# I Feel So Violated-Long



## TroubledNights (Dec 24, 2015)

I am a new member here, and just need to get some facts out there and some feedback. I keep going around and around in my own head and that is a horrible place to be.
Background: I am a 52 year old woman. I have been married for almost nine years and we have lived together for almost 19 years. In addition to living together for that length of time, we have known each other for almost forty years. I can say without any hesitation that he was my best friend for many, many years. Although he professed his undying love throughout most of my teens, by the time we got to our early twenties we had settled into a very satisfying, supportive friendship. 
I knew that he had done a lot of drugs in his twenties. I was there when he went into rehab and was very supportive of his sobriety. Drugs and alcohol were never issues for me, and they certainly didn’t play a part in our friendship. 
Our relationship changed in 1997. He asked if he could stay with me and my (then) eight year old son after returning from a couple of years of living across the country. Both his parents were dead, his half-siblings were a great deal older than him and it seemed normal for him to kind of couch surf through life. He had a reputation for being a little irresponsible-no career, no education. He had a trust fund and that was about it. He had been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD in his early teens and never had it addressed. Brilliantly smart, but very unfocused.
So he came to stay and never left. I had been a single parent for three or four years by then and it was so fantastic to have another adult in the home. We were such good friends, it seemed so effortless. And one day something just shifted in me and our relationship became romantic. Eventually I became pregnant. The party line was that I refused to get married, but looking back on it, I never refused because he never asked. 
A year after our son was born, we relocated out of state. We purchased our home together. With the exception of him providing most of the cash to buy our home outright, our day to day expenses were covered by me those first three years. He did not work. He presented himself as a modern stay-at-home Dad. I worked. I had a college education and experience that he didn’t, so I was more employable. Plus, I like working. 
He was a good father to our son, although he could be very scattered. He was not very involved with my older son, who was not “his” biological child. My older son had little to no contact with his father, but my SO did not step up and fill that void unless really pressed to do so. My older son became more and more troubled. 
We were married in 2007. I had started to feel that it was important to show that I valued the family we had created, and he stopped talking about how commitment phobic I was and just asked me to marry him. 
About eight or nine months after we were married, I woke up in the middle of the night and found my husband touching me in a sexual, violent way while he masturbated. This was unwelcomed and horribly distressing to me. After struggling with the ramifications of divorce, I agreed to marriage counseling. We found a great husband and wife team that had a set up that left us both feeling supported and heard. The consensus was that his behavior was linked to porn, his own poor impulse control and stress (I had lost my job a few months prior and we were now living on his trust fund while I went back to school). 
It seemed like we had managed to get past it. I didn’t forget it, and I would struggle from time to time with flash backs to the “Incident”. But for the most part it seemed like we were doing pretty good. Then his gambling got worse. And his internet porn use got worse. We were no longer in counseling. I had such a hard time discussing my concerns with him. He would either minimize his behavior, or he would vow to do better.
These past seven or eight months have been bad. He has been experiencing sexual dysfunction and started to take an ED medication, which he did not tell me about. His gambling has skyrocketed, as has the lying and secrecy surrounding it. A week or two before Thanksgiving he started to act really, really strange. He had stopped even attempting sexual intimacy with me; he was staying up late and not even coming to bed until I had been asleep for hours and he was waking up well before me, too. I asked him what was going on and he gave me some strange explanation about feeling disconnected from his body and feeling like he was going to have a heart attack at the same time. Then he kind of snapped out of it and I put it down to anxiety over his birthday (always a hard time for him).
Last Friday, on December 18, I got up as usual. I took my shower, fixed a cup of coffee and sat down to log on to the family computer before waking up my sixteen year old son. I was surprised to find the computer on, with my husband’s account up. There was a half-minimized window open and a scan notice (you know, the notice you get when a routine scan has been run and nothing was found). I glanced at the window that was open and it looked like some random pictures in a scroll frame. I looked a little closer and saw at least a few of the pictures were of a naked woman. I thought, “Crap, porn again” and then noticed something strange. And familiar. I looked closer and realized that the pictures were of me. In my bathroom.
The bastard had recorded me undressing and getting into the shower. And uploaded the video and stills onto the family computer. I was horrified. Not surprised. But horrified regardless. This was no impulsive act. He had to think of it. Set his phone up for it. Record me. Upload the video. It makes me sick. And I feel so violated. I can’t even begin to describe how violated I feel.
I want a divorce. I can’t think of anything else right now. He has moved out of the bedroom and is sleeping on the couch. He says he’ll go to counseling. He says he’ll do anything to “make it right”. I want him to move out. I am heartbroken at the turmoil this is causing our son. But I can’t bring myself to even look at my husband. 
I am off for another week (I am a teacher). I had been looking forward to my break, but now all I can think about is getting an attorney and going back to work so I don’t have to think about this freaking mess any more. 
This is such a mess.


