When my husband was told by the attorneys that I had told them that I could not
provide any financial information for the courts as I was not allowed access to it, he
was upset that I had shared this information.
I had actually been hesitant to share this at first.
I was simply going to be the “I don’t know” wife.
I didn’t want to admit out loud that my reality was the “I wasn’t allowed” wife.
It was embarrassing.
But I made a decision that if I was going to have to walk this new journey called
divorce and have any chance at coming out healthy on the other side-I would walk it
with honesty.
Raw, open honesty.
At least once I stopped hiding from life.
I had to look at everything in my life if I had any hope of healing and being a better
person on the other side of all of this.
And this meant I had to hold myself accountable most of all.
My husband told the court that he had never told me I could not access our bank
account.
More lies.
He told the court that if I had wanted to access our bank information I could have
simply driven myself to the bank and asked to see it.
When I read his words I was filled with so many emotions.
I was angry.
I was sad.
I was just plain exhausted with emotions at this point.
Why wasn’t he feeling any guilt about the lies he was telling?
As I stared at his words, I couldn’t help but wonder how it seemed lost on him that in
his own response to the court he was actually confirming that I had no online access.
I simply had to “drive to the bank” to look at our bank information.
Did this seem normal to him?
How could he have even written the words and not realized what it sounded like.
When I saw his response, I realized that he had no problem being dishonest even under
penalty of the court.
This made me tremble a little inside.
Going through a divorce was terrible enough, but knowing I was going through it with
somebody that had no problem with lying made me fearful.
A type of fear I have never felt before.
I would have loved to have read a statement from him to the court telling them that
yes, he had not allowed me online access to our finances, but he now realized that it
had been the wrong thing to do.
Even if it was embarrassing to admit this information to the court, a good man with
integrity would have done so.
But I was learning that this was not what I was facing in my divorce.
Each new part of the process brought deeper pain for me.
I knew there had to be other people in the world that go through this in their
divorce-you hear about things like this all the time.
But it didn’t make me feel any better while I was living through it myself.
And my shame kept me from talking to people about what was happening to me.
When I was growing up, I had always viewed the word discovery as a positive thing.
An exciting thing.
New discoveries.
New adventures.
I learned to loathe the term “discovery phase” during my divorce.
It became a time of great anxiety and fear for me.
It made me want to hide away from the world forever as the “discovery phase” was
leaving me with discoveries that made me feel more and more foolish…

My attorney told me that because I did not have access to our financial information, and
we would have to rely on the information my husband provided, I would need to do my
best to look everything over and let them know if it was accurate to the best of my
knowledge.
It took me a few days to gather the courage to look things over.
I was scared of what I might find and what it would add to my already frail emotions.
It sounds silly to admit, but it was my new reality.
When I finally summoned up the courage to begin reading over the 50 plus pages of
documents, it felt like I was living someone else’s life.
And what I feared became my reality as I read over things I was completely unaware
of.
The vulnerability you feel swallows you up.
The foolishness you feel swallows you up.
I had trusted my husband completely with our finances.
I was an open book regarding every cent I have spent for the past 27 plus years.
There was nothing I spent money on that he did not know about.
In addition to what I spent; I turned over every bit of money I received to him. My
paychecks from my jobs, my disability payments and even every personal birthday
check was turned over to him. I never spent them on myself. I always turned every cent
over to what I saw as our family finances.
I would learn how foolish my blind trust in him had been.
I learned things I knew nothing about-in addition to the hidden Amazon purchases he
had hoped to keep from me that I knew were not likely to be the only ones.
In his paperwork to the court my husband disclosed a large loan against his 401K that
we had been paying back each month for a few years.
When I read this information, I felt as though I had been hit over the head with a board.
I didn’t understand what I was reading at first.
It didn’t make sense to me.
At a time when our family finances were at their best with 3 less people living in our
home, less use of utilities, less groceries, less gas for our cars etc., he had taken out a
loan.
And he had never said a single word to me about it.
Touching a 401K was something he had always told me was a bad financial move for
people.
We had known people that did it and he said we would never ever do such a thing.
I couldn’t believe it when I saw it on the paperwork.
I couldn’t understand why he had done something he had always said was wrong to
do financially.
I didn’t know what the money was used for.
It was a large sum for us as a family.
And it was now a loan that I had to pay ½ of back in the divorce settlement.
That stings.
To this day, I have no idea what it was for, and I have no plans to ask him about it.
