Things
get tough from here on. I will warn that the content to follow may be upsetting
to some. I share this not to humiliate or defame, (which is why I don’t give
names) but to share the truth, and how the hardest things we
face in life can be eased and tenderly overseen by the Lord. What I’m about to
share has brought me closer to God in a way I cannot begin to express. I have
witnessed His hand in remarkable ways, and if I don’t share the miracles I have
been given, I would be incredibly ungrateful. I know the Lord wants me to tell
my story, for whatever reason He sees fit. He knows far more than me, and I’ve
learned to trust Him and obey when He gives me direction. My direction now is
to tell how I came to be divorced.
At
the beginning of 2019, as mentioned, I had begun to feel things were off in my
marriage. My husband had become increasingly closed off and distant, and the
Spirit left the house whenever he arrived home. Tension filled the air whenever
he was around.
My
husband was incredibly protective of his phone. He had locks and passwords I couldn’t
crack, and even though he knew how to access everything on my phone/laptop etc.,
he refused to let me even touch his and would get angry if he saw me pick up
his phone. I became paranoid and agitated as I watched him texting but refusing
to tell me who he was talking to. His phone was completely off limits to me,
and I would be severely reprimanded if I so much as looked at it.
I
want to make his protectiveness of his phone clear as much of what is to unfold
revolves around his use of it, and how the Lord gave me miracles so I could
find what I needed to escape. I won’t mince words here and I will say directly
that my husband had become verbally and emotionally abusive. After our
separation he was diagnosed by a professional as narcissistic, impulsive, and
would do harmful things to garner reactions and attention. In the midst of the
dark part of our marriage at the end, he used these things against me to keep
me quiet and submissive. He made me believe I was useless, lazy, ugly, mean,
selfish, and a terrible wife and mother. I worked as hard as I could to try to
mend things. I worked a thirty-five-hour work week, I was enrolled in online
college classes, and I was expected to tend to all the needs of our children
while also somehow maintaining a house and making sure he had dinner every day.
Sufficed to say, I failed at juggling all the balls I was supposed to juggle. At
the time, I felt overwhelming guilt for failing, especially because I would be
heavily criticized for it from not just my husband, but his mother and other
family members, and even some of his friends. I was exhausted and beaten down,
so questioning or fighting over my husband’s overprotectiveness of his phone fell
low on my priority list.
However,
one morning, he left his phone unlocked and, on the bed, while he took a
shower. This was one of the rare mornings he got out of bed before I got our
children and me out the door for work and school, because yes, I did all of the
morning routine on my own. An image on his phone caught my attention.
Horrified, I picked up the phone and flicked through several images of anthropomorphic
homosexual pornography. With shaking hands, I held up the phone and asked him
to explain. He couldn’t. He stood dumbfounded looking between me and his phone.
Finally, he said he couldn’t explain it away. He knew he’d been caught. He
tried to grasp my shoulder, but I pulled away. I felt sick to the stomach from
his betrayal and confused by what it meant. I hurried to leave and get the
girls and me as far from him as possible. Before I left for work, I told him he
needed to either go to the bishop or move out.
He
chose to go to the bishop.
After
his meeting with bishop, he came to me and explained himself to me. He said he
was what is called a “furry” and so his sexual desires are piqued by the animal
imagery, costumes, and so forth. He also confessed to being drunk on a recent
work trip to the point where he vomited in the hotel room and had a massive
hangover in the morning.
When
I asked him if he had same sex attraction, he flat out denied it and said he
liked to imagine those images were him. I was foolish enough to believe him.
He
told me to help him overcome his porn addiction I needed to be more sexually
available. With my desire to help him, I agreed. Unfortunately, this meant I
suffered from degrading and humiliating sex. I felt like a piece of meat to
release his excessive sexual needs. To put it bluntly, he’d hump me to the
point where it hurt me, but he wouldn’t stop until he had his release. Then,
he’d simply roll over and ignore me. It made me feel like trash. I hated it.
