Step 4: Bargaining

This stage was pretty short for me, yet it was one of the most complicated and honestly the hardest to share. My thoughts during this time were kinda twisted. I am thankful that I kept my head on straight. I actually think this stage came before anger in my situation so it may seem as though I have gone backwards... bear with me.

The end of a marriage is always tough. The end of a marriage because of betrayal is devastating. The end of my marriage was beyond anything you could imagine. I had a loving, caring and devoted husband one day and a criminal ex the next. I had to deal with layers of deceit. He lied. He cheated. He placed ads on the Internet looking for partners. He tried to have sex with an a woman he thought was 15. He had a porn addiction. He downloaded underage pornography on OUR computer... on and almost daily basis... while I was at work... while he was supposed to be setting up our daughter's nursery.

Now try to get all of that info thrown in your face while you are 8 months pregnant, 2 days after your baby shower... My head was not on right. Not 6 hours before he called you at work to make sure you were feeling OK because you had a headache that morning... just wanted me to know that he loved me... Now everything I thought he was is gone.

I had the strangest thoughts, like: If only the person he was talking to was 18... If the porn had been legal we could have worked through it. Maybe he was just depressed (he had lost a job recently) and was temporarily out of his mind? He told me he was turning around to leave the meeting site when he was arrested, so maybe he wasn't going through with it? If the girls on the computer were close to 18 then that makes it less sick right? If they were almost 18 then he is not THAT bad of a criminal... I mean guys are always counting down to when certain movie stars are 18 (ie Emma Watson, the Olsen Twins, Miley Cyrus...) so that isn't too bad, right?

That was my bargaining stage. Trying to work things out to make everything seem less severe. Trying to make the man I loved less of a criminal. After all, he had never shown me anything that ever made me think he had this problem. Not beyond once dating an 18 year old in the past, but he was younger then too... As the scenarios went through my head I knew my thoughts were all dumb. He was sick. He was deep into a secret life and could not be trusted. The fact of the matter is there were videos with girls as young as 4 years old, his keyword search showed him searching for pre-teen hardcore videos. As I write this my stomach turns all over again. It was BAD and it kept getting worse.

Thank GOD I listened to my inner voice. The amount of women that stand by there significant others during these trials amazes me and I am proud of myself for breaking through the bullshit. I think it is all of the little "bargains" these other women make in their heads that confuses them. They want to believe they could not be in love with a sicko... well you can... sometimes what you don't know CAN hurt you and your family. You just have to be strong enough to walk away.