I was aware of my husband's previous marriage. What I didn't know, until I recently discovered it, is that I'm actually wife #4, not #2, I thought. We discussed previous relationships before we got married, but he referred to them as relationships, not marriages. I also pulled out our marriage license application where you have to declare which marriage this is...he wrote "second".

When asked why he did this, he replied, "it was along time ago, the marriages were so short, I thought you may not marry me, you didn't ask".

I'm really struggling with this. It feels kinda like discovering hidden church stuff all over again.

I don’t blame you for being upset. I would wonder what else I wasn’t told in that situation. It’s a breach of trust.

I agree with Knotty. In your shoes, I would want to see the divorce decrees from each marriage. If he lied about the marriages, he may also have lied about the divorces.

A very, very popular phrase goes, "That's not how I remember it!"

I sincerely believe that every one of us has edited an event or two in our lives and that the majority of us would rather the truth of what really happened not ever come out.

For most of us, these are rather trivial events. But for some, the repercussions were not trivial.

Imagine a Thread here titled, "What's the most embarrassing, not to mention revealing, act or inaction that you've lied about to hide the truth?"



And then there are the decisions we make in terms of who we forgive and what we forgive.

No one is purely logical in this arena, which requires us to live with the concept of favoritism. Which is the silly, shallow rivulet of emotion from whence racism emerges, among other insults to an ordered existence.

Still, glossing over TWO marriages does seem to be going a bit far...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2021 12:54PM by Soft Machine.

Not when there are two more she hasn't found out about!

Could one or more of the previous marriages been one of those Vegas weekend things, just to make the sex legal for the weekend romp?

You do realize this is a Mo urban legend, and never happened? Just checking.

The getting married on a weekend in Vegas is possible. The divorce the following Monday part is not. Even back in the day, you first had to establish residency (6 months) and then get a lawyer and get a court date for the divorce hearing,



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2021 01:44PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Nevada residency is 6 weeks, not 6 months, but you're right in that the Monday divorce isn't really possible.

I suppose it could conceivably happen over summer vacation, where they get married in June/July, remain in Vegas or Reno while making out like rabbits for a month and a half, get it out of their system, then get the divorce or annulment and be back well in time for the fall term, no one the wiser.

(Notice I said "conceivably," not "likely.")

Sex without a license!!

Oh, the horror!!!

But how come the penalties for "sex without a license" are so varied in the church?



And then the advice to "Never, ever do anything that isn't natural!!" If people can do it, repeatedly, isn't that the very definition of Natural?


Only eat bananas, because they fit your hand! Never eat coconuts!!



Man, the more I think about it, the less I am tormented by my 'natural' desires to practice mormonism (not that it exists anymore).

.. "Only eat bananas, because they fit your hand!"

And don't forget to eat the 4 skins....you know, you cut the skin into 4 strips, marinate, and fry them and make banana peel bacon!

It's not off topic at all.

Having been an "all in" believer, that realization that I was lied to was a very big deal.

My ex-husband is a master at lying by omission. We'd been married 20 years before I figured out he often drank alcohol on his business trips.

When I did figure it out I confronted him about other potential things that happened--like infidelity.

He denied it, but can I ever really believe him after he lied to me for 20 plus years?

There are whole books written about the importance of trust.

Our default is to trust people--just like we trusted our parents.

Not trusting paralyses us and wastes a lot of time.

Each person falls on the continuum between automatic full trust and extreme skepticism.

He may want to down play this discovery, but it's a very big deal.

It's time for full disclosure.

If he says, "just fugedaboutit" that's cause for concern.

A long-time spouse is like the church. Turns out you never really knew them.

35 years. I knew I didn't know him, just not how badly I didn't know him.

What?! Wow, that would not go over very well with me, that's for sure.

I feel for you! Yeah-I found out I was wife #2 when I thought I was wife #1. (Many years later when a family relative let it slip)
Supposedly there was an annulment of wife #1 but-- I; like you, did not see any documentation.

Currently I just found out my divorce of over 24 years ago is not finished-not done, not finalized!
The ex did not ever submit the final paperwork and I not knowing how divorces proceed thought if was finalized in 1997.
The ex decided to not pay his attorney as he was the petitioner

The ex has married 2 more times! In the temple I kid you not.
I have my own lawyer and trying to get something finalized 24 years later is difficult and expensive.
Plus the ex told MY lawyer now after all this time that I owe him money!?

