August 27, 2026 • 45 mins
For 30 years, Eileen trusted her husband. Until one confession reveals secrets that threaten not just their marriage, but her life.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
When this did start unraveling, he actually used the words
I've been unmasked. He loved that people thought of him
as this boring economist, and at night, on weekends, he
was living this wild life that nobody knew about. I
thought you put my life in danger and never gave
(00:25):
me the option to opt out.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Sometimes on our show we tell stories of
a life destroyed in an instant. The betrayal is like
a rock thrown into a window. With one strike of
(01:01):
the glass, everything shatters. But then there are other stories
where the window doesn't break on that first throw. There
are many secrets, many discoveries, sometimes uncovered weeks or even
years apart. Each discovery sends a crack through the glass
until finally it all falls apart. That was the case
(01:25):
for Eileen. Eileen grew up in the sixties and seventies
just outside of Boston. She was part of a big
Irish Catholic family, the fourth of seven children.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
It was a happy house full of very strong opinions,
and our family was always trying to one up each other.
With storytelling and jokes.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
In a house of nine, she learned to speak up.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I can be a little bit feisty.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It's no wonder she gravitt towards politics in high school.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I was kind of driven to do things that I
thought would be important for the country. I had been
a page in Congress in Washington, d C. In my
high school years and had interned down there, and I
had a very defined vision of going into politics.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So right after she graduated college, she moved to d C.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I was working in Washington for a political consulting firm.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
After a few months on the job, she began to
doubt whether politics was really for her. This had been
the career she'd always imagined, but she hadn't ever really
considered other options.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I probably wasn't a bit of a crisis in my
life at that moment, questioning, oh am I really doing
the right thing. I was kind of bobbing around in
the water, looking for my purpose and really missing Boston.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
That summer of nineteen eighty six, she had to travel
back home for a wedding. One of her cousins also
happened to be in town.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
A distant cousin of mine was over from Ireland and
he was living in a household full of Irish people
who were working there.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Eileen decided to spend a night out in Boston with
her cousin and his friends.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
We were all going out tonight and let's all go
to this party.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
They went out to an Irish pub and that's where
she met a man we're going to call Paul. He
was friends with her cousin.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
He was a little shy, and that's sort of why
I began talking to him. I wanted to draw him
out very quickly. She could tell he was smart. He
was the oldest of five children, the only one to
go to college, and going to university in Ireland in
those days wasn't common. I think only about ten percent
(03:56):
of the population went to college at that point, he
told Eileen.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
And he was only in Boston for summer break. He
was in the middle of a five year degree back
in Ireland, and he was serious about his studies.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And I kind of perked up because I thought, oh, okay,
here's another ambitious, driven person, and that was really what
piqued my interest.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
But Paul was more than just a brain.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He showed me kind of a little hidden side of him.
He was sitting acrass for me, and I was sipping
a drink through a straw, and he said, oh, to
be a straw. I was flabbergasted because I thought I
was totally not expecting that from you.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
She liked a sense of humor. Even more so, she
liked how Paul put her at ease with him. She
just felt calm. This was a transition point in her life.
She was looking to ground herself, and I.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Liked the idea of a comfortable stain a person by
my side to help me do that. He was safe
and soothing.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Soon after that night at the pub, Aileen left DC
for good. She moved back to Boston and found a
job working at an art gallery. That's when she and
Paul went on their first real date.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
It was about a twelve hour date. We started in
the morning and we were walking around Boston, went to
a movie Blue Velvet, I believe, we went out to
dinner on Newbury Street. We just had this marathon date,
and then he put me in a taxi to go home,
and I remember glancing over my shoulder and he had
been kind of like waving goodbye and sort of blowing
(05:42):
kisses to me and That was my last image of
our first day and I thought, wow, this guy.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Around that time, Paul decided that he wasn't ready to
leave Boston just yet. He took a year off from
school and got a construction job to make some money.
So through that fall Paul and Eileen started officially dating.
