I Know More Than 17 Names

Warning:  Please know, if you are reading this post today, I am purging.  If my truths or my story are too much, know that I understand.  Thank you for reading and commenting in the past.  I hope if you skip this post you'll be back again one day.  Your comments and support are huge to me.
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I have been sitting down at this blog every day for the past two weeks trying to get the words to flow in a way that expresses my feelings without disrespecting H.  I want, no,  I need to tell my story.  This is my life.  The things I write about happened to me.  These experiences are the ones that are tearing me down, or hopefully, helping to build me back up.   I find that I am often locked up in the telling.  This story is difficult.  Pieces of it raw and painful.  I don't want my healing to cause H more pain.   Keeping it locked away, as if it didn't really happen has been hurting me.  I'm not going to recover until I can hear me tell my story.

I know more than 17 names.

In the past four years H's acting out has exacerbated to the extreme.  He's lived double lives with other women while I believed we were progressing well, and living a life together -- just the two of us.  We've taken trips, held new grand babies, purchased a second home, all while he has lived a life with another women.   And this is not the first time this has happened in my 25 year marriage.

H has had multiple sex partners.  Sexually "seeing" several women at the same time.

H has entertained bi-sexual women.

H has lied. And lied some more.

Through all of this, H returns and leaves so often from my life, and my home, I feel like a revolving door.

Here I go again.

Two weeks ago H began texting me frequently throughout the day.  The two weeks prior had been pretty silent.  When H left with his venomous words of 'I won't be back this time.'   I was grateful for the silence and distance to help heal from those stinging words.

These texts sounded engaging, pleasant.
He wanted something.
I didn't trust them.
I don't trust him.

When H came back in February, it was with the promise that he would come clean with everyone he'd been with and to what extent.  He'd show me the email, the instant messages, texts,  phone numbers.   I wanted to see it all.  He promised.  He lied.

I saw nothing.

We spent the next six weeks avoiding each other.
I wanted disclosure and truth.
H wanted to hide his crimes in the shrouded lies and duplicity.

The anger got worse.
The nights at work longer.
With all his electronics password protected I had no proof.
Still, I asked for the truth again,
H left.

H left and went back to a woman he'd initially been with when all this started four years ago.  How does that work?  They just wait around for him?   For two or three years?

I don't get this lifestyle or the mindset of these kinds of women.  I try not to judge and pray God will forgive me when in my pain I have judged them.  I've called them names.  Words I have never ever said before.

H's place of preference has become hookup sites. I'm amazed,  no, shocked at the amount of women who are married or looking for a married man to 'hook up' with.  In the last four years he has found plenty of opportunity to explore a side of sexuality that doesn't work with me.  That language disgusts and repels me.  It makes me feel used and dirty.  I hate what this addiction has turned my husband into.  He is not the man I once knew.

When H and I are separated he turns to those places to fill up the void and the hurt.   Knowing this makes me cry.  It also makes me want to hit him.  I don't, but I recognize those twin emotions.  I'm grateful they are both there.  I'm grateful that in all of this I've not be consumed by hatred.  I easily could have.

I know more than 17 names.

The more women I know who share this trial, the more I realize how different we all are when it comes to the amount of information we need at disclosure.  Because H is a liar and skilled at a duality of lifestyles I dig until I feel confident I have the truth.

This time, I have been even more relentless in my queries.  I would not even consider H's return without his willingness to answer every one of my questions.  Even if I asked them over and over.  I also wouldn't tolerate any anger or defensiveness.  When the 'grilling' became too much, we took a break.  I didn't want to shame H as he disclosed.  I hoped the truth would set him free like the scriptures teach.  I hoped that having everything out this time, not February's 'everything' or January's everything, or December's, but the everything that should have come out before it ever came to separation.  The everything kind of truth that God knew.

H cried as he answered my question.

I paced the floor like a caged animal and the stories unfolded.

I know more than 17 names.