Soon
after this, I underwent gastric sleeve surgery. I told him before going in that
it meant we wouldn’t be able to have sex for a while as I recovered. Looking
back now, this lack of sex likely became his undoing.
In
the time that followed, he became increasingly distant and irritable. I knew
he’d gotten involved in furry chatrooms and I felt uncomfortable with it. Whenever
I voiced my objections, he yelled at me and told me to stop being paranoid.
During
another work trip, his car was repossessed while he was gone, leaving me
standing in the street with my confused and distressed eight-year-old daughter.
He had lied to me! He told me he’d been making the payments, but he was more
than three months behind. When he returned home, I dragged him to the bishop
and explained that I was just about done with his money mismanagement and
something needed to change immediately. Bishop agreed and encouraged us to get
marriage counseling again. While my husband’s parents bailed him out with his
car so he could have his vehicle back, I also discovered we were on the brink
of foreclosure on the house, which was another bill he had lied to me about
paying.
I’d
had enough. I took over all the bills and the budget, giving him strict and
tight funds to use. Although I managed to catch up the mortgage and most of our
other bills, he saw this take over as a personal insult, like I wanted to ruin
him and refused to support him. From my perspective, I had gone years trying to
support him, trusting him with our finances even though I watched him blow our
money over and over. I’d tried to do the financial self-reliance class with
him, among other things, but he still couldn’t stop the hole money burned in
his pocket. And so, I took drastic measures in a desperate attempt to keep our
family afloat so our children would have a roof over their heads and food on
their table.
We
started counselling. After our first session, he told the counselor he wanted
me to stop yelling and make dinner every night. I said I wanted him to read
scriptures with us in the morning and lead as the priesthood holder in the
house.
I
did what he wanted. He didn’t do what I wanted.
When
we returned to the counselor, my husband’s excuse was that I’d done the things
he’d asked with a bad attitude. He justified not doing what I wanted because I
was horrible and miserable to be around and my attitude about doing what he
wanted killed his motivation to do what I asked for in return. The counselor said,
“But she did do what you asked.”
This
just made my husband angry. Counseling wasn’t going well.
During
this time, I managed to pick up pink eye from work. Working with kids has some downsides
at times! As pink eye is highly contagious, I had to stay home. It was probably
the worst case of it I can recall having. My eyes were sealed shut in the
morning and I had to feel my way to the bathroom to flush them out. I’d barely
gone back to work after my surgery and I was out again.
My
second day of home remedies, I couldn’t tolerate the itching and goop any
longer. I called my husband and asked him to stop on the way home and get me
some eyedrops. I promised to have dinner ready, and he told me he’d get the
drops and be home by six.
I
made dinner. Six came and went. I fed my children while the food was still hot.
Seven came and went. I bathed the girls, got them ready for bed, read a story,
and got them in bed. Eight had passed by this time. At eight thirty, I called
my husband to find out why he was more than an hour and a half late when I had
explained how miserable I felt with my sickness. He answered and told me he had
driven a friend home. I thought he meant stopping somewhere on the way, but
that didn’t explain the two and a half hours. When I asked where he was, he
said he was on the other side of Phoenix. I was mortified. Hadn’t I explained
my sickness clearly? Hadn’t I told him I would have dinner ready for him if he just
grabbed me some eye drops and given a specific time? I begged him to come home
because I desperately needed eyedrops. He said he’d come home when he was ready
because he was helping this friend with his college classes. I became
frustrated, wondering why his wife being sick took a backseat to some random
college kid. I yelled at him, trying desperately to get my message across since
he clearly wasn’t hearing me. I was highly infectious and had our children in
bed. I couldn’t go anywhere and I needed relief from my misery. He yelled back,
telling me to stop being so selfish and he would come home when he was good and
ready. He hung up.
I
tried calling back. Again and again. I tried texting, but he ignored me.
