Tis the Season for Joy (and Sorrow)

A few days ago, my son was regaling his daughters with stories of Christmases past, particularly in the last home his father and I shared.  It was a splendid home, large, warm and welcoming in an upper middle-class neighborhood in the Midwest.  It was a consummate “holiday” house because it lent itself so well to wonderful holiday decorations and large parties.  But it was also the house whose front door was broken down one cold morning as police executed a search warrant. The memories I have of the house brings joy but also sorrow—bitter and sweet.

Temple Mount, Jerusalem

I was recently reminded of a story from the Old Testament that is kind of strange to read during this season of the year but maybe not so strange.  The temple in Jerusalem—that center of worship—had been destroyed by the Babylonians and many of the land’s residents had been carried into exile.  Seventy years later, the new king of the land decreed that the exiles could return to their native country and commissioned them to rebuild the temple.  When the builders laid the foundation of the temple, the people threw a party to celebrate but not everyone felt joyful—those who remembered the glory of the old temple were sorrowful because they knew that the rebuilt temple would not equal the majesty of the destroyed one.  There were shouts of joy and sounds of weeping that were so loud that one could not distinguish the sounds of the joy from those of the weeping.

Ancient Judean ruins

Those of us who have experienced the trauma of relationship betrayal probably understand better than most the season of joy and sorrow.  Like the exiles, we may have been kicked out of our lives or sat in the ash heap or ruins of what once was trying to find a remnant of the joy we once knew.  We may long for the life we once had while also being greatly relieved and joyful in this new normal of a life we have built.  While we are so grateful to have survived, like those exiles, we still bear the scars of the traumas we have experienced.  We still feel the pain of wounds that are healing but still hurt enough to remind us that something went very wrong in our lives and in our relationships.

There is an odd sentence in the Biblical narrative of the exiles returning home. It describes the returning exiles as being in dread of the neighboring peoples.  Not all of the Judean inhabitants had been carried into captivity.  The elite of the community were taken first but many “commoners” were allowed to remain in the land.  The elite were religious and civic leaders who were probably the wealthier inhabitants.  Their land and possessions were taken by those who remained.  So, there was a loss of status and economic security for the exiles.  In their former lives, they were esteemed as leaders and upstanding citizens; their captivity ended that identity and their return threatened the new lives the remaining inhabitants had created.

How many of us can fully identify with the fear and trauma these returning exiles experienced?  We too once had an identity, reputation and status that was ripped from us by the actions of our betrayer.  We still feel the sting of that loss and maybe still feel the fear that we will be judged guilty simply by our relationship with a perpetrator.  We sometimes fear the dread of our neighbors—not because of our actions or behavior but because of what the addict, pedophile or abuser in our lives has done.

Western Wall--Wailing Wall

Joy and sorrow—two ends of a spectrum of emotion that we are capable of experiencing as humans created in the image of God.  The holiday season presents so many opportunities to experience both, and that is ok.  Life is not black and white nor is it a Hallmark movie.  Stuff happens, we break and we hurt.  Sitting with both emotions is a healthy and appropriate response to the season, particularly in light of loss.  

My hope and prayer for you is that you experience the gift of presence as you navigate these days of joy and sorrow—that you embrace the paradox of both emotions and celebrate the gift that you are.  You are who you are today precisely because of all that you have experienced and you have so much to offer a hurting world.  Relish the joy and welcome the tears—they both are a reflection of the journey that has brought you to this day.  Merry Christmas and may the New Year bring more joy than sorrow!

Court Transcripts & Letters from Prison

I have not said much lately about my "qualifier" (a kinder word for the perpetrator I was married to).  Earlier this year, he violated the conditions of his probation and now sits in prison.  As a former volunteer behind bars, I had inside information on the kind of treatment child offenders receive when incarcerated.  After I learned of his foray into the dark world of child pornography, we had many "discussions" where I painted the consequence of his continued pursuit in vivid language.   He called me "paranoid" then but is now living in some pretty horrendous conditions, as I predicted.

Anyone who has been in a relationship with an addict has experienced the blame, projection, minimization, exaggeration and denial that is common to addiction, and particularly so when dealing with a narcissist.  (One therapist that I worked with asserts that she has yet to meet an addict who is not also a narcissist).  You would think that when you are caught with your hand in the proverbial cookie jar, there would be little recourse except to acknowledge your guilt and accept your punishment.  That is not what I am experiencing and after speaking with many women who have had the same misfortune of marrying a pedophile, I find that my experience is not unique.

As I did after my ex's first trial, I purchased the court transcripts from his most recent trial and received them a few months ago.  It has been enlightening and sobering to read once again the case against him, particularly the ways he "storied" his probation violation.  One paragraph in the transcript stood out to me and the words continue to reverberate in my head and are validated by past and current experiences with my qualifier.  Quoting  a clinical psychologist who treated my ex for nearly four years, the prosecutor said, "This defendant has an inordinately difficult time accepting responsibility for his behavior.  He constantly blames his [ex]wife for his offense . . . feeling that if she had been more supportive of him, he wouldn't have had to look at child pornography."  His probation officer testified about his violation in great detail (no children were directly harmed, thank God) and the prosecutor illustrated how the defendant's story about the violation changed, depending on who he was talking to.  Court transcripts are incredibly valuable, particularly when dealing with an addict/narcissist who uses a lot of gaslighting.  They are the stake in the ground that becomes unmovable and grounding when communication becomes murky and confusing.

