I've posted this over in Considering Separation/Divorce, but would really like more feedback than I've gotten. Except for the same couple of folks there, I've gotten way more views than actual comments & I'm kind of desperate at this point for any & all advice from those that are there or have been there. I'm really alone. Not sure if I posted in the wrong forum or not.....
Not sure where to even begin, I'm sure I'll unintentionally leave out some info, just ask if there's anything I'm not clear about...
A couple of years ago is when it started (or when I started realizing). My husband of 17yrs came clean with me about some things-he had been using steroids for the last 6 months or so. I was very adamant about this not being ok with me & insisted he stop immediately. He was also adamant that he would not. I struggled with this a lot & was completely thrown off by the idea that he would be injecting his body with this stuff. This was not the man I thought I knew.
This caused me to become curious & began snooping through his things. I also began checking his FB. Here is where I found some messages between him & a friend I ran with. It seemed benign at first, I thought I was just reading too much into things. I had a race coming up, it would be the longest distance I had ever run, so it was a big deal for me. I would be running it with the sister of the woman he was messaging. He was trying to talk her into going to breakfast with him & our 2 kids (DD14 at the time & DS12) & her young child(she is twice divorced with one child) while I was running the race with her sister. This was a 50K run so I was gonna be a loooong while. She declined his offer but they did correspond quite a bit more about running certain races together. I always ran with her sister since she was more my pace, my husband was faster & more her pace. This hadn't bothered me before as I had never had any trust issues with him & didn't mind they together at th e same races as me. I remember being so proud of myself that day after completing that race. My parents came from out of state to support me, my husband was there. After it was over we were all walking to our cars (me, husband, kids, parents & the two sisters I run with) & my husband was walking ahead of me with her. I remember it & thinking 'wow, he's not even walking next to me & asking about my race'
I spoke to my best friend & read her the message. She immediately was shocked as was I, & told me this wasn't acceptable & that I should be concerned. I was beginning to freak out. I confronted him about the message & told him I was not ok with him asking her to breakfast when I wasn't around & the behavior/messages was starting to concern me. He became very angry & we argued about it. He told me I wasn't his mother & I couldn't tell him who he could hang out with. This was 2 yrs ago, so I don't remember everything said at this point, but he did begrudgingly agree to stop. I began checking phone records after this & saw the very next morning on his way to work he called her. I confronted him again & he told me that he called her to tell her how he truly felt about her & wanted to see if there was a chance for the two of them to be together. I was stunned.
Here is where it all gets a little foggy for me. All of the above happened in & around Sept. 2013. By the first week of October 2013 he told me he was leaving me. That even if there wasn't a chance with her, he still wanted a new life, something different for himself & that didn't include me. He was gone for a week or so, & we did speak during that time & eventually decided to reconcile. I had been doing a lot of reading here & realized he seemed to be in the 'fog' that's always mentioned. All of this was very new to me & I had up until that point never had a clue what was going on. I felt so stupid & blindsided by all of it.
He had agreed to stop the steroids, which I knew had to be having an effect on his thinking/emotions. Again, things are a bit fuzzy about what went on after that initial 'separation'. I had spoke the running friend. She told me he was the one doing the pursuing & she turned him down & I believed her. I was still unclear as to why she never told me about it though. I am 100% certain that nothing ever came of that situation between them, but the story isn't over yet. Anyway, he's home at this point & we're supposed to be working on things.
Come Christmas time, he started with the irrational thinking again about needing 'something new' We celebrated Christmas as a family, & come NYE, I approached him about what was bothering him. He was acting different & I wanted to know what was going on. He didn't want to talk & I pressed the issue. Finally, he got up & left. I began calling/texting & he wouldn't respond. I used the Find My iPhone app & tracked him to an apt. complex downtown which I knew to be a coworker of his. I'm sure there was a party going on. He was there the whole NYE night. Came home way after midnight. This is something he had never done before.
