The lie that broke this camel's back
It was the week before Christmas. Sounds like such an idyllic start. We'd just gotten back from an overseas trip as a family. 12+ days visiting amazing places* that were just a few short months from being totally closed to the world.
Dick* (I chose this pseudonym for its multitude of meanings and cultural references) told me he wanted to go Christmas shopping after work one night, on his own. Not the first time this had been his request. But something about the way he asked (making sure I could watch the kid and we had no other plans) kicked off my spidey sense. He's lied in the past (more on that later), and there are often signs. I can't pretend that I know every time, but the reason he's been caught lying before is that he's far from perfect at it.
So, I don't know if he's an idiot about it (in general, he's not a complete idiot), thinks he's better at deceiving me than he is, doesn't care if I find out, or just wasn't thinking at all (maybe he's done this hundreds of times and the fact that I've only called him out on about half a dozen made him play the odds). But the behavior had me wondering. So I checked. The open laptop, the work chat app, the unlocked phone. Every place I looked, there were bits of the story. Plans on where to meet (went from a drink somewhere to had to meet at a hotel). Chats going back months with eggplant and heart emojis coupled with “I miss you” — from when we were overseas. The kicker is that it was obvious there was a half-assed attempt to hide things. Older texts were gone — from the phone. But that's not the only place they live in this day and age. So, I knew that he knew things weren't kosher. I mean, in addition to lying about shopping by himself, he felt the need to delete some incriminating texts on his phone.
So, I documented everything. Screenshots, exports of conversations, even screen capture video of conversations (so I could scroll through it, and have it recorded). I didn't know how things were going to go, but as I'd mentioned, I've now fully accepted he's a gaslighter. He denies. He doubles-down. He blames others. Redirects the conversation. It's amazing that he's somehow thought he'd won all those attempts in the past. Sure, I didn't divorce him, but if he thought things were ok after each of those times, he was really busy with deluding himself. Each incident just added to my mental distancing.
Why stay, you ask? I'll get to that more later, too. But it came down to it's easier to stay. Financially beneficial. Questioning how bad the lies were (as a result of the gaslighting). The last time I was really ready to be done was 3 years ago — but I put our kid first, and knew that getting a divorce where we were living at the time was not something I was willing to do. We'd lived there a while, and it was becoming apparent that the education system and the state government were going to put our kid (and everyone else's there) at a disadvantage. I wanted to give him a better chance. So, I pushed down my resentment that had seeped into all my interactions with my husband (I'd just found out he'd been lying for years about tobacco use — more on that later), to get us the hell out of a state that I'd fear we'd never be able to leave if I proceeded with ending it there. And, there's always that “what if” xyz change means the lying SOB will suddenly stop lying. Ok, so, looking back, apparently I spent a lot of time denying how pissed I was, and deluding myself into thinking his behavior (and my refusal to leave) was something I could truly accept.
*Details are vague on purpose as this is meant to be an anonymous blog.