My heart had come to accept that no matter what his explanation for it was to me, I
could never be sure it was the truth.
Lies do this.
They make you doubt everything.
Once I started seeing a pattern of dishonesty and deceit with him, I began feeling more
and more vulnerable just to be in the same room as him.
I couldn’t look at him, be anywhere near him or even hear his voice without physically
shaking.
What did it feel like for him to carry all this deceit around in his heart?
I felt like I was finding out my husband was living a double life.
One life in front of me and one behind my back.
And it was more than him being my husband-he was the Father of my 3 sons.
This was the man that was supposed to set an example for my boys.
I no longer respected the Father of my children.
I no longer wanted my boys to be anything like their Dad.
This realization brought me deep aching sorrow.
I couldn’t stop myself from wondering just how much he had kept hidden from me
during our marriage and if lies had always been a constant companion for us.
It haunts your thoughts even when you try to push it away.
And I spent every day and many sleepless nights trying to push it away.
Each time I learned new pieces of information, more pieces of me tore off.
Even if my husband was to tell me the truth, I would now doubt it.
If he were to tell me it was not going to rain, I would get my umbrella.
I felt cheated out of the safe place I had once been in when I trusted him with my
whole heart.
With my whole life.
He had told me many times over the years that he hated liars.
I believed him…

One of the first things you have to do when you’re going through a divorce, is complete
all the forms and paperwork and provide all of your information to the court.
Personal information.
My personal information for the majority of time I have spent as an adult.
My heart burned against the man that was forcing me to sum up my personal life in a
bunch of legal paperwork for a bunch of strangers.
It felt devaluing-not just for me, but our family.
This information includes every bit of your financial information-bank accounts, debts,
assets etc.
This is part of the “Divorce Discovery Phase”.
You learn terms you never thought you would have directed at your life.
It was like an out of body experience providing all of my personal information to
strangers.
It didn’t matter that they dealt with this kind of stuff on a daily basis at the court, I was
embarrassed at how they must all be viewing me when they looked over my
paperwork.
I was a reject.
I was a failure.
I was a throwaway.
I was unable to provide any financial information as I did not have access to any of our
finances.
This is how I learned the term “Out Spouse”.
This meant that I had to rely on my husband to provide this information to the courts.
And rely on the accuracy of the information he provided.
This is very, very hard to accept when you learn the person you have to rely on for
information has been dishonest with you.
When my attorney’s office asked me for the information, I let them know that I did not
know any of it.
Not one single thing.
And I had no way to get it as I was not allowed access to it.
I was deeply ashamed to admit this to them.
I had talked to my husband about it numerous times over the years, but had not been
successful.
A year or two before my husband told me he was divorcing me, I had approached him
and asked him again if I could have online passwords to our bank etc so I could access
our information online.
I had told him multiple times that I was worried if something happened to him I would
not know how to access our information.
He would always tell me I just needed to get in touch with his brother if anything
happened to him and that his brother would help me get into the computer etc.
This never made sense to me.
Why send me through his brother to get our families financial information?
I had even told him several times over the years that I would like to help him with our
finances and budget to help take some of the stress off him doing it all himself.
He always said no.
In our final conversation that we had about him giving me online access to our finances,
he told me in aggravation that without a job I did not deserve this information.
I was shocked to hear him say the words out loud.
I had always known he did not respect my place in the family regarding finances, but
hearing these words come out of his mouth still shocked me. Especially since I wasn’t allowed access even when I had a job outside our home-so having or not having a job never changed my being given access.
I told him nobody is supposed to feel this way and it wasn’t right that he did.
Even with the argument he didn’t budge, and I wasn’t given our online information.
I did not pursue it any further at the time.
I had gotten used to these types of conversations.
It was during this “discovery” process that I learned that my husband had opened up
his own bank account in the year prior to asking me for the divorce.
He had emptied both of our savings’ accounts, emptied our Money Market account and
stopped his paycheck from going into our joint account.
He had started keeping a minimum balance in our joint account that he monitored to
make sure I had spending money for groceries and household items.
Prior to learning about the account, my attorney had told me that my husband
probably already had his own bank account.
I assured him he would not do something like this.
I’m sure my attorney must have been shaking his head on the other end of the phone,
knowing better than me what I was about to learn.
The day I found out that he did indeed have his own account, I couldn’t believe it.
I was shocked.
I cried.
It made things more real.
You read about things like this, but you don’t expect to live it.