When I approached him the next evening to discuss what had happened the night before, he just started stone faced at the tv & refused to speak. I sat next to him & kept asking-I know, I should've dropped it but at this point I was really bewildered at his behavior the last couple of months & couldn't leave it alone. He suddenly looked at me with a look I've never seen on his face in my life & said 'Do you want to die?' in the most callous sounding voice & flattest affect on his face. I immediately jumped up off the couch & without even realizing what I was doing I called 911. He was arrested. He went to jail for a few days. When he got out, the court had put a protection order in place to where we were not allowed to speak or contact in any way. I didn't want that to happen. I was terrified but not just for me, for him. I had never seen him this way. He was a different person. Something was clearly WRONG on so many levels. I never wanted him to get arrested. I th ought they'd just make him leave for the night. I was very naive/ignorant to this sort of situation, I'd never been in it before.
His parents came from out of state & relayed some messages to me about his state of mind after they bailed him out of jail. He was getting a lawyer. He was divorcing me. Again, I was flabbergasted. I was panicking, I was overwhelmed, I was desperate. WTF was happening?? It was almost out of nowhere. I began to think mental illness was at play here. Court dates came, the protection order lifted & he was given a misdemeanor harassment charge but under the veil of domestic violence. He was sentenced to 1 yr probation & had some DV classes to attend for most of that year. Again we talked, he agreed to put the divorce on hold & after a few weeks of talking while he was living in an apt, we again agreed to work things out. We also began MC. He was having a hard time forgiving me for calling the cops on him. He was traumatized from being locked up & held that against me. i was shocked he wasn't taking any responsibility for making the threatening remark to me in the 1s t place. I was willing to be patient though & figured it would get worked out in time with the counseling. He also was diagnosed bipolarII & adhd. He was seeing a psychiatrist for meds for these issues also.
At the middle of Feb.2014, he left again. I was tired of this game. What was wrong with him?? I talked with my best friend & she convinced me to do more snooping. At that time I began noticing copious amounts of text msgs & mms (pic messages) between him & another number at all hours of the day/night. We & all of our family & friend are from another state. We live in another state away from all of them. These texts/pics were between him & a number local to our home state. I counted from what I remember at least 25+ PAGES of these between the two numbers. I did more investigating & found the number to be between him & a cousin of his from back home. I was somewhat relieved but still curious. My friend I always consulted with was also confused & didn't know what to think. I did at this point have a lawyer. Papers had been filed. He had his lawyer also. I continued to use Find My iPhone to keep track of his whereabouts. We were still speaking, some days he was f ine & seemed to be able to have coherent conversations, other days he was very standoffish & a straight up a**hole to me. I still had hopes at this point of reconciling. I really felt like he wasn't in a stable mindset to be making all of these life altering decisions. He was very clearly not well. We would meet & have talks about what we were doing & what was wrong with him. I spent a lot of time trying to make him see he was sick, something was wrong, & for him to please stop this!
I met him one night for dinner. I never brought up the texts/pics I was aware of. He acted like his old self, & I had a glimmer of hope that maybe he was coming around. After dinner, I had hoped we were going to go home together, but he was in a hurry to leave. I thought maybe I was pushing it too fast, so I reluctantly agreed & we went our separate ways with me crying all the way home. I used Find My iPhone & saw he wasn't back at the apt that night. He actually went out of town & then the next day the phone had no signal but was frozen at what looked like a house in a town about an hour away. It was like that for the entire weekend. This was approx. mid March 2014. I obsessively checked the Find My iPhone app all weekend, finally on Sun. the icon was in motion & it was headed back towards the apt. I was on the phone with my friend as I backed out of the driveway to head him off & follow him. My heart was racing. Even now as I type this, I remember it like it was y esterday.
Ended up I timed it perfectly. I was at a red-light as he crossed me. Only, he wasn't driving, a woman was. I was screaming on the phone to my friend as I followed them. When we got to the apt, I parked right along side them & she jumped out & took off walking. I opened his door & screamed at him to get in my car. He was clearly intoxicated/hungover/not well looking. BTW, the person who got out the car was his cousin from our home state that he had been obsessively texting. He got in our car & I asked him what the actual FU*K was going on. He came clean. He had just spent the entire weekend holed up in a cabin snorting cocaine & drinking & banging his cousin.
