Chapter 9 | The Confession
This is from a series of blog posts I wrote back in 2020 to share the background for what was to come. It will help you understand the context of the rest of the stories if you read this introductory series.
I figured I’d start at 'the beginning' wherever that might be when you're trying to unravel 15 years of lies and nearly three decades of disordered behavior. She already knew about the porn, as we talked about that the night before. I decided to go back to 2004 to the first time that I really felt like things were slipping out of control.
The next six hours were surreal. It was the longest night of our lives. Together we walked up to the abyss.
Together we took the plunge.
Nothing Between Us
I was determined to speak the truth as accurately as I could about my sin. It took me some time to figure out exactly what the truth was. 2004 was a long time ago and I had spent the intervening years trying to hide all this shit, so it was buried pretty deep.
So we talked.
And wept.
And prayed.
At times we just clung to each other in silence too wrecked to speak. We would stare deeply into each other's eyes, praying that we could keep seeing each other's heart as we faltered through the valley of the shadow of death.
She saw my contrition. I don't think I had a defensive bone in my body. I was all in. No point in going halfway. I didn't know how I was going to get through all of it, but I knew I was going all the way through.
Over the past year, I'd grappled with the cost I had paid and would pay for my sin. I was learning just how destructive it had been for me to live a lie for all those years. Like the foolish man in Matthew 7:26, I'd built my house on sand. And it was falling with a crash.
What had I been thinking?
In my blinded and lost state, I had convinced myself that I could bend the fabric of reality to suit me. That I could somehow avoid the pain of transformation by numbing out and creating an alternate reality. A reality where temporary pleasure-seeking short-circuited my very sense for meaning. One thing I learned: nobody gets away with anything. Be sure your sin will find you out and all that.
Now that I had staked my life on the Ground of Being itself, I was starting to see that the only way to set things right was to go all-in on the truth. learned that if I was careful, I could at least not lie and it had become clear to me that when I lived this way, things got radically better in ways I hadn't predicted across a number of dimensions.
For the next six hours, from the least shameful revelation to the most, I unpacked 15 years of hell in high definition. Finally at 4:00 am, exhausted but feeling more alive than ever, we stood facing each other.
I took her face in my hands and looked at MJ and said "that's it. There's nothing more. For the first time in 15 years, there is NOTHING between us."
I had wandered through the years as we talked as each new revelation brought fresh questions. For MJ, it was like missing puzzle pieces were dropping into place, completing a picture she that she didn't know had been incomplete, but now seemed so clear.
We talked about the strip clubs, massage parlors, and the illicit sex. All of it, in as much detail as I could recall.