When I asked my husband why he would do this he told me it was his right because
he paid all of the bills.
There was nothing I could do about it.
He had plotted and planned and made financial moves to his benefit while I lived in
ignorance-believing the head of our family was watching over us and taking care of us
as a family.
He told me he would continue to monitor our joint account and make sure there was
enough money in it for me to spend each month, but that we would need to keep our
spending to a minimum while going through the divorce.
I have always kept my spending to a minimum.
In the years we have been married, I have almost never spent money on myself.
The money I spend each month nearly always consists of groceries, household
purchases or things for my family.
Never really spending money on myself during our marriage made me suddenly wish
that I had splurged just a tiny bit before being plunged into divorce poverty.
Especially when I learned that keeping our spending to a minimum during this time
was only applied to me…

I think my husband getting rid of the old broken-down truck that sat in our yard for the
past 16 years or so, should have been one of the biggest red flags for me.
Goodness, no amount of prompting could convince him to do anything about that truck.
It had become a yard decoration.
Some of my boy’s friends had even teased them over the years about our yard looking
like a “junkyard”.
It gave us a good laugh sometimes, but there were also times I looked forward to not
seeing it as part of our country landscape.
It’s why I was so filled with joy when he told me he was having it taken out of our yard.
Looking back, I think maybe I did have a sense that something abnormal was up.
Something in me felt strange that it was all happening at once.
Around this same time, he also announced that he was putting our travel trailer that we
used for family camping up for sale.
A travel trailer was not something that would normally be in our budget, but my
in-laws had bought it for us quite a few years ago and allowed us to use it and told us
to pay them back whenever we could.
It was a Blessing and I loved camping in it.
No more tent camping for this spoiled girl.
Going from tent camping to trailer camping makes you feel as though you transitioned
to royalty.
We had tent camped for part of our honeymoon along the coast.
As much as I enjoyed the feeling of getting back to nature in a tent, as my age
increased, so did my desire to rough it less when I camped.
As a family we gradually went from tents, to a tent trailer and then a travel trailer.
It made camping so much more comfortable, and I was hooked.
I loved sitting in the trailer when it rained.
This happened once when we camped close to the beach and there is something cozy
about being dry in a trailer when you’re camping, and it rains.
Especially since I’ve experienced camping in the rain in a tent.
My husband told our son and I that he had decided it was time to update to a newer
trailer while we could still get good money for the old trailer.
This made sense to me, and I trusted his decision.
My son couldn’t wait to start planning our next camping trip and had been talking
about it..
He asked his Dad what we would do about camping at his favorite place at the
beach-we had planned it prior to the Pandemic hitting and had to put it off.
His Dad reassured him that we would be camping once he got the new trailer.
I remember my son talking about it and he couldn’t wait to start planning for it.
My husband pulled the trailer out of our yard and took it to his parents’ house to sell it,
telling me it was easier this way.
Not long after that, he told my son and I that the trailer was sold and that was the last
we heard of it.
We obviously now know the trailer was sold in preparation for the divorce and that my
husband had no intention of ever replacing it, but it would play a part in a bigger deceit
that I would learn about later.
I can’t help but wonder if he felt anything at all when he was saying things about the
trailer that were not true as he listened to our son talk about camping.
Did any of it cause a twinge of regret in him?
Lying to me feels so much different than including my boys in the lies.
It feels heavier.
I don’t know if it was the divorce that was causing my husband to tell lies or if he had
always told lies and the divorce process just amplified it.
It’s a terrible thing to start looking at somebody like you can’t trust anything they say.
Especially when that person is your person.
Your person that you took vows with.
Your person that you have spent most of your adult life with.
Your person that knows you better than any other person in the world.
Your person that you made 3 babies with.
Having children with someone makes you connected with them forever.
Would I always have trouble looking at him.
Would I always feel that everything he says and does is tainted, dirty and dishonest in some
way.
Once you find out someone lies to you, it changes every single interaction you have
with them.
It changes how you look at them forever.
Whether you want it to or not…

It wasn’t just the house sale preparations that he had been planning for.
There were other things.
A few months before asking me for the divorce, he bought a car for me.
It wasn’t new, but it was a cute little car and I liked it.
The car I normally drove was now mostly driven by our youngest son since he had
gotten his license.
What I initially thought was a kind thing on his part, was done in order to make sure I
had a car of my own so he could take our beautiful family truck, the current Honda car he
drove and a Ford Bronco 4×4 in the divorce.
