymore tonight. Its 11pm and depression is weighing heavily on me.
I will pick up around May 2011 on my next entry; when things took a turn from a normal, yet still suffering relationship into an imminent train-wreck.
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