I'm a SAHM to two children (one boy, one girl) under the age of 4.
My husband of 4 years has always been an amazing father (plays with the kids, reads to them every night, etc..) and a great roommate (helps clean up on the weekends, makes dinner at least once a week, etc..) and a wonderful provider (no savings but no debt, and he always paid the bills; he spent more on himself and our son than he allowed me to spend on myself or our daughter but we had enough)....but as a spouse he's been increasingly emotionally absent, distant, and disinterested.
Last year I found out he had been lying to me about his age. He was actually 5 years older than he told me he was. That was my big wake up call. After finding out that I had blindly believed such an obvious lie (in three years of marriage, all I had to do was check his drivers license and I never did...I just believed him, I was so naive), I began noticing alot of holes in his stories. Within 4 months of finding out about his real age, I realized that he is a compulsive liar. He lies about anything and everything. What he ate for lunch. Conversations he had on his smoke breaks at work. Where he bought something. Stupid things that I wouldn't even bother asking about, he'd come up to me and offer me a lie for seemingly no reason.
I started checking internet history and snooping in his Facebook account whenever he left it open. I found that he had developed an emotional affair with a female co-worker whom he told me he hated. She had no idea that he felt that way towards her, despite her mild flirtations, the feelings seemed to be one-sided as he did stalk her on Facebook without her knowledge. I also found that he had been looking at local escort pages (though he never seems to have used one in real life, I think it was only a matter of time). And that he had been watching alot of porn, many times just moments after rejecting my advances.
I dragged him to marriage counseling but of course that didn't help. He swore up and down that he did nothing wrong and I was just crazy.
Around this time he became violent. Never hit me nor the children but he punched a hole through our bedroom door and broke the baby gate at the top of our stairs and in general just started screaming all the time with seemingly very little to trigger him.
The final straw was when I found he had been downloading child porn. Mostly females aged 10-15 years old.
At first I tried to let him explain it away. A virus. Hackers. I wanted to believe him. He's such a wonderful father, I didn't want to worry about our daughter's safety with him. But I eventually came to my senses.
I called the cops and my husband was arrested.
When the cops came to search our house and seize evidence, they found drugs.
Shortly after my husband was released on bail I demanded access to our joint bank account (in the past he always insisted that I didn't need to know the password to view our online bank statements). I went through the last 6 months of bank statements and I found he made more money than he told me he did. In six months he had spent nearly $5,000 on Facebook games, drugs, porn websites, and his collection of toy figurines.
At first I was dead set on divorce but then I decided to stay...don't ask me why I'm staying, I have no clue.
He's done everything I've asked to try and make things up to me.
In the last 3 months:
- I've taken over our family's finances and started putting emergency money aside in my name only (he is aware of and supports this).
- We've gone back to marriage counseling with a mutual desire to work on us.
- He's started individual counseling.
- He's come clean to this female co-worker about Facebook stalking and masturbating to her photos, then cut all contact with her.
- He's stopped watching all porn. (3 months clean, but that sucess is probably due to lack of access. The cops took his computers and I monitor his access to mine.)
- He's stopped doing drugs. (again, lack of access since I now write the monthly budget and monitor how he spends his extra cash)
There is an on-going police investigation and he is looking at possible jail time. Def loosing his job, just don't know when. And when he looses his job, we will have to move. (We currently live overseas for his career.)
I've done alot of reading.
I've found information on regressed pedophiles and how they actually prefer adults but in times of stress will regress back to an age range that they were traumatized during, and the attraction to children of that age is merely an extension of their regression.
I've found information on how some porn addicts will watch a certain type of porn which they would never act out in real life. Like straight men who become obsessed with gay porn.
I've started looking into how I can protect my own children. Obviously teaching any child about boundaries is a good idea but also, for my children, never leaving them alone with their father.
I'm considering wiring our house with nanny-cams and putting a key logger onto my computer. Just grasping at straws trying to figure out the best way to make sure my daughter isn't raped by her father the way I was raped by mine.
I've been an off-and-on lurker on your boards for about 9 months. I think at one point I created a point I created a profile but I don't remember anymore.