Letters from prison have been arriving--letters that are deeply disturbing and hurtful, far more desperate than previous ones.  The latest, addressed to one of my children, includes 20 pages of hate and blame towards me.  The specifics do not merit inclusion here but once again, those court transcripts are the anchor in the swirl of blame-shifting, denial and deception.  As my friend, "Eve" discovered, the man I thought I married does not exist and never did.  He was an illusion and I was simply a prop in his elaborate scheme to hide his secret nature.  Eve and I had a conversation recently about the difficulty in removing those rose-colored glasses and accepting the truth about our former partners, a conversation I vividly remembered when reading those letters!

My ex made it clear in his letters that he does not like the fact that this blog exists and consequently I have questioned my motives in continuing to write about my experience.  While he thinks that my writing is all about him, it is really about my recovery from betrayal and trauma; he is central to my wounding but irrelevant to my recovery.  I regularly hear from women just like me who somehow discover this space on the internet and find hope in the knowledge that they are not alone.  There is risk and vulnerability in writing of such personal experiences but there is also freedom in speaking the truth rather than continuing to hide.

So the lessons I have learned from reading and re-reading court transcripts and letters from prison can be summarized by the following:

• Denial, minimization, blame-shifting, projecting and deception are common among addicts and until they are abandoned, recovery becomes virtually impossible;
• Gaslighting (using tactics to try to change an individual's perception of reality) is very confusing; those who experience it need frequent reality checks with trusted individuals or court transcripts;
• Manipulation, exaggeration and distortion of facts can be very convincing and require vigilance in holding to what we know to be objective truth;
• Perpetrators are incredibly skilled at creating and maintaining a near-perfect illusionary life, gathering props (i.e. spouse, children, academic credentials, etc.) to support the facade that hides their true nature and behavior;
• When a narcissist is through with you, either by your choice or his, what seemed like love becomes rabid hatred.  We can't be surprised by this.

How about you?  Has your experience been similar or different to what I have described?   As always, I would love to hear from you. 

Two Marriages, Two Islands, Two Traumas

I married my first husband when I was 21 years old and left with him two weeks after our wedding for an assignment in the Caribbean.  We set up housekeeping in a multi-colored cement block house, in a small village on the edge of a rain forest.  We had running water but no hot water, electricity, refrigerator or screens on our windows.  Our only mode of transportation was a small Honda 90 motorcycle.

I've written elsewhere about the trauma that I experienced while on this gorgeous island paradise, when my husband introduced me to a young girl and insisted that she become a regular part of our lives.  I didn't know it at the time, but he was grooming her for an eventual molestation.  I didn't learn of the molestation until three years later when he confessed it to me.  I experienced the "relationship" with his young friend as an incredible trauma that I was completely confused by--nothing indicated that he was a predator, my gut was just screaming that this little girl was a threat to my marriage.  She wasn't, but he definitely was; in fact our marriage ended before it really began.  I just didn't know that for over three decades.

I met and married my current husband four years after my world and marriage exploded with my ex-husband's arrest.  During the first year of our marriage, an idyllic time of adjusting to one another and blending our families came to a rather abrupt end during the month of December.  December tends to be a trigger-month for me; my first marriage began and was pronounced dead and I gave birth to my firstborn during the last month of the year.  Our final family gathering also occurred during this month, so it can be a challenging time for me.  For a variety of reasons my current husband and I entered some treacherous waters during our first December together.

We were vacationing on the beautiful island of Hawaii when our individual triggers collided in a frightening and bewildering fashion.  I think it is fair to say that we both were confused, hurt and lost; it seems that even paradise can turn ugly, depending on our perceptions and circumstances.  I ended up leaving my new husband and returning to the mainland early.  Eventually with the help of some gifted therapists and a lot of grit and determination (i.e. hard work), we gained a better understanding of what happened; the whys are still revealing themselves as we continue to grow individually and as a couple.  But the experience was traumatic during a month that has a history of trauma and loss for me.

Recently we revisited some of the "whys" of that island trauma and I found myself fighting hard to

not mix up the names of the two islands.  What I've learned about trauma and loss is that if left unresolved, new losses or traumas bring the old ones along for company.  So it appears that I may have some additional work to do around that first trauma on an island paradise with my ex-husband, especially as we near my "trigger" month of December.  Recovery work, I am learning, is rarely completely done in one season of life; each new growth spurt or deepening relationship can reveal new levels of healing that is necessary.

I am re-reading an excellent work by an incest survivor turned advocate.  Marilyn Van Debur's biography "Miss America by Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayals and Unconditional Love" chronicles her molestation at the hands of her powerful father and more importantly, her recovery.  It is a stark reminder of the indelible imprint that childhood sexual molestation makes on an individual and the work that is required if recovery is to occur.  As the former wife of a pedophile, it is both a grim refresher of the seriousness of the crimes my ex-husband committed but also of the secondary victimization that occurs for the non-offending family members of the perpetrator.  Everyone in a perpetrator's sphere of influence is impacted by their behavior; no one remains untouched.

Before we move into December with all of its celebrations and potential landmines, we will pause to give thanks.  We give thanks for the good and for the challenging times and remember that forgiveness is a gift that we give ourselves; it opens the door to deeper healing, connection and freedom.  I was mesmerized by this poem that came across my desk today:

"At the year's turn,

in the days between, 

we step away

from what we know

into the spaces 

we cannot name.

Slowly the edges

begin to yield,

the hard places

soften,

the gate to forgiveness

and gratitude

opens."

-- unknown

And another by a favorite artist/poet:

"she closed her eyes

and thought of her year.

it couldn't just be

the good she was

thankful for

it had to be the all...

the fullness, the depths,

the journey.

the dance of life.

for these she gave thanks."