They got into a rhythm.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
He would meet me in Cambridge and we'd go and
have pizza, and we'd walk around, go to museums, go
on walks, things like that. It was a very peaceful
time in my life and very routine, and I think
I needed that at that moment.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So Eileen Paul was an anchor. Being with him just
felt right.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And then we had been dating about ten months eleven
months when I became pregnant.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Eileen was only twenty three, Paul was twenty two.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
I had mentioned that I'm from a Catholic family and
so is he rural Ireland, and so we had decided
we're having this baby and we'll get married at some point.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
At some point didn't exactly go over well with their
Catholic parents, so when Eileen was seven months pregnant, they
had wedding.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
We got married in December, two days after Christmas. Our
son was born actually on Valentine's Day in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
While Paul went back to school to finish his degree,
Eileen stayed home with the baby. She loved those early
years of motherhood.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I think I took like a duck to water being
with my son and doing this with my husband.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
We were a team in many ways. Their relationship was
happening backwards. They got pregnant, got married, and only then
did they have the opportunity to really get to know
each other.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And I think as I got to know him more,
our relationship deepened.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Even though Paul was busy with school, he made time
for her and their son. She admired how thoughtful he
was when it came to their little family.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
He grew up in a very unhappy household, and so
I think he was learning how to be a husband
and a father, not in the mold of his parents.
He was still trying to please his family. But I
thought he was doing his best by us too. You know,
(08:11):
he was going to school, working hard, coming home, helping
with the baby. Our life was continuing as I thought
it would with family as center.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Paul graduated A couple of years after the baby came
and new opportunities quickly opened up for him. He got
a PhD in a specialty of.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Economics, and during those four years we had two more
children had just had my third when he got an
offer to become a professor, and I could not have
been prouder of him.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I thought, this is great.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
They moved to a university town in the Midwest with
their three kids in tow and then within two years
of being there, we.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Had a fourth child, and that completed our family.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Their life was starting to look a lot like hers.
Growing up. They had a full house, and as the
kids got older, their home became a hub of activity.
There was always a sports practice, to drive someone to,
a science project to get done, a school play to see.
Paul and Eileen held it down together.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
We were literally dividing and conquering for attending events, and
he was a very present father at their sports events,
taking them to soccer tournaments, taking them to track meets.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Still they managed to find calm amidst the chaos.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
We would have dinner every night as a family, whether
it was at eight o'clock after sports ended, or whether
it was at six o'clock when everybody was home for
that night.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
But they would also carve out time for just the
two of them.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
You know, going for hikes on the prairie, and he
would plan little getaways.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Paul also made a point to show Eileen how much
he loved her with small everyday gestures.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Bringing me coffee in bed, or you know, on Sundays
he'd bring me the New York Times. I mean, when
you see what we looked like as a family, we'd
be the last people you would imagine. This would be
what happened to them.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
The years passed without incident, with Paul teaching at the
local university. The kids all grew up and went off
to college. After many years as a stay at home mom,
Eileen got a master's and went back to work in
the school system. But after twenty two years, and they're
small Midwestern town, things got a little boring. Paul and
(10:41):
Eileen were ready for a change.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
So he decided to apply for a department head at
another Land Grant university, and he ended up getting that job.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
They'd be moving eight hours away to a bigger city
in the Midwest. At this point, Paul and Eileen were
in their fifties. They were now empty nesters looking forward
to retirement. This would be the final chapter of Paul's career,
and he was finishing out in a prestigious position as
the head of his academic department.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I was extremely excited, not just for him career wise,
but for us as a couple, because we never had
that time at the beginning of our marriage to embrace
each other and get to know each other. And I thought,
now we get it. Now's our time to connect on
a deeper level and to have that. And so almost
thirty years later, we get to be newlyweds again, and
(11:38):
I was super excited about the future.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Paul moved to the new city first in January of
twenty seventeen. He spent a few months getting oriented to
his new job. I Leen stayed back packing up their
family home. Finally, when summer arrived, Eileen joined.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Him, and that's where my life imploded.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
That summer, they had to drive out of state for
a wedding. But one day, as they were gearing up
for the trip, Paul sat, I leaned down.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
He had to tell me that he had lost his
license and I was like what, And I said what happened?
