Marriage on the Edge

When The Truth Comes Out

When you fully trust someone and rely on them, lies and secrets can destroy a relationship. When lies are deep and secrets immense it can totally wreak havoc on the lives involved. Now, my husband will even admit that he was a liar and thought he played a good game. He had all the right words; everything to tide you over until the next bout of suspicion came on. That's how he got by. I wanted to believe him for the longest time until the evidence was just to clear to deny. 

It started with the checks like I said in a previous post. When I finally threatened to call the payroll at his work and really find out what was going on (because come on, if she were really making those mistakes she would be fired) that's when he broke down and said he was taking the pay advances. It was him not her. Okay, now to find out what these pay advances were for. That was easy. Obviously he was using hundreds of dollars a month on weed and chew and stupid crap. To get him to admit that took a long time, but he finally broke down and did.

See the thing that made me so mad was that we were struggling. I would make dinner out of the most menial things in our pantry. We didn't eat out, well Benjamin and I anyways, we barely got our necessities. Here he is, blowing money on dope and a nicotine fix, eating out pretty much daily and we are at home just getting by. All because he wanted to live his life.

I put my foot down. That was it. I had had it. I shouldn't have to sit back and suffer with my child while he "lives it up". No way. I gave him an ultimatum. Stop or move out. He promised over and over again he would stop. Okay, here goes naive me listening to his pleas that we are all he has and he will never hurt us again. He moved to his mom's house for a month to "prove" himself and during this time I got a part-time job to help ends meet and to have back-up "just-in-case". I also looked into low-income housing for myself and Benjamin for the worst case scenario though I was hoping deep down he would change and that he would want to change. 

We start counseling as a couple and he started seeing the pastor at our church for his own counseling. Things seemed to be going pretty good! Life seemed to be getting on track and I was happy. Happy for a little while.

6 months later the same things start happening. Money is missing out of my wallet now but the checks are intact. Oh wow, here we go again. But wait it gets worse. He happened to leave his phone home from work one day so I snooped. And I found terrible pornography on his phone. No not child porn. Acceptable porn to the world, but not to me or to God. This is a boundary I have and he crossed it. From the abuse in my background and the fact that the Bible clearly states that lusting after another woman is adultery I knew this was wrong. Oh so very wrong.There was loads of it in his phone's history. 

When I confronted him with his phone, he denied it. Said he had no idea what I was talking about. That someone must have picked up his phone at work, yada yada yada. Of course I am no idiot. I knew that was lies. So I drilled him until he finally admitted it. I told him if he wanted to keep this marriage alive he was going to have to do better than that. We fought for awhile, then he left for a walk to cool down. When he came back I asked him what is it!? What is going on so bad that you feel this way! He kept telling me he wanted to die and no one cared about him and so many sad horrific things that it broke my heart. Though I knew he had hurt me so bad, I knew it went deeper than that. Some people truly are messed up and hurt others for no reason, but usually there is a reason.

And sure enough. There was a reason. Reasons I cannot post on this blog in detail as that is his life to tell. But I can tell you that it was a family member abusing him, and no one would listen. His mom wouldn't listen when he tried to tell her. The perpetrator got away with it, and he had lived his life since he was 5 in total fear and uncertainty in a lot of areas, especially sexually. With no father, he had no guidance. He is the youngest of 4 boys and was always last, felt uncared for and had to deal with it in this unhealthy manner he had for most of his life.

Finally a breakthrough. This is why God tells us to persevere. We never know what lives we touch by just doing the hardest things in our lives. Now it was time to fix this broken heart.

Counseling was in order. If he wanted this family to stay together and be a healthy family, he was going to have to change his life, or go about it on his own. I called Focus on The Family, which by the way is a terrific resource for family matters and personal issues. The counselor I talked to told me to make a plan. She said that I needed a plan and to pick a counselor for him, not let him choose this time. Obviously he was lying this whole time to everyone. To me, my parents, to Benjamin, to the pastor and our counselors among countless others. So this was the time to get real professional help, not church counselors. And despite the fact of his past, for all I knew that would be excuse to keep on being the person he was and not get help.

She talked to me for quite a while. Working with me through it and giving me the truth straight up, no sugar attached. It was the conversation I needed. She said that if he agreed to my plan, that he should stay in the house, not necessarily share a bed, but he needed to live with us. He needed support which he didn't get anywhere else and he needed to see the unconditional love. If he wouldn't agree he needed to move out and I needed to move on. He would plainly make his choice then. Himself or his family and that would be that.

He agreed to do anything to keep our marriage together. He agreed to apologize to our other counselors, which he did do. He had a lot of people disappointed with him. He looked like a complete fool to a lot of people and not many would trust him. That was his ultimate low.

The counselor I had talked to agreed to have a phone meeting with us, as we were in Michigan and they are in Colorado, and get a feel for who Lawrence was and if he really was sorry and wanted to get help and what kind of help. She was willing to help us find a counselor. The meeting went well, I must say. She was very point blank with Lawrence and myself. She prayed with us and then actually found us a counselor Lawrence could Skype with once a week for meetings. The counselor dealt strictly with sexual addictions and pornography problems. This is exactly what he needed! Finally some real help! It only took a step of wild faith to get there and a lot of shakes on my end to see that my husband desperately wanted to be loved and feel loved and was searching for it in so many of the wrong places.