Finally,
exhausted and miserable, I flushed out my eyes again and climbed into bed. Not
long afterward, a crippling pain erupted from deep within my belly. It felt
like a tearing inside me, ripping me from the inside out. I couldn’t move. Tears
rolled free from the agony, and I begged to the Lord, confused and alarmed by
this strange and debilitating pain. It spread over my body, radiating from my
core and the Lord answered, “I cannot stop this. You need to feel it.”
Never
have I felt anything like this pain before. It was different to childbirth or
dislocating joints which I had experienced. It was like it came from something
beyond the physical. However, although this pain lasted for almost a half hour,
I felt the Lord with me. He couldn’t take it away, but He could help me through
it.
After
the pain finally subsided, I looked at the unanswered texts and calls and I
knew, deep in my heart, that my husband had just cheated on me. I sent him a
message saying as much.
It
wasn’t until much later when I mentioned this event to a friend that I realized what
the pain was. The pain came from my temple marriage covenants literally
breaking. My husband had broken them, and I felt it. I’d always held my
temple covenants as sacred and knew they were extremely powerful, but now I
know how deep and binding they truly are. To feel that pain from the breaking
of sacred covenants made in the temple affirms to me their divine power and my
responsibility to keep those vows with the Lord.
When
my husband arrived home close to midnight, he woke me just to yell at me and
say how dare I accuse him of cheating. Still sick, and alarmed by what had
happened to me, I didn’t resist his barrage of insults and demeaning remarks, I
just wanted to sleep. My heart hurt, and I knew what he’d done.
At
our counseling, my husband brought up my accusation. I couldn’t say anything in
response. I’d felt he’d done it. I had no proof, but I felt it. He kept saying
“I’m a good guy,” over and over like he needed to prove it to everyone else and
himself. Deep in my heart, I felt the pains of his words as the whispering
came, “He was once, but now he casts all that’s good aside.”
Somewhere
in there, we had another fight. I’m not sure exactly where it fits in, but he
left to go—surprise, surprise--help his mother. I stayed home with the girls
and worked on my college classes. I was studying Eternal Families at that time
and did work on what to value most and whether to be more concerned about
winning a fight or preserving a relationship. So, that evening, when I went
over to meet my husband, I took the time to apologize. I tried to hug him, but
he pushed me away. He said, “What’s wrong with you? You’re bipolar or
something.”
I
told him about my lesson, but he didn’t care. He scolded me for being the most
selfish and mean person he knew and then told me he didn’t love me anymore
because I was impossible to love. He went on and on about how horrible I am and
how everything wrong was my fault and I needed to change.
The
worst part? I believed it. I believed I was the most horrendous person alive
and I deserved to feel like the scum between his toes. He had successfully
whittled down my confidence and perception of myself that I now believed every
horrible insult he threw at me. I believed I was fat, ugly, selfish, mean,
unsupportive, lazy, a terrible mother, hateful, and the list goes on. I was so
destroyed inside that even when I prayed, I didn’t see that all these things
were completely false. I couldn’t feel the Spirit tell me they were wrong, but
sought out answers on how I could change myself to please a man who didn’t want
me to please him, a man who had turned me into his personal punching bag to
project all of his own self-loathing onto.
Earlier
that year, before I even found the porn on his phone, he had stopped attending
church. He said it was because I harassed him about getting ready, but even
when I stopped and focused on getting the girls and me ready without him, he
still didn’t come. The only time I recall him attending church was Mother’s
Day, and even then he ignored me and spent the entire time on his phone. In the
special Relief Society held, Bishop said some beautiful, tender words that
really struck my heart. I had to leave and hid in the bathroom to cry. Everything
the bishop said I didn’t experience. In fact, I’d been made to believe I was a horrible
wife and mother and didn’t deserve any respect.
