Can i expect him to ever train his eyes, and is his still looking as wrong as i feel it is?

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I’m afraid you are right about all this. I feel so cheated, because I was the good wife, the one who never looked at another man, the one who signed on for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part, and I just want to get to happily ever after somehow – I know, I know, it doesn’t happen until we are all perfected in heaven, but I believe in the GTH&BYB (get to heaven and bring your brother) and it is so hard to realize I’ve been a terrible fool all these years and that he may just never change or even mean to try. I want so badly to have not been stupid, to have a husband in whom the goodness I saw, though buried, can grow and grow until he truly is the man God intended for me. I’m scared. I’m weak. I’m lonely. And I’m terrified of ending something that maybe I am to work and work and pray and pray on, that this is God’s test for me. Crazy, I guess.
 
Rachel, if I am not mistaken, you have sons too, right? What do they make of all this? Do they get a weird vibe from their dad?
 
BTDT.

But there comes a point when either your safety or the safety of your children should no longer be put at risk for you passing some “test” you believe God is putting you through that He may not even have intended.

You put your own pride aside, admit you were taken in by his dog and pony show, that there isn’t as much there as you gave him credit for (his fault, not yours) and happily ever after is more likely without him than with him.

The problem with bringing your brother to heaven is God doesn’t want you binding him with duct tape and trussing him and pulling him in with a rope. It has to be his free will and free choice.

Let’s fast foward 14 years or so. If you keep him. He hangs around to be around the children. As soon as they’re gone, amazingly and predictably he’s gone too. And the kids won’t talk to you because they endured a childhood where you chose not being lonely over their safety and mental health.

I’m sure there’s more to his behavior and head games than just what you’ve told us. People like this are not just weird in one way. It goes across the board on all levels of interaction.

Meanwhile, he’s an expert at using all your spiritual doubts about saving his soul to keep you bound to a life where he’s free to prance around naked in front of your underage children and stare at his daughters’ backsides and tell you if you have a problem with that it’s all in YOUR head.

And he looks at porn. Yeah, like that will stop. Or the corrosive effect of that won’t bleed into the way he looks at his own children.

The fact that when you told him your concerns, when he was caught, when he was called on his bad behavior, the first thing he did wasn’t stopping it, changing, getting help… instead he blamed you, blamed the kids, blamed everyone but himself and denied he had any issues…

makes me sad.

If you were dating a man like that wouldn’t you dump him immediately?

But because he’s biologically related to your daughters you think it’s okay?

I know how it feels like to be “cheated” of the dream after following all the “rules” myself.

You need to protect your kids though. It’s not about your dream only. It’s about them. And any divorce will get nasty as you will be required to have proof of allegations, the possible testimony of your daughters, his denials and counteraccusations. Stuff could be made public during the divorce proceedings. In some ways you can rationalize not going ahead with splitting just to avoid all that. But HE is the one who could have controlled all that.

He chose not to. Eventually the train leaves the station and you can’t stop it.

How lonely are you as his wife? Really answer that honestly in your head.

How lonely will it be when your kids don’t speak to you as adults because you ignored them when they said their father creeped them out.

That may not happen. But is it worth the risk? Do you want to spend the next 14 years or so not allowing your husband to be in the same room alone with his kids? What are the logistics involved in that?

What you need is a separation right now while he gets REAL treatment and a real mental adjustment and spiritual counselling. Not a bandaid for a few weeks, jump through the hoops and he’s back in the house and nothing really changed.
 
Rachel, are you computer savvy? I would reccomend taking the hard drives of any computer you have to an expert and have them recover all of the data that is on them. You might be shocked at what you find. If he is like most perverts, he thinks he can easily erase things here and there while overlooking the extensive history keep buried in there.
Also, you need to know if he is looking at under-age material, this could prove crucial in a custody battle down the road. Time to be smart!
 
Liberanosamalo said:
BTDT.

But there comes a point when either your safety or the safety of your children should no longer be put at risk for you passing some “test” you believe God is putting you through that He may not even have intended.

You put your own pride aside, admit you were taken in by his dog and pony show, that there isn’t as much there as you gave him credit for (his fault, not yours) and happily ever after is more likely without him than with him.

The problem with bringing your brother to heaven is God doesn’t want you binding him with duct tape and trussing him and pulling him in with a rope. It has to be his free will and free choice.

Let’s fast foward 14 years or so. If you keep him. He hangs around to be around the children. As soon as they’re gone, amazingly and predictably he’s gone too. And the kids won’t talk to you because they endured a childhood where you chose not being lonely over their safety and mental health.

