I still didn’t doubt his love for me. But the duplicity of his personality and immorality was tearing us apart and had been for years.

It was Friday, the last day before the weekend that was going to swallow me into abandoned despair and the unknown of separation. I was unprepared.

I had never lived alone, I grew up in a big noisy family, then grew a big noisy family of our own.

This could be a horrible emotionally charged weekend or a hostile one. My mind was on the edge of either one and I was not in a place to make a choice between the two parallels.

To help us begin the weekend with some structure I booked two tickets to go and see the new James Bond film. It was the right choice as we were able to spend the evening together without talking. Except for my Husband educating me about the model of the Bond car!

It was late when we arrived home meaning no time for a long drawn out conversation that may lead to tears and conflict. We had a short warm chat and a drink then off to bed, we were intimate, which surprised me.

I felt cherished.

Saturday morning, he suggested we went for a drive to a farm shop café to chill for an hour.

We sat chatting superficially while waiting for our food to be served.

Then between breaths the silence broke and he began to talk.

What he said took me completely by surprise!

He reached for my hand and began with words I had been longing to hear. My husband had returned! He explained that at some point through the previous week he had turned a corner. He wasn’t sure when it was, a curry night out with some mates, a successful counselling session or seeing family for the first time in weeks, then our night out together at the cinema. Something fell into place.

He continued, saying he felt as though he has been lost at sea without and awe or a life jacket and now he felt hopeful for the first time since the dreadful shaming email exhibit.

He thanked me for standing by him and asked me to forgive him, assuring me he loved the children and me and chose our future and us together.

He cried, I cried, the worst was over, I thought! Sadly the Grey One was not going to give in that easily. My husband continued counselling and changed his mobile number, to stop unwanted contact.

He kept the same email address explaining it was the address that his work contacts used so would prevent him getting business. I had no choice but to accept that, but it did provide a weak entry point for the Grey One.

The next day he emailed his children to let them know his decision.

He wrote… The problems of the last two months are not all resolved yet or likely to be for some time, but he was in a better place personally, and in his relationship with me.

He reiterated his words that he had said to me the day before telling them that something lifted and he felt hope and strength to believe things can be much better for the future.

The deep grief and pessimism he experienced along with a huge urge to be alone appeared to have abated.

He said he was sorry for putting them all through a terrible time the last few weeks and deeply regretted his actions that led to the unmasking of his other self. Which gave ammunition for someone to expose him.

Hopefully he continued, we could all rebuild and continue to be the great family we are despite his deep flaws.

Over the following few weeks we were happier than as you can imagine we had been for a long time. I felt confident I was winning my husbands affections back.

I felt his desire for me return. I saw him looking at me with affection in his eyes, I hadn’t seen that for a long time.

There is something about the way a person looks at the one they love that is very unique. I would know when things were not going well when the affection had gone from his eyes. Affection was replaced by avoidance and distance, shame and guilt, which couldn’t be hidden.

Sadly the grey One still had the upper hand. He wasn’t given the same message as us, therefore he stood his ground. The Grey voice silently mocked with the tone of forboding evil ~

“We have been here before, I’m not going anywhere.”

A year forward, I have recently discovered that soon after his recommitment to us, he was grooming online to meet total strangers for behaviours I can only imagine.

For me to go out in the evening and feel assured my husband would be faithful, I had to know what he intended doing with his time. It was most reassuring for me if he had arranged to be out with a friend who I knew and could confirm he was with him.

Except now he should have been different, as he had very recently recommitted himself to fidelity, I was going out with a group of girl friends to the theatre. I was somewhat anxious because it was the first time my trust was put to the test since his recent change of heart..

He had given me his word he was going to relax and watch television.

About ten minutes before I left, he went to the bathroom… with his phone. This was the silliest thing he could have done, as he knows that raises my fears.

When he came down. I asked to see his phone.

I was apprehensive because I knew there would be Grey intent threatening to ruin my evening.

What a fool! He had texted someone very dubious, it wasn’t her. His face was the expression of a child caught in a lie as I looked at the message. The content of the message didn’t imply a betrayal, but it was still alarming as it wasn’t innocent in its subject.