He was the one who stiffed me on child support and alimony and had the county garnish his wages
and then he would change jobs and get paid under the table.

At least you weren't the 19th wife.

That is a dirt-bag move. You might encourage him to start looking for Wife #5. What does he do for work? If he's on the road alot, he might have already found #6, #7, #8....etc.

Wife #4 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> marriage license application where you have to
> declare which marriage this is...he wrote
> "second".
===============================
Have always wondered skeptically why it is that the question is there in the first place.
What is the interest of the state?

Wish the best.
If he is fine enough for you to marry, he's fine enough of a man.

Not necessarily good enough of a man. Some people are good at pretending to be something they are not!

didn'tbothertologinrightnow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Not necessarily good enough of a man. Some people
> are good at pretending to be something they are
> not!
===============================

True.

Sometimes one sneaks in under the radar.

I used to hate that my "husband" told me he is gay after we had been dating about 7 months. But then in talking to women who found out their husbands were gay after a long marriage, I'm glad he was at least honest in THAT. It took him 5 years to tell me he was cheating.

Do you have kids? I would have stayed with him until they were raised, but he chose to leave--just as co parents, nothing more. He regrets that he left now and lives downstairs in "our" house and I live upstairs. It is very damaging to be lied to.

Are you in therapy? My therapist saved my life, helped me get to at least this place. In fact, I need to make an appt. Haven't seen him during COVID as phone visits just don't cut it. I had to try out several therapists before I found him. He is an exmo.

You have a big decision to make. Can you go on living with him and put this behind you (once he comes completely clean) or do you need to get out of it. Will you ever fully feel "safe?"

Wife #4, I encourage you to pay the fee and meet with a lawyer. You need to know that those previous marriages were all legally terminated; you have financial interests in this current relationship: jointly-owned items, perhaps a claim (or not a claim) to his social security earnings years down the line, etc.

I'm so sorry for what you learned - and hope there are no more skeletons in his closet. You owe it to yourself to find out for sure.

With these kinds of lies, you would be justified in hiring a private investigator to catalog his life for you. Find out the names and contact information of the other wives. Find out what his third-grade school teacher said about him. Contact the other wives and get their sides of the story. Then ask him a lot of questions, stringing him along like you know relatively little, to see just how big his lies are capable of becoming.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2021 09:56PM by azsteve.

I was 22 when I transitioned from the mission to BYU: left the mission in the morning and signed up for classes that same afternoon, courtesy of the church travel office. Then they flew me home that evening.

This was mid-semester, third week of September, 1967.

My last Senior Companion had found me a place to live, and one of my two roommates was engaged to a girl living with three other girls in an off-campus apartment. I ended up, Christmas of 1967, sitting in the kitchen of this girl's parents, after a day at Disneyland, hearing her tell her parents, "We're getting married."

The subject had never come up. But that was the path good mormons followed so I went along with it. Would I have proposed on my own? Probably... maybe...

A very curious fact (especially at BYU) existed in my BYU Temple Bride's life: She was a certified non-virgin. The story she told me was that the summer after her high school graduation, she and her boyfriend eloped. They high-tailed it out of Dallas, TX, found a Justice-of-the-Peace and got married. So, non-virgin... The parents on both sides worked to get that marriage annulled. ...again, that was the story.

Three summers ago, when Saucie and I went up to Utah to meet BYU Boner and NotMeMike, about three weeks had passed since that BYU bride had passed away. When we stopped in Orem to visit my TBM oldest daughter, there were a couple of the funeral programs on a side table.

I thumbed through it. ...no mention of me... But there was a nice layout of wedding photos ... That I didn't recognize!!

She'd never married again after we divorced, so my mind was scrambling to line up the evidence that I knew about with the evidence of what I was seeing.

It turned out that my BYU temple bride and her high school boyfriend had not eloped. Nope, they'd had a big beautiful (non-mormon) church wedding, with all the folderal. Those were the photos in the program.

Then a few months later he'd dumped her. No details were known to my TBM daughter as to the whys and wherefores of the dumping.

Whether or not the truth would have affected me (compared to the lie I was told), I can't say. But lying is a character issue. A person of better character wouldn't have lied and might have been more attractive in the long term.

