Background: A Rough Outline

My name is Autumn.

I am a fairly conservative Christian, married, mother of four. 

I grew up in and out of the church as it suited the needs of my parents at the time. If they needed people to believe us to  be religious, we attended church. If that wasn't the goal, we did not. 

Church was used as a camouflage that allowed abuse and neglect to hide in plain sight. 

Having a deep and personal relationship with Christ was not the point. 

Church was used to present the best image of yourself (and more importantly your family) as possible. 

This meant using purity culture, modesty rules, and huge doses of shame to belittle and manipulate children obedience. Granted, it was obedience based in fear rather than respect, but no one cared about that. 

I stepped away from church my junior year of high school and didn't return until my senior year of college.

When I came back to the church I tried desperately to follow the rules that I had been taught were crucial to being a Christian. 

I tried really hard.  

I went to a Christian counselor to work out the issues from how I grew up. I memorized scripture, I dressed the "right way", I volunteered, I read my Bible, I listened attentively.

I married a Christian man with whom I followed some very intense courtship rules that made "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" look easy. 

None of it delivered on the promises. Following those rules and safeguards didn't pro

My husband, Cian, has been unfaithful throughout our marriage. 

There has been pornography use, other women, lies, secrets, gaslighting, and a fake face put on for the outside world.  

We have been married for eight years and in that time we have had:

-countless meetings with church leaders, elders, pastors, and mentors

-hundreds upon hundreds of lies

-5 D-Days with pornography

-4 moves

-4 children

-3 miscarriages

-3 D-Days with other women

-2 separations

-1 awful, hours long, disclosure about all the women he was sleeping with while we were dating and engaged... while doing a purity based counseling plan.

When I approached churches, para-church organizations, chaplains, and counselors for help I was given mostly the standard answers... which did nothing. I also got a few REALLY terrible answers that I will share later. 

That was when I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I read every Christian book on the shelf about marriage, infidelity, separation, pornography use, and divorce. 

What I found was a lot of blame... on me. 

Most Christian books blame the woman for her husband's infidelity. Some do this passively in their wording. Other books do this actively in treatment of the women and the way that they demand reconciliation without change. One of goals for this blog is to list safe resources and to list the dangerous ones. That way women that are navigating the rapids of betrayal don't then have to determine which "help" is actually snake oil or worse, poison. 

That being said, I will go in to more detail on my background in the future. 

For now you have a basic outline of how I got here and where I want to go.