-- terri st. cloud

May we all move into those spaces we cannot name--traumas, memories, losses and betrayal--and as we do the work of recovery, watch them soften and give thanks for the gifts we find in our woundings--the depth fullness and journey.  Have a wonderful week of feasting, giving thanks and dancing to the music of life! 

When Dreams Die

One of the gifts that I have discovered as a consequence of marriage to a pedophile has been the opportunity to work with other partners. Sharing our stories and pain has been deeply rewarding and healing for me and I think for them as well.  I'd like to introduce you to one such partner with her permission, of course, and her identity shielded.

Eve* met her husband at a church singles' group and was immediately attracted to his quiet nature and compassion.  People were drawn to his kindness and ability to be present with others so it came as no surprise when he announced plans to go to seminary in preparation for ministry.  Shortly after their marriage, Eve supported "Adam" through seminary training and joyfully joined him in ministry when  he obtained a pastorate.  She loved ministering with him and watching him minister to others.

As his ministry flourished, they began making plans to start a family.  Early one morning she kissed him goodbye as he left for an out-of-town church conference.  He never came home from that meeting.  While folding his laundry she received a phone call from him and heard the unbelievable news that he was in jail, having been arrested in a child pornography and trafficking sting.  Can you imagine how her world tilted and twirled?  Nothing in her life with him led her to believe that this was remotely possible.

Eve and I have shared our stories and our pain over the death of the dreams we had when we were brides.  While her marriage lasted three years and mine over three decades, there are similarities and profound differences in our stories.  The death of a dream is a loss and all losses must be grieved, but just as people process grief differently, variations in one's story may also impact how one processes the losses attached to broken dreams.

My dreams died a slow and agonizing death; Eve's died suddenly with one phone call.  I had time to come to terms with the loss of my marriage prior to my ex-husband's arrest; Adam's arrest required that Eve immediately take steps to end her marriage.  Both of us lost homes, ministries and friends that we dearly loved but while I lost my past, in a way Eve lost her future.  I had spent my entire adult life committed to my ex-husband and our marriage; recovery demanded that I sift through a lifetime of memories and reframe them in light of the diagnosis of pedophilia.  While Eve's recovery also involves this sifting and reframing, her immediate hopes for a family were dashed when her marriage ended.

She remarked recently that the "shock of adjusting to the difference between trying to have a baby with this man to suddenly divorcing him [after his arrest]" continues to be a challenge to recovery and moving on. I had grown children who were devastated by their father's arrest but I had children and a grandchild on the way! Eve understands that it is advantageous that she did not have a child with Adam but the lost potential of children underscores the devastation that he brought into her life.  This is not what she signed up for when she took her sacred vows; it is unfair and tragic.  When dreams die, sometimes hope does as well. 

I've been musing recently on the dreams that I cherished on my first wedding day--dreams of living a long full life with the man I loved, creating and raising a family and eventually growing old together.  This week my third granddaughter came into our lives and even now, after all of the pain, I feel a bit of nostalgia and regret that the man who helped me create this family is not sharing in the joy of watching them thrive and in welcoming new little ones.  The dreams I had long ago as a bride have died and life demands new dreams and a reframing of old ones.  And new dreams birth hope.

Eve is just beginning to nurse hope again--sober hope but hope nevertheless.  I am reminded of a quote I used when I named this year and it seems a good place to end this post.  Hope (and new dreams) "comes into play when our circumstances are dire--things are not going well or at least there's considerable uncertainty about how things will turn out."  SOURCE  My friend Eve is daring to choose hope and to dream again  That is the definition of courage.

*pseudonym; some details changed to protect her anonymity

The Language of Addiction

Recently I've been amused by my almost two-year-old granddaughter's attempts at learning to communicate and have noted the importance of how and what we communicate to our children and to each other, often without full awareness of what we are actually communicating.  For example, the word she has chosen for the fuzzy stuff on her head is "Ow," because she often hears her older sister cry "ow" when her hair is combed.  So "ow" have become her word for "hair."  Eventually she will correct herself but for now she is excited that she has added a new word to her growing vocabulary.

How we language addiction or compulsive behavior is also interesting to me.  Is it a "slip," or a "relapse?"  One word communicates a rather minor fall from the sobriety wagon that is to be expected, while the other signals a more serious and dangerous condition.  I recall my ex-husband referring to his sexual compulsion and illegal activity as "almost an addiction," but "not quite one."  Falling back into illegal activity becomes a "probation violation" rather than "engaging in a compulsory behavior or an addiction."  The former is innocuous and could cover any number of behaviors while the second description indicates something over which a person has little or no control.

Addicts are known for their attempts to intellectualize, minimize, blame-shift, project and deny their behavior.  Manipulating how they language their compulsions may provide a level of protection for the addict but true recovery cannot begin until most if not all, of these defense mechanisms are abandoned.  Telling the truth about and to one's self is critical for transformation and change.

I've also found it interesting to note how institutions have used and abused language when referencing an addict, especially the high-profile ones.  While Bill Cosby's accusers tell the same story of being drugged and raped, his defenders minimize his behavior by the language they use.  He is not a "rapist" but rather someone who has engaged in compulsive sexual relationships outside of his marriage.  In religious circles terms such as "sinner," or "hypocrite" implies behavior that is a minor, discordant part of life and common to all.  By lumping all "sin" into one category we overlook or marginalize abhorrent behavior and minimize the pain of victims.  It's all in the language we use.