The day he brought the car home and drove it in the yard I stood in our driveway and
cried happy tears.
Crying.
It’s what I do.
I was so excited and thanked him over and over.
I’m humbled with embarrassment now thinking about what he must have thought as
he drove into our driveway that day with the car and saw me outside reacting with so
much happiness and him knowing the real reason behind giving me the car.
Now, when I look over my life and the divorce, I think about so many things
I was ignorant of that bring me embarrassment.
If they gave out patches for embarrassment, I would have boxes full.
It is honestly hard for me to even look at the car now.
Every time I get in it and drive it, I am reminded of the dark reason for its purchase.
It may seem silly as it’s just a car, but getting something with bad intention makes
everything about it feels dirty and terrible.
I’m hoping that terrible feeling will someday pass, as I have no choice but to drive it at
this point as I have no other vehicle.
I keep telling myself to look at the Blessing in it.
I need to be thankful to have a vehicle at all.
There is a deep sadness that comes over me when I realize that so much of my life for
the past few years was a lie. And maybe even longer than that.
Knowing that some in his inner circle (and some in his outer circle) knew about his plan
to divorce me before I did feels so unkind and surreal.
I look back and feel like I was on a stage, and everyone was looking down at me and
laughing.
Laughing at the woman that had no idea that her life wasn’t real.
When I chatted and laughed and thanked them for help with work around our
house-they knew a secret.
When we gathered for family events including our last Christmas as an extended
Family-some knew a secret.
I feel deep embarrassment.
There’s another patch.
I know I am not the only woman (or man) going through a divorce to go through these
types of things.
But it doesn’t matter that you know so many other people go through divorce and go
through these same things.
When you go though it yourself you feel alone.
Alone in your pity.
Alone in your embarrassment.
Alone in your mistakes and your foolishness.
Alone in your fear.
Very, very alone…

I’m not sure if it is the same with every woman whose husband tells her he is divorcing
her or not, but for me, on the day my husband told me he was divorcing me, it was as if
my mind began to explode with all of the different realizations of so many things from
our life.
I started thinking about all the things he had been doing for the last 2 years or so, and I
realized they were in preparation for the divorce and it caused a deep ache in me.
We had lived in our home for 16 plus years.
It’s a simple but good home out in the country on a little over 5 acres.
It was my dream to raise my boys in the country and I felt Blessed to be able to do it.
I have 2 inside dogs-a Chorkie that I got after my breast cancer diagnosis and a robust
little chihuahua mix we got to be his buddy a few years later.
I never in my life thought I would have 2 small inside dogs.
I have always been an outside dog person.
BIG outside dogs.
But these little dogs have changed my life completely and gotten me through some
tough times and still are.
There is nothing like a wee little dog to distract you, whether it’s a Mastectomy or a
divorce.
A big yellow Lab named Bella rules over the outside yard, and she is my bosom buddy.
She is right by my side no matter where I am in the yard.
A tiny little bunny named Cornelia sits in a fancy hutch not far from the house.
She is my youngest son’s bunny, but every person in the family loves her.
Next to her is a chicken yard with a fantastic coop that houses 5 chickens.
Three Blue Australorp hens named Henny, Penny and Jenny.
A Polish hen named Polish Polly.
And a beautiful Silkie Rooster named Silkie Sam.
The hens rule the roost.
In our lower pasture is my Sweet Willow.
She is a little pygmy goat that I couldn’t wait to get when I first moved to our property.
And joining her is Charlotte my Nubian goat-Charlie for short.
Any sound I made in our yard brought them running to me in search of grain or some
other treat.
If you want to brighten your day, watch goats running across a pasture to you.
Things didn’t feel quite so bright on the days that Charlie would scream out across the
pasture like a human-but that’s a story for another day.
Rounding out the animal kingdom at our home are two Betta fishes sitting in tanks in
our living room.
Up until a couple years ago our yard was quite plain and simple, full of weedy grass
and a wooden deck off our sliding door that had become a danger to walk on.
But then all of a sudden, my husband began working around our home.
I was so excited to watch everything transform.
He built an outside storage barn area that we had never had before.
Then a large patio was put in.
A beautiful patio covering followed.
I felt so spoiled.
No more tables with umbrellas blowing away in the wind for me.
Our large patio side yard was rocked and landscaped with multiple plants.