Thank-you everybody for the thoughts...much appreciated. When my husband acted like this was no big deal, it confused me. It seemed like a big deal to me, but then I wondered if I was making too much of it.



cl2notloggedin: Do you have kids?

Wife #4: no kids

cl2notloggedin: Are you in therapy?

Wife #4: Yes...my therapist has been helpful and also thinks this was a significant breach of trust.

cl2notlogged in: You have a big decision to make. Can you go on living with him and put this behind you (once he comes completely clean) or do you need to get out of it. Will you ever fully feel "safe?"

Wife #4: Yeah, these are the important questions for sure! I was shocked how easily he could mislead me on this. So many problems with this:
* By keeping this info from me, denied me the opportunity to decide for myself if I was OK with this.
* missed an opportunity to be vulnerable and accepted for who he is. Could have been a major trust builder.
* I was presented an image of who he is and now I'm not sure who he really is.
* Lied to present the image he wanted me to believe. It's a breech of trust.
* How can I be sure he won't do it again? I can't. This is the toughest part.
* There doesn't seem to be much recognition of the inappropriateness of this on his part. How he denied me information I should have had to make an informed decision. How he told an untruth to present an image of himself. I just get justifications of why he felt it was OK for him to do this. If he can't even recognize the harm this is causing to trust in our marriage...I don't know...it's gonna be tough for me to give this a pass.



elderolddog:

But lying is a character issue. A person of better character wouldn't have lied and might have been more attractive in the long term.

Wife #4: That was a VERY interesting story - I'm sure it was a shocker to you! Thank-you for the advice and thoughts above.

Trust is a foundation of any romantic relationship, and this is a major breach of trust.

A few years ago I found out my partner had been sued by a bank because he had defaulted on a $10,000 credit card debt--while we were living together and had been together 4 years. I only found out because I noticed a paper sticking out of a box while we were moving that turned out to be a summons. As problematic as the debt and lawsuit were, the fact that he hid it from me was worse, because it meant I could not trust him to share information that could have a major impact on my life. Fast forward to today and he still doesn't understand that--one of the reasons we're splitting up.

Whatever ends up happening between you and your husband, you'll come out of it wiser and happier. We're here for you.

The breech of trust is the most major issue for me. Once trust is lost, it's very difficult to regain it. You never quite trust the person to the same degree again.

I see the possibility of a lawsuit.

One fact that would be tough for me to handle is his lack of understanding of what he did. He isn't willing to take responsibility. That's another BIG ISSUE.

Old Dr. Phil. I know people don't think he is someone to get advice for, but when he was on Oprah when he was first around, an ex-wife told him that her ex-husband would come over to have sex, and she couldn't understand why he didn't want to get back with her if he was coming over to have sex. Dr. Phil said, "He treats you this way why?" She stopped and thought for a second and she said, "Because I let him." That opened up my eyes in how my "husband" was treating me after he left (no, he didn't come back to have sex, but he kept dangling coming back in my face and then I'd get my hopes up and he'd change his mind). I quit putting up with the way he treated me. (I was asked to be on Oprah as I wrote to Dr. Phil about this, but I turned them down.) This was long ago.

But another thing Dr. Phil would tell people when a spouse would cheat, he'd tell the cheating spouse that you put up with her questions and her spying on you UNTIL she feels like she can stay with you and trust you.

Your husband isn't taking responsibility. He lied and he needs to make sure you are okay and can trust him UNTIL. He is acting as though he did nothing. That is a huge problem. If I didn't already say it.

Agree cl2, Dr. Phil started out giving some good advice. You teach people how to treat you. They don't change as long as THEIR needs are being met. I learned the hard way too. The crap I put up with boggles my mind now. My ex didn't file the final papers and I only found out when I went to get married again. BUT he had gotten married again in a big destination wedding. Oh that was a FUN phone call to make :).

To Wife #4, you are not being dramatic or over reacting. This is a BIG deal on a lot of levels. First deal with the legal. MAKE SURE ALL THOSE DIVORCES ARE FINAL AND LEGAL. Period. And he can pay for it. He created this mess, he needs to be responsible for it. Next I would recommend couples counseling. Keep trying different ones until you find a good fit for both of you. I agree with Dr. Phil, have no trust till he earns it and that will take as long as it takes. Again, HE is the one that made this mess.

People with nothing to hide, hide nothing.

HH =)