And I've also noticed how often the organization or church or political party focus on forgiving the offense and restoring the offender rather than on the real pain of the victims.  Forgiveness is an important part of recovery from any injury but the cheap forgiveness our language references denies the seriousness of the offense and the nature of the behavior.  How we language sexual compulsions and addiction matters, particularly addiction that victimizes another. 

The alcoholic who stops by the bar on the way home is not engaging in criminal or immoral behavior unless he gets behind the wheel while under the influence; the porn addict or pedophile who engages with his drug of choice is minimally guilty of a moral offense and most often engaged in criminal behavior as well as behavior that involves the victimization and/or trafficking of another human being.  There is a big difference but our language lumps them all together.  Unfortunately, the language of addiction is often one of minimizing and denying the horror of victimization, betrayal and criminal activity.  Collectively we collude with the addict's efforts when we embrace his language of addiction.

Unlike her sister, my nearly five-year-old granddaughter has language that is precise, descriptive and often beyond her years.  She has learned the art of communication and her vocabulary is huge, thanks in large part to her love of books and reading.  It is time for the rest of us to "grow up" in the language we use around addiction.  We need to speak the truth in love and with compassion.  Softening the language does nothing to really help the addict and minimizes the tremendous human cost tied to addiction.  We heal what we name and speak; we cannot hope to end addiction in our society until and unless we speak the truth about it.

Betrayal by Pedophilia

I had an interesting discussion with a marriage therapist recently regarding the unique experience of having been betrayed by a pedophile partner.  In the course of our dialogue, I stated that it would have been easier had he betrayed me with another consenting adult--male or female.  She was surprised, believing after many years of working with couples, that an affair with a consenting adult is far more difficult.  She concluded that this is true because everyone knows that a sexual attraction to a child is taboo, so the pain of betrayal that a pedophile's partner may feel is not as severe as it would be had her partner chosen a consenting adult.  Really?

It is a mistake for any of us to try to assign levels of pain to an experience for another and I in no way mean to minimize the very real pain of betrayal within a committed relationship.  Betrayal is horrendous no matter how or with whom it occurs.  But betrayal by pedophilia is unique in its devastation and that is what I tried to explain to my friend.  There are elements to the betrayal that simply are not present in a "normal" case of adultery.

First and foremost, conducting a sexual relationship with an adult other than your spouse is not against the law.  The criminal element present in the betrayal a pedophile's partner experiences adds an incredibly frightening element.  Partners have often been charged or threatened with criminal charges by law enforcement and are sometimes seen as colluding with the perpetrator.   Additionally, personal privacy has often been invaded by means of an executed search warrant.  My personal diary was taken by law enforcement during the raid on our house because it was on an external hard drive that my ex-husband had access to.  Intimate details of one's relationship are often testified to in open court with hungry journalists ready to report each tidbit to the public.

The scandal that often follows the arrest of a perpetrator is frequently more widespread than that generated by an affair, particularly when the media become involved.  The humiliation a partner and her children feel as friends, family, work colleagues and acquaintances learn of the arrest or accusation is intense.  And all too often, the family is unable to comment on the details of the case because of the criminal investigation.  They are forced to enclose themselves within a cone of silence and shame while speculation and judgment swirl around them.

Devastating financial consequences often follow a pedophile's betrayal with loss of family income, health insurance, retirement and sometimes the family home.  A number of years ago I wrote a post about the psychological misinformation, bordering on malpractice that is often applied to the partner of a pedophile.  Labels such as co-pedophile, co-conspirator, or co-dependent victimize and stigmatize an already traumatized woman!

Gaslighting is a deliberate attempt to redefine another's reality.  The partner of a pedophile has
probably experienced this tactic throughout her relationship.  Her concerns or fears, if realized or expressed, are minimized, denied or blamed on her faulty perception, etc.  She has probably been told that the problems in the relationship are due to some deficiency or failing on her part.  He justifies his behavior by blaming it on her. While this phenomenon is not unique to pedophiles, the secrecy and shame that surrounds this disease makes it nearly impossible for her to find information or hep, if she suspects anything at all. l She has very little ability to do a reality-check because she most often knows nothing of his secret behavior though she may have a gut feeling that something is wrong.  Imagine her horror when she discovers that the real reason there were problems in their relationship was not due to a deficiency on her part but to a secret so huge and devastating.  Imagine how it feels to know that your partner was not attracted to you but to a child!  Yes, another adult would be easier to accept than this reality and the years of gaslighting, blame and denial only add to the wound.

After our conversation, I had a terrifying dream in which one of my sons was being threatened by a group of ignorant guys who believed that my son should bear the punishment for the crimes his father committed.  I woke, grateful that it was just a bad dream but in essence, it reflects a measure of truth for the partner and children of a convicted pedophile.  We feel the "guilt by association" in the silence, stares or avoidant behavior of those we once called friends. We live in the fear that we will be held responsible for his despicable behavior.  It is a unique experience and recovery requires specialized, professional help.*

I highly recommend a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) for partners of pedophiles because I have learned from personal and professional experience that not all therapists are equipped to deal with the unique challenges that this issue present.  For more information or to find a CSAT provider, see the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals.

Not a Victimless Crime

I knew better but I did it anyway.  I watched a rerun of Law and Order, Special Victims Unit.  The episode focused on the fall-out of child pornography on the victims, and the fact that once an image is on the world-wide web, it is there forever.  Victims are re-traumatized with each download of their image.  Perpetrators view the memorialization of a child's rape, molestation and abuse for sexual gratification.  I remember the detectives' mantra during the long hours I sat with them while my house was searched:  "Child pornography is not a victimless crime."