I took him home, put him in bed, & tried to settle my mind & figure out what was going to be my next step. I looked through his phone & found he had been planning this for a while. He'd bought her a plane ticket to get her out here. They had been sexting. I called her husband to expose them to him & he refused to believe it. I guess I can understand that. If I hadn't actually caught them, I wouldn't believe it either. Upstairs he was freaking out, thinking someone was coming for him, that someone followed him home & was going to murder us all. Holding his hands over his ears & yelling 'make it stop, make it stop' I took him to the hospital & they said he was fine, it was just coming off the cocaine making him like that & sent us on our way.
I waited a few days to give him time for a clear head so we could talk. I should mention my husband has a long, horrific history of some of the most twisted & evil child abuse anyone could possibly suffer. He admitted what happened with this cousin wasn't the first time, it had happened when they were teenagers as well & she was also known to be with other male cousins in the family. This makes me want to vomit even while typing it. It's so sick & disgusting. He cried, told me how sorry he was, let him make it up to me, he was going to get help for himself. He admitted to doing drugs the entire time since he left the first time back in Oct. 2013. He also had never stopped the steroids. This was in addition to the psych meds he was taking that were prescribed. No wonder none of it was helping.
Again, stupidly? I agreed to give this one last shot. I felt like I forgave him. I chalked it up to being in a mania from the bipolar & all of the drugs/alcohol in his system. He had to go to these classes & we were told we could no longer legally get MC because since it was a DV charge, he had to do all of the classes ordered by the courts first. That meant from the time I busted him in March 2014 until Oct. 2014 we were unable to deal with what happened. At least, I haven't been able to. I'm in IC, but I don't feel it's helping me deal with it with him together.
He's now at a place where he's moved on & he says 'I thought you forgave me?' when I say we need counseling to help me. I don't feel he's ever put me first even after all he's done. Things were going ok while he was doing the classes & we were getting along, but for me it's been me being patient while he fixed himself so we can fix us. I've been putting me off for a long time because he even said he can't worry about me until he fixes him.
Now I want to leave. I feel I've given him so many chances & I've given so much I have nothing left at this point. How much can one person handle? I think I've finally found my limit.
I could keep going, but if you've read this far-THANK YOU, & I'll explain more as you require or ask of me.
Not sure where to even begin, I'm sure I'll unintentionally leave out some info, just ask if there's anything I'm not clear about...
A couple of years ago is when it started (or when I started realizing). My husband of 17yrs came clean with me about some things-he had been using steroids for the last 6 months or so. I was very adamant about this not being ok with me & insisted he stop immediately. He was also adamant that he would not. I struggled with this a lot & was completely thrown off by the idea that he would be injecting his body with this stuff. This was not the man I thought I knew.
This caused me to become curious & began snooping through his things. I also began checking his FB. Here is where I found some messages between him & a friend I ran with. It seemed benign at first, I thought I was just reading too much into things. I had a race coming up, it would be the longest distance I had ever run, so it was a big deal for me. I would be running it with the sister of the woman he was messaging. He was trying to talk her into going to breakfast with him & our 2 kids (DD14 at the time & DS12) & her young child(she is twice divorced with one child) while I was running the race with her sister. This was a 50K run so I was gonna be a loooong while. She declined his offer but they did correspond quite a bit more about running certain races together. I always ran with her sister since she was more my pace, my husband was faster & more her pace. This hadn't bothered me before as I had never had any trust issues with him & didn't mind they together at th e same races as me. I remember being so proud of myself that day after completing that race. My parents came from out of state to support me, my husband was there. After it was over we were all walking to our cars (me, husband, kids, parents & the two sisters I run with) & my husband was walking ahead of me with her. I remember it & thinking 'wow, he's not even walking next to me & asking about my race'
I spoke to my best friend & read her the message. She immediately was shocked as was I, & told me this wasn't acceptable & that I should be concerned. I was beginning to freak out. I confronted him about the message & told him I was not ok with him asking her to breakfast when I wasn't around & the behavior/messages was starting to concern me. He became very angry & we argued about it. He told me I wasn't his mother & I couldn't tell him who he could hang out with. This was 2 yrs ago, so I don't remember everything said at this point, but he did begrudgingly agree to stop. I began checking phone records after this & saw the very next morning on his way to work he called her. I confronted him again & he told me that he called her to tell her how he truly felt about her & wanted to see if there was a chance for the two of them to be together. I was stunned.
