Yesterday, I introduced Jen who after almost ten years of marriage started to realize that her husband was a pathological liar, lying to her on multiple fronts, where he was working, their health insurance and how much money he’d borrowed. Much of what he was telling her wasn’t making sense but there was always an element of plausibility. She started to push harder for answers. Here’s Jen:
About four years ago, when I was pregnant with my youngest, he came home and said he’d lost his job. We had some savings so we were OK for a little bit but things were really tight and pretty bad. He ended up taking a job he didn’t like.
Part of the problem with my story is that I don’t know what he told me was true and what wasn’t. So I don’t really know when he lost job or even if took that job. Anyway because our financial situation was so terrible, I went back to work. I’m fine with doing that if it means helping out my family, but I was really the only person having a steady paycheck and not being a college grad and not really having a career, what I was making was minuscule.
Finally in August of ’09, I was pushing him about his job,
“I don’t know anything about your work. I’ve never seen a pay stub. You refuse to bring one home, you always come home with cash. What’s going on? I want to see where you work.”
“I don’t understand why you don’t believe me?” he said.
I said, “Are you kidding me? Look at why I don’t believe you.”
He told me he wasn’t lying to me anymore but I still said,
“I want the number of your boss so if there’s an emergency I can get a hold of you, I want to see where you work.”
As I started pushing and getting closer to him having to show me all of this stuff, he came home one day, crying, really sad, upset…
“I lost my job, I don’t understand why this keeps happening to me, I’m such a good worker”
Looking back, this sets me off because the whole day was an act…. our electricity had been shut off, so I told him I was going up to my parents house to get on the computer and to look for jobs. He said his back was hurting him really badly. I said I thought it was just the stress and he agreed so off I went.
About an hour later he called and said he really was in pain and that he needed to go to the doctor. So I went and picked him up and went to urgent care. They said it sounded like kidney stones and that they would do a CT scan to see how big the stones were and if they could zap them. They called us back the next day and said,
“It’s not kidney stones, we think he has cancer.”
The Divorce Coach Says
Can you imagine how Jen felt? Her husband’s out of work, again, he’s told so many lies she doesn’t know what to believe, she’s working what hours she can in addition to parenting three small children, and the electricity’s been cut off. It’s hard to believe that life could get any worse and then, her husband’s diagnosed with cancer. Cancer could be one of those cataclysmic events that forces a couple to work together to save their marriage but that didn’t happen in Jen’s case. In fact, it may actually have precipitated the end of their marriage. Hope you’ll come back to read more…
Photo credit: *zoup*