Gene, Frank’s wife speaks. By the time I realized there was drama on social media and parts of my marriage was a hot topic, it was weeks after the fact.
Imagine finding out weeks after the fact that you’ve been judged, speculated about, pitied and mocked by strangers online. And as if that is not enough, you find out that the man who vowed to protect you was the very one who exposed you to be humiliated like that.
And to answer the popular question that was asked, I had no idea my husband had another relationship.
I was told he had an ex who did not get along with his family.
My husband’s cousin sent me both posts and insisted I read them. A couple of paragraphs into my husband’s story, I knew I was learning about my marriage; details would I otherwise not have gotten from anywhere.
Painful details. Gut-wrenching, truthful details.
The kind of things my husband, under the cloak of anonymity, could write and send to a stranger but did not have the balls to say to my face.
I learned he was neither in love with me nor sexually attracted to me.
But I was a good enough convenience that he liked me. My initial reaction was denial.
But eventually I had to face facts. My young marriage really did bear all the symptoms described in the story; I was the one always initiating sex, I was always putting effort into the relationship, he was just a passive participant and he would introduce me to people as, “Meet Gene,” it was never meet my wife .
Plus my husband did have an ex whose name rhymes with that of the woman in his story.
So my next reaction was anger.
I sent you a facebook message and called you every foul word I could think of, and for that Misskorang, I apologize. You caught stray bullets that weren’t yours to catch.
At the same time I am glad I came at you because your response roused something in me. You said, “Your anger is valid.
Do you mind aiming it at the right person?
May the heavens be your guide.
” I needed to address the elephant in my marriage.
I stewed for about a week, I did not know how to confront the issue. Unlike his ex, I was not raised to have a voice or trust it.
I was taught that being a good christian wife was to be agreeable to a fault. I was taught kindness but not boundaries, submission without expectation.
I was afraid to stir the pot, so instead of speaking out and asking for what I needed, I pretended all was well and kept being ‘good’.
But I also knew I did not want to stay in a loveless marriage, so I gathered courage and confronted him; I pulled up his story on my phone and asked him to read it.
His facial expression told me all I needed to know. It hurt, because somewhere deep down, I was hoping it wasn’t him and that I was overreacting.
Bu it was him. It was our story.
He tried to wiggle out of it by saying his original submission had been edited out of context.
So I asked him to show me his original story, but he refused.
And he refused to discuss any of the issues he wrote about. I tried day after day for about a week and he flatly refused to have a conversation about it.
He just expected me to gloss over it and keep the status quo of our marriage. And I couldn’t blame him much, for the whole period of our courtship and one year marriage, I had dutifully assigned myself the position of a doormat.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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