My husband of 4 years has always been an amazing father (plays with the kids, reads to them every night, etc..) and a great roommate (helps clean up on the weekends, makes dinner at least once a week, etc..) and a wonderful provider (no savings but no debt, and he always paid the bills; he spent more on himself and our son than he allowed me to spend on myself or our daughter but we had enough)....but as a spouse he's been increasingly emotionally absent, distant, and disinterested.
Last year I found out he had been lying to me about his age. He was actually 5 years older than he told me he was. That was my big wake up call. After finding out that I had blindly believed such an obvious lie (in three years of marriage, all I had to do was check his drivers license and I never did...I just believed him, I was so naive), I began noticing alot of holes in his stories. Within 4 months of finding out about his real age, I realized that he is a compulsive liar. He lies about anything and everything. What he ate for lunch. Conversations he had on his smoke breaks at work. Where he bought something. Stupid things that I wouldn't even bother asking about, he'd come up to me and offer me a lie for seemingly no reason.
I started checking internet history and snooping in his Facebook account whenever he left it open. I found that he had developed an emotional affair with a female co-worker whom he told me he hated. She had no idea that he felt that way towards her, despite her mild flirtations, the feelings seemed to be one-sided as he did stalk her on Facebook without her knowledge. I also found that he had been looking at local escort pages (though he never seems to have used one in real life, I think it was only a matter of time). And that he had been watching alot of porn, many times just moments after rejecting my advances.
I dragged him to marriage counseling but of course that didn't help. He swore up and down that he did nothing wrong and I was just crazy.
Around this time he became violent. Never hit me nor the children but he punched a hole through our bedroom door and broke the baby gate at the top of our stairs and in general just started screaming all the time with seemingly very little to trigger him.
The final straw was when I found he had been downloading child porn. Mostly females aged 10-15 years old.
At first I tried to let him explain it away. A virus. Hackers. I wanted to believe him. He's such a wonderful father, I didn't want to worry about our daughter's safety with him. But I eventually came to my senses.
I called the cops and my husband was arrested.
When the cops came to search our house and seize evidence, they found drugs.
Shortly after my husband was released on bail I demanded access to our joint bank account (in the past he always insisted that I didn't need to know the password to view our online bank statements). I went through the last 6 months of bank statements and I found he made more money than he told me he did. In six months he had spent nearly $5,000 on Facebook games, drugs, porn websites, and his collection of toy figurines.
At first I was dead set on divorce but then I decided to stay...don't ask me why I'm staying, I have no clue.
He's done everything I've asked to try and make things up to me.
In the last 3 months:
- I've taken over our family's finances and started putting emergency money aside in my name only (he is aware of and supports this).
- We've gone back to marriage counseling with a mutual desire to work on us.
- He's started individual counseling.
- He's come clean to this female co-worker about Facebook stalking and masturbating to her photos, then cut all contact with her.
- He's stopped watching all porn. (3 months clean, but that sucess is probably due to lack of access. The cops took his computers and I monitor his access to mine.)
- He's stopped doing drugs. (again, lack of access since I now write the monthly budget and monitor how he spends his extra cash)
There is an on-going police investigation and he is looking at possible jail time. Def loosing his job, just don't know when. And when he looses his job, we will have to move. (We currently live overseas for his career.)
I've done alot of reading.
I've found information on regressed pedophiles and how they actually prefer adults but in times of stress will regress back to an age range that they were traumatized during, and the attraction to children of that age is merely an extension of their regression.
I've found information on how some porn addicts will watch a certain type of porn which they would never act out in real life. Like straight men who become obsessed with gay porn.
I've started looking into how I can protect my own children. Obviously teaching any child about boundaries is a good idea but also, for my children, never leaving them alone with their father.
I'm considering wiring our house with nanny-cams and putting a key logger onto my computer. Just grasping at straws trying to figure out the best way to make sure my daughter isn't raped by her father the way I was raped by mine.
I've been an off-and-on lurker on your boards for about 9 months. I think at one point I created a point I created a profile but I don't remember anymore.