I helped to choose the plants to put in these areas-learning about what plants work for
shade and sun and what plants were considered native or invasive.
When I look back on those moments now, I wonder what my husband was thinking as
he watched me participate in getting my house ready to sell in the divorce.
I feel embarrassed at my blissful ignorance.
I thought I was experiencing a Blessing.
I had no idea of the bad intentions behind what was going on.
Finally in my fifties I was watching my yard become something so beautiful to walk
around in and enjoy.
Maybe not fancy by other people’s standards, but lovely to me.
My husband then painted the outside of our house and put in a new beautiful double
front door with etched glass.
I was so excited when he had his old truck hauled away after all those years of sitting
in our yard like a yard sculpture.
I added a small garden, hung up bird houses, put in a bird bath and my yard became
ALIVE!
I never thought I would live in such beauty.
I thought that maybe this is what it’s like to get older, have your children start leaving
the nest and finally start finding the time to have these kinds of things take shape at
your home.
To me, it was the most beautiful place I had ever lived.
Veggie plants, fruit plants, and various flowers surrounded our house.
Birds, Bees and insects of all sorts were living the high life.
In addition to our domesticated animals, wild animals filled our yard-rabbits, squirrels,
racoons, opossums, deer, turkeys-so many beautiful creatures.
We had fresh chicken eggs, fruits and veggies from the garden and got to enjoy the
beauty of nature.
My heart was full every day when I walked around watering, filling bird feeders and
battling with the squirrels for things in my garden.
It was the first time I had ever gotten to have something like this.
I was in heaven.
I did not take it for granted.
I knew that not everybody gets to experience this type of life.
I felt Blessed to live amongst all of it.
I remember the day I showed my “new” yard to my sister with a big smile on my face
as I walked her around showing her everything.
Looking back on that moment now I am so embarrassed that I didn’t have a clue what
was really behind all the wonderful improvements.
Everything had been done to get my home ready to sell.
The realization of all of this the day my husband told me he was divorcing me, was
almost more than I could bear.
In an instant the joy of my home was sucked out of me.
In an instant I didn’t want to look at any of it any more…

The moment that lit the spark that began bringing to light the reality that things were
being hidden from me happened even before I was told by my husband that he was
divorcing me.
I think perhaps this was partly why I was so confused by it.
It was a day that started out like any other day.
But it would end up being the day that I would continue to look back on as when I
began to realize that lies and deceit were a part of my marriage.
And it would lead me down an endless path of wondering how many lies had I been
told during my marriage, how many things had been hidden from me?
Lies do this to people’s minds.
I was sitting in my living room when my son came in to ask about re-ordering an item
we had gotten previously on Amazon.
I told him I would go ahead and re-order it.
When I went into the Amazon cart to look for the item, I noticed $1000’s of dollars
worth of items that had been ordered on our account and were awaiting delivery.
I was shocked.
None of it looked familiar as anything for our family.
A year or so before we had one of our credit cards used for fraudulent charges and this
is immediately where my mind jumped to.
I thought somebody must be using our Amazon account to make fraudulent orders.
I jumped up and ran into my husband’s home office and knocked on the door.
He told me to come in and I feverishly began to tell him about the charges and how
somebody must have hacked into our Amazon account.
I was breathless as I told him about my discovery.
We better hurry and alert Amazon, I said to him, proud of myself for saving us from
this fraud.
He stared at me for a bit.
I thought maybe he was as shocked as I was.
I waited for him to start bellowing out how much he hated thieves and grab his phone
to call Amazon and our bank to take care of the problem.
After a few minutes of just staring at me, he told me that the charges were for his
brother.
I was so relieved that we hadn’t been hacked and I said, “oh thank goodness” and went
about my day.
It wasn’t until towards the end of the day that I realized that in all the excitement of
the morning and the worry about our Amazon account being hacked, I had forgotten to
go back online and re-order the item for my son.
So, I went back into our Amazon account to place the item in the cart.
The $1000’s of dollars in charges were gone.
I can’t explain this moment with adequate words.
A bad feeling started coming over me.
Something felt weird.
Something felt off.
I wondered why the charges that were there this morning were now missing.
I’m not that familiar with Amazon.
The most I do is look for things that are needed (mostly for my boys or my animals)
and place them in the cart.
That’s really the extent of my Amazon use and knowledge.
But that day, a cloud started forming in my mind about these charges and I wasn’t
really sure why.
I made myself look over the site and educate myself about it.