I'm sure there are some I don't know.  I'm confident that there are truths that still have not been told.  I'm not sure I will ever know everything.  I'm confident that H doesn't even know the truth.  He has lived a life of deception for so long that the falsehoods are mingled into his reality making one big, unravel-able knot.  Only the Savior can undo this part.

For now,  I'm trusting in that kind of grace and mercy, for H and for me.

I cannot think of a more difficult test than to be constantly forgiving an unfaithful spouse.  No matter the depth of the infidelity, betrayal is a miserable and painful trial.  Women, like myself, who deal with repetitive betrayal have a very difficult and often lonely recovery to get through.

This isn't like job loss, or surgery.  You don't go around your neighborhood or ward talking about your husband's addictions or how he sexually acts out.  You wear this trial in silence.  All the hurt and broken-ness invisible to those around you.  And if, in a moment of desperation, you are brave and share,  shunning happens.  It happens in the form of doubt or justifying or even blame.  Words like 'all guys do this, its no big deal.'  Or, "you should have been more available to your husband so he wouldn't have strayed."  Some of the most painful remarks come from ecclesiastical leaders who tell you to pray harder, study your scriptures more, attend the temple more regularly.

No one knows that I know more that 17 names.  No one, but this page and a few brave supporters who have made it this far.  (If that is you,  know that I love you and have survived only because of the support I have receive here and in my private recovery groups.)

In the past two weeks since H came home, again, it is a constant battle in guiding the thoughts that come into my mind and set my physical body into turmoil.  I often want to throw up.  I often shake uncontrollably.   Betrayal does this to the soul.  The battle is not only emotional -- it is very, painfully, excruciatingly physical as well.

In the past two weeks I have also felt joy.  Having H home completes me.  That should sound unbelievable (and maybe insane)  on the heels of my 17 name revelation.   I've known this man more than half my life.  I've loved him longer than any other human being, aside from the familial love I have for my parents and siblings.  I've been through more trials and more joys with this man than with any other human being.  We've planned and executed more dreams.  We've survived more failures.  We've born and buried children together.

These are the reasons H keeps coming home even though I know more than 17 names.

Last week H went to see the bishop.  He made that appointment on his own.  Tomorrow he sees the stake president.  Also an appointment he set on his own.

Two more reasons to hope.

I have to compel myself to believe what H says to me right now.  Every word runs past that filter of doubt.  I'm constantly asking myself if these are words he said to woman #5 or number #12 or even to all of them.

I'm in a numb stage right now.  I'm scared to death of the anger that has to be breathing down my door.  H has never been able to see anger as stemming from hurt.  He sees it as rejection -- which then causes  him act out.

I hate this vicious cycle.

For the first time, in 25 years we talk about my emotions.  We talk about my right to get mad and what H can do to allow those feelings without him absorbing them and feeling that rejection.  H has never been able to go there with me.

He told me yesterday, in one of my low points, how surprised he was that I haven't struck him.

Is it believable that he can actually see how ugly this is for me.

Two weeks ago I added more names to my list.  Its more than 17 now.  Its more pain than any one soul should ever have to bear.

But I do.

I'm not sure why.  I'm not even sure how I am able to.

I am furious.  To say otherwise would add my deception to all of H's.

I hate this life.  Those 17 names.  Even sometimes this man I'm married to.  I hate this addiction.  I hate how it tears down the soul and damages the core of the addict and his wife.

I try not to be angry at God though.  I try to hold to my trust in a loving Heavenly Father, and in his divine plan.

I've been told all my life that losses will be made right.  How can God give me a marriage of fidelity?  That is my loss.  How can God take away more than 17 names from the list of women who have shared this marriage?

I have no answers.  Just faith.

It is that faith that has gotten me out of bed each morning the past 14 days.  It is that faith that keeps me from crumbling on the floor of the shower as I try to start yet another day with all this heavy weight on my heart.  It is that faith I'm holding on to right now for dear life.  For fear if I let go, the grief and anguish will wash me away.