![\"marry](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0_Closeup-of-a-single-sad-wife-after-divorce-lamenting-holding-the-wedding-ring.jpg\" "\\"marry")
My then-husband and I were refinancing our home mortgage. The last thing I needed to send over to the lender was a copy of his credit card statement, the only one I didn\u2019t have access to. He was weirdly evasive about getting it to me, but he finally handed it over a week later.<\/p>\n
Once I had a three-page statement in my hands, I scanned it and e-mailed it to the lender. I had no idea that those three little pieces of paper would later end up on the desk of a divorce attorney.<\/p>\n
We all know what infidelity is.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s the late-night text messages, the hotel room visits, the red lipstick on the white collar, or that trace scent of strange perfume on a blazer. Most of these metaphors are specific to\u00a0men<\/em>\u00a0cheating, but it\u2019s women too. It could be Facebook messages or DMs. Infidelity can be anything we wouldn\u2019t want or feel comfortable with our partner knowing what we\u2019re doing or saying with another person we\u2019re attracted to.<\/p>\n However,\u00a0financial<\/em>\u00a0infidelity is less widely known. When I would say, \u201cMy ex-husband committed financial infidelity,\u201d a lot of people would look at me blankly.<\/p>\n \u201cFinancial infidelity\u201d may not seem that big of a deal, but in\u00a0context<\/em>, it can be a\u00a0marriage-ending kind of big\u00a0deal. It was for me.\u00a0Beverly Harzog\u00a0defines it: \u201cFinancial infidelity involves actions such as hiding a credit card account or purchasing an expensive item without discussing it with a partner.\u201d<\/p>\n If your sweetheart was buying things without your knowledge, it likely would break your trust, but you both could potentially work through it. You\u2019d have a conversation, and, if your partner was amenable, you\u2019d make some plans together on how to do things differently, so the trust wouldn\u2019t be broken again in the future.<\/p>\n But for\u00a0some types of financial infidelity, a couple simply can\u2019t come back from it.<\/p>\n When I first saw the credit card statement, I\u2019d just noticed it had a $0 balance and didn\u2019t look much further.<\/strong><\/p>\n I sent it to the lender and then left it on my desk. Later, I went in to grab a pen from my desk drawer when I saw the statement sitting there right on top. I scanned it, and a charge of $1363.12 jumped out at me.<\/p>\n He spent $1363.12 on something? WHAT?!?<\/em>\u00a0I thought. I snatched the statement up and started\u00a0going through it line by line. I pulled a calculator out. What I found out was more than disturbing.<\/p>\n In two months, my then-husband and the father of my children had spent nearly $20,000 on Paypal, eBay, and other online websites purchasing what I would find out later to be vintage signs to decorate his \u201cman cave.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s a lot of money to spend without your partner\u2019s knowledge. Some couples might be able to come back from that, but let me add that all-important context:<\/strong><\/p>\n Our twins had just turned one a few months before. I\u2019d taken 4 months off from work for maternity leave, and 10 weeks of those had been unpaid. Once I returned to work, we were paying $1600 a month for childcare. After not receiving 5 paychecks and then shelling out an extra $1600 a month, we were struggling financially.<\/p>\n That $20,000 my then-husband had spent on his \u201cman cave\u201d decor hadn\u2019t gone to diapers, clothing, food, or daycare for our kids. It hadn\u2019t gone toward even a nice dinner out for the two of us. It had gone to\u00a0him<\/em>\u00a0and him alone.<\/p>\n As a father and husband, he had chosen to spend $20,000 in less than 2 months on things for\u00a0himself\u00a0<\/em>while his wife and two babies were struggling. That credit card statement told me, with undeniable evidence, that while I\u00a0thought<\/em>\u00a0I\u2019d married someone who would be a good husband and father, I hadn\u2019t. All of those secret purchases added up to a lot more than broken trust. They showed that we were operating with two different worldviews.<\/p>\n For example: I nursed and pumped two babies for over a year because formula was too expensive. I chose to do that to help my family save money and to do what I thought was best for my children. I sacrificed endless hours both at work and at home attached to a pump, so we didn\u2019t have to spend upwards of $400 to $800 a month\u00a0per child<\/em>\u00a0on formula.<\/p>\n While I\u2019d done that for over a year, my then-husband blew all of the money I\u2019d potentially saved us in\u00a0two months<\/em>.\u00a0I could have understood a few purchases. We all like some nice things now and again, but\u00a0$20,000\u00a0worth<\/em>? And with no thought to what his wife or children may need?<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t reconcile\u00a0the difference in our worldviews: how I\u2019d sacrificed because it was best for our family and how he\u2019d selfishly\u00a0blown all of the money on himself.<\/p>\n It was the beginning of the end because how can two people stay married and raise children together as a \u201cfamily\u201d with such fundamentally different beliefs?\u00a0<\/p>\n There was more I was to discover later.<\/p>\n None of it is good. It was when I was going through his credit card statement line by line that I noticed weird credits and debits between himself and his place of work, like when he\u2019d debited himself $1.19 and then credited himself $1190.<\/p>\n When I later confronted him about all of the purchases\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0the weird credits and debits, he admitted he\u2019d been embezzling from his job. It was the way, he admitted, that he\u2019d kept me from knowing how much money he was spending on his credit card because he was \u201cpaying it off\u201d by stealing from his job.<\/p>\n I called a divorce attorney immediately, and later that afternoon, I put that three-page credit card statement on his desk and started the paperwork to file.<\/p>\n I could have maybe gotten\u00a0over a fling, some brief and heady tryst that had made him forget his vows temporarily. But this was too much, and I didn\u2019t think I could ever recover from it.<\/p>\n It had altered how I saw him permanently. He was no longer a good father or a good husband. That $20,000 secret showed me who he truly was: a selfish and self-centered liar.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n