What the detectives did not know that cold February morning, however, was that I had heard countless stories of childhood victimization, mostly from the women I worked with in a prison setting.  The impact of childhood sexual exploitation can be codified in the details of their drug and criminal records.  None of them escaped without harm.  Not one.  The devastation lasts a lifetime.  Pornography, no matter how "tame" some would judge it to be is never without victims, especially child pornography.

Yet how often, as a society, do we minimize or trivialize the seriousness of a media presentation containing child nudity?  How often do we determine just how serious the crime is based on how offensive we judge the material to be?  Isn't that a technical definition of pornography--material that a "normal" person would find offensive?  Is child nudity in a sexual context ever innocent or non-offensive?  For a pedophile any image of a child, nude or fully clothed, can be sexualized so where do we draw the line?

The episode of SVU was a poignant reminder of the countless ways that pornography impacts all of us, not least of which are the victims.  So while I should not have watched it, I'm glad I did.  The grief and horror are necessary--we must not fail to be horrified when someone is victimized.  We must not grow complacent in our fight to end all victimization and to protect our most vulnerable.  We must not draw back from looking evil in its face and calling it what it is.  When we cease to be horrified, when we refuse to disrupt the quietude of our lives with a look at the dark side of rampant pornography, when we bury our heads in the sand and pretend that this is not our problem, we condemn innocent children, men and women to continued exploitation and victimization.

"I knew better but I did it anyway; I couldn't help myself," is an excuse often given by the one caught in a pornography sting.  I've heard variations of that from the addict I was previously married to.  But this time, I'm glad I went ahead and watched something that I knew would trigger my trauma.  I need to be reminded.  There are children to be protected, and some of them are very dear to my heart.

For Better or Worse: Really?

After nearly four decades, I can still remember making these promises to my ex-husband:

For better or worse,

For richer or poorer,

In sickness and in health,

To love and to cherish,

Til death do us part.

While the vows seemed to encompass all of the possibilities that life can bring--wealth, poverty, sickness, health, good times and bad times--they don't really address what happens to a marriage when pedophilia is present.  Maybe the last line should be amended to read "Til death or pedophilia do us part."  How many brides would agree to that promise?

Aside from the very serious implications of criminal behavior towards a child, pedophilia impacts every facet of the relationship, even if miraculously the pedophilia is contained and no illegal activities take place.  I recently described it this way:

Here's what I know about child pornography or pedophilia from a personal and professional perspective.  It is progressive--what titillates and excites today won't work tomorrow so more graphic material must be found.  It is all-consuming--it will demand more and more of his time and energy.  It requires secrecy and hiding, which will spill over into all of his relationships.  Even when he seems to be present to you and your children, he isn't completely--his mind is absorbed with maintaining his secret life or reliving what he has watched or viewed.  It will eventually render him incapable of normal relationships and work productivity.  One day he will be caught and you and your children may be in harm's way when that occurs.

If I could give advice to that pregnant 23 year old who was me when I first learned of my ex's behavior, I would say "Run!"  I am remarried and the layers of grief and pain that are now healing are rooted in my marriage to a man who was and is a fake.  I have over three decades of junk to heal from--times when I was blamed and accepted the blame for his criminal behavior, times when I felt less than as a woman and wife because I could not satisfy him after I "grew up."  I still struggle with disrupted sleep because I learned as a 23 year old to stay alert during my sleep to the potential cry from one of my children.  I struggle with trust and with shame  I struggle with fear and anxiety.  I live waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I live with trauma responses.

I went on to note that pedophiles have a different relationship to truth than do most people.  The deceptions inherent in living a life of secrecy and of hiding your true self, colors every day and impacts every facet of a marriage.  My ex and I once spent days, if not weeks, arguing about what constituted a lie.  For most of us, this is pretty straightforward and simple--a lie is something that is intended to deceive.  My ex argued that it was not a lie if it could be construed to be technically true, though the intent was to deceive.  It was maddening!  But for someone whose entire life was a lie, his definition didn't seem too important or too big a stretch for him.

Trust is foundational to the living out of those vows and if trust is broken, the vows have been broken.  It is astounding how easy it is for some perpetrators to discard those vows and see them as meaningless.  They never became meaningless to me but I was dumbfounded to discover how little my ex-husband thought of them.  Maybe they were never meaningful to him in the first place.  I don't know.

If marriage is based on promises that are made between two people, and one of the individuals has no intention of keeping the promises, is it a marriage? Is it possible for a pedophile who is intent on hiding his true self from his partner, to honestly make such promises?

On the anniversary of my divorce, I can truly say that pedophilia brought the worst of times and left me below the poverty line.  The actions of a very sick man who was unable to love or cherish anyone other than himself destroyed all that I thought we had built together.  So death would have been an easier separation than this.

Leap Year

This is my 100th blog post!  While I had planned a different sort of post for this milestone, I think this is appropriate.  Thanks for journeying with me on this road to healing and activism.

 

Thirty days hath September

April, June and November;

All the rest have thirty-one,

Excepting February alone

Which hath but twenty-eight, in fine,

Till leap year gives it twenty-nine.

In the quest to keep our calendar year synchronized with the astronomical and seasonal year, an extra day is added to February once every four years.  Adding a day to the year is a corrective measure since the earth does not orbit around the sun in exactly 365 days.  A number of superstitions and traditions surround this four-year phenomenon, including:

• A woman can propose marriage to a man on February 29
• Marriage and divorce should not occur in a leap year
• Couples should avoid having a baby during leap years
• Natural calamities abound in leap years
• Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable during this time

The last leap year was in 2012 and it was on February 29, 2012 that my life was drastically and dramatically altered.  Before the sun was completely awake that cold winter morning, the police broke down the door of the house I shared with my daughter and now ex-husband in their quest to serve a search warrant.  They had been investigating my former spouse for a number of months, documenting each time he downloaded child pornography.

