He's been looking for a new job lately. One that doesn't require him to be states away working for months out of the year(the next scheduled trip is 3 months long!). He doesn't like his job anymore. I don't like his job.
It doesn't help that when he would stay away on those work trips he would sit in the hotel room at night and watch porn on cable(which we've never had).
It doesn't help that on those trips he works with filthy men who drink, go to strip clubs, and many have wives and girlfriends at home. And these same men talk about all the local "massage" parlors they will visit when they get home.
And it doesn't help that they talk about it at work and tell obscene jokes on a regular basis.
But what is really bothering me right now, what I really can't be empathetic about, is my husbands lack of action when he is surrounded by the filth. Even if that action was praying for help, asking others what they would do, something! Just not acceptance.
On his last trip away, we would check in and he'd tell me about another day of trying to avoid overhearing about their "escapades". He would try and leave if it was a conversation he was overhearing, or put on headphones, and every once in a while change the subject. But he has never made his beliefs known. Or complained to HR. And if they specifically tell a joke to him, he has always stayed and listened, or even laughed(which he feels guilty about later) because he is afraid of what they'll think of him.
So when he came home today talking about how his boss was the one telling a joke about homosexuality, he wanted empathy for having to deal with that.
I know it is hard to stand up to others. I know in the moment you panic and say or do things you aren't proud of. But my trauma? She doesn't really care.
She only knows the searing pain of having a husband with a porn addiction who lied to her for years.
She knows that her husband will sit and listen to verbal porn and expects her to just accept it because it would be too hard to say something, do something.
And she knows that she feels unsafe. That he isn't safe. Because if he doesn't have the strength to say "hey man, I'm not into that stuff', then will he really resist the pressure to join those men on their hooker binges? (A little strong, I know, but valid.)
Last time we went through this I fell apart. I needed him to see why this hurt. Needed him to do something to spare me this pain.
Today I feel strength. Today, I journal it all out like crazy, I reach out to my WoPA friends. I briefly let him know that it isn't okay with me, and I will detach for my own safety and sanity. Then I (do my best) to surrender it, and start making plans for how to handle the next trip(babysitters, housecleaner once in a while) he is on instead of insisting to myself that I can do it all alone.
So I am "standing for the right" for me. Regardless of whether he can.
And I may or may not have left the lyrics to this primary song up on the computer before he used it today.
Our prophet has some words for you,
And these are the words:
"Be true, be true."
At work or at play,
In darkness or light,
Be true, be true,
And stand for the right.
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