And he said, well, I got pulled over for a
duy I was shocked.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Paul drank, to be sure, Still, she never expected Paul
to drink and drive. But that revelation was only the beginning.
Eileen soon learned that during their time apart, Paul had
been building a new life.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And he said, well there's more, And I said, what
more could they be? He got a duy and he said, well,
it happened on my way back from a nudist resort
in Indiana.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Eileen had been married to her husband for thirty years,
and for thirty years she known him to be a shy,
even kill guy. He was a mild mannered professor the
study and hard working father to their four children. In
July twenty seventeen, they had just moved to a new
city in the Midwest so Paul could start as a
(13:36):
university department head. But just as they were about to
begin this new chapter, Paul made a shocking revelation. He'd
gotten a DUI and lost his license while on the
way home from a nudist resort.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
My heart stopped. I was like, what in the world
are you talking about.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Nudist resorts weren't part of their life together. He'd been
hiding this from her, but Paul was acting like it
was all no big deal.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
And he said, I went to Indiana and I went
to a nudist resort and they had an aft party
and I got drunk and on the way home, I
was stopped for drunk driving and they arrested me and
they kept him in a drunk tank for the night.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
This was the first Eileen was hearing of any of this. Remember,
Eileen had just joined Paul. She'd been getting ready to
move while Paul was settling in at his new job
that first semester. While they were apart, Paul had tried
to sweep all of this under the rug. He hired
a lawyer and argued that since this was his first defense,
(14:46):
he should be let off. But at the court hearing
for his DUI, he was hit with some serious consequences.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
The judge in his case said, I'm revoking your license
for a year.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Eileen couldn't tell what's done her more, the DUI or
the party at the nudist resort.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
And he said, I was just curious. It was my
first time. I've never done anything like this. You were gone.
I just wanted to see what this was like. And
then I remember, actually googling is it cheating to go
to anudist resort.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
She began to wonder what else had he been up
to before she moved.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
We used to leave our laptops out on tables, and
I was like, you know, I sometimes see your email.
I've never seen anything from a lawyer. And I said,
show me the emails from your lawyer. And he's in
front of me and he's tapping away, and he's like,
I don't know where I put them on. They must
be in some other folder. I don't know where they are,
(15:48):
and so I left him. I said, well, show me
when you get them, and I left the room and
he came in ten minutes later, put the laptop on
my lap and said, here they are. And there were
the emails, but I could see that they had been
imported from an email address I had never seen and
didn't recognize, and I was like, there's something very off.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
So the next day, while Paul was at work, she
tried to log into that unfamiliar email address.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I started plugging in some of his known passwords, and
I think about the tenth eleventh one that I was
just sloofing. It popped open and I see hundreds of
messages from Craigslist. I saw him responding to hundreds of
Craigslist ads for anonymous meetings with men.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
She scrolled and scrolled, trying to wrap her mind around
what she was reading.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
It was a lot of sexual conversations like where do
you go for a glory or what sex store is
the best? He replied to somebody who wanted to give
a Mother's Day gift to their wife by having two
men at the same time, and my husband had answered
(17:13):
it and said, that's my dream come true.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
She never knew her husband was interested in men or
group sex, even if he never acted on it. This
was all shocking information to Eileen. And this wasn't a
new habit. His email showed that he'd been sending messages
like this for years.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
It was like a kick in the gut, like I
had just been stabbed, something at my core had been violated,
and I just couldn't even absorb it. I don't know
this person, I don't know how this happened. My mind
(17:58):
could not grasp then normity of what he had been
doing and what he had been hiding. And then I
just absolutely got furious. I am not a yeller, even
with four kids, very rarely lost it. But I remember
going back into the backyard and calling him and screaming
(18:20):
at him and saying, get home right now. I know everything.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
In the moment, she thought that was true. Eileen waited
for him on the front porch, and when he got home,
he groveled. He told her he was so sorry and
insisted that he never met up with anyone in person.