There are things I will never forget about that morning:

• the crash of wood splintering
• my daughter's scream of terror
• thundering footsteps of officers with weapons drawn headed for the bedroom I was in.  In their eagerness to secure the scene, they ran right past the room the target of their investigation was sleeping in.  With the help of Ambien he was oblivious to the terror my daughter and I were experiencing.
• opening my bedroom door in an attempt to get to my daughter and seeing so many men in black, shining a bright light in my eyes
• my embarrassment at only being in a nightgown and feeling the need for a robe
• the humiliation of being forced to sit with bedhead and morning breath for hours while the sanctity of my home was invaded
• the impatience I felt at the chatter of the officers assigned to sit with my daughter and I
• maintaining eye contact with my terrified daughter, trying to communicate love and strength to her
• her stoic and resourceful presence even after they had forced her to the floor at gunpoint when they entered the house
• my helplessness at no longer being able to protect her from the knowledge of her father's secret and criminal behavior
• my screams of rage and terror when the officers finally left and I was alone in my dismantled life and house

Scene from "The Impossible"

These are the things I will forever associate with leap year, specifically leap day.

In a technical sense, one could argue that today is the first anniversary of our world explosion day but I'm glad I am further down the road of recovery now than I would have been one year after that fateful morning.  This blog has been part of my solitary healing journey; it has provided a venue for processing what happened to me.  And it has proven that even the most heinous pain can be redeemed.  I have seen that redemption process in the many women who contact me or leave comments because they are in a similar life explosion.

February 29, 2012 was a pivot day for me.  It was preceded by 33 years of marriage to a man who had a secret identity but who worked hard to create an illusionary facade as a successful family man and professional.  The days that followed were filled with trauma, betrayal and scandal.  This event did not begin and end on that 366th day of 2012 and while we are healing, it will always be the defining day in our family history.

My story is not just about a marriage that went south or a husband who misbehaved and was caught.  It is also about organized religion's failure to respond appropriately, colluding therapists, the criminal justice system's zeal and then compromise and society's discomfort with the fact that predators do not fit the comfortable caricature we have created for them.  My story is not an anomaly, unfortunately.  The major systems involved have fatal flaws in them when it comes to really protecting, supporting and defending victims, including secondary ones, against predators.

http://www.comfortprints.org/

As I reflect today on that event four years ago, I grieve.  I grieve that while much as changed in my personal life, little has changed in our societal response to predators.  I grieve that so many other families are experiencing their own world explosion days silently and with little or no support.  I grieve that very few are willing to get in the cesspool of pedophilia and addiction with wounded and betrayed partners and children.  It is lonely and frightening, stinky and messy--not a suitable place for good, law-abiding, church-going citizens.  I grieve that so many of these cases seem to be occurring in churches and that the response is often exactly that of the predator--minimize, deny, rationalize and deceive.  I grieve for the women who are made to feel responsible for their husbands' deviancy, for the innocent children impacted either directly by the molestation of the predator or by his betrayal of trust as their father, or both.  I grieve and I truly believe that Jesus grieves as well.

When will we get it right?  There is too much at stake to keep hiding our heads in the sand--too many lives are being decimated.  Our children are vulnerable--not just in leap year but every day of every year.  We need a multi-pronged approach to this insidious problem and that must include the predator's partner and his children.  It is time, way past time.

What Happens in Childhood Does Not Stay in Childhood

Childhood is a relatively short period of time compared to the average lifespan.  And yet so much of  what happens during those formative years impacts the individual for decades.  A landmark study that actually began in 1995 illustrates this convincingly.  It is known as the Adverse Childhood Experience Study and is "one of the largest investigations ever conducted to assess associations between childhood maltreatment and later-life health and well-being.  The study is a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente's Health Appraisal Clinic in San Diego."  Source

The ACE Study has followed over 17,000 enrollees in Kaiser's health plan who underwent a comprehensive physical exam as well as completed the ten-question ACE Test.  Data from the study revealed "staggering proof of the health, social and economic risks that result from childhood trauma."  Source.  ACE scores can range from zero to ten, with ten reflecting the highest number of adverse childhood experiences by category.  It is important to note that the ACE Test does not account for the total number of adverse experiences in each category throughout childhood but rather the number of categories of adverse experiences an individual encountered.

The ACE Test asked participants about ten types of childhood trauma:

• Three types of abuse (sexual, physical and emotional)
• Two types of neglect (physical and emotional)
• Five types of family dysfunction (having a mother who was treated violently, an alcoholic or drug addicted household member, family member imprisoned or diagnosed with mental illness, divorce or separation of parents)

The study revealed that childhood trauma is far more common than previously believed and that the consequences of the trauma last a lifetime.  Individuals with an ACE Score of 4 had increased prevalence rates for the following behaviors:

Source 1   Source 2 

 
Clearly, what happens in childhood does not stay in childhood.  We focus a lot on the horrendous impact of child sexual abuse and molestation, as we should.  But there are other harmful experiences that negatively impact a child for life that we should be just as concerned about.  Improving the quality of the parents' marriage, making sure mom is not treated violently, dealing effectively with depression, addiction and other types of mental illness that may be present in the family as well as having a zero tolerance for abuse and neglect of any kind are all incredibly important aspects of a child's life that we need to pay critical attention to.  We can never give up on the important task of ensuring that our children have safe, healthy environments so that they can enjoy a long and productive life.

