A Saving Grace

Yesterday I tackled three cupboards untouched since moving in three years ago. I knew they would be hard. Some of my mother’s keepsake boxes were there. My stash of cards, notes and letters from people over my three decades of ordained ministry were there. And boxes of personal remembrances of mine were also there. And so it was that I went back in time for most of the day. I went back into the life spent mostly being covertly used and abused by the one person who vowed to love, honor and cherish me.

I now know that his highly developed secret life began years before we met and included a covertly incestuous relationship with his extremely religious mother. He differentiated himself from her narrow theological roots by becoming a mainline denominational minister. There he anchored his deceptive life in pretty much the same way she had anchored hers—acting out a part in a desperate attempt to be both independent from her, but still able to lie about who he really was. He liked having a secret life and he had learned the tools of it well. For decades he fooled everyone, not just me and our children.

Opening these cupboards and the boxes inside took me down the path of my earnest faith and loyalty to him. I read letters I sent to my mother about my new babies, the various congregations in our lives and the things I was doing. Now I recognized my regular sacrifices for what I thought we were building together as a family. The ongoing interference and torment of my mother-in-law was always there, too. But I also enjoyed some of the earliest cards my boys made me for various occasions and the deep hearts of love they were growing within themselves. Our moves across the country were recorded along with the challenges of new places, schools and people. I could see in the letters how, over time, the spark of my spirit— usually full of energy and ideas and projects—dulled under the weight of daily dynamics of him withholding communication, support and intimacy. It was hard to wear me down but he and his mother never let up. Never.

At the same time his secret life was always there. From the first years of our marriage in the 1980’s when he would drop me off Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver for choir practice (I sang Evensong and non-Sunday morning events). He cruised the east end prostitutes until my practise was over. It was three decades of voyeurism, exhibitionism, sexual and sexualized relationships with others, porn, etc. His secret life was more important than me and more important than our children. He risked our security financially, emotionally, spiritually, socially and physically with his secret life. It was just more important than us.

Secret lives take a lot of time, energy, attention, and sometimes money. He hid all those things under the guise of “ministry.”  At the same time, his mother would warn him about how I would destroy his ministry and he had to watch out for me. Yes, they were quite a pair. It never bothered him to hurt me or our sons. Never.

But there I was, decades later, picking through a stash of cards from him to me for birthdays, anniversaries, Mother’s Day, Christmas, Easter and Valentine’s Day smeared with false pledges of love and lists of all the wonderful things I was to him. It’s interesting how when I finally uncovered the tip of the iceberg of his secret life, he suddenly complained I was terrible at every one of those things he listed on those cards.

Some of these cards I just threw out, but I have kept quite a few. Why?

I’m not keeping them with sorrow and grieving on my mind. I’m keeping them for anyone who still imagines I “should have known” who he was or I should have known his “needs were not being met.” I’m saving them for people who believed what he said about me to them in order to present himself as the victim.

For there in the piles of cards and notes is the evidence of his purposeful, unwavering and effective fraud committed against my life, against our vows, and against our children. He affirms me as the very best wife, mother, lover, friend and soulmate. He is grateful for every year we’ve been together and pledges himself again to the future for more adventures and growth and laughter and joy. Over and over again he does this. On birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Easter and Mother’s Day, he does this. He knew that protecting his secret life required that I believe in our relationship, our family and our life together. He needed me to believe it was a relationship of positive mutuality even though it wasn’t.

He lied as smoothly as he breathed. He’d been doing it all his life. Every once in a while if I questioned something he could not hide his contempt for me and lectured me that he didn’t “appreciate” the interrogation. Unknowingly, I would meet one of his affair partners who starting coming to church. Yes, there on Sundays they would humiliate me by pretending they didn’t know each other while I made overtures of welcome and friendship to her week after week. I would mention her to him afterward and he would dismiss any further conversation. By then I was so beaten down there was nowhere to go with it.

These men are not good men. They are not good husbands, life partners, or fathers. They are not benign. They are users and abusers. They watch with contempt and pride as we and their children frame a reality for our lives that they know all the time is false. They take pleasure in it. And they protect their secret sexual and sexualized activities by taking risks with our precious lives. If we resist or try to stand up for ourselves, they dial up the rage, abandonment and gaslight you into silence.That’s abuse.

Are they wounded? It doesn’t really matter since they do not seek help and when they do they manipulate a rather dim lot out there working as therapists. They don’t seek help from people they can’t con or charm. And from everything we experience the treatment model protects the deepest cracks in their psyches instead of offering qualified care. The model refuses to recognize these men are, in fact, abusers.

But keeping the evidence is not really about proving who they are. It’s about proving who I am and have always been—a keeper of promises, loyal, courageous, passionate about every aspect of life including my sexuality, pursuing growth, a truthteller, ready to take one for the team, caring for others, very funny, a good mother and life partner—and a damn fine preacher! I have weaknesses and bad habits, but those do not include using and abusing others.

I can’t save his next victim from his tediously unoriginal con. I can’t save him, either. But I will save myself. And I will try to save my children from the confusion his lies have created for them about what it means to be a man. I save us by being a steadfast steward of the truth. It’s a saving Grace.

Oh, and I’ve kept enough cards and notes to prove who I am and who our sons are. I don’t need to read them again for a while—maybe even for the rest of my life. It’s a saving Grace.

What and who are you saving? And why? Your story is safe here.

With you,

Diane