Here is where it all gets a little foggy for me. All of the above happened in & around Sept. 2013. By the first week of October 2013 he told me he was leaving me. That even if there wasn't a chance with her, he still wanted a new life, something different for himself & that didn't include me. He was gone for a week or so, & we did speak during that time & eventually decided to reconcile. I had been doing a lot of reading here & realized he seemed to be in the 'fog' that's always mentioned. All of this was very new to me & I had up until that point never had a clue what was going on. I felt so stupid & blindsided by all of it.
He had agreed to stop the steroids, which I knew had to be having an effect on his thinking/emotions. Again, things are a bit fuzzy about what went on after that initial 'separation'. I had spoke the running friend. She told me he was the one doing the pursuing & she turned him down & I believed her. I was still unclear as to why she never told me about it though. I am 100% certain that nothing ever came of that situation between them, but the story isn't over yet. Anyway, he's home at this point & we're supposed to be working on things.
Come Christmas time, he started with the irrational thinking again about needing 'something new' We celebrated Christmas as a family, & come NYE, I approached him about what was bothering him. He was acting different & I wanted to know what was going on. He didn't want to talk & I pressed the issue. Finally, he got up & left. I began calling/texting & he wouldn't respond. I used the Find My iPhone app & tracked him to an apt. complex downtown which I knew to be a coworker of his. I'm sure there was a party going on. He was there the whole NYE night. Came home way after midnight. This is something he had never done before.
When I approached him the next evening to discuss what had happened the night before, he just started stone faced at the tv & refused to speak. I sat next to him & kept asking-I know, I should've dropped it but at this point I was really bewildered at his behavior the last couple of months & couldn't leave it alone. He suddenly looked at me with a look I've never seen on his face in my life & said 'Do you want to die?' in the most callous sounding voice & flattest affect on his face. I immediately jumped up off the couch & without even realizing what I was doing I called 911. He was arrested. He went to jail for a few days. When he got out, the court had put a protection order in place to where we were not allowed to speak or contact in any way. I didn't want that to happen. I was terrified but not just for me, for him. I had never seen him this way. He was a different person. Something was clearly WRONG on so many levels. I never wanted him to get arrested. I th ought they'd just make him leave for the night. I was very naive/ignorant to this sort of situation, I'd never been in it before.
His parents came from out of state & relayed some messages to me about his state of mind after they bailed him out of jail. He was getting a lawyer. He was divorcing me. Again, I was flabbergasted. I was panicking, I was overwhelmed, I was desperate. WTF was happening?? It was almost out of nowhere. I began to think mental illness was at play here. Court dates came, the protection order lifted & he was given a misdemeanor harassment charge but under the veil of domestic violence. He was sentenced to 1 yr probation & had some DV classes to attend for most of that year. Again we talked, he agreed to put the divorce on hold & after a few weeks of talking while he was living in an apt, we again agreed to work things out. We also began MC. He was having a hard time forgiving me for calling the cops on him. He was traumatized from being locked up & held that against me. i was shocked he wasn't taking any responsibility for making the threatening remark to me in the 1s t place. I was willing to be patient though & figured it would get worked out in time with the counseling. He also was diagnosed bipolarII & adhd. He was seeing a psychiatrist for meds for these issues also.
At the middle of Feb.2014, he left again. I was tired of this game. What was wrong with him?? I talked with my best friend & she convinced me to do more snooping. At that time I began noticing copious amounts of text msgs & mms (pic messages) between him & another number at all hours of the day/night. We & all of our family & friend are from another state. We live in another state away from all of them. These texts/pics were between him & a number local to our home state. I counted from what I remember at least 25+ PAGES of these between the two numbers. I did more investigating & found the number to be between him & a cousin of his from back home. I was somewhat relieved but still curious. My friend I always consulted with was also confused & didn't know what to think. I did at this point have a lawyer. Papers had been filed. He had his lawyer also. I continued to use Find My iPhone to keep track of his whereabouts. We were still speaking, some days he was f ine & seemed to be able to have coherent conversations, other days he was very standoffish & a straight up a**hole to me. I still had hopes at this point of reconciling. I really felt like he wasn't in a stable mindset to be making all of these life altering decisions. He was very clearly not well. We would meet & have talks about what we were doing & what was wrong with him. I spent a lot of time trying to make him see he was sick, something was wrong, & for him to please stop this!