I don’t ever want to see that look of shame again, or that naughty school boy face!

I went out despite my anxieties. I placed a stick from the garden in front of his car wheels and took photos so that i could check later if he had been out.

The evening was mixed with fear as well a smiles and laughter. The not so ‘perfect life’ mirage covered up the insanity that was going on in my head.

My recent belief in him ebbed, I was losing him again. I didn’t show it, or tell anyone ~ The secret keeper was still alive and well too.

Going out in the evening is something I am free to enjoy now and I am making up for all those lost opportunities to make the most of them.

He would always deny there was anything he needed to admit to but I knew he was guilty because I saw it in his eyes. I could read my husband and the Grey One in an instant, I know him so well.

But for now, I was in the make believe of a fresh start, I was hanging in there. But not naïve.

We were still very close to ruin.

Pornographic addictions, a strong dark grip.

Her cause is every part to strip.

She will eat your flesh, and chew your bones, only the splinters will be spit.

Through the pain come out on the other side,

Where there is nothing more to take and nothing more to hide.

It has been quite difficult to go back to the memories of this stage of our story and feel it again. It was Autumn 2016 when this was written. I felt the anger rise in me again after last weeks blog, it took a couple of days to process my way back to where i am now currently, being a much better place.

Reality has gripped me unexpectedly, that I am overwhelmed with grief, abandonment and extreme loss. I am so very cross with him for choosing adultery and lust over his children and me.

He boasts of our wonderful family and friends. They deserve every shout out because they are wonderful and amazing. But his boast is that without him I can run into them and I have. But they cannot replace him. They cannot be there in the middle of the night for a spontaneous hug and reassuring words when I need them. That’s his place. He vowed to be that person for me. He has cheated me, traded me for a dark and shallow alternative.

And how did he come to the blind conclusion that his family are better off without him? Yes I am angry right now.

We vowed to each other our loyalty and commitment for better or worse. It is not okay that he deserts me for another.

Who is she that she thinks it is right to stealth a husband, father and grandfather from the heart of his family? Who is the man that allows this to happen? These feelings will pass, they do and will continue to come and go for the foreseeable future.

At this very moment of writing I am angry and broken that my husband would do this to us.

I fully understand the vast humiliation he unnecessarily suffered and his need to hide away from the spotlight. He should have done that within the safety and love of his family, we all stood by him and loved him beyond his demise.

He was far more than the Reverend to us.

My husband is an intelligent man.

As much as I concur with the effects of his early emotional traumas’

his behaviour is without excuse.

Now that rant is of my chest. I love him. I can’t help it. I have given up trying to force myself to get over him.

As a family our situation grew worse,

Our children had only just found out about the affair. The situation was volatile and in that unresolved atmosphere of hostility, they arrived at our door.

In an instant, the Grey One vapored and their father greeted our children with an effort of normal.

Their response was direct and confrontational as to how, not normal things were.

he remained silent while our children begged him to choose us his family.

To fight for us.

I was appalled to hear one of my children say that we are dysfunctional as a couple and that their father has been abusing me for years.

That shocked me. I never saw it like that.

There were tears and disbelief in who their father was. They had never seen this person before. They didn’t know him or recognise him as dad. Yet another blindsided crash for our family.

The anger in my son was tangible, he shook his head saying,

“I don’t know this man”.

They had never met the Grey One before. 

We understood he had lost so much, his loved career, his reputation, he had been publicly humiliated to an untenable degree. Friendships had changed, even though all our friends were non-judgmental and supportive they now knew information about him in a way that should never have been available in black and white to so many.

Yes he was a different man, he was lost. We his family expected him to run into us, so that we could all recover together.

But instead the Grey One became the dominant identity, that confided in the stranger!

After our children left in anguish, their father said when they were gone.

“They’re great kids.” How could he not say that when they were here?

Father and family would be estranged from one another for many weeks from that night! Things being difficult were an understatement!

The whole family became victims of deplorable choices they had no part in. The choice to satisfy an emotional impoverishment he was abandoned with as an infant. Then as single young adult exploring harmless fun, to fill a void he did not create, or accept existed for a long time.