But what about those of us who are already grown?  We may recognize and acknowledge that the environment in which we grew and developed was toxic and we may already be struggling with some of the consequences that the ACE Study revealed.  Is there hope?  YES, there is.  Simply acknowledging that what happened in childhood happened to us, that we did not cause it, we did not deserve it and we were powerless to prevent it, begins the process.  We change the questions from "What's wrong with me?" to "What happened to me?"  There is power in naming our experience and acknowledging it as trauma.  And by dealing with the trauma, with the help of qualified individuals, we can change the outcome--we can minimize or eliminate the potential health and behavioral risks that our ACE's have created.  We commit ourselves to practicing good self-care, mindfulness and gentleness with that frightened, traumatized child within.  By re-parenting our inner child, we ensure that what happened in our childhood stays back there and does not continue to impact our present or our future.

Our goals when it comes to childhood maltreatment are twofold:  we must do all that we can to change the culture of violence, exploitation and maltreatment that exists today so that tomorrow's children fare better than yesterday or today's.  And, we must commit ourselves to caring for our first child--ourselves--and to healing those hurts of yesterday.

Kicked Out of My Life

Among the items on my bedside table are two framed photographs of my only daughter--one taken when she was a curly-headed three year old and another when she graduated from high school.  As I glanced at them this morning while making the bed, my heart broke yet again.  For a number of reasons, I am in yet another cycle of grief--it rolls in unexpectedly and while it is not as intense or all-consuming as it once was, it still requires processing through the pain that betrayal and loss have brought into my life.  This morning as I held the picture of my curly-headed toddler, I grieved for the life that I've lost.

I resonate with the feelings of another betrayed wife who bravely pulled the curtain back on what infidelity and sex addiction really look like within the privacy of a marriage.  She writes, "Sometimes I feel like I am sleepwalking.  I don't recognize my life now.  I feel like it must surely belong to someone else.  It is a good life in many, many ways, but it does not feel comfortable in that I don't feel like it belongs to me.  It's like wearing someone else's clothes--the feel, the smell, the look is all wrong.  I don't know how to explain it."

Life post-betrayal is full of paradox.  While I am grateful to be living in truth and authenticity, free of pedophilia, and am deliriously happy with my new marriage, I am homesick.  I'm homesick for the familiar life that I no longer have.  My ex-husband's arrest on child pornography charges brought a tidal wave of change into my life, all at once.  I was anticipating some changes because six weeks prior to his arrest we had decided to divorce.  But his arrest dramatically changed those plans.  I did not know it then, but I was entering a period of imposed change.

According to Dr. Patricia Wiklund, imposed change results from a life-changing event that you couldn't predict, didn't cause, don't want and can't avoid (Wiklund, Patricia, Lesson One of e-course for women of child molesters).  Change that we anticipate and plan for is exciting but all change carries with it stress and loss.  Imposed change, on the other hand, is not planned for and does not result from a personal choice--another or circumstances beyond our control imposes it upon us.  Here is some of what I recorded in my journal five months after my life exploded:

"I guess I'm also realizing how much of my old life was cut off and thrown away.  I smashed a 25th wedding anniversary photo of us, threw away my wedding bouquet and our anniversary album.  These parts of my life have been consigned to the trash heap--so many years.  So many years.  So much of who I am and what I have lived for is now in the trash.  Where do I go from here?  How do I redeem this?"

And

"Life as I knew it ended five months ago.  Life as I anticipated it ended.  My budding career--my hopes and dreams--all died five months ago.  I don't know what or who I am or should or will be.  I am in a place I never wanted to be in--literally and figuratively.  A dusty, congested, barren place that I now call "home."  Maybe I enjoy seeing the barren hillsides surrounding this new home because they symbolize my internal world--barren, without life, future or hope.  I don't know--just know that I am waiting.  Waiting to see who I will become when I grow up--hoping I get to grow up before life's hourglass runs out of sand."

There were many layers to the grief I experienced when I wrote those entries and even today as I
write these words.  Loss has marched through my life in so many different forms during the past few years but of all the varied types of loss, that of imposed change is the hardest to contend with.  No one asked me if I wanted my door broken down or if I wanted my life displayed on the evening news for all to see.  I wasn't consulted about any of these changes; they just came.

So today, I honor the grief that has come yet again.  I allow it to wash over me and acknowledge that I feel like an alien in my own life--an undocumented, non-resident in a world that is no longer familiar to me.  And I vow to take this grief and make meaning of it by sharing the journey with others who similarly grieve.  It is time to tell the truth about pedophilia, sex addiction, infidelity and betrayal.  It is time to reclaim that which we have lost as a consequence of imposed change--ourselves.  It is time to own our story and to tell it with vulnerability, courage, and determination.

It is only when we dare to show up and allow our stories to be heard and ourselves to be seen that real societal change begins because it begins in us.  This is how we change a climate that sanitizes and minimizes the pain of sexual betrayal and loss.  We stand up and say "ENOUGH ALREADY!"

Tamar's Tears

One of the things I love about the Bible is that it does not shy away from telling stories that reflect the whole spectrum of the human condition. The accounts of two women named "Tamar" provide an interesting framework for understanding some of the insanity we see in our culture today--both inside and outside of organized religion.

We encounter the first Tamar in Genesis 38 where we are told that she was the daughter-in-law of Judah, one of Jacob's sons.  Tamar's husband died, and as was customary in that patriarchal society, she was given to her brother-in-law as his wife.  Women in that day had no right to own property so depended upon their husband or sons to provide financial security.  The only option for a woman to earn a living outside of marriage was to work as a prostitute.

