Even in the best of circumstances, going through a divorce is a gut-wrenching process filled with uncertainty about how it will impact your kids, how you will end up financially and who you will be as a single person. The uncertainty can turn the most confident and decisive person into a totally different beast. Some of us may just want to rip the band aid and get it over quickly. Others may be totally unable to make any decisions and therefore the process gets hopelessly stalled.

For me, at least in the beginning, my divorce also represented a tremendous personal failure. I did still love Scott, despite having lived through two difficult years with him. I believed we were going to work it out, right up until the day he decided to move out.

After he moved out, I just didn’t understand what went wrong. His behavior, how he explained what had happened and how he felt just didn’t add up for me. The “it just doesn’t add up,” feeling added more fuel to my emotional distress. Once I started to uncover what really had been happening, it didn’t get any better. The bad was just different. Before my obsession was “why has this happened?” As my investigation peeled the onion on Scott’s sex habit, my focus changed to “how could he have done that, why didn’t I know and who will believe me if I say what he has done?”

Every divorce has its own dynamics and everybody is different in how they handle the stress and uncertainty of it. But managing the stress and uncertainty is critical to getting to the other end in one piece, feeling like you did the best you could for yourself and your kids and feeling you were in control instead of a victim of a difficult and unpredictable process. Here is what I learned as I navigated through it.

 

I. Friends and Family

You Can’t Hide Your Pain

I was unbelievably lucky to have a big family and lots of friends who listened, supported and advised me, particularly once Scott had moved out. In the first year of our difficulties, I tried to keep Scott’s affair a secret from all but a few friends. I hid it from most of my family too, including our kids. That was a mistake. It put so much stress on me I ended up in the hospital because of a double vision episode. One of our daughters was particularly angry about being kept in the dark as well.

I became an open book during the second year of our difficulties. After he moved out, I was even more vocal. Talking about it was therapeutic for me and I talked a lot, fortunately having quite a few friends I could talk to.

You Never Know Who is Going to Step Up and You Have to be Open to the Help

None of my family lived nearby. In fact, most of them lived on the other side of the country. I think they were so surprised and horrified by what Scott had done, it was difficult for them to talk with me by phone about it. They had such a different experience with him, as did a number of our close friends. Trying to reconcile what I was saying with what they had experienced of him over the many years they had known him was just… difficult. The more I found out the more difficult it got.

Yet, subconsciously, there was something about having family who knew all of the horrid details that was important to me. I was fortunate to connect with a cousin and his wife, who I barely knew, at my mother’s memorial service some two months after we had filed for divorce. Since I didn’t know them well, they hadn’t had any history with Scott. In the way people often do, they said you should come visit us in Chicago. Instead of saying the equivalent of “yes let’s do lunch,” I asked them if I could come when the girls were with Scott at his parents. My cousin is a lawyer, his wife a therapist so they offered great perspectives and advice. More importantly, they believed me without question and supported me unconditionally at a time when I really needed it. Their relationship had never been with me and Scott – it was just with me.

The lesson for me was I needed to “make shit happen” when people held out their hand. This lesson was repeated with a number of acquaintances who then became close friends and even an old boyfriend who turned out to be going through a divorce at the same time as me.

You Can’t Ask Your Friends and Family to be your Therapist

You are fortunate if you have close friends who will talk endlessly with you about your marriage, your divorce and what a shit your spouse was and continues to be. I was lucky to have a number of friends who were an enormous support to me. At a certain point, however, you have to recognize they can’t be a substitute for a therapist. They don’t have the training. They are also biased and in being your friend they should be.

That is not to say you shouldn’t still talk to them – but, in going through such a difficult time in your life, talking to a therapist can really make a difference. A good therapist can offer an unbiased and honest viewpoint on your behavior, your situation and even your spouse. It is not fair or even necessarily productive to ask your friends and family to do that for you. Even my closest and oldest friend, who is a psychoanalyst, told me she couldn’t offer me therapeutic advice or a professional opinion about Scott. She was too biased, or as her husband said to me right after Scott left, “we are all on the Gail team – he is a jerk.”

Get a Divorce Buddy

Sometimes your friends have just had enough. There is only so much of it someone who isn’t going through it can take. It is not a good idea to wear out your welcome. I did it in a couple of cases and wish I hadn’t.

I was lucky to find a divorce buddy, an old boyfriend, living in another state, with whom I reconnected by phone. He was going through his own messy (for different reasons) divorce at roughly the same time and the two of us talked endlessly by phone about our respective situations – it was a big help to both of us.

 

II. Talk Therapy and Anti-Depressants

If you can’t sleep (I couldn’t), you can’t concentrate (I couldn’t) and your weight fluctuates (I kept losing weight), you need to at least consider the possibility medication may be needed. You have to keep your wits about you if you want to own your divorce process instead of being a victim of it. I am a poster child for the success of a combination treatment of talk therapy and anti-depressants for people with severe but short-term depression ¹ It is at least worth speaking with a psychiatrist if you feel your mental capability has been impaired by the stress of the divorce.