He got on with working. When he was home, we got on with normal things. We enjoyed similar dramas on TV, also enjoying days out together.

We were far from okay as the ‘elephant in the room’ was always present.

The Grey One was attending counselling which was enlightening regarding the reasons, not excuses for his behaviour.

It must be said my husband never excused his moral flaws. He knew they were wrong and he knew he caused pain, but he was compelled to give in to the Grey One to pornography, elicit sex and now her.

The Grey One continued to find comfort outside of his marriage and family. We talked very little. He felt with family estranged that he might as well move out, that we would all be better off without him.

He began to look for an alternative home. I was not ready for this. I was ok with it, then I wasn’t, but really I wasn’t!

I desperately wanted our marriage to survive and become better than ever.

I was putting up a united front believing we would survive. Never ever in a million years would I have believed it possible for my husband to leave us?

We had to make old age together. After all I had stood beside him and fought for us, it was still my hearts desire to grow old with him.

With the rift between our children and their father growing further apart, the Grey One continued his plan to leave.

What an awful dreadful time that was. I was broken, very broken that the Grey One had totally hijacked my husband. I still loved him very much; neither did I doubt his love for me.

Not only had the Grey One obliterated the Reverend, he was intent on obliterating him as a Husband – Father and Grandfather.

I would check almost every day that his car was where it was supposed to be parked, for my peace of mind.

I was living on high alert always on vigil making sure he was where he was supposed to be.

I was leaning into family and friends and they were very supportive. Even though many of them expected I would walk away, understood my preferred outcome, that our marriage would be strong again.

I was so confused with his obsession with a women he would have nothing in common with, other than their interest on line for the purpose of promiscuity.

Reverend Grey’s recklessness stretched me to the point of fracture, crushing my fragile cerebral bones over and over again.

 Every time I found that he had strayed into websites and or adultery, I refused the option to get help, because I feared the outcome if I let as little as one other person know the secrets in our cellar.

All through our marriage we had challenges to face and difficulties to get past, just as everyone else does. We always faced them, managed them and got through them and survived them. We could have survived this too.

At the moment I will be doing this alone. I would like nothing more than for us both too become able and strong enough to confidentially help and support both singles and couples who have similar struggles.

The Grey One continued to look for a flat, while confiding in her.

He was and still is the man I want to be married to.

The next few weeks were the most unbearable of my entire life…

When things go wrong ~ you’ll find,

They keep on getting worse for some time;

But when things start going right,

They often go on getting better and better.

                                                         C S Lewis 

With one successful career ended, another successful career under scrutiny, the Reverend had work to go to that would not be impacted in any way by our circumstances.

This was both a good and bad thing, good because it kept us financially solvent, and able to sustain life, bad because the Grey One had long opportunities to disassociate to chat to and meet up with her.

She was the one he chose to confide in and would do so while he was at work.

When I learned that he was entrusting his grief and pain with her it was a bitter pill of rejection to swallow.

It is very difficult to think again about this period and what followed in the months to come. There are details i have never told anyone. I was very weak in the struggle against my own demons. For the moment it is suffice to say that i wanted to sleep but i didn’t want to wake up… Adrenalin pumped fiercely every waking hour.

The Reverend and I were readjusting to a colossal life change.

But we were not leaning on each other. 

Our children continued to ask subtle questions about their father’s morals. All I would say was that they needed to ask him those questions, not me. Of course my answer meant there were questions that needed answers.

He was speaking to and seeing the women, but he denied it, also denying that he was on any pornographic or dating websites.

Then the expected decision was made. My husbands credentials would be removed with immediate effect. He was no longer a Reverend.

He and I had given over three decades to a vocation and calling that we both loved, and have now lost following the exposure of a lifestyle of the Grey One’s sexual addictions.

He was still my precious husband, and father to our kids and papa to all the grandchildren.

He was also still lying to us.

He was slowly and gruellingly disqualifying himself from his family.

He was still the Grey One! His Grey grew even darker. It seemed he felt safer in the darkness with the elusive Grey identity than he did with honesty, because the truth would make him vulnerable.