Something I wouldn’t have normally taken the time to do, but a small little voice in me
seemed to be whispering “look and see, look and see”.
I searched around to see why I would no longer see the charges that had been there
earlier in the day.
In my search of the site, I learned that there are different places you can place your
orders.
There are even places you could put orders so they couldn’t be viewed.
This is where I now found the charges.
But this didn’t make sense to me.
Why would my husband now put the items where I couldn’t view them?
Why would he want to hide them from my view-especially if I had already seen them?
My heart sank.
I walked to his office and casually asked him why the items were moved after I had
spoken with him about them.
Surely there was a good explanation.
Once again, he stared at me.
He appeared shocked that I was bringing it up again.
He seemed to stumble with his words and told me that he had originally put them in
the wrong place and since they are for his brother he now has them in the right place.
I told him “Oh ok” and left his office but something continued to feel off.
Throughout the rest of the day thoughts started coming into my head and I couldn’t
shake them.
Wait a minute-surely his brother had his own Amazon-why would he need to place
orders for his brother on our account?
And why had he never placed orders for his brother before?
But most importantly, why would he need to hide the orders?
It felt so silly and yet so dark at the same time.
While lying in bed that night my mind started flashing back to some of the items I had
seen in the order.
They didn’t seem to be something his brother would order.
Dang it, why wouldn’t thoughts about this order leave me alone I wondered.
For the next few days, the clouds continued to linger.
Something was off and it felt really bad.
I just didn’t understand why my husband would need to lie to me about anything
financial including an Amazon order so nothing made sense.
I approached him again and told him that something felt off and asked if this was really
his order and not his brothers.
I asked him to please just be honest with me about it because it was making me feel
strange and I would rather everything just be out in the open.
He became angry with me and told me the order was his brothers and I needed to let it
go.
I approached him about 4 times in those few days almost begging him to please set
things straight as something felt off and I really wanted to just clear the air on it.
I told him I didn’t care about the orders-I just cared about how strange everything felt
about it.
Each time I approached him he got more and more irritated with me and continued to
insist that the orders were for his brother, and he would scream that I was the one with the
problem, not him.
The angrier he got about it, the more I felt like something really bad was going on.
You can’t understand the feeling unless you have experienced it.
I had never thought him to be dishonest with me about something before.
Was it all in my head?
Something told me it wasn’t.
By the morning of the 3rd or 4th day, I was standing in our dining room and he walked
up to me and stood before me in silence looking at me.
He hesitated a bit, cleared his throat and then told me that he had been lying to me
about the orders.
He said they were his.
I stood there quietly and listened to him.
He said he had no real explanation as to why he had lied about it, but if I had anything
I wanted to say about it I needed to say it then and there and then he didn’t want it
talked about again.
I continued to stand there and look at him.
After all the lying he had been doing for the past few days and all the finger pointing
at me being the one with a problem-I was numb and had nothing to say.
I said nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I just continued to look at him.
He looked at me, turned and walked away and that is the last we ever talked about it.
When I look back on that day, I am acutely aware of just how much something greater
than me played a part in me finding those orders.
He had meant for me to never know about them.
He was in shock when I discovered them.
Had it not been for this moment in our life, I may never have realized he hid things from
me.
I may never have realized that he lied to me.
We certainly had other problems in our marriage like everyone does.
But I had always viewed him as an honest person.
He had told me on more than one occasion that he hated liars.
I believed him.
I know that they say when someone is caught doing something it is most likely not the
first time they are doing it-it is just the first time they are caught.
I realized that this was most likely my reality.
I wondered just how much he had been hiding from me when it came to our finances
and I would come to learn some of it during the divorce process.
But even aside from financial things, finding out that someone lies to you makes you
start to wonder about every single thing in your relationship with them.
How much had he hidden from me during all our years together?
How much had he lied to me during all our years together?
It made me wonder about every single thing.
It made me doubt every single thing.
Divorce.
Divorce sucks.
Divorce that involves lying and deceit sucks even more…

As the divorce process progressed, I learned things.
I learned my husband had planned out the divorce for some time.
I learned my husband had lied to me about things.
I learned my husband had hidden things from me.
I learned that not everything was hidden-some things I knew about but didn’t
understand what they meant or realize at the time how it was all connected.
I felt so upset at myself.
How did I allow all of this to happen to me?
I had once considered myself to be a strong woman.
I had once considered myself to be fairly intelligent.
All of those thoughts were gone.