On
my way back to the room, I hesitated outside the door. I didn’t know if I could
face a room full of women who were amazing when I was so pathetic. The husband
of a friend of mine walked into the building. He and my friend had both gone through
terrible divorces before finding one another, and I have tremendous respect for
them both for their strength to go on. He saw me standing by the door to the
room and complimented me for being a strong and wonderful mother. I burst into
tears again. It was hard for me to fathom such a thing when my own husband
constantly told me otherwise. Poor guy gave me a hug, clearly not sure what to
do. But when I pulled myself back together, I could return to the room. And I’m
glad I did. The women embraced me and loved me and so many told me how amazing
I was to be able to work, study, raise children, and still attend church on my
own. All of it on my own. I would say, “My house is messy,” and they’d laugh
and say, “If that’s all that’s wrong, you’re doing pretty well!” My ward
sisters gave me strength. This was the beginning of a turning point for me.
At
work, I had coworkers who had become wonderful friends. They showed me love and
lifted me up, telling me I was the opposite to everything my husband would tell
me at home. Meanwhile, he was coming home less and less, and later and later. He
told me to cancel our counselling because I wasn’t learning or changing so it
was pointless. But I had begun to rise up inside. I would watch him and see how
mean and selfish he was, not me. I realized that he had been projecting
onto me, blaming my struggles to keep a clean house and make dinner for him, as
well as my doubts regarding his lack of real estate work as the reason why our
marriage was failing. Truth be told, he never once supported me. He openly
objected to me returning to school and hated the choices I’d made for
employment because it didn’t fit what he wanted me to do. The only
reason he had for me being a bad mother was that the girls looked “scruffy”. I
made sure they had a bath every night and clean clothes, and if their clothes became
scruffy, I couldn’t replace them because he’d already blown our budget. It
began to sink in that, considering what I had to work against, I was doing a
pretty decent job. However, calling me a bad mother was another projection of
his. One evening, while he was laying on the bed using his phone again, I got
into an argument with our oldest who refused to do her chore. After some
yelling back and forth, he stormed into the living room. He grabbed her and
yanked her over his knees and started smacking her hard, over and over. She was
screaming and crying, and I said he needed to stop. He paused his beating to
glare at me and said how dare I undermine him, and he would keep hitting her
until she stopped crying. I was so frightened and scared, all I could do was
watch my child be beaten by her father until she finally managed to suck in her
sobbing. When he released her, all she did was run and cry in her room. Her
chore never got done, and instead, she treated me with more contempt.
Despite
everything, when it came to saving our marriage, I was fighting a losing battle
and it had exhausted me.
One
Friday night. It was a rare occasion when I stayed up later than my husband.
When I came to bed, he had left his phone on my pillow. When I picked it up to
move it onto the charger, I saw messages from strange people, some of them
suggestive in nature. I tried to unlock the phone to figure out what was going
on, but I couldn’t. Instead, I took a photo of his screen with my phone and
went to bed.
In
the morning, after his phone had woken me several times during the night, I
tried to unlock it again as it had even more of these strange messages on it. He
woke to me doing this and turned savage on me. He raised his fist to me, but
somehow didn’t actually hit me. I thought he would. He stormed from the house
swearing to not come back all day because of my behavior, leaving me frightened
and shaken. I went into the kitchen to prep breakfast for me and the girls
while they were still in bed and cried the whole time. I didn’t know what to
do. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I’d tried counselling with the
bishop and a marriage therapist, and he had cancelled them. I’d tried church
classes, and he openly hated them and told me he didn’t need them, but that I
clearly did. I worked hard and studied hard, but nothing I did was good enough
for him or good enough to mend our relationship. Standing up for myself caused
fights and backing down made him treat me like garbage. Apologizing made him
call me bipolar and crazy.
While
I worked in the kitchen that morning, a friend called. When I answered, she
simply told me that she felt impressed to call me and tell me to go to the
temple that day and she would watch the girls. This made me cry all over again.
God knew me and knew my pain, and through this friend, He was calling me to His
house. So, I got my girls up, dressed, and fed, and dropped them with my
friend.
I
didn’t know what to expect at the temple. Honestly, I just needed to find some
sort of peace. After being told by my husband he didn’t love me and no one
around us liked me, I felt pretty hopeless. After years of being rejected by
his family and treated like a pariah, I’d become beaten down. My fight had just
about been extinguished. The people who were supposed to love me hated me. There
are no words to describe how lonely it is to feel worthless. Thinking back, I
think all I wanted at the temple was to feel like I meant something again. That
there was some point to my existence.
