it up, and I didn’t want to pick it up. After the second ring, I reached for the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” Ben said on the other end. He sounded tense and got straight to the point.
“Hi, honey,” I said, trying to keep my voice level and normal. “How’s your week going?”
“I am doing all right. Did you read the book I asked you to read? The Carnes book?”
“I did read it,” I said. “So, what level are you?” I had meant it to be a light, almost comical question, as a way to ease the tension.
“The first,” he said.
A wave of relief flowed over my shoulders and back. A chronic masturbator, while a little off-putting and gross, is still manageable. That’s not so bad, I thought.
“I figured,” I told him, then asked, “Well? What part of level one are we talking about?”
“At one time or another, almost all of it.”
This was not a good list to be on. This was the prostitution, pornography, anonymous sex list.
“Almost all of it?” I asked. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. I doubled over at my waist.
“Yeah, almost all of it,” he said. He went on to tell me that he had also abused drugs and alcohol, but the sexual addiction was full blown, the true addiction in his life. He said that he had been a sex addict way before we ever married—that this disease had started in his early teens. His disease had flourished during our fourteen year marriage. He then said I needed to get tested for sexually-communicable diseases, most importantly HIV. My beloved husband had been having anonymous, faceless, unprotected sex even while I was pregnant with our children.
I dropped the phone.
I fell to my knees.
For a few moments, I had the sensation of falling down a deep, dark hole. I believe now that I fell into hell on earth. I think I went into shock. My breath got shorter and shorter, and I began to hyperventilate. With every quick exhale, I quietly, almost in a whisper, repeated the words, “God, what am I going to do?”
Still on the floor, I rocked slightly back and forth. I could hear Ben weeping on the phone from where the receiver lay next to me. He kept saying, as if he were answering me, “I don’t know, I just don’t know.” I reached for the phone, a white Slim line, and I hung up the receiver.
I realized that night, that the one person who I should have been able to count on—to guard my heart, my very life—didn’t exist and never had for my entire married life. I had an overwhelming feeling of being utterly alone on this Earth.
As soon as I caught my breath enough to cry, I wept deep, long sobs that came from within my soul. I was physically sick with disbelief over his behavior. My life was a total, complete lie.
The kids were in the living room waiting for me to say good night and put them to bed. They may very well have saved my sanity that night.
I pulled myself together and opened my bedroom door. Thankfully, the only light on was from the TV, so the kids couldn’t see my red and swollen eyes. I asked if any of them wanted to sleep with me that night. That wasn’t a common occurrence, but I needed the reassurance of my children, pure and real, next to me. Two of the kids, including Harper, jumped at the chance and got into our bed. The other two slept peacefully in their own rooms, not knowing what had just happened between their parents.
I kept the TV on all night. I must have dozed off and on that night. The phone rang around 2 a.m. The caller was Sally, one of Ben’s therapists from Menninger. She said Ben had called her and told her what he had disclosed to me over the phone. Everyone at Menninger had asked him not to do that over the phone. She said she was sorry he had. They wanted him to wait until I was there with him.
“How are you feeling?” Sally asked.
“How do you think I am feeling?” I said, my voice was flat and emotionless.
She started to give me some pat therapy jargon—bullshit—and I cut her off.
“I can’t go into this right now,” I said. “I have two small children sleeping beside me.”
She suggested I call Menninger first thing in the morning to plan an immediate trip to Kansas, so I could meet with Ben and his doctor. Then Ben’s therapist said something I’ll never forget, something I now say to other people in crisis.
“We certainly understand if you don’t want to deal with this and just decide to divorce Ben immediately,” she said. “A lot of people do that. However, if at all possible, I would encourage you not to make such a major, life-changing decision when you are in the midst of such severe emotional distress. If at all possible, Maurita, come out here, learn about your husband’s addiction, take the time to work through some of your extreme emotions before you decide what to do with your marriage.”
It was one of the most important things anyone had every said to me in my life. It made sense.
This next journal entry is what I wrote after my husband’s disclosure. It reflects the first few days of me trying to wrap my brain around what I had just found out about Ben and his double life.
August 8, 1997
…Had a good day today blocking everything out until about 5 p.m. What I found out about B’s behavior before and during our entire relationship and marriage is just too much to take in at once. After finding out two nights earlier about all his sick fucking fucks—all the hundreds of lies and manipulations—my whole married life to this point has been a fraud and a hideous joke. I just can’t take it all in at once, because it is too much for me to bear. I hate him. I want him to feel what it is like to give so much of yourself to someone and have it mean nothing. I am going out on Tuesday to meet with his main therapist Sally (what a weird voice she has) and some guy named Dr. Richard Irons to learn more about his “fucking disease.” I am filled with fear, rage, and hopelessness. I have to accept the fact that I allowed a stupid, selfish pig of a male (he does not deserve to be called a man) walk all over me and humiliate me in public and private. He didn’t protect my beautiful kids or me. I will now call them “my kids” because the selfish pig doesn’t deserve them. I hate him.
I flew out to Kansas a few days later. Since my husband’s disclosure, I had the feeling of living in a continuous nightmare, except I was walking around and functioning like a regular human being. I felt like a freak, a fraud, someone who was no longer of this earth. Every moment of my life became drenched with indecision and self-doubt.
At the rental car counter in Topeka, for example, the attendant asked me an innocent, benign question.
“Is this business or pleasure?” he asked.
I thought to myself, How could I possibly answer what this trip is for, what this means for my life, my children’s lives? Nothing about my life felt normal anymore and wouldn’t for years to come.
During the drive to the hotel where Ben was staying, my heart was pounding. He was allowed to live off the grounds of the treatment center after it was determined he was clean and sober and not a danger to himself. I honestly didn’t know how I would react to seeing him
