Infidelity Stories

Originally Posted January 20, 2006
Member MissLuvly, Minnesota

Warning: VERY long

With so many single women with children on this site who are dating I feel the need to help you look out for those other red flags. Sadly enough, it is from my own experience and the consequences that my oldest son (who is now 23) have faced.

I will start out with my story.  I have never told it on this or any other site. It has hurt too deeply. The guilt, sadness and anger still are resonating in my heart. It happened 19 years ago.

I was 20 years old I had a baby a month after I had turned 17.  The year was 1986.  I was recently laid off from work and was applying for any job that I could find.  I went in to apply for a job that was exactly what I had been doing before, except it wasn‘t a management position.  I got an interview.  The boss who interviewed me was a hotty (or so I thought at the time).  He didn‘t hire me, it turns out that they were really going out of buisness (at that location) and he didn‘t have use for a manager.
A week later I am out with my girlfriends at a bar listening to a band.  He was there. I had never went up to a guy before and hit on him.  I decided that I would at least go up and say hi.  He didn‘t seem very interested, in fact he was kind of aloof.  This threw me, and interested me because I had never had that happen before. **red flag** (not really interested in women).

We did end up dating.

Since the place closed down for him here he had to move to another location a couple of hundred miles away. At first he didn‘t even want me to come visit. Then he calls one day and tells me he wants to see me.  I drive the 200 miles to see him. When I get there, we go out to his car to find a rose on his windsheild wiper and a note from a girl saying she was sorry and why did he break up with her?  For some reason I didn‘t take that red flag either. After that he really changed. He started tellig me he loved me, wanted to marry me etc. I kept my house but temporarily moved with him. He then needed someone to help manage the store there. One day he tells me that he trusts me enough to manage the place that day.  He tells me that he is going to stay with my son. I had no ill feelings....he had messed with my self esteem enough (on how before he didn‘t know if I could handle the job) that I went for it.

When I got back my 4 year old son was telling me that he hated Paul. Something had changed in his eyes that day. I see it now plain as day, I didn‘t see it then. Paul told me it was because my son was jealous of "our relationship".  He didn‘t ask me to watch the store after that (thank god). That one never actually made it to open due to city politics and taxes. So he went on to another, and I followed along.  Because of moving and things being so up in the air my mother offered to take care of my son until we got an apartment. God bless her for that.

 It was at this time that I started discovering the real Paul. He was a horrible manager. He would essentially go to the bar and I was doing his job. I found out that he was addicted to cocaine.  I ended up getting another job besides to support us. One day he told me that he wanted to go visit some old friends of his. We went to the gas station to fill up my car (he had lost his due to non-payment). When I went in to pay for the gas I discovered there was NO MONEY in my wallet. I couldn‘t understand where it had gone. I had over $300 in tip money alone.  I went out to the car confused and was regretting having to tell him that someone had stolen my money. HE handed me the money.  It was HIM that had taken all my money out of my purse. When I told him it was him he started yelling at me about accusing him of stealing from me.  He spent all of my money that weekend on cocaine, took my keys so that I could not leave and of course he never went to sleep so that I could sneak away. I did get rid of him a few weeks after that. He hit me, and put a knife to my throat threatening me when I told him that I wanted to break up. He did leave, but took all of my money with him.

A month later my son and I were in a restaurant. He was misbehaving badly.  As a normal mother I couldn‘t leave because the food was coming, so I took him into the bathroom to have a talk with him. My intentions were to tell him that he either had to behave or we were leaving, and that if we had to leave he would get a spanking. He started to cry and was so overly scared, I had never seen him this way and he had never reacted this way to me.

A year and a half later things weren‘t adding up and I was suspicious that something had happened, but I didn‘t really know who, where or what.  I sat down and asked him. The horror story that this 5 year old boy told me brought me to my knees.  I tried to stay calm, but I couldn‘t. It was far worse than I had ever imagined. The more he told the worse it got.

That day that Paul had sent me to do his job as a manager he raped my son. He put a knife to my baby‘s throat and he sodomized him. He threatened to kill him. He told my son that I was a drunk and that I would never figure out what was going on. He told my son that if he ever told me that he would kill me. My poor baby who was only 4 years old at the time had all this on his shoulders.

I called the police. They took the report and did NOTHING  with it. I called the police advocates office. They finally did call me back to tell me they hadn‘t did anything with the case (at this time for 3 years) because it was not in their jurisdiction. I took my son to psychologists, psychiatrists and anyone that I thought could help him. Once he had told me he started wetting the bed and defacating in his pants in the daytime. I learned later that this was a classic symptom. I knew nothing about it until then.

I became an obsessed woman. I couldn‘t find Paul and it‘s a good thing that I haven‘t, for him. To this day he is the only person I could murder and not ever look back. I called all the bars he used to hang out at.  I told everyone that he knew that he was a pedophile. I sent posters with his picture on it. I scoured the internet looking for him and calling every Paul Heath there was in the country. If I had found him I actually had plans for his death. I felt that was the only way I was going to make my baby okay again.

As I am writing this I am still crying. We did finally see a psychologist who helped me, I wish he could have helped my son. He said to me "Did you know that this was happening? or going to happen?"  The thought had never occured to me. No, I had no inklling. He then said "Then how could this be your fault?" Those words finally sunk in after about 3 months. It helped me to release some of the guilt. I think that my son however now blames me.

 We were victims. In the 80‘s we were affraid for our little girls from the weird man that lived down the street. No one told you to be affraid that a boyfriend would do this. Didn‘t they all look the same? In their 50‘s and gross? Who knew that they would be attracted to little boys too?

Since this has happened I have been the overly protective mother. My husband has a hard time understanding it.  He gets upset because we can‘t seem to find a sitter that I trust. We haven‘t gone out a lot because of it.

Here is what I have learned.  Here are the signs that I look out for.

 1. ANYONE who out of the goodness of their heart just loves kids and wants to babysit for you.

2. People who try to be alone with your child. For instance: You were so busy with the other kids I helped him go to the potty.

3. Pedophiles will come into your life and try to be your friend to get to your children. They will even give tickets to get away somewhere with your hubby. Then offer to babysit while you are away.

4. They do not have an interest in the opposite sex.  They may have some significant other that you have never met. An intenet relationship that they are madlly in love with and plan to marry. This is their cover. Or on the flip side they are married to a wife who knows his preference but prefers to say nothing.

5. People that just up and buy gifts for your child. They want to take them to amusement parks or have a huge collection of yugio cards. They may have several pets that draw children to them. Pretty dogs, cats, rabbits.

6. He makes frequent references to children in exalted or exaggerated terms such as "pure," "innocent," "God sent," "blissful" and other descriptive labels that seem inappropriate and excessive. Remember that a pedophile cannot help the way he behaves and therefore will inadvertently reveal aspects about himself during speech.

7 .He is over 30 years of age, single and has few or no friends his own age. He may also have frequent and unexplained changes of residence. He may be unable or unwilling to discuss why he lost his last job. He may have a military discharge that he cannot explain and a past that he can not easily talk about.

8. He has systematic and prolonged access to children. Pedophiles, because of the wide age disparity between themselves and their victims, cannot just hang around children. The pedophile has to find a way to legitimize his contact with kids. He usually accomplishes this by obtaining employment in a field where he is forced to deal with children on a daily basis. Jobs like schoolteachers, bus drivers, camp counselors, photographers and sports coaching⁽¹⁴⁾ serve their needs perfectly. They will always volunteer for activities in which they are left alone with children with no parental supervision (Lanning, p. 19).

Some of these are mine, based on experience the others were from: http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/pedophiles/7.html