For
years I have exclusively taken family names to the temple, and this day was no
exception. There is something about doing the work of your own family that
draws the Spirit in a stronger way. Listening to the words of the session and
keeping a prayer in my heart for direction and guidance, the Spirit encompassed
me throughout the entire time.
In
the Celestial room, I found a quiet place and began to pray. I needed help with
my marriage. I’d run out of ideas, and everything I’d tried fell flat and often
made things worse. We were supposed to have an eternal marriage, so I needed
help getting it to a place where I didn’t feel so destroyed. The Lord knew my
husband better than I did, so I needed direction to make this work.
The
comfort of the Spirit wrapped me tightly as a warm voice whispered, “I am here.”
It’s
months later while compiling this that I realized that those were the same
words He whispered to me as a broken-hearted teen alone in the bush. He reminds
me while I’m at my loneliest that I don’t need to feel alone because He’s
always right beside me if I just be still and listen.
After
having a good cry from the overwhelming strength of the Spirit, I asked, “What
do I need to do to repair this marriage? I’ve done everything I can think of,
and still I can’t make things better. Lord, you know my husband better than I
do, please, help me.”
His
response: “Let it all go and leave it to Me.”
Leave
it to Him? Okay, I’d learned to trust Him over the years, but what else could I
do?
“Let
Me take care of it,” He repeated. “I know all, and I will provide a way. What
will come will be hard, but you are strong enough to do this.”
“Strong
enough?” I thought. I felt so broken. “I’m not strong at all,” I told Him.
A
flood of memories, trials, heart aches, torment, all rushed to my mind. I’d
gone through all of it and survived, even came out stronger for it. He had
given me trials to make me stronger, and I had enough strength to get through
what was to come.
“You
husband will be brought low,” He told me. “He needs to hit bottom to remember
who I Am.”
In
a moment of fear, I begged Him to keep my girls and me safe. So often, we’d
suffered from my husband’s poor choices more than he did. Car repossession, severe
debt, being left stranded with a broken-down car, air conditioning not working mid-summer
in Arizona because we didn’t have the funds to maintain or replace it. I feared
that bringing my husband low would drag us down right with him, and I didn’t
want that for them. My girls deserved better.
The
Lord promised He would watch over and protect us. He would get us through, but
again, I would need to be strong.
“I
don’t think I’m strong enough to do this,” I told Him.
“You
are,” He responded, “But I’ll give you support.”
It
was as if the veil had lifted. I felt so much love around me. Five distinct
presences drew close to me, and one said my name, and said, “I’m here.”
I
knew his voice. Years had passed since I’d heard it, but I still knew it. The
voice had filled my childhood and youth with love and kindness. That soft,
English lilt in the way he spoke my name brought me to tears. My dear maternal
grandfather. I believe he was the one who spoke because I would recognize his
voice. I felt as if he stood right in front of me.
The
other four presences were female. I believe one was my paternal grandmother.
She knew my pain, and she knew what I would soon face because she had gone
through similar trials herself. The other three women I cannot say who they
were, but I felt their love. I knew as my ancestors they watched me closely and
we have some deeper bond I don’t yet understand. I felt them all pledge their
strength to me.
I
left the temple feeling like a different person to the one who walked in. My
heart was full and I felt powerful. I could face what was to come.
After
arriving home, I tried to reach out to my husband. He didn’t answer my call but
responded to my text where I said I’d gone to the temple and had an incredible
experience. He told me I needed to stop being so self-righteous. As a result, I
kept what I’d experienced in my heart. I feared he would mock it and sully it.
Instead,
as I looked at my phone, the prompt came to download the app I’d found on his
phone and get into the furry chatrooms. I did not want to do that. I’d
felt for months something was off about the chatrooms he’d gotten involved in.