Tamar's brother-in-law opted to enjoy her body for his own sexual gratification but refused to impregnate her.  When he also died, Judah promised marriage to his youngest son but Judah did not keep his promise.  Tamar, facing certain disgrace and destitution, posed as a prostitute and was impregnated by her father-in-law.  When Judah was told that Tamar was pregnant, he ordered that she be burned to death but quickly backed down when she provided evidence that he was the father of her unborn twins.

The second Tamar was King David's daughter and she was raped by her stepbrother.  Dr. Steven Tracy in Mending the Soul:  Understanding and Healing Abuse has identified a number of primary characteristics of abusive families or systems (i.e. churches, organizations, etc.) that are revealed in this troubling Biblical account.  They include:

• The needs of individual family members are highly expendable.
• Reality is very difficult to discern.
• The victim is made responsible for solving needs they didn't create and could never legitimately satisfy.
• The family's shiny exterior belies a dark inner reality.
• Vulnerable family members are not protected because no one really wants to know the truth.
• Abusers use force to get their sordid way.
• There is no straightforward healthy communication, and many of the verbal messages are contradictory and confusing.
• The victim's response is futile.
• Power is used to exploit.
• Abusive families are emotionally unstable.
• The victims are shamed, blamed, and demeaned.
• Members are isolated and lack intimacy.
• A strict code of silence is enacted.
• Abusive families deny and distort proper healthy emotions.
• The wrong ones are protected.

One doesn't have to search very long to see these characteristics glaringly present in so may of the troubling revelations of molestation, abuse and infidelity in today's headlines.  Three immediately comes to mind:

1. Josh Duggar's outing as a serial adulterer, porn addict and child molester, while posing as a model for religious piety and purity.
2. Bill Cosby's legacy of drugging and raping women for decades, while posing as a role model for family values and morality.
3. Judicial decisions that favor the rights of the perpetrator over those of the victim. 

Behind these tragic headlines are victims, who like the two Tamar's, cry bitter tears that are never seen, acknowledged or valued.  Men are still privileged over women and children and are often seen as mere objects to satisfy the needs of the men in their lives.  Men who struggle with sexual compulsions and addictions are either hailed as "real men" or shamed into silence and secrecy.  And neither the victim or the perpetrator is offered qualified help that will begin to heal the pain and disease.  Everyone suffers in such a system.

Why Activism Matters

Over the past few days, the blogging world has been very active with the Josh Duggar and Karen Root Hinkley stories.  For those of us who have been impacted either by spiritual abuse and/or interaction with a pedophile, these “stories” are felt deeply and our anger is rooted in the trauma we have experienced and that we see others experiencing.  It is a deeply felt pain of identification that time and distance do not heal.  We are angry at the injustice, ignorance and our sense of impotence in the face of such evil.  It gets exhausting—anger may be an empowering emotion but it also becomes exhausting, especially when it seems that real change is elusive.

Sometimes it feels like it would be easier to just give up, bury our heads in the sand and sing a happy song.  But our anger and grief matter.  They matter a great deal and we cannot afford to be silenced on this critical issue.  It may be uncomfortable to be angry and to fully identify with the pain of others, but it is the catalyst for creating the change we want to see.  And it is critically important that change come.

 

Men and women who stood against the injustices, excesses and abuses of organized religion, social norms and punitive laws made change through their activism.  They got angry and decided to do something about it.  Reformers and change agents risked personal safety, reputation and anonymity in order to draw attention to a problem and to mobilize public support for change.  None of the major battles of reformation within organized religion and society were undertaken passively—they resulted from a burning anger at injustice and a commitment to do something to force change.

Our anger and subsequent activism matter; they matter a great deal.  Organized religion must change its approach to women and children and it must change its perspective on pedophiles. And we must channel our anger into positive action until change comes.  Our activism matters because:

• Our children matter!  They deserve to grow up in a community where predatory behavior is not tolerated.  Childhood sexual abuse has been termed a “soul slayer.”  It destroys a child’s sense of worth, value and spiritual connection with God.  It is not innocent or harmless!  If we allow the severity of individual acts to be judged on the basis of whether they occurred over or under clothing, penetration was achieved or not, or any other attempt to minimize the impact on a child’s emotional and spiritual health, we are culpable as well!

• Perpetrators are incredibly skilled at deception and manipulation.  Pedophilia is not something that can be prayed away; it requires years of intensive therapy with individuals specifically trained to deal with sexual orientation/addiction issues. And even under the best of circumstances, it is incredibly resistant to change.  Church leadership who think they can control, contain or manage a pedophile intentionally places the children in the congregation at risk.  And the church leadership must be held accountable, by their congregants and by the courts. 

• It is time for the needs of victims to be prioritized without question.  We can quibble about theological differences of opinion regarding gender roles, submission in marriage, the role of women in the church,  recognizing that theologians may legitimately differ on what Scripture teaches with regards to these sensitive topics.  However, we must no longer tolerate further abuse or insensitivity towards those who have been victimized.  And we certainly must not remain silent when we see instances where the needs of the perpetrator are prioritized over those of the victim.  Victim-blaming must stop and we must not stay silent when we see it occurring.

The greatest tragedy that could possibly come from these two horrific stories (and all the other untold ones we have yet to hear about) would be if we allow ourselves to forget, to become distracted and to turn from the battle that we now see clearly.  The time for change has come.  If you and I do not take up the challenge, who will?  If not now, then when?  If not us, then who?