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## Adelais (Oct 23, 2013)

TroubledNights, your life must be hell right now. Even I feel sick reading your post.

Your husband seems to be a sex addict, for one, and disrespectful of you for two. His proclivities have progressed perhaps to the level of criminal. (I don't know the laws about filming a spouse without their consent, but it seems to me that would be illegal.) If he filmed you and put it on the computer, and if it is not already downloaded to a porn site for others to see, it was going to be.

Personally, I would start the divorce process on Monday, and not look back.

Like intheory said, can you spend time with family or friends until school starts again?


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## SecondTime'Round (Jan 15, 2015)

TroubledNights said:


> I am heartbroken at the turmoil this is causing our son.


How does your son know about this mess?


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## gouge_away (Apr 7, 2015)

Definitely criminal.
In some states (Wisconsin) filming without consent is permissible, however recording with or without consent in an environment such as bathrooms and bedrooms are illegal.

This man is and has been using you this whole time. You said that it is nice to have another adult around, this one has no respect for you, you can find someone that does.


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## TroubledNights (Dec 24, 2015)

SecondTime'Round said:


> How does your son know about this mess?


My son only knows that his Dad has moved out of my bedroom. I explained to him that his Dad needed to work on some things and that we had decided together that the best way to do that was by taking some space. 

That was on Saturday. Yesterday I talked with my son and asked him if he had any questions. He wanted to know what was going on. I told him that I didn't think he needed to know what had happened, the details of anything. But I did acknowledge that something did happen, that it has nothing to do with him and that his father and I love him very much and that will never change. I repeated what I had told him on Saturday, that everything would work out eventually because we would all be okay no matter what ends up happening.

I don't want to be married to him any more. I want a divorce. I am still struggling mightily with what happens between now and the time when I am not married to him any more. I know I have to go through all that **** (the pain and fuss and mess and upheaval) before I can get to the place where I am not married to him any more. That has me pretty stuck. 

I don't think we can fix this. I put everything I had into repairing the damage done when he sexually assaulted me in my sleep eight years ago. I come from a childhood of abuse, mental, emotional and sexual). It was a really difficult process to work through what he did, filtered through my childhood experiences. I just don't have enough left to do that again with him. Obviously it all ended up being wasted time and effort anyway. 

I feel like I have been in shock this past week. It is only now that the full weight of what has happened has begun to settle in on me. Why? Why would he do that? Take away his responsibility to treat his spouse in a moral and ethical way. Why would anyone do that? 

My life as I knew it has ended. Every expectation I had is no longer possible. I know that everything I thought was true about my life was a lie. But I am still feeling the loss deeply. 

I need him to move out. He wants to chat about car repairs and t.v. shows and I can't stand to be in the same room with him. I need him to leave. I want to vomit every time I walk into my bathroom. 

It is illegal. Even though he is my husband, I have a reasonable expectation under the law to privacy. The bathroom and the bedroom are two places where the law recognizes implied privacy.


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## Adelais (Oct 23, 2013)

I'm so sorry he did that to you. It has to be worse after the first time he violated you. He has a problem and will bring you down more if you allow him to stay. I think you are in a good place in your head, as painful as it is. Too bad it is Christmas season, because of your son. Can your husband move out soon?


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## BlueWoman (Jan 8, 2015)

First, I want to say, I am so sorry that this is happening to you. Feeling violated seems pretty reasonable.
Second, I think it's okay to not want to try to fix this. Hopefully, for his sake, he does get counseling. But he has seriously violated your trust twice. It would have been a reasonable decision to leave him when he attacked you in your sleep. It's definitely reasonable to not want to leave your self vulnerable to him again.


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## gouge_away (Apr 7, 2015)

I would seize the computer.
Lock it up off site where he can no longer get to it, along with any recording devices, removable storage devices, and recorded compact discs.

Maybe his phone should disappear as well.


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## arbitrator (Feb 13, 2012)

*@TroubledNights :You impress me as being a rather educated and sophisticated lady!

That being said, I hope that you are intelligent enough to know that your H, indeed, has issues that are effectively involving the entire family and over the course of time, they are only going to get worse, and certainly not better!

He has summarily been given far more chances than a lot of women would have ever extended to psychologically abusive spouses! To that end, I would worry about you and your children's welfare and think you would be doing yourself and your son's a severe favor by legally ending this marital relationship!

Start your "180" campaign immediately, and line up an appointment with a good family law attorney ASAP. You need to extricate yourself from this hellhole that you've gotten yourself into!