But the prompt came through stronger. Get in there.
So,
I did. It took some prodding around, but I eventually found my husband’s alias.
I sat on it for a few days, concerned he’d figure out who I was. During that
time, many of the furries confirmed my suspicions that the scene was a shady
one. I was asked to meet up for sex, have threesomes, and sent crude and
pornographic images, even of the guys' genitals themselves. I wanted to get out, but the
prompt came to engage with my husband.
So,
I built up my courage and dove in. I started simply, saying I was new to the
furry scene and seeking guidance. It didn’t take him long to start trash
talking about me to me. I didn’t even try to get it out of him. He talked about
how his wife was crazy and certifiably bipolar but refused his suggestion to
get treatment. I don’t recall him ever suggesting I get treatment for being
bipolar! I brought up the question with my counselor after filing for divorce,
and he gave me a look like, why would you think that? and told me I was
quite normal. A bit damaged, but not bipolar.
Anyway,
Tuesday, after talking for less than a few hours, he told me he is bisexual. I
was absolutely gutted. He’d lied to my face saying he didn’t have same sex
attraction, then was trashing me to the furries saying I didn’t understand and
I was horrible for not accepting him as he was. How could I accept someone as
they were when they lied to me about their feelings?
After
work, I couldn’t bare the thought of facing my husband. I’d arranged to visit
with my host mother that afternoon a few days earlier, and I couldn’t be more
grateful I had. So, we went over to their place. My host mother immediately
noticed something was wrong. She asked if I wanted to talk, and I began to tear
up. She asked her daughter to watch the girls and took me into another room so
we could talk.
There,
I went into great detail. I explained everything, pouring my heart out to her.
I told her he didn’t love me, he blamed me for everything, resented me for
trying to fix our money problems, and he was bisexual. I cried the whole time,
feeling terribly betrayed, and hating that lying to me had come so easily for
him. Yet, hating even more that I’d been blind enough to believe the lies.
After
I’d finished, she asked her husband to come in. Being on the stake presidency,
he had better insight into the repercussions of what I’d revealed. He and my
host mother counseled me to talk with my bishop because things had become very
serious. While still in that room, I contacted my bishop. He was still at work,
but he heard my concerns and arranged for me to go to the Relief Society President
for support in his absence.
Before
I left my host family, my host mother invited me to join them at their family
cabin that weekend. I needed a break, she told me, and I had to agree.
After
leaving, I headed straight to the Relief Society President’s house. We talked
about all that I’d discovered, and she was shocked. One thing my husband has a
talent for is putting on a good face. He has charisma and knows the best way to
sell himself to people. Even now, people refuse to believe what I say happened
because he is that convincing. I was abused, but he convinces people I was the
one who did the abusing. However, this kind woman believed me and she hugged me
and told me she and so many other would support me through this hard time.
Still,
I did not consider divorce. I hoped, with some help, the truth would bring us
to a point of healing.
But
I had yet to discover more truths. Worse truths.
Over
the next few days, I kept him talking on the app. He would spill without any
prompts, willingly trashing me to someone who was essentially a stranger. He
had no idea who I was under the alias, yet he talked more to someone he didn’t
know than he did to me.
Meanwhile,
as of the Saturday when he yelled at me and stormed out, he told me flat out
that I wasn’t allowed to talk to him. All week, not only did he not come home
until late, but when he did, I was met with a deafening silence.
On
Wednesday night, as I was heading to bed, he stopped me. With every part of me
aching from his betrayal, I stopped, wondering what he could possibly say to
someone he told the world was basically the devil incarnate.
He
said I had permission to talk to him.
I
had permission? A bubble of rage popped inside me. Permission? I was his
wife and I needed his permission to talk? It took all my effort to keep
walking to the bedroom. Except, he stopped me and forced me to the living room
to talk. I could barely look at him knowing what I did, but I didn’t want him
to know. Not yet anyway. I felt like there was more. I wanted him to admit to
me the truth on his own. To my face.