Then I was asked the big question by one of my children. I was taken by surprise with the direct approach, there was no subtlety woven through their words.

Has dad ever been with anyone for sex who he had met online?

I could not lie; there was no skirting around the truth. No opportunity to blag my way out of this one. Even if I had not answered, apart from the fact my eyes welled up with tears, my face told the truth. Silence alone would have been an answer to such a direct question!

Of course my honest answer required more questions.

The dam was weak and history burst its banks of all the Grey One’s past, and more poignantly the very present ~ her.

Though I said I would never expose the Grey One, I could not lie for him. For the first time, I had done it. I had opened up my mouth. I was unprepared for this impossible position.

I could not lie to our children.

All the hidden mysteries behind the scenes of the Grey One’s unseen story were now exposed to his much loved children.

I had arranged to see my daughter the next morning. She knew instantly something had changed and that it wasn’t good news.

What a week for my family. They were loved and supported by their spouses as their relationship with their father fell apart. Relationships were at an all time low between them and their dad.

Little did we know things would still get far worse.

My parents had planned to visit for a few days the same week his children found out their father was living a double life on a far larger scale than they first knew. With him being involved in an affair with her for as long as he has.

This was a tricky week as it was… Then my parents arrived for a four day visit.

I didn’t want them to know anything unless they needed to. If my mum has an reason to worry to the point of robbing herself from sleep, she wouldn’t refuse the opportunity.

My puppy got lots of walks, so that I could talk to the family daily, they were devastated beyond words. There were no words that would put together the foundations that had just disintegrated from beneath their feet.

I don’t know if I fooled my parents, probably not! They were far too polite and appropriate not to meddle. I’m sure they sensed things weren’t okay…

… especially when events such as this happened.

We all went for a day out together. My parents, my daughter and her two youngest children and me. We drove past the car parking place where the Grey One parked his car each day near the train station. The grandchildren pointed out Papa’s car with excitement. We continued to enjoy the day out, when driving home a few hours later we drove past the same car park and my father noticed the car wasn’t there!!

My heart plummeted, my tummy rolled with familiar rotation at high speed, i was nauseous. His car should have been there for another two hours or more. It was only three in the afternoon; he wasn’t due home until five thirty.

Suspicion prompted me of the possible events. He jumped on the train at lunchtime, used his car to visit a hotel room or at least meet her, and then when he came back to the car park his space had been filled so he parked elsewhere. Then he hopped on the train back to work. A long lunch break yes, but he would have worked on the train journeys.

He may not have imagined us driving past the same place twice. It wouldn’t have dawned on him to even consider we might drive past there once.

Of all the weeks when the children discover their father’s affair, it becomes a reality to our daughter as she saw his car, then she saw his car had mysteriously gone!

My parent’s left. It was time to let the Grey One know that his children knew about his affair and all other sexual behaviours he has been caught up in. He was very angry with me.

He felt like he had been exposed all over again, sadly, he had.

Surely, i asked myself, he didn’t expect me to lie for him, when there had never been a reason to lie before.

There was never a situation that demanded I tell a direct lie to protect him. I could justify remaining silent, but I wouldn’t be able to justify speaking lies.

The exposure in August raised many questions.

Again – I hadn’t helped my husband by keeping his secrets. We were both so wrong, because now that I am not doing so, it’s as though I am betraying him.

The burden of enduring anxiety would rise and fall depending on how reliable his plans were in a day.

If I was with him, they were my best days, because if I was with him, that was my favourite place, right by his side, the only place i could find calm in the centre of unrelenting and unbearable turmoil.

She would regularly interrupt our times together with messages and photographs. There was some comfort in-between the moments of pain she caused, in that he was with me, it was me he saw last thing at night and first thing in the morning as we slept together.

He would never defend a lifestyle with such double standards for anyone else. How can he be so blind to think the rules are different for him?

As a young Reverend in his twenties, he was so shocked by the marriage of a woman in our congregation. He looked after her and cared for her while supporting her through a divorce.