 

III. Deciding What You Can and Can’t Do

Calling the Women

If you are trying to get to the bottom of a deceptive spouse’s behavior, you need to decide how much you can stomach. On-line investigation was something I became good at. I was totally comfortable with it and even obsessive. But one thing I couldn’t stomach was to make calls to the fifty or so women I had identified through my reverse phone searching. Luckily, my attorney identified a private detective who was extremely effective in getting some of these women to speak with him (or his partner). They were former Boston police officers and knew the ins and outs of prostitution in Boston. They were surprisingly good at talking with “working girls,” showing them a picture of Scott, then asking them if they knew him. I was amazed at some of the additional information they uncovered, including:

• Several of the hotels Scott had stayed at, particularly in Boston, were “hooker haunts,” known to the Boston Police. One in particular was well known because of its easy access from the Massachusetts Turnpike.
• Scott clearly had spoken to many of his “regulars,” including Miss New Jersey, before my PI started calling them, judging by their refusal to take my PI’s call.
• Several of the women met and had sex with Scott at the hotel he stayed at while in New York City. The hotel was one I often visited during my travels to New York to spend time with Scott while he was there on business. It was beyond disgusting to know Scott would have me come down and stay with him in the hotel room for one night and have the prostitute in the same hotel room the previous or next night.
• One woman said she connected with “Bill” (his alias) on Match.com or Ok Cupid and met him at a bar. She remembered him talking incessantly about how much money he had and he tried to get her upstairs to his hotel room. She also said he seemed like he was on drugs.
• Another saw his picture and remembered him as a “hit and split” asshole, saying some men will tell a prospective female companion they are willing to pay them five or ten thousand dollars a month. They will then meet them once or twice for sex and disappear. I wondered if Scott was proud he had gotten free samples. I even laughed about him being the ultimate douche bag in the slimy world of his hidden life.

My private detective and his partner were effective and surprisingly affordable. They were also honest about what types of investigation were worth it. For example, they advised tailing Scott would burn a large number of hours and probably wouldn’t produce anything we didn’t already know. I was particularly keen to have them follow him to New Jersey to track his movements with Miss New Jersey. I appreciated and followed their candid advice against doing this. Paying them to call the fifty women gave us new information. More importantly, had I not paid them to make the calls, it would have been hard to resist the temptation to make the calls myself.

Being Deposed and Being a Witness at Trial

You also need to think about whether you are willing to be deposed and be a witness at trial, both of which you will have to do if you are unable to negotiate a settlement. These were both difficult for me but I was willing to do it. As it turned out, I was a really effective witness at trial. My obsession with detail and my steel trap memory gave me credibility, particularly since the judge in my case seemed similarly inclined.

 

 IV. Do You or Don’t You Unload

Your husband has led a double life for four years and it wasn’t simply an affair which in itself is bad enough. The financial and phone history evidence compellingly document his obsession with sex. He keeps quite a harem of women. The worst is you unknowingly were an active member of the harem since he was having sex with you the whole time he was leading the double life. He would even have a sexy evening with you in a swanky New York hotel room one night of a business trip and bring in a hooker the next.

Sure, you have told your family and friends what he has done. But do you tell your kids and his family? His work colleagues? Or do you remain silent and let him stick with his cover story; he was so distraught by your inattention he fell in love with someone else? If, like me, you learn about your spouse’s unsavory and maybe even illegal behavior, you will face more than once the decision of whether and when to “out” him. There are pros and cons to going public.

Of course, you will feel better to be publicly exonerated, particularly if he has been blaming you for the breakdown of your marriage. In addition, keeping secrets and pretending the divorce is because “things just didn’t work out,” can be extremely stressful. Most importantly, you may feel compelled to go public if you are concerned for the safety of your kids or their friends.

There are, however, several cons to speaking up about his behavior. You may find those you tell choose not believe you and are unwilling to look at any evidence you offer. Worse, if you go public and his behavior is illegal or even just unsavory, it may jeopardize his job.

Outing him may also be to your detriment in the divorce process. You would lose the threat of going public, which may be a good negotiating position. Of course, if you use it to get a better settlement, you have to live with being paid to be silent. I was also advised by my lawyers divorce judges do not like when one parent disparages the other to the children – even when there is ample evidence that what is being said is true.

I desperately wanted to go public about Scott’s behavior during our divorce process but was strongly advised not to by my attorneys. While I understood and respected their legal counsel, there were a couple of occasions when I simply refused to keep my mouth shut.