I spent every minute of every day filled with thoughts of self loathing.
I had failed.
I was letting everyone I loved down.
I wondered, had my husband laughed behind my back each time he felt he was pulling
something over on me?
It wasn’t that things were completely wonderful between us-we had a lot of problems
in our many years together.
But I lived my life believing everybody has problems and you navigate life in spite of
them.
But I knew that if I sat in a room full of people and revealed my life over the years, each
and every person in the room would be shaking their head at me.
How could she be surprised about the divorce they would be asking themselves.
Why did she let things go on this long they would also ask themselves.
I realized that I had become the girl in the movies that you feel sorry for but tell
yourself “she should have known better” “she should have been smarter”.
Each new revelation was making me feel like maybe I didn’t really know the person I
was married to.
I wondered how much was out there that I didn’t know.
It was a strange feeling.
And one of the biggest questions that I have found myself asking myself is if I had not
had health issues over the past 13 years or so, would I have been the one that said
enough is enough and had asked for the divorce in spite of how much I hate divorce.
As I sit and reflect over everything day after day (whether I want to or not), I am filled
with shame at how I had allowed my marriage to be something that was so unhealthy
and I had simply just been “hanging on”.
“Hanging on” is not at all the proper landscape for a marriage.
I had let my health and not feeling good so much these past years keep me from doing
the right thing and demanding better for our family.
I have not shown my boys what a healthy relationship between a man and a woman
looks like.
This has become my biggest shame.
Because insomnia had become my constant companion, I lay awake night after night
replaying so many moments from my marriage.
It wasn’t just that my husband was divorcing me.
Divorce in itself is an awful thing to go through.
But finding out about things that were hidden from me or lied to me about made
everything so much worse.
It was a vulnerability that I had never felt before.
It made me doubt everything.
Even good memories are taken from you because you wonder what part of them was
real.
A moment came about 6 months prior to being asked for the divorce that became a
catalyst of sorts to realizing deception existed.
It was such a strange thing that it still feels unreal to me.
Had it not happened, I’m not sure I would ever have known that lies and hiding things
was a part of my marriage.
Up until that point I really felt that my husband was an honest man.
Not without flaws just like me-but I never doubted his honesty or integrity.
I was in our living room and one of my sons came in and asked about something he
wanted to order again from Amazon.
I told him I would re-order the item.
Our Amazon was under my husband but I was able to put things in the cart and then
he would look everything over and place the order.
This was part of the “out spouse” process I would learn about.
Even Amazon was in my husband’s name.
Everything was.
Our house loan.
Every car loan.
Every credit card.
Our phone bill.
Our Utility Bills.
Our Streaming Services.
Our car Insurance plans.
Every membership-Costco, Amazon…
EVERYTHING.
I would learn during the divorce process just how much this would harm me.
After so many years of near perfect finances that included never having a single late
payment and always paying every bill on time, my husband was left with a perfect
credit score and the ability to get any credit card or loan he wanted at the drop of a hat.
Because I had not had anything in my name for nearly 30 years, I would learn that it
has left me looking like I was MIA where the credit world was concerned.
I wasn’t qualified for even the simplest of loans at this time.
I get no credit for years worth of being wise and frugal with our money.
The end of our marriage left my husband looking like royalty to creditors and I looked
like a ghost that just returned from credit death.
Oh why didn’t I listen to all those people that told women not to do this to themselves.
Keep yourself involved in your family’s finances.
I think there is a realization of many emotions that divorce brings out in us.
One of those for me is great foolishness.
I have been knocked off the ladder of wisdom that I thought I stood strong on, and I am
currently standing on the step ladder of foolishness…

In addition to hiring an Attorney, I found myself spending days and days reading
everything I could about divorce.
It wasn’t that I’m not familiar with divorce.
I am the child of divorce.
My parents divorced when I was in my 30’s.
Two of my three siblings are divorced and a good amount of my friends and family.
I disliked divorce even before it came for me.
Knowing what divorce is and watching it happen around you still doesn’t prepare you
or give you the knowledge of how exactly to get through it when you’re going through
it yourself.
Because I was 52 and had been with my husband for 27 plus years, I learned terms I
had never heard of before like “Gray divorce” and “Out Spouse”.
Gray Divorce refers to people who divorce over the age of 50.
That’s me.
I’ve had gray hair since I was 21-there is just much more of it since my divorce process
began.
I am feeling every bit the poster child for a Gray Divorce.
