Perfect To Imperfect

Rebecca had been married for seven years, and she had a daughter. The family lived at a place Rebecca had always dreamed of. Their house was in an adorable gated suburb area which was only four miles inland from Jacksonville beach, Florida. “I could cross highway A1A at work and eat lunch on the beach. My Jeep always had sand and seashells in it,” said Rebecca, who had always been a beach person. What seemed to be a perfect life was soon going to get shattered and turn into a nightmare. Rebecca felt like she had achieved her dreams by landing the job as a pediatric nurse practitioner, a loving husband and daughter, and a lovely home. But it was all going to come crashing down very soon.

Catastrophic

Just two days after the birthday party when Rebecca reached home from work, she was numb when she saw the scene outside her own house. All the presents received on Friday were crammed into a bin. Not just those, but every little thing that belonged to Rebecca was tossed out in the yard like it was all trash. When Rebecca tried going inside the house, she realized the locks of the house had been changed. “I wasn’t allowed back in our own home”, said Rebecca, who could not understand a single thing as to what was going on, was searching for her husband in hope of a little support and calmness.

Confronting

Rebecca had been giving out money to her husband for their living expenses from her own income. So where did all the rent money go? When she decided and confronted her husband for the same, he was silent and did not even have a single word as an answer to Rebecca’s questions. Rebecca decided to take matters into her own hands when she sensed something fishy. Her husband had had erratic sleep habits for a very long time now, and she had thought it was due to some work-related stress. He had even lost weight recently and was always running here or there for some work or the other and never wanted to take his wife and daughter along with him.

Another Surprise

The trunk was full of several years of mail, all of which were addressed to Rebecca. Her own husband had been keeping letters from her that were from collection agencies, various bills, birthday cards and a lot of other things. But why did he do this? Why had he been keeping so many secrets from his own family?

Fraud

With tears in her eyes, Rebecca said, “He had been lying to me for YEARS, and my credit was unfortunately ruined because of it. I had no idea how easy it was to open credit cards and take out personal loans in your spouse’s name. I thought I had stayed on top of my bills, but had no idea he was secretly hiding things from me over the course of our 7-year marriage.”