He
started telling me how impossible I was, and how he couldn’t stand living with
me. He tried to convince me that I needed to leave. Where would I go? I argued.
My family lived on the other side of the world. He told me to go live with my
friend if she’d have me.
I
said I couldn’t leave the girls. They needed me. He told me they needed a
decent mother, and I’d do them a favor by leaving them with him. After years of
him telling me that I wanted the kids so I needed to deal with them, and me
literally being the one who “dealt” with them 95% of the time, that cut deep.
They were my babies, and I would never go anywhere without them. A voice inside
me lit a flame, saying, “You are not the bad mother he says you are.”
That
night, he tried to force me to leave. He bullied, belittled, demeaned, insulted,
made me feel like the salt of the earth, but I wouldn’t budge. Not for him, but
for my girls. I’d never leave them. I’d fight to the death for them. I’d
suffered through infertility, aggressive tantrums, sleepless nights, postpartum
depression, fear of them being harmed, and years of being accused of being a
bad mother just for them. They were my blood, sweat, and tears, and I’d never
let them go.
I
tried to push him to admit the truth to me. I said I felt he was keeping things
from me. I knew it deep down. He told me I was paranoid and I needed therapy.
But I knew I wasn’t. I knew he was lying to me.
Somehow,
I managed to escape and go to bed.
Thursday.
After work, I prepared to leave for the trip to the cabin the next day. It
meant putting off my oldest’s homework, and I had my own assignments for
college I wanted to complete before going away. It was one of the few evenings
my husband arrived home when he was supposed to. When he walked in, I was
engaged in an argument about homework, and had barely managed to get my
youngest to go to her room to leave her sister to do her work. Basically, all
three of us being in a tense state, didn’t register him arriving home hours
earlier than usual.
As
my oldest did her homework and I retreated to do my assignments, he sat on the
couch, waiting for someone to acknowledge him. When no one did, he stormed out.
The
next thing I knew, he sent my alias a message showing him with a glass of beer.
He said his wife had made sure everyone ignored him when he got home and
started trashing me while he drank.
Alarmed,
and knowing he didn’t have house keys, I locked down the house. He spoke such
ugly and hateful things about me that, with some alcohol in him, I had no idea
what he’d do to me.
He
didn’t arrive home until well after the girls had gone to bed. I’d shut the
house down to go to bed myself when he first started banging on the doors. He
went all around the house, banging on the windows and yelling at me to let him
in and stop being crazy. He grew so aggressive, I called in a mutual friend who
lived nearby. This friend managed to coax him into leaving, but told me later
he had to stop my husband from throwing a brick through a window.
He
went to this friend’s place briefly, and after he left, this friend called me
and told me he was very upset. I explained that I knew he’d gone out drinking
and I feared for my safety. He said he hadn’t smelled any alcohol on him, so I
sent him the picture. Concerned, he said I should probably try to talk to him.
The
forty-five-minute conversation that follow I recorded. As I made the call, the
distinct voice of the Spirit spoke to me telling me that I needed to record it.
When I played it for a professional, they explained to me that it showed
prolonged gaslighting to the point where he knew exactly how to manipulate me
into bending and thinking I was completely to blame. Even though I made valid
points for concern, the way he twisted my thoughts made me buckle and even ask
him to come home, despite my fears and best judgment. He made me doubt my own
judgment and even my sanity.
He
stayed with his parents that night. However, at some point we did see him
because he wanted me to take the more reliable car to the mountains. I don’t
recall much about that encounter aside from telling him there was an extra box
of Ritz in the cupboard.
We
settled in at the cabin, enjoying the cold. The girls ran around and had fun
with my host brother’s kids, while I felt mellow. I simply wanted to savor my
time with these people I’d grown to love, but hadn’t seen much of due to life
getting in my way. The family all knew something was wrong, but no one said
anything. They were just kind and loving, like always.
That
night, over the app, my husband started to sext my alias. He talked about his
fantasies with men and what he’d do to my alias. He talked about how his wife
was fat and refused to do things he wanted to do and how unsatisfying I was. He
also sent me pictures of his penis, and a video of him getting off.