I’m sure there’s more to his behavior and head games than just what you’ve told us. People like this are not just weird in one way. It goes across the board on all levels of interaction.

Meanwhile, he’s an expert at using all your spiritual doubts about saving his soul to keep you bound to a life where he’s free to prance around naked in front of your underage children and stare at his daughters’ backsides and tell you if you have a problem with that it’s all in YOUR head.

And he looks at porn. Yeah, like that will stop. Or the corrosive effect of that won’t bleed into the way he looks at his own children.

The fact that when you told him your concerns, when he was caught, when he was called on his bad behavior, the first thing he did wasn’t stopping it, changing, getting help… instead he blamed you, blamed the kids, blamed everyone but himself and denied he had any issues…

makes me sad.

If you were dating a man like that wouldn’t you dump him immediately?

But because he’s biologically related to your daughters you think it’s okay?

I know how it feels like to be “cheated” of the dream after following all the “rules” myself.

You need to protect your kids though. It’s not about your dream only. It’s about them. And any divorce will get nasty as you will be required to have proof of allegations, the possible testimony of your daughters, his denials and counteraccusations. Stuff could be made public during the divorce proceedings. In some ways you can rationalize not going ahead with splitting just to avoid all that. But HE is the one who could have controlled all that.

He chose not to. Eventually the train leaves the station and you can’t stop it.

How lonely are you as his wife? Really answer that honestly in your head.

How lonely will it be when your kids don’t speak to you as adults because you ignored them when they said their father creeped them out.

That may not happen. But is it worth the risk? Do you want to spend the next 14 years or so not allowing your husband to be in the same room alone with his kids? What are the logistics involved in that?

What you need is a separation right now while he gets REAL treatment and a real mental adjustment and spiritual counselling. Not a bandaid for a few weeks, jump through the hoops and he’s back in the house and nothing really changed.
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Exactly, Rachel, this isn’t about anymore. The time has come to “suck it up” and do what needs to be done, no matter how much it hurts. You can no longer live for yourself, but for your children. Any dreams, wishes, etc you had for your life are no longer relevant, only your children’s safety. If you have family that you can lean on, all the better - if not, you need to soilder on anyways.
 
Rachel, one of the most important things one of my friends said to me, was “If a man your daughter was dating or married to, did to her what your dh is currently doing to you, what would your response be?”

I would have castrated him myself, with a dull, rusty knife.

Had I stayed married to my xh, I would have been teaching my daughter that it was appropriate for her husband to rape her, and my son that it was okay for him to rape his wife. And ask her to perform as a housekeeper, accountant, gardener, mother, with nothing to show for it but verbal abuse.

It was so hard to leave, even with a number of friends supporting me and carrying my furniture out his door and into my new house. The divorce is final, and still I run into people who believe what has told them about me, or who think that I must not really be a Christian because I broke my marriage vows. That still hurts, even though I know they don’t understand.

You are not on an easy path, but the road to heaven isn’t easy. Who knows if you might get your happily ever after, if your dh might really respond to tough love and boundaries and actually get his stuff together and clean up his act. That would be fantastic! But your course of action has to be what you choose as right for yourself and your daughters, not dependent on his response.

It’s hard. Did I mention that already?
 
I just wrote out a long post and bumped something and lost it – if I were really computer savvy I could get it back, but I somehow shut down my whole browser by bumping alt or something, and now I’m about out of patience and time!!! Arrrrggggghhh!