She was a women in her sixties or seventies. Her husband had been involved in an affair with another women for many years, she lived not far from where he had lived with his wife. He was sleeping with his mistress every night, but going home to his wife, to get fed. This was his habit every day. The Reverend was outraged at his arrogance and the disrespect he showed his wife and daughter.

Now in 2016…

Though the circumstances are different, he has become that man.

He is today, and every day causing intolerable suffering and distress by his dishonour and disloyalties as we are forced to bare the betrayals of his abandonment and rejection of his marriage and family. 

I am so confused right now, as he is not an unkind or mean or rebellious person. I can only equate his behaviour with spiritual deception or blindness, or mental illness, such as depression.

If people pleasing to the point of recklessness was a mental illness, then we are all suffering this debilitating disease.

For many years my trust in the Reverends ability to defeat the Grey One and bring him to an end has been at rock bottom. He is still surrendering to the Grey One’s whims and fantasies. I have felt the loss of hope, and belief in him sifting his soul to sort out his morals for a very long time.

He is his most powerful enemy against himself.

One day i sincerely hope he will see that he alone holds the key to the first steps into his freedom and find the strength to turn the lock and walk away from the person he has become. only then can his family and his God intervene.

There is nothing anyone can do until he makes a choice to get out of the place that he made a choice to get into.

There is no handle on the other side of the trap door, he must turn it. Then cut the ties completely with everyone and everything that has kept him in the basement, in fantasy land. Only then will he be able to become the person he truly is  ~

Handsome Born of Fire and Gift of God ~ The One I deeply love and have lost… 

I believed in you, I trusted you to be true,

I didn’t know when i looked deeply into your beautiful brown eyes,

They were telling me so many lies.

We were at a Christian festival. Our family had been involved in this annual event alongside many of our friends, colleagues and their families for numerous years.

Arriving early as always the Reverend was busy getting on with his responsibilities as normal. The children and grandchildren along with some friends gathered together for  lunch.

The Reverend joined us but he didn’t eat.

Being busy with all the little ones making sure they were fed and then with all the clearing away and tidying up, we hadn’t noticed him leave to get back to his task.

Later that afternoon he came to find me. I was alone. He sat down and said he had something to tell me. He looked ‘grey’.

I knew something was seriously wrong!

I sat down and braced myself for impact.

My husband gave me an email to read.

I stepped aside as the Rug of secrets was removed. The padlock unlocked and

the basement door had been flung open. 

It took over three decades for the breaks to be applied. The duel-controlled life was stopped at last. Their paths had converged.

The Reverend was exposed of his deceptions and the Grey one exposed of his deeds.

There was no guarantee which one of them would relinquish command to the other.

After many years of anticipating the moment,

in the space of a few hours, everything changed.

The Reverend was disqualified from his position. His credentials were under great threat, when his deep dark private behaviour was exposed in a most cruel and destructive way.

There had never been a moment where I had to consider lying for my husband.  

No one would ever have had a reason to question the Reverends morals. To everyone, all they saw was a kind, generous and thoughtful and funny man. Occasionally his choler would rise with petulance when irritated, but he loved his wife and family and cared for those fortunate as well as the less fortunate. This is the man he was. That person still breathes, but he is in chains and the Grey One still holds the key… For now…

Those chains that look so strong are weak against the will of Truth –

And the pursuit of Moral Excellence.

 I knew nothing about the circumstances of his exposure.

The very same style to what I received fifteen months prior to this one.

It was delivered by a different yet equally creative name. Which again had been chosen to conceal a true identity. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it was the same person as Colin Churchgoer.

Just as before, screen shots had been taken of explicit conversations the Grey One had been involved in over the summer of 2015, along with photos of himself, including his head and shoulders.

They were collectively emailed to newspapers and numbers of people and organisations the Reverend was well known to. So not only the newspapers as was threatened previously.

It appears to me, someone who had also been on the same sites recognised the Reverend and decided to cruelly expose him. By distributing information that explained what he was dabbling in and that he shouldn’t be allowed to continue in his career, with such questionable morals.

This was the moment I knew we would face one day. But never in my wildest dreams, would I have thought someone could be so vengeful, spiteful and merciless to my husband and especially his family.