First, I was adamant in wanting to tell the kids what he was up to, particularly when I identified women (“sugarbabies”) as young as our college aged daughter in his harem. When the PI came back with the report one of the women called Scott a “hit and split asshole,” it was also evident Scott avoided paying for sex if he could get away with it. I didn’t want the girls to unknowingly expose their friends to a predator. I didn’t buy it when people told me he wouldn’t make a run at the girls’ friends – if he liked them young and was looking to get it for free, why wouldn’t he? So, I told the girls exactly who he was having sex with and how much money he had spent. I told them I would show them the evidence if they wanted to see it (which they didn’t).

It also became apparent I had to at least ask them if they had ever felt unsafe with him. I thought the chances were extremely low he had sexually abused them but felt strongly I needed to ask. They answered no, and there was nothing in their behavior to suggest they were covering for him.

I stand by the decision to tell the girls. I had uncovered a mountain of evidence of Scott’s obsession with sex, including his taste for young women. It was also unclear if I had even gotten to the bottom of it. I simply wouldn’t put them or their friends at risk and I was willing argue my point to the judge if I had to.

Second, I was flat out unwilling to play the “don’t ask, don’t tell” game Scott and his family were so good at. To me, acting like he didn’t have a sex problem was enabling him. I decided against actively seeking an opportunity to tell them what Scott had done but I wasn’t going play the game if I came face to face with his family. I told his mother the following when she, on her own, came up to me at my daughter’s horse show, expecting me to “act normal:”

“I feel very uncomfortable being around you when Scott’s and my divorce has gotten so contentious and we will be going to trial in early February. There are a great many things about Scott’s behavior in the four years prior to moving out I think you should know but I am not the one who should be telling you. It involves his spending over 450k on prostitutes, mistresses and sugar babies. I would hope he would come clean with you about this before trial when the evidence will become a matter of public record. The evidence is comprehensive, compelling and disturbing.”

After that, Scott made sure his family and his “legit” Massachusetts girlfriend never came face to face with me at the rare events we both needed to attend for the girls. He certainly didn’t have them come to support him at the divorce trial where all of his behavior became a matter of public record. To my knowledge, his family has never really looked into what he actually did, despite what I said to his mother. For them, if you don’t have to look at it, it just doesn’t exist.

 

V. Diversions and Obsessions

You have to be able to get away from it, in a healthy way. Exercise had always been important to me and my daily aerobic or weight-training sessions often helped me fight off my depression, at least for a short period of time. I wouldn’t say I didn’t think about Scott and the divorce while I was exercising. I got some of my best ideas when I was running. The exercise was more like a temporary tension release, often sorely needed. Coincidentally, my trainer, her husband and their young family have become great friends. She was a tremendous source of emotional support.

Another important diversion was my horse. Riding a dressage horse required all of my attention and effort so it forced me to stop thinking about the divorce. My regular rides gave me a much-needed mental break.

I also had two obsessions; my on-line research into Scott’s extramarital activities and my writing. Scott had robbed me of the ability to make informed choices about my future by lying to me. He systematically gaslighted me, starting with his first admission of his emotional affair with Miss New Jersey. ² It was a lie of course. He was actually having sex with her and countless other women. Worse still, he successfully convinced me I was mostly at fault for HIS failings. The on-line research I did uncovered the reality of Scott’s behavior. The research and my writing were powerful ways for me to fight back. Experts on gaslighting would say I found and documented the “counterstory” reflecting the reality of what had happened.

 

VI. Make a Difference

My final recommendation is to look for opportunities to make a difference. It doesn’t have to be world changing. In fact, making a difference on a more personal level can be powerful emotionally for you at a time when you really need it. It may also be a confidence booster. For example, a friend of mine volunteers her time helping immigrants learn English and prepare for taking their citizenship exam. She does this on a one-on-one basis, which means she makes has an enormous impact on each individual she guides through the process.

I found an opportunity to make a difference by developing and leading an entrepreneurship camp for high school girls. My view was high school girls are capable of developing a new product idea and presenting a business plan if given the right guidance. Leadership at my daughters’ school supported my first proposal, which by coincidence, happened just a few weeks before Scott moved out. I continued to develop the idea with them, though it was difficult at times to have the energy for it. Our first camp successfully occurred a year and a half after Scott moved out. The camp was a powerful experience for me, largely because I believe it has been a significant life experience for a number of girls.

 

 

1. SOURCE: Steven Hollon, Ph.D., professor, psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.; Scott Krakower, D.O., assistant unit chief, psychiatry, Zucker Hillside Hospital, New York City; Aug. 20, 2014, JAMA Psychiatry, online.
2. To gaslight means to overwrite someone’s reality, to manipulate her into believing she’s imagining things.” From Theater to Therapy to Twitter, the Eerie History of Gaslighting, by Katy Waldman, http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/04/18/the_history_of_gaslighting_from_films_to_psychoanalysis_to_politics.htm