anyhow – he says he hasn’t looked at porn since college, never bought any, saw his first porn mag when he found it while delivering newspapers while in 6th grade and looked at it for a few days and then threw it away because he knew it was bad.
He is much less computer savvy than even me, although our kids are great at it all – the oldest works in the computer program writing industry (I always say if a site works well, AJ must have been there to fix it!) and he has a laptop at school but hardly does anything on it and then needs help. I think it is ‘beneath him’ somehow to deal with computers or learn new things like that.
He cares most about his image, his facade – if there is no evidence of the improper thoughts in his head, then all is fine. No one can read his thoughts, so he lusts at unsuspecting women, or women he assumes mean for him to lust about them, with impunity. He feels it isn’t wrong if he can say he hasn’t done anything to go out of his way to find a lust object – he doesn’t got to the men’s club to watch strippers, doesn’t buy porn mags, doesn’t go to x rated movies, etc, because those would involve choices that could be seen as choices. If he looks at a women wearing tight clothes, it is her fault. If the model on the cover of the mags in the checkout lane are sexy, that is their fault for making him lust. If you are very beautiful, it is your fault. If you wear a lowcut top and bend down to reveal everything, it is your fault. If you work out and have a great body, you are asking him to lust. See, it really is kinda true!!! We do have a culture that says we should dress sexily and think about sex all the time!!! So, I need to know how much is true and what he is really doing to not give in and lust and how realistic it is for him to stop looking even if he can stop lusting (if he is really trying, not just getting better at covering his thoughts with a neutral facial expression)
He was brought up Christian Scientist – they wear contact lenses instead of glasses because then there is no noticeable evidence of imperfect eyes, etc. Any sickness, physical deformity or hurt is not real and the appearance of illness, etc, caused by imperfect thoughts.
This taught him to cover up whatever is on the inside so his parents could be very proud of him, his church could point to him as a good member, he could fool everyone all the time and just keep his thoughts to himself or even *from *himself and life would be good. Me telling him that what is on the inside is the only important part is just upside down and backwards to him. Me being hurt by his thoughts is ridiculous to him. Our children being icked out by what goes on inside him is unbelievable to him.
 
You are in my prayers.

From what you are saying about the way he was brought up…hiding his imperfections…I fear that you may start finding out some distrubing things about him…

Please keep yourself and the girls safe!

God bless, Dana
 
MercyMia said:
Rachel, are you computer savvy? I would reccomend taking the hard drives of any computer you have to an expert and have them recover all of the data that is on them. You might be shocked at what you find. If he is like most perverts, he thinks he can easily erase things here and there while overlooking the extensive history keep buried in there.
Also, you need to know if he is looking at under-age material, this could prove crucial in a custody battle down the road. Time to be smart!
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Rachel, It sounds like one of your older sons can do this check of the history.
 
because they are both young men, both entertaining atheistic beliefs, both rejecting or at least questioning Catholicism and Christianity, both out there and deep in the culture of ‘it’s fun so let’s do it’, I don’t know how willing they are to help – ds1 is across the country and ds2 just ‘wants to know his(dh’s) endgame’ or why dh is doing this stuff, because it doesn’t make sense to him(ds2), although I don’t really know how much he understands or how much he feels lusting is okfine
 
RachelKH said:
because they are both young men, both entertaining atheistic beliefs, both rejecting or at least questioning Catholicism and Christianity, both out there and deep in the culture of ‘it’s fun so let’s do it’, I don’t know how willing they are to help – ds1 is across the country and ds2 just ‘wants to know his(dh’s) endgame’ or why dh is doing this stuff, because it doesn’t make sense to him(ds2), although I don’t really know how much he understands or how much he feels lusting is okfine
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I can tell you how to do it yourself. PM me if interested.

God Bless
 
What WHM said.

Print out your above letter. It would make a very good testimony for an annulment petition. This man is all facade. He’s a whited sepulchre full of dead men’s bones. But he looks good on the outside.

I suppose, to follow your logic, it’s your daughters’ fault for being beautiful and for wearing shorts or teeshirts or pajamas in their own home. So they make him look at him.

It’s one thing to put up with a husband who looks at every woman who walks by and kick him in the shins every now and then.

We’re talking about your children.

Their safety.

All you’re telling us is your husband has had over 40 years to perfect a facade of morality over a reality of leering lustful contempt for females.

Go back to your original posts. His problem is not just looking at your children. It’s every other action and disregard for the rights of his wife and children and his neglect and victimization.

He’s probably convinced you to get meds to fix YOU. YOU are the one with the problem, right? Becuase you’re sad and depressed. Depression is anger turned inward. Medicating it doesn’t make the anger go away. It doesn’t root out the toxic cause of the anger.

It makes YOU the one he points fingers at. After all you’re the one on meds. Not him. He’s fine.

That’s the way narcissists function. They project their pathology on everyone around them and they shine by comparison. After they take perfectly normal people and reduce them to depressed angry frustrated hopelessly confused shells.

What’s wrong with this picture? You’re wondering if he’s as bad as you say he is. And he’s sure he’s better than you think he is. You’re making excuses for him based on his upbringing. It’s tragic. He was conditioned to be a fraud. If he was conditioned to eat people would you keep him around for dinner? Go read again your description of what 23 years with him have been like.

You can feel sorry for him for his childhood. Who will feel sorry for your children for their childhoods?
 
thanks for the wake up slap – it is exactly what I need to stay the course of protecting my children and keeping him out and not letting me wear down under all his excuses. It’s just that he is so very good as well as being so very bad.
 
