Update

We are a year and a half into our divorce, and while not much has changed, SO much has happened.  Some of it mundane, typical divorce-y stuff, some of it the juicy, yet horrific details that you are drawn to like a bad accident. 

Turns out, I got to witness karma at its finest.  On one very eery day this past spring, I happened to run into my husband at the gas station. I let the kids say hello, and then he attempted conversation with me. He attempted to act human…attempted.  Remember, this man is not human in the sense that he actually cares about people or feels sorry or has empathy.  EVERY act, every word, is a means to an end on his secret agenda.  So lets put a pin in that and fast forward about five minutes.

I’m driving towards home, when his girlfriend calls me.  She knew I had been with him at the gas station because she could hear our conversation on the spyware she’d installed on his phone.  He didn’t realize that it picked up ALL sounds, whether he was on the phone or not. Creepy…

Anyhow! What led her to this call was that he had cheated on her.  With 12 women. He had betrayed this woman…the “love of his life,” not just once, but over and over and over…

What she revealed to me was that he was a sex addict.  Shocker. She told me that they had been in counseling for months, and he had revealed that he had cheated on me with at least 39 women (ew ew ew….no worries,of course I was tested and all was clear).   He used his parenting time to screen new prospects he met on the internet because that is the only time she wouldn’t suspect anything. (I remember the kids coming home saying “we met daddy’s new friend and her son/daughter/dog/whatever).  Not in a million years would I have guessed that after he tucked the kids into bed those nights, that he was sneaking off to meet these women at a local restaurant.  Even after his girlfriend busted him on that, he continued to do it.  Apparently it is an addiction because he can’t stop to save himself.  He paid her (yep, PAID her) $1000 and let her put spyware on his phone a few months back to show how sincerely sorry he was. He said if he ever cheated again, she could keep the money. Well, guess who’s going shopping?

She had finally reached her breaking point when one day near Easter, she left him for a few hours to dye Easter eggs with her daughter and she busted him on this nifty spyware trying to get a booty call from two other women. Lucky for me, I got to sort of sit back and watch the fireworks as the drama unfolded.  She did all the things I couldn’t bring myself to do…out him to all his family and friends.  She told anyone who would listen.  And there it was…all the sordid details, and I didn’t have to say a word. 

When she was done, she went home to her husband.  Sick people. They deserved each other.

It was around this time that I discovered my husband had taken my children on a “chase” of sorts.  When the girlfriend went missing one day, he used her Iphone to track her down.  He then went to a stranger’s house and threatened the guy that lived there.  My children were terrified. No one realized they were in the car until a bit later when he was frantically calling her best friend and the friend called his girlfriend to tell her the kids were with him and she had to do something to make him stop.  And when she did leave, my husband was at the edge of the neighborhood, waiting for her. My children were so scared, and it was like he couldn’t even hear them. He parked in the middle of an intersection and left them there to go to her car. 

Right now, we are working on modifying the court order to initiate supervised visitation.  So many things have happened that children should never be witness to. I have been in closer contact with his parents so that they are aware to keep an eye on things.  This is just scratching the surface of the events that unfolded over the past six months. My two oldest are in therapy and I’m working on the third one.

When I found out how much and how often he cheated on me, it didn’t bother me a bit. It drove home that it wasn’t me…it was him.  The marriage failed, and was doomed to fail.  There was never going to be a fix for this.  But, when I found out the details of what he’s put my children through…that goes straight to my heart.  How dare he! How dare he ignore their cries and pleas to stop!? How dare he ignore them when they say they are scared of him?

So, apparently since the breakup, he has found God again. I’ve decided that the whole, “suave, sex-addicted businessman” thing didn’t work out for him (he got demoted because of pornography on his computer and abusing company privileges), so now he’s trying out the “wounded sex-addict  in recovery who attends church and listens to the Bible in the car” role.  We are Christians.  But him stepping into church makes him no more a Christian than me stepping into a garage makes me a mechanic.  He is all fake. Every ounce of his being is fake.

All that said, the kids are ok.  They are very open, and their counselors have suggested that I not cover for him anymore, but let them explore what they believe to be the truth.  The ironic part is, he has said to them, “believe what you see, not what you hear.”  Well, what they have seen are pictures on his phone of him on vacation in various locations, without them.  What they have seen is his crazy, erratic behavior. What they have seen is him lying to them.

The advice people have given is true. “His true colors will shine, give it time.” “The kids will pick up on this faster than you think.” “The truth will win.”  It was all true, it just took time.