First
thing in the morning, he told me about his sexual encounters with men. Two men,
specifically, one aged twenty-one which he’d had several penetrative encounters,
one time on a Sunday when he waited for me to leave for church and went to meet
this guy. The other was a nineteen-year-old whom he was working to convince to
let him penetrate, but they were having oral.
I
thought I was devastated before. This took my pain to a whole other level. When
I managed to go downstairs, I asked to speak privately with my host mother. She
took me to her room, where I sobbed as I told her of my husband’s affairs. She,
having watched him grow up, was mortified and in many ways, quite heartbroken
herself. None of us saw this coming. Once, my husband had been a good man, an
honest, loving, loyal man, but somewhere that man had died. The man I loved had
gone, and I think that was more heartbreaking than death. Death means someone
going to another place and one day I would see them again, but this, this was the
complete vanishing never to be seen again of someone I loved. A new person
resided in his body; someone I didn’t know nor did I want to know. My husband,
who had been tender and caring for years, no longer existed.
I
told my host mother that I had to divorce him. She agreed that things had gone
too far and I needed to get out. She invited her husband in to update him on
the situation, and he too knew that divorce would be the best route for me and
the girls. We decided that I needed a blessing, and my host brother, who was
the same age as me and my husband, was invited in to help. The poor guy just
saw this sobbing mess but had no clue what was going on. To his credit, he didn’t
ask either.
The
blessing from my host father was tender and so affirming. He said I was doing
the right thing and, down the road, my girls would look back and admire me for
the choices I would make and would love me for being strong. The blessing
confirmed that I’d done the right thing, followed my promptings, and that the
Lord would be with me.
That
night, I discovered my husband’s affinity for beastiality. My resolve was set.
The
following evening, after a series of texts regarding everything that I’d
learned, my bishop called. I sat outside in the cold night air as we went over
everything that would unfold. I sent him the screenshots of what I’d learned,
being careful to select shots without the pornographic images and just the
descriptions. He agreed that divorce was the only course to take and sent me
details for an attorney. After our conversation, he contacted our stake
president and shared the screenshots with him as well. Excommunication began to
be a definite possibility.
The
problem was, my husband still lived at the house. Somehow, I had to convince him to
leave. As I drove home, I worried over how I would do this. I prayed over it,
fearing his explosive temper. Then, I received a message from him that answered
my prayers. He had moved out. I sent up a prayer of gratitude, relieved
I didn’t have to face that horrible encounter.
Then,
with my burden lightened, I told the girls. My oldest started to cry, but my
youngest sat quietly.
I
asked her, “Do you understand that means Daddy won’t be living with us anymore?”
She
said yes, then, in her three-year-old innocence, said, “I’m glad because you
can be happy now, Mommy.”
It
broke my heart. She’d seen how much her father hurt me, and with him gone, she
hoped her mother would finally be happy.
Over
the next few hours, I was frightened when he showed up, and even more frightened
when he took the girls to his parents’ house. In tears I made his dad promise
to bring them back.
The
next day, I went to the attorney, signed a contract with him, and filed for
divorce.
The
day after that, my friend who had told me to go to the temple just over a week
earlier, took me back to the temple. I cried through large portions of the
endowment session, feeling the grief of broken covenants.
Afterward,
in the Celestial room, my friend left me to converse with the Lord. I asked
again if I’d done the right thing. I believed so fervently in the sanctity of the
temple sealing and eternal marriage, yet I’d taken action to end mine. The Lord
reminded me of what He had told me before, that He would take care of things. He
showed me that He’d made the truth come to me, and for the wellbeing of my
children and me, we needed to escape. The Lord told me that He wanted me to get
out of the marriage, so He made it so.
The
best part? He told me He had greater plans for me, and because of my faith, He
would guide me down that path, remaining at my side the entire time.
I
would need Him with me, as the worst and ugliest was yet to come.