You know, there’s actually a name for that, because they all use the technique It’s called hoovering–when they suck you back in with stellar behavior. And then they go back to the status quo until you walk out again.

I hope you can find some good, deep, irl relationships to help you see what real love is like, so that the contrast slaps you in the face over and over again. I have as good friends a married couple who love me persistently and at the same time show me how they love each other, and I think that’s really the #1 thing that changed my life and helped me get moving.
 
no irl help – my family is not a good example (father is much like my dh, mother is pretty into herself, sees us ‘kids’ ages 50, 49, 47, 45, 42 as still kids that should follow her every ‘advice’ when she takes the time to notice us, both very controlling. 2 of my brothers are very controlling and sils strive to be gentle, obedient, submissive wives, 3rd is getting divorced but doesn’t know why, sister is the peacemaker who gets migraines every time she visits parents, but is sure it is not their fault. Most other women I know either baby their husbands or are overbearingly in control of them. And then their are those who are always making excuses for their husbands bad behavior even as they complain about it – I guess I’m falling into that category. I just have never seen a good marriage in action. Even the family I thought all my life I would love to be a part of I have found out through friends who are nurses that work/worked with him that the doctor father was/is a real womanizer – proof of that just the other week in Mass (his wife of 50 years died a couple years back) when he looked me up and down as I walked down the aisle past him and he said, “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” wink. Ugh. I don’t know where to turn.
 
This is just a guess,.but if you have already come up empty at your own parish, you might be able to call the chancery of your diocese and see who helps people with annulments, and who is on their list of qualified spiritual directors. Somebody in that group, especially if there is overlap, ought to be able to help you. There is also a directory of Catholic mental health professionals somewhere on the web.
 
If your DH and your father are so much alike I’m surprised they tolerate each other. Usually narcissists hate each other. (Too much competition for glory. They don’t do “sharing” of glory.)

But it explains how you ended up with one.

Don’t look to other people for your standards. They’ll disappoint you every time. Look to how Christ said we’re to interact. Maybe you need to expand your circle of friends to include others who don’t follow the same behavior patterns. Sometimes through marriage, we end up with a very small circle of friends that are “acceptable” to our spouse or normal people avoid us because they don’t like our spouse.

Maybe once you shed him, a different kind of person will hang around you who didn’t feel comfortable with him leering at them behind your back. (Though he was sure he was too clever to be caught.)
 
dh and dad are both musicians, much better people than the rest of us, although dh ‘has so very much to learn from’ dad and dad ‘has such old fashioned ways of teaching, etc’
 
Dear RachelKH,

For a few days now, I’ve been planning to write about how you should worry about whether he has a concealed porn addiction, since when I was into nudity on the internet, I also tended to look at women in inappropriate ways in daily life. Since I stopped that internet behavior, It has gotten much easier to keep my eyes where they belong. It seems, however, that this thread has quickly moved way beyond that.

His problems sound very serious, to the point where fixing them will probably be the hardest challenge he will ever have to overcome in life. He does not seem to be treating them very seriously and does not seem to be working on therapy and fixing them with all his strength. No one else can fix them for him, not even someone with as big a heart as you.

Praying for you,
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our meeting with a priest from another parish did not go well. fr. said a perfectly normal man can look at his daughters and suddenly realize he is feeling certain things he is shocked by. But dh doesn’t admit to those feelings, even tho I’ve seen the looks he takes at our daughters, and he has no shame or shock at his behavior. Does this mean he is not feeling anything or that he is not bothered by his feelings or that he buries them even from himself. Fr. said dh is safe to have back in our home – how can he come to that in mere minutes of just a quick ‘I don’t look inappropriately’ sayso fro my dh? He thinks my telling the teens has ruined things for dh, didn’t listen to how it is teaching them to disregard their feeling when they are looked at, to think a normal marriage has a husband who really doesn’t care and a sad lonely wife. The priest used to be at our parish, back when dh went thru rcia and joined the Church, which was at my insistence that he stop floating around w/o a church and study up and find one any church as a better example for our 6 children that only ever saw him go to church when he was being paid to do so as soloist, choir director, special music, etc. Fr. said he never talked much or shared in rcia so he never got to know him well. I came off as a crazy woman who wants the world and is upset I can’t have it. I just wanted to let fr. know who I was married to that the world doesn’t see, but I look like a witch.
 
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