The following is a message I received by email from another woman who has gone through a very similar situation. She writes so well about something we will all understand:
"I think so many folks are inclined to think that stories like this
only lie within the fringes of society, or are the makings of Jerry
Springer spots. It's so easy to flip on the news or read the paper and
see the stories as distant, removed - the problems of all those "other
people." There really aren't words for the day when you find that your
own life is the leading story on the 11 o'clock
news and the front page of the newspaper. I don't have any friends that
are divorced, much less have spouses or family members, or even
distant acquaintances who have been convicted of felony crimes. My
husband and I were active in our community and church, good-standing
members of society. I find that my friends, family, and
colleagues don't even know what to say and most have opted to simply
ignore that anything has even happened. It's as if even the mere
reference to my husband will taint them in some foul, repulsive way. To
this day, I'm still greeted by many with looks of pity or masked
sympathy, when I know that the unspoken question from so many is "how
could she not have known? how could she have married such a monster?
what kind of issues does she have to have been attracted to someone
like that?" I don't kid myself into thinking that people really don't
make those kind of judgments.
"I confide in you on these points not so much because
I'm dwelling on what other people think, but because I find that other
than through professional counseling, there is virtually no support for
women in our circumstances. I'm not trying to play victim when I say
that - I take full responsibility for who I married and chose to have
children with. I don't expect society to come running to my rescue.
But I do think it's helpful to connect with each other and others in
similar circumstances from time to time. . . It's just
comforting in some ways to know that there are others who have
experienced similar experiences and truly understand the pain and trauma
of something so devastating."
When I first received an email from this woman, I asked her if she would like to share on this blog. She declined, saying that she wasn't ready to talk about her story, but in that second email was also the message above. I thought it was worth sharing. If anyone else out there wants to share a message, you don't have to give personal details of your life story because sometimes a sympathetic message to others in your situation is enough.
All I can do is echo that 100%. I don't know how this ended up being my life. My husband's crime was "no contact" for whatever that's worth. He got addicted to porn and hid it for over a decade and for the last two years, he started downloading under aged stuff with teenaged girls. I didn't know until the FBI showed up at my door one ordinary January night. I never thought of myself as somebody whose husband could be guilty of multiple felonies and somebody whose life could be so easily shattered. I used to live in a house in a cul-de-sac in a fairly nice neighborhood. It even had a picket fence. I had friends and felt like I was pretty well liked in the neighborhood. Now everything is destroyed. I did not know. I had NO idea. My husband brought this porn addiction was brought into my marriage and hidden for over a decade and I did not know. Believe me or not when I say that. But you don't have to have a stash of magazines or videos to hide these days. Everything is online and much of it free and if you know computers, it isn't hard to delete the web history. This shit is probably going on in a lot more homes than people think.
ReplyDeleteAnd there IS NO SUPPORT for the wives.
To the writer: You don't need to "play" victim. You are one. And you don't need to take responsibility for something you didn't know was happening. Just wanted to say that.
One of the only decent things that happened to me in all this is that the prosecutor in my husband's case looked me in the eye and acknowledged to me that my children and I are victims.
Blogs like Not the Life I Chose create a community of women / wives who support each other, women who know what it's like to be "groomed" by someone more interested in exercising sexual power over children than with an equal relationship with a consenting adult. We didn't realize how deeply we were raised to actually believe that in personal relationships "Father/husband/ males know best" and we, too, questioned and blamed other women ("How could they not have known all along?"). We questioned ourselves and our grandmothers and mothers instead of questioning a system that ensconced males in power and allowed those men so inclined to take advantage of their position to sexually abuse others. Under the guise of "boys will be boys" we have allowed predators to develop undetected while silencing and shaming their victims who must learn on their own how to become survivors unless they become a (growing) community of wives who support each other. .Having another women say "You don't need to take responsibility for something you did not know was happening." especially when the person telling you is another wife/mother who really does know from experience. Who is as angry and confused and brave as you yourself are trying to be, most of the time anyway...
ReplyDeleteMale power in private life only mirrors that of public life. The victims of sexual abuse need us to rethink the inequities of male/ female power embedded in our society as a whole. We need not be intimidated those who charge we are "bra burning feminists" anti-family/ sexually frustrated liars/gold diggers who want more money in a divorce by "claiming" our children were molested. We need to support each other against those who claim we falsely "cry rape when we don't get promoted" When Congressmen on TV publicly drag their feet, refusing to change a system that allows Rape in the Military because to do so would lessen the power of long standing male power a "chain of command" dependent upon rape it becomes obvious that rape, like incest and other forms of sexual assault support male power exercised with near impunity in the current social system. And the shaming nd blaming of victims/ wives/ mothers perpetuates a system that molests our children. We need community to speak up, to speak out, to change our own ways of thinking as women and mothers and then to change the power differential in a society where boys are raised to be boys and girls are raised to be subservient members of a race and gender ap artid. Janet Mackie
I remember the day the police raided my house at 6:30 am like it was yesterday. I remember being shocked, in denial. But one of the most vivid memories I have is the fury, the indignation when the officer in charge looked at me in pity and said, "I feel sorry for you. You knew nothing about this but your life will never be the same." How dare he pity me! They were wrong about my husband! But truer words had never been spoken. And I think I knew that, which is why it made me so angry hearing it. And looking back now, I can stand in my strength and power and admit I was a victim - because I was! But that doesn't mean I have to continue to be. I've chosen to learn all I can from this experience - to gain strength, independence, wisdom. Becoming a victim isn't weakness, but it is a choice to remain that way.
ReplyDelete