Life Cycles

Sometime in 1999 when the internet was barely making its way to everyone's home I had already been on it for a couple of years due to being in school completing my bachelor's degree. Even back then, it didn't take long to fin the world of sexual images and I had the perfect excuse for staying up late at night 'doing homework'. One of those times, my wife was searching for an online game or something and started typing on the URL address line and my settings were such that the auto-fill was on; several links came up that shocked the hell out of her and brought her to my 'secret' world. The next few months were filled with turmoil and uncertainty. She then told me that a lot of things made complete sense, but she had not tied all the pieces together then.

Somehow we made it out of that one...

About 5 years later (2004) we were living with her folks and saving money to get into a house. To say that stress was at a high time level is an understatement with work, family, extended family and myself now in graduate school. We had a family argument with someone (a sibling or something) and I was mighty upset. Unfortunately I had gone back to my old internet habits, but this time I had found some internet lists and had chatted with a few people online. While discussing 'coming out' with someone, he told me that I would decide to tell my wife basically when I didn't care about anything. Well, that argument made me not care about anything, so I had taken the kids to the movies and when we put them to bed I had a talk to her and dumped all my problems to her, which included gay porn and masturbation. I had read and heard horror stories about this situation and my biggest fear was how she was going to react to this revelation.

She must have had a ready script/rebuttal prepared for such an occasion, because she told me in less than 10 minutes that we were going to divorce, the kids would live with her and that we were basically done. Although we had agreed that we should not tell anyone what was going on, she ended up telling a few of her siblings in the next couple of days and she told the kids we were divorcing when I wasn't there to explain anything to them. I must have not slept for the next week or so but I moved out of her parent's house and got my own place within a week. I don't know what happened when she went from "we'll work things out" to "I'll never let you see the kids; you piece of #$@#". I was basically bowing to everything she would say and demand, as in her POV I had basically ruined her life. Those two weeks have been the most hellish and miserable of my life. I have never cried so much as when I did then. It was heart breaking to pick up the kids after school for a little bit, then have her take them with her and tell me how much they were suffering because of me. My son, was 10 years old at the time immediately assumed the role of her care-taker and my daughter was just confused-one time she asked me: "why don't you love mom anymore?"

A few days later reality must have set in when my wife told me she couldn't do it, she was sorry to kick me out and that we should work things out somehow. She'd come crying and begging not to do this to her and the kids. I was in shreds by then and told her that I would not move back to her parent's house, but they could move in to where I was living. I offered once and then twice. The last time I offered I told her that it would be the last time I asked her to do it and she accepted. I offered no assurances, but at least I had all of them back, especially my kids. I also had something of a coming out to my mother and a few of my siblings and I went to counseling for a few months during which time many things surfaced about my past, my relationship with my family and overall life, eventually things got better and we got back into our home lives, got into our home and life became 'normal'.

It has been over 4 years since that time. We are getting close to 5 years and for the life of me, I hope that the cycle is not about to repeat itself...