Welcome to TAM! Sorry to see you here, but you have come to the preeminently best place in the world for emotional support from friends who have walked down similar paths in life! *
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## TroubledNights (Dec 24, 2015)

Thank you, everyone, for the support and advice. It means a lot to me. I do have friends, people I can talk to. But I am a pretty private person and I need time to process this before I can talk about it with the people who know me. Plus, my husband is well liked by most of my friends and I am feeling too vulnerable right now to deal with their sense of disbelief that he would do something like this. They will believe me, but it will be filtered through their own thoughts and opinions about my husband.

This morning, before the boys got up to open presents, my husband asked if he could talk to me for a few minutes. He wanted to show me how all of this was just a big misunderstanding because his cell phone malfunctioned. He refused to take responsibility for anything other than not deleting the pictures/recording as soon as he realized what had happened. As for how they ended up on the computer? He is baffled by that...unless, he said, he is even sicker than he thought.


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## arbitrator (Feb 13, 2012)

*It makes me wonder if your H's psychological problems aren't actually more advanced than you thought! Has he undergone recent evaluation and/or therapy?

In any event, there was never a viable reason for him to have awoken you to see him sexually abusing you! For that, there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever! That being said, you need to proceed with your exit plan, but after talking with your family, friends, and church leadership about it, so as not to unduly alarm them about your plans whenever the hammer comes to fall! Just saying!*
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## TroubledNights (Dec 24, 2015)

My husband left the house this morning, and a couple of hours later I received a text message from him saying he was being admitted into a psychiatric hospital. I feel better, knowing that he is out of the house and being cared for.

I am taking my two sons to a movie, which is our Christmas day tradition. I will tell them after the movie about where Dad is. My brother is on his way over. 

This is very, very painful. But it feels like a healthy kind of pain, not the pain you get from worry and secrets and resentment and fear. I am still in shock, but I have started to cry. I think that means that I am starting to process the loss.


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## Blondilocks (Jul 4, 2013)

He could be serious about getting help or he could be trying to avoid some charges.


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## arbitrator (Feb 13, 2012)

*Does your H perchance have other family relatives?

Or at least those whom he still has viable relationships?*
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

TroubledNights said:


> My husband left the house this morning, and a couple of hours later I received a text message from him saying he was being admitted into a psychiatric hospital. I feel better, knowing that he is out of the house and being cared for.
> 
> I am taking my two sons to a movie, which is our Christmas day tradition. I will tell them after the movie about where Dad is. My brother is on his way over.
> 
> This is very, very painful. But it feels like a healthy kind of pain, not the pain you get from worry and secrets and resentment and fear. I am still in shock, but I have started to cry. I think that means that I am starting to process the loss.


Do you know where he is supposed to check himself in? I would call and make sure that he's really there.


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## TroubledNights (Dec 24, 2015)

arbitrator said:


> *Does your H perchance have other family relatives?
> 
> Or at least those whom he still has viable relationships?*
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


Both his parents are dead and he is not close enough to his half-siblings to reach out to them. They are a lot older than he is and they just don't have any real relationship.

He does have friends that he is close with, but I know from past experience that he will not reach out to them when he is in crisis. He will just pretend that everything is a-okay and then (maybe) after the fact comment that he had a rough patch but things are so much better...blah, blah, blah.

I know that he went back through my history log on this computer and read everything I had posted here last night. He framed it as "necessary snooping", since he had "no idea what was going on". He was awake and waiting for me when I got up this morning, wanting to explain the misunderstanding so I wouldn't be upset anymore. He gave a lame excuse about the phone just randomly recording me without his knowledge...more blah, blah, blah. He was not taking any responsibility. 

I don't know if he was seriously looking for help, or if he just wants to protect himself by being hospitalized. He would have read the replies in this thread, talking about police involvement. Maybe he discovered that what he did is illegal and he got scared. 

I am contacting an attorney on Monday. I should have done it earlier this week, but I was hoping to hang on long enough to get my sons through Christmas.


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## Adelais (Oct 23, 2013)

TroubledNights said:


> I know that he went back through my history log on this computer and read everything I had posted here last night. He framed it as "necessary snooping", since he had "no idea what was going on". He was awake and waiting for me when I got up this morning, wanting to explain the misunderstanding so I wouldn't be upset anymore. He gave a lame excuse about the phone just randomly recording me without his knowledge...more blah, blah, blah. He was not taking any responsibility.
> 
> I don't know if he was seriously looking for help, or if he just wants to protect himself by being hospitalized. He would have read the replies in this thread, talking about police involvement. Maybe he discovered that what he did is illegal and he got scared.
> 
> I am contacting an attorney on Monday. I should have done it earlier this week, but I was hoping to hang on long enough to get my sons through Christmas.


It would seem that since he read the replies here, that he is now afraid.

