He was my first big love. It was 1997, we were 20 years old and it was passionate and intense, so intense that both of us could not handle it and after 7 months he ended it much to my devestation.

In 2007 we reconnected. I was fresh out of a sex-less short marriage but living in NZ, mr Big-Love was in the UK. We texted and talked on the phone. I flew over 3 times to see him and by November 2008 he had moved to live with me. It was passionate like we were in our 20's again. I was (accidentally) pregnant 2 months later but thrilled about it. My parents put pressure on us to marry before the baby came along. This should have been such a happy time but instead he completely changed personality. He drank heavily and called me pathetic and useless when I had morning sickness. I surrounded myself in a bubble of baby-planning and somehow got through that time. However I planned to move to be near family once the baby was born and have support to leave him if it all became unbearable. I got caught up in the Mumma-love whirlwind when the baby came. Mr Big-love's heart softened, he was smitten with our baby as well. Funnily enough though, his work visa ran out and the renewal application was turned down. We had to move to the UK. Once there his moods were erratic and the drinking became heavier again. After a few years of handing him self-help books, cds and dvds which he never picked up I went to my family to ask for advice. They said I had to stay with him and would not be supportive of me otherwise. By this time I really thought he had depression and that he was depressed because of money/the weather/winter/being a parent, there always seemed to be something I saw as a reason and then I thought that caused the alcoholism. I spent 2 years studying nutrition to  find a way to combat the depression with supplements and diet as he had no interest in counselling or medication. I remember one Christmas my present was a carefully worked out box of supplements and a book called The Mood Cure. Of course he never took them. I can't believe the lengths I went to to keep our home happy and upbeat but at the same time we had no social life. One of his few friends had been put into a mental home. That should have been a clue. I moved us to new homes 4 times in 5 years (he hated them all), bought him 2 boats (he did not like the first one), got us a shared allotment and he fell out with the others, created a beautiful home spending all my savings and not his money doing so - he complained in time that he actually wanted minimalism and hated all the "stuff". Nothing was ever right. He started to do the 4 Horsemen behaviours and that is when I said we had to go to marriage counselling. I had a whole list of things to address, but for him it was just one issue....money and that his name was not on the title of the house which I had bought from selling my business and home in NZ. We only had a few sessions because I could not get childcare and timings to fit.

At this same time our son was diagnosed as having special needs and the journey through the diagnosis to Autism took all of my attention for the next 2 years. I stopped trying to fix my husband and instead turned all of the fixing attention onto my son. at the same time I became much more resilient to my husband's permanent dark mood. Because I gave it no attention I did not get dragged down by it. Both my son and I were on a supplement program created by a functional medicine doctor especially tailored for us after various tests. In 2018 both of us made dramatic improvements on our health. He has no more eczema or asthma or migraines. His eyes are straight now and he barely stims any more. My energy levels picked up, and many other things cleared up. I got on with life and took my son on little trips away. We even went to Paris. 

My husband though moved into the attic for 3 months. I made an effort with my appearance to win his attention. It worked for about a month but then he lost the plot ranting and raving like a dormant volcano suddenly come to life and exploding...he was fuming about how he was not on the title of the house and that I did not share my savings with him. He packed up his bed and filled the car with what few things he had and drove off. It was a bluff though. He thought I would beg him to return and join up financially. But I did not. Instead I took my son on a trip of a lifetime to meet my old friends in NZ and to try and heal from this.

When I returned he showered me with flowers and phone calls and had been sober for 3 months by then. He was taking supplements, reading self-help books, had changed his diet, was going for runs and even doing an online guitar course. He had totally changed, or so it seemed. I started to see him at weekends. After about 10 weeks he gave me an ultimatum....you've guessed it...put him on the property title and live together ..or...divorce.  I was on the verge of going for it , BUT I wanted us to go through counselling first. I felt that there was a lot of damage done and loss of respect and trust. I did not feel emotionally safe even though he had by then been sober for over 6 months.

He refused counselling. So I started journalling alone to do some work on myself. I wanted to find out why I felt unsafe. It took me a while but I recalled catching him looking at porn back in 2008. At the time I assumed it was just the one page and a one-off. I thought that my reaction and dislike for anything like that would mean that he would respect that and not include that into our relationship. I had assumed men only used that because they needed it to get aroused. I had no idea it was an addiction. I had never looked at it myself other than catching that webpage in the history bar whilst looking for a flight page from the day before. I thought the conversation would be difficult but had NO IDEA about what would be uncovered. He remembered the name of the website which I thought was odd 12 years later. He immediately denied looking at anything underage when I had not even accused him of doing so. I was really shaken and ended the phone call. That was last Thursday. He took our son away at the weekend and I had an old school friend come to tea. We discussed it and I said that the girls from the page I had seen did seemed pretty young teens. We started to freak out and she was saying I should go to the police. When he brought my son back on Sunday night I decided to let him in to ask questions. I said he had to otherwise the police would. I quizzed him thoroughly. He had been into this hardcore website since 1995, that is 25 years. He said he had only looked at it 4 or 5 times. He described quite a lot of the content and it was stuff I would never imagine existed and would never want to view. Some of answers were vague as he would not admit yes or no and he contradicted them and changed them and it was like the Prince Andrew interview so obvious that he was lying most of the time. What also came up was that he had been hacking into my facebook account. I had noticed a security alert last week and addressed this. He tried to say that he had not signed in as me but that desktop notifications had my fb messages pop up as they came in and he could just read them...like it was his computer doing it flashing them up...but he would have had to have hacked in and set up the alerts to happen. His excuse made things way worse. He was digging a bigger and bigger whole.

I have the whole gamut of emotions going on this week. Grief, disgust and confusion mostly. The hardcore porn stuff is a huge shock, that it was a real thing for him and his level of normal. No wonder he though tv shows like Top Gear were tame where as I hate it and find it offensive. 

I need to move on. A friend innocently said that everything happens for a reason when I said I was getting a divorce. She does not know the story yet though. I can't see what the "reason" is here. At all. I guess there is a damn good reason for divorce, but as for why I had to live that relationship? I guess I learned about nutrition!

If anyone has any ideas for how to recover from this kind of trauma please let me know.

I guess counselling and just moving on in life, right? Anyone else been through similar? I need some support so badly.

Jemima