A corrupt and unethical plot detonated the grenade that had lay on my doorstep for years and was not handled with care by the person who pulled the pin. The brutal force blasted through our lives to result in a big mess as any explosion would, and left casualties in its wake.

 In public display for all to see.

A faceless accuser, guilty of the same transgressions,

Callously brought my home to ruins.

We were blown up, desolate and in bits, also wary for what lay ahead.

I hoped with all my heart the Reverend would at last master control, but sadly the Grey One disqualified him, defending his own mastery by using shame as a knife to stab the wounds of abjection and degradation into the flesh of his rivals emotions and mind.

In his bleeding and dying shame the Reverend served the Grey One pursuits. Stuffing as much of him back into the basement that he could.

Locking him away out of view, hidden again from sight. Much remained unknown of his dark Grey identity, The Reverend was far too fragile for honesty and transparency at that time.

Such was the depravity of his morals,

relationship suicide was, he believed, his only choice.

The Reverend was beaten and crushed  in the name of his disgrace. 

I never imagined it would happen this way. The fact that it was sent while we were at the festival was intended to cause maximum embarrassment.

I cannot begin to imagine what that violent and appalling exposure did to him.

However terrible our sins –

Grace will craft Humiliation into Celebration and Holy Spirit will work His Beautiful Artistry with the ink stains of our Shame. 

Yes this day needed to come, and yes, the person was correct that the Reverend should not be allowed to continue in his role, but exposure should have been administered privately.

The greater the bomb, the more professional expertise is required from the Bomb Disposal Squad –

The Reverends grave misdeeds fell into the hands of an immature and unskilled character, who was blinkered towards disclosure. Forsaking respect and courtesy for the family community he devastated.

Unbeknown to the person whose intention it seemed, was to gain maximum scathing for the Reverend, We couldn’t have been in a more loving and caring environment. We were in a bubble of love and protection for a whole week.

It was a disgraceful way the individual chose to expose the Reverend. There was no other intention but to ruin him. He needed help, not punishment.

The intention of exposure should be to recover, not to ruin. The wellbeing of the individual should be of paramount importance.

It is never ok to destroy someone that struggles with pornography or any other addictions.

Removing the Reverend from his pastoral position was only one part of the process.

I am humbled and blessed to find I have many wonderful family and friends who have loved me and my children and cared for us sacrificially and generously for the past year and more. Not one person I counted on has let me down. I can never repay their kindnesses.

Of course there was more, so much more. I needed to give the Reverend the opportunity to bring the Grey One completely into the light himself!

There’s advice in the bible that says.

Confess your sins to each other and support each other

So that you can live together whole and healed. James 5:15 (My paraphrase)

I believed there is no healing in confessing other people’s wrongs. This will only cause more pain. (Unless the law has been broken)

Every day a life changing event that creates havoc may occur, that we won’t have foreseen or been forewarned of. We survive, just as we did the last time and we will again. We become a different person each time harrowing information or violations take us out from our blindside.

It throws our world upside down, and when we finally land, we are not the same as we were before.

The Reverend who I love and know so well, is the man who dropped everything and drove more than an hour down the motorway, phoning the police to come to my assistance as I had spun out of control at eighty miles an hour. I had gone unconscious in the spin,

I came round to find myself up against the central reservation barrier and traffic speeding past me.

The Reverend was the first person I called and he came, and I know without an atom of doubt In a similar situation, he would do exactly the same today. I can trust him 100% to be right beside me to help me if I was in such an extreme difficulty. He would never let me down when I needed him when I was in trouble of any kind.

I miss that lovely, kind, generous, caring and loving husband.

Lust, addiction, seducers, the Grey One, those dispicable websites and the other women, tricked him from me.

I tried everything to prevent us from losing him. It was a hopeless battle, because he didn’t want to be stopped.

He went fishing in a muddy stagnant lake every day and finally he got pulled in and now he’s grappling to survive in the debris.

We faced every hurdle of which there were many and jumped over them, not realising how fragile our marriage was.

The festival was over – It was time to go home.

What had been our normal for over thirty-three years was over. We had an unpredictable  process to live through to find what was unknown to us.

Our brand new normal.