I met him one night for dinner. I never brought up the texts/pics I was aware of. He acted like his old self, & I had a glimmer of hope that maybe he was coming around. After dinner, I had hoped we were going to go home together, but he was in a hurry to leave. I thought maybe I was pushing it too fast, so I reluctantly agreed & we went our separate ways with me crying all the way home. I used Find My iPhone & saw he wasn't back at the apt that night. He actually went out of town & then the next day the phone had no signal but was frozen at what looked like a house in a town about an hour away. It was like that for the entire weekend. This was approx. mid March 2014. I obsessively checked the Find My iPhone app all weekend, finally on Sun. the icon was in motion & it was headed back towards the apt. I was on the phone with my friend as I backed out of the driveway to head him off & follow him. My heart was racing. Even now as I type this, I remember it like it was y esterday.
Ended up I timed it perfectly. I was at a red-light as he crossed me. Only, he wasn't driving, a woman was. I was screaming on the phone to my friend as I followed them. When we got to the apt, I parked right along side them & she jumped out & took off walking. I opened his door & screamed at him to get in my car. He was clearly intoxicated/hungover/not well looking. BTW, the person who got out the car was his cousin from our home state that he had been obsessively texting. He got in our car & I asked him what the actual FU*K was going on. He came clean. He had just spent the entire weekend holed up in a cabin snorting cocaine & drinking & banging his cousin.
I took him home, put him in bed, & tried to settle my mind & figure out what was going to be my next step. I looked through his phone & found he had been planning this for a while. He'd bought her a plane ticket to get her out here. They had been sexting. I called her husband to expose them to him & he refused to believe it. I guess I can understand that. If I hadn't actually caught them, I wouldn't believe it either. Upstairs he was freaking out, thinking someone was coming for him, that someone followed him home & was going to murder us all. Holding his hands over his ears & yelling 'make it stop, make it stop' I took him to the hospital & they said he was fine, it was just coming off the cocaine making him like that & sent us on our way.
I waited a few days to give him time for a clear head so we could talk. I should mention my husband has a long, horrific history of some of the most twisted & evil child abuse anyone could possibly suffer. He admitted what happened with this cousin wasn't the first time, it had happened when they were teenagers as well & she was also known to be with other male cousins in the family. This makes me want to vomit even while typing it. It's so sick & disgusting. He cried, told me how sorry he was, let him make it up to me, he was going to get help for himself. He admitted to doing drugs the entire time since he left the first time back in Oct. 2013. He also had never stopped the steroids. This was in addition to the psych meds he was taking that were prescribed. No wonder none of it was helping.
Again, stupidly? I agreed to give this one last shot. I felt like I forgave him. I chalked it up to being in a mania from the bipolar & all of the drugs/alcohol in his system. He had to go to these classes & we were told we could no longer legally get MC because since it was a DV charge, he had to do all of the classes ordered by the courts first. That meant from the time I busted him in March 2014 until Oct. 2014 we were unable to deal with what happened. At least, I haven't been able to. I'm in IC, but I don't feel it's helping me deal with it with him together.
He's now at a place where he's moved on & he says 'I thought you forgave me?' when I say we need counseling to help me. I don't feel he's ever put me first even after all he's done. Things were going ok while he was doing the classes & we were getting along, but for me it's been me being patient while he fixed himself so we can fix us. I've been putting me off for a long time because he even said he can't worry about me until he fixes him.
Now I want to leave. I feel I've given him so many chances & I've given so much I have nothing left at this point. How much can one person handle? I think I've finally found my limit.
I could keep going, but if you've read this far-THANK YOU, & I'll explain more as you require or ask of me.
Put the internet to work for you.
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