Everything I read says that the overall divorce rate has been dropping, but for people
over 50 it is surging.
The Out Spouse refers to the spouse who is out of the loop and unaware of the marital
finances and assets.
That’s me too.
Ever since I was a young girl, I knew that one of the most important things a woman
needs to be aware of is to never, ever, ever relinquish all financial control in a
relationship.
I had once been a single career woman.
I took care of everything financially for myself and I did it well.
My husband was the computer expert in our family and once we were married we
combined our bank accounts and he took control of everything financially-our budget,
bills etc.
He took care of it all online.
It was so easy to take this route.
It made sense.
I never once felt anything but trust in him in regards to this.
I felt he was a good person.
In the first few years of our marriage we discussed everything.
Every paycheck, every purchase, every loan etc.
As the years went on these discussions got less and less until I was out of the loop
completely.
When I brought up concern when credit cards, house loans, and bills started having
just his name on them he told me it would be fine as we were married and we were
looked at together even if just his name appeared on financial documents.
I have learned this is not true.
I have approached him a few times over the years regarding my being involved
in our finances more-even if simply just to take some of the stress of doing it all
himself.
Those discussions would always go very, very bad.
Each conversation would end up being unresolved and I continued to stay out of our
financial matters.
I have learned how much of a mistake this was for me.
I was in blissful ignorance and it would come to bite me on the bum.
I had not been allowed access to any of our families financial information for quite
some time. My husband advised me that without a job I had no right to be involved in
our finances or even to access our financial information online.
I had held a job outside of our home throughout most of our marriage. It was only in
the past 5 years or so that I no longer had a job outside our home after leaving due to a
breast cancer diagnosis and a declining hearing condition.
Although he had not allowed me access to our financial information even when I held
my job-he just became more cruel about it after I no longer had the job.
There were things he was doing with our finances that he felt were none of my
business and things he was doing with our finances that he didn’t want me to know
about period.
I had trusted this man.
I would learn about hidden purchases.
I would learn about hidden loans.
I would learn about hidden financial transactions.
All hidden from me…

At our family meeting my oldest son had asked me if it was ok for him to serve me the
divorce papers.
He did not want a stranger bringing these papers to me.
I agreed that this would be ok with me.
What a horrible conversation to have with your child.
My poor boy.
I sat at home waiting for my son to bring me the papers.
Just the thought of my husband handing these papers to his son to “serve” his Mom
filled my heart with agony.
With each new day my feelings about my husband darkened.
Everything changed about the way I viewed this man as the head of our family, as a
husband and as a Father.
As a man.
I felt numb as I waited for the papers.
Time ticked by and I sat quietly in my home.
The worst part was that my husband was still living in our home with me while I
waited.
It was a surreal feeling.
Nothing can prepare you for the day you receive that envelope.
That big manilla envelope.
My son handed it to me with emotions that crushed me.
I will never forget this day and this moment that my son had to play a part of.
I opened the envelope and words all jumbled together as I scanned the forms.
Superior Court, Dissolution, Divorce, Petitioner, Respondent, Date of separation.
I felt like I was having an out of body experience.
This couldn’t be me living this moment.
The day I had met with my boys for the family meeting, we made the decision that an
Attorney might be a good idea.
The process seemed overwhelming.
What were the proper papers to fill out?
What were the filing dates that needed to be met?
My husband had already secured an Attorney for himself, and was getting it free
through his job.
I had no idea how to walk through the divorce process paperwork on my own.
Overwhelmed was not a strong enough word for how I was feeling.
I spent the next few weeks researching Divorce Attorneys in my area.
That’s something you never think you will be doing.
I had never had to hire an Attorney in my life.
I sent out inquiries to multiple Attorneys explaining my situation.
I prayed and prayed and prayed some more for God to help me choose the right one.
I decided on an Attorney that focused on family law and was located fairly local.
The cost was hard for me to think about.
Spending money on an Attorney made me feel selfish.
It was hard, but I knew that I had to learn to overlook the cost in the hopes that somebody would
help to make sure I did everything right and hopefully was treated fair in the process.
And fair was something I was discovering was not on my husband’s mind.
I was already so far behind in the process.
I was lost and felt like I was being swallowed up.
As each day passed, and I saw the signs that my husband had been planning and
preparing for the divorce for a good year or two or more, I realized he had done his best
to make sure the divorce would impact him as little as possible-personally and
financially…