I was feisty. I knew I was quick to anger but I was also quick to forgive. Peter Pan was an addictive liar and would often tell me little white lies about where he was and what he was doing. I would check his phone often because I knew of his ability to lie on a whim. I think it would be safe to say that 75% of the time I'd check his phone, there was some lie that I'd find out from that day or week. And another 10% of the time, all of his messages would be erased when I'd check.
Every time I'd confront him, he would become irate and yell at me about how I shouldn't be going through his stuff. He would tell me that everyone lies and that he's sure I lied to him too. I handed him my phone during one of those arguments and told him I had nothing to hide.
All of the lies were little. None of them were lies about anything that would be extremely detrimental to our marriage. But they were still lies.
For the first 5 years of our marriage, I never assumed there was anything worse that my pathological lying husband wasn't telling me. That may make me sound pretty stupid but I never had a reason to believe he was doing anything big that he shouldn't be doing.
I should've been more in tune with what was going on in my marriage but because we fought so much, I had learned not to rock the boat as much---because when I did rock the boat, there was fire and fury on both sides.
We were both hurting and I had learned not to trust anything Peter did or said...or so I thought. Let's come back to that later...
There was one morning that Peter was still in bed when we were getting ready for church. I kept asking him to get up and get ready and I was getting impatient. This had been happening more frequently and I wasn't "dealing" well with taking the kids to church on my own while he made up new excuses. I got angry with him. I yelled. He got angry right back. He told me he didn't believe in God and that he wouldn't be attending church with us ever again.
I wished I could go back in time to 30 minutes prior and ignore him staying in bed. I blamed myself for getting mad and pushing him over the edge.
But the hurt we were going through was too much. I told him I was done. I told him that him being the spiritual leader in our home was the last thing I had held onto and that I was leaving.
That day, I met with our bishop and surprisingly, Peter joined me. Our bishop was not helpful that day. I felt like it was 2 men against 1 woman. I felt like I was being blamed because of my emotions over our inability to conceive a third child. I felt like I was being told that was the reason my husband was struggling. It was all my fault. We agreed to meet with the bishop the next week to see how things were going.
What a long week. We hardly talked because I still wasn't sure I wanted to stay in this emotionally abusive and exhausting marriage.
Sunday came again and after skipping out on church, Peter showed up for our meeting with the bishop, only this time, he was closed off. His arms were folded, his eyebrows were furrowed, and his answers consisted of short yes's, no's, and ok's. Our bishop realized that he wasn't getting through to Peter and told us there was nothing else he could do for us except refer us to a marriage counselor.
We agreed.
To continue on to Part 4, click here.
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