I’m guessing from your question that you know that
a) you can marry in good faith and still not have a valid marriage. (It is quite likely that you don’t have a valid marriage, based on your husband’s deceit at the time of marriage concerning his sexual orientation. It is no exaggeration to call his lack of disclosure 18 years of a lie.)
b) even in a valid marriage, infidelity against an innocent spouse is grounds for separation with the bond remaining. (This is in canon law.)
In other words, according to the pastoral mind of the Church you are not bound to live the common conjugal life with your husband, even if you are validly married, by reason of his infidelity. Although readmitting him to the common conjugal life is praiseworthy in the case where the wayward spouse is contrite and intends to make amends and avoid any future transgressions, that is not a realistic appraisal of your situation, because of the habitual and long-term nature of his deceit. (If it is found out that someone working in retail has been helping themselves here and there to the till for 18 years, nobody in their right mind ever lets the person near a cash register again. Forgive–let go of ill will or a desire for vengeance–but see the person as totally unsuitable for any position requiring integrity beyond reproach.)
You see that he has always been lying to you, you have no reason to believe he is capable of fidelity and you know him to carry a deadly sexually-transmitted disease. Re-admitting him to the marital bed is out of the question. According to the Church, that is a choice that is yours to make unilaterally, as the innocent spouse. (Again: It does not matter whether or not your marriage is valid. You have that right, either way. The only exception would have been if you are in a valid marriage and had chosen to forgive him, readmit him to the common conjugal life, and he did not re-offend with regards to infidelity.)
I don’t know what you mean by “it should not be on me to end it.” Separating with the bond remaining or filing for a divorce and a request to find the marriage null does not imply you have done anything wrong. It only says that you are asserting the rights that the laws of marriage give to you. If you are lured into an attempt at marriage in good faith only to find you were deceived, you have a right to have the marriage declared null. You have the right to seek a *valid *marriage. More to the point: it does not make sense to expect that the spouse who wants to continue to benefit from the deceit is going to move to have the nullity of the marriage recognized by the Church or by the state. When you realize your rights are being violated, of course it is “on you” to defend them from continued violation!!
OK–so you aren’t going to have sex with him again. There is no morally-compelling reason that you would and serious reasons that you won’t. That does not mean you have to kick him out of the house, if you don’t want to do that. Considering, however, that you are not going to continue in the common conjugal life, there are practical problems with that approach.
If you want to keep him in the house, ask yourself these questions:
–is it better or worse for your daughters to have him in the home? I don’t mean as he ought to be. I mean as he probably *will *be. Be honest with yourself about that. You need to take their welfare into account.
–do you ever intend to re-marry, since the Church would probably find you in an invalid marriage and free to marry once you are divorced and have your case investigated? Taking your vows seriously does not mean abdicating your right to attempt a valid marriage for as long as your husband lives unless your marriage to him is valid.
–is there a compelling reason such as the financial welfare of your children to seek a civil divorce or to avoid seeking a civil divorce? (Divorcing and maintaining the cost of two households is a very expensive proposition, parenting from two households can be extremely stressful on both the parents and the children. When it comes to custody, you have the choice of losing control of your children some of the time and not allowing them to have any contact with their dad–and his social circle, which you do not get to choose. Opting to stay under the same roof with the habitually unfaithful parent of your children has obvious drawbacks of its own…)
–which leads to the final question: Under what circumstances could you tolerate having him in the same house? Do you need a home with a separate bedroom for him? Does he need to live a chaste life? Is that a realistic possibility? You cannot force reality to give you what is not realistically possible.
You are in a very difficult situation. Had it happened to me back when AIDS was a death sentence, I’d probably have thought about sticking it out for the sake of being there for such a difficult trial in the life of the father of my children. Now that those infected with HIV can live independently for a very long time, I would probably not consider tolerating his presence in my home unless I realistically thought he would maintain something like a chaste life. If he was going to keep frequenting lovers and living with all the sexual self-control of an animal, I’d feel forced to get him out of the house and to seek full custody of the children. I would not trust the people he was consorting with around my children, because I would realistically have to assume he would be choosing his lovers on totally self-centered grounds from a field of prospects that had nothing to do with whether or not they might pose a threat to the girls and everything to do with whether they were willing to have sex with a man that was already HIV-positive.
Any good Bible verses of encouragement that anyone could share?