Have you called to make sure he is really in a psych ward? They will not let him get away with it either, once they know.

Hopefully what has happened is that once he read the seriousness of what he did, it is helping him come out of some denial and he is realizing how sick he is.

However, whose phone malfunctions and films other people in the bathroom, then downloads only the pictures and videos onto the computer all by itself?

Don't believe a word he says about his phone malfunctioning.

Are you safe? Do you believe he could try to harm you to keep his behavior from coming back on him?


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## TroubledNights (Dec 24, 2015)

IMFarAboveRubies said:


> It would seem that since he read the replies here, that he is now afraid.
> 
> Have you called to make sure he is really in a psych ward? They will not let him get away with it either, once they know.
> 
> ...


Yes, we are totally safe. He has never been violent or physically abusive. I don't believe his phone excuse at all. I think that he has a porn addiction, as well as the gambling addiction. I think that he was using those pictures for sexual satisfaction. End of story. I was no longer a real person to him, but just one more image to use. 

He is really in a psych ward. The charge nurse called and gave me the code that I would have to use to contact him. Fat chance of that happening.


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## phillybeffandswiss (Jan 20, 2013)

TroubledNights said:


> About eight or nine months after we were married, I woke up in the middle of the night and found my husband touching me in a sexual, violent way while he masturbated.
> 
> The bastard had recorded me undressing and getting into the shower. And uploaded the video and stills onto the family computer. I was horrified. Not surprised. But horrified regardless. This was no impulsive act. He had to think of it. Set his phone up for it. Record me. Upload the video. It makes me sick. And I feel so violated. I can’t even begin to describe how violated I feel.
> .


What's scary is your counseling team didn't tell you to get him serious help. You WERE sexually abused. Now, you find out he is secretly recording you. I'd advise you to inform the doctors of these two acts.


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## Spotthedeaddog (Sep 27, 2015)

Tell him to leave, on your terms or you'll have him criminally prosecuted for "making an intimate recording without your knowledge" (give your local free legal organisation a call for the exact local terminology). Tell him to destroy all copies and that if you see or even hear about them still existing you will have him charged for the crime and violating your agreement. Get him to sign.

If he disagrees get a barrister and put him in criminal jail.
The law takes such things very seriously in these days of the microcamera.

If he records - it's illegal.
If he publishes, such as storing the photos on an internet storage facility - it's illegal in many ways (we're not just talking misdemeanor time here...)


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## TroubledNights (Dec 24, 2015)

phillybeffandswiss said:


> What's scary is your counseling team didn't tell you to get him serious help. You WERE sexually abused. Now, you find out he is secretly recording you. I'd advise you to inform the doctors of these two acts.


I don't want to be involved with his current treatment. If he starts to shade the truth with them, or not fully disclose his problem, I don't want to be cast as the paranoid wife who has to prove that he did something and this isn't just an over reaction on my part. I can't make him "do" treatment right any more than I could have made him "do" relationships right.

I think the issue of the sexual assault was treated fairly and competently by the therapists we saw in 2008. It was never marginalized by either of them. And exploring whether or not I wanted to press charges for spousal rape was a big part of my therapeutic process initially. It was my choice.


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## phillybeffandswiss (Jan 20, 2013)

If you are that adamant about staying out of his treatment, then you need to end the marriage and get away from him as soon as possible. The behaviors are resurfacing. You have no clue what he has recorded, who he has recorded and what else has occurred. Porn addiction is one thing, this is escalation of his voyeurism and has scary implications.


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## Adelais (Oct 23, 2013)

TroubledNights said:


> I don't want to be involved with his current treatment. If he starts to shade the truth with them, or not fully disclose his problem, I don't want to be cast as the paranoid wife who has to prove that he did something and this isn't just an over reaction on my part. I can't make him "do" treatment right any more than I could have made him "do" relationships right.
> 
> I think the issue of the sexual assault was treated fairly and competently by the therapists we saw in 2008. It was never marginalized by either of them. And exploring whether or not I wanted to press charges for spousal rape was a big part of my therapeutic process initially. It was my choice.


The psych ward called you, as the wife. He obviously gave them your number, and they called you. If you were not significant in what happens to him, they wouldn't have called.

I believe it is your duty, to yourself, to let the psych ward know the latest thing that tipped him off: 1. You found out he filmed you. 2. he lied about how it happened, and how it ended up on the computer. 3. You posted online for help and he found your postings. 4. Only after #3 did he put himself in psych.

That is all you have to tell them. No more details unless they ask. He may have told them the truth, he may not.

Glad you are feeling stronger. Hopefully your life will get nothing but better from her on out. Not saying there won't be stress, but you don't have to worry about any more surprises that haven't already happened.


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