These were all online fantasies.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
That's what he fed off of, is sending out these
messages getting them back. And I said, are you addicted
to pornography? And I can still remember he had sort
of a little relief in his eyes. He's like, yeah,
that's it. I'm addicted to pornography.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
This was the man she'd been with for thirty years,
her entire adult life. If he was saying this was
just an online habit, she felt like she had to
take his word for it.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I gave him the assumption of trust because we were
married and we had taken vows. I wanted so badly
to believe that he was still the same person I knew,
and that my marriage was not a sham. I was like, Okay,
you know, it's pornography. We can handle that, we can
deal with that.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
And yet I.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Knew deep down that his story didn't ring true. That night,
we were in bed and I'm lying next to him,
and it's three am and he's sleeping.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
She stared at the blank, white ceiling, unable to get
the messages out of her head. Eventually, she couldn't lie
there alone with her thoughts any longer, so she woke
Paul up.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I just started poking him on the shoulder and saying,
what did you do? I know you did something. What
did you do? And he's like nothing, nothing. I swear,
and he's groggy. I just kept poking him and saying,
I know you did something. Tell me and he said
nothing nothing. I said, okay, swear on your grandfather's head.
He was close to his grandfather. I said, swear on
(20:17):
your grandfather's head that you have never done anything during
our marriage with another person physically. And he leapt out
of bed and said, okay, okay, I did. You're right?
See what you made me do?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Paul finally admitted it. His infidelity wasn't just online. On
many occasions, he'd snack away to meet people and engage
in sexual activity. He'd lie to her about where he
was going and cover his tracks afterwards, and he'd woven
this all into their everyday lives. In the middle of
(20:54):
days that might otherwise seem normal, Paul was having sexual
encounters all while keeping up the image of being a
family man and respected professor.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Anytime he went to a professional meeting or was asked
to speak somewhere, he was seeking out sexual opportunities. On
the trip to interview for the University of department head position,
he had gone off and met somebody at a glory hole.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
He'd also met up with people on trips years back,
when he'd travel with his kids for sporting events.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
How do you drop your kids off at a volleyball
tournament and turn around and look for a sex store.
How do you tell your kids you'll be back for
their next soccer game and go out and meet somebody
at a glory hole.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Eileen could hardly process what her husband was saying.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
He had been masterful at keeping me in the dark
for thirty years. He's putting himself up as a family man,
committed to his faith, and he was doing everything in
opposition to what he was putting out there. Talk about
an inauthentic double life. Everything he did was designed to
(22:10):
deceive those around him from knowing the truth.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Her mind snapped the immediate risks. Could he have given
her an STD.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
I insisted that we go to the health department, and
I had said, we're getting some STD testing, and then
those all came back negative. But I was like, you
did all of these things without even a thought to
what you were doing to me, And I was like,
thank god, I didn't get any diseases.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
As the shakrare off, Eileen felt her anger rise to
the surface.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I trust you to do right by me. You trust
me to do right by you, and I was robbed
of that.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
On the other hand, she was incredibly relieved, not just
that she was healthy, but that she was finally getting
the truth out of him.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
At that moment, I felt like, Okay, now we're getting somewhere.
Now I know that you have stepped outside the bounds
of our marriage.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
If they were going to have any chance at repair,
the first step would be Paul's complete transparency.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
You have to bring light into a dark situation. And
that really was my attitude. Let's bleach all of this
so you can be the person we always thought you were,
and then you can overcome your dark behaviors. I said,
I need to know everything so that we can begin
to repair this. I don't want to find out in
(23:36):
five months that you did something else.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Paul said he was ready to do whatever it took
to save their marriage. He swore he was done cheating
and that she now knew everything. He even went so
far as to tell their friends and family and even
their children what he'd done to Eileen. It meant a lot.
At last, all the cards were on the table. They
(24:00):
started couples therapy, and every week Eileen began driving Paul
to a twelve step program for sex addiction.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
We did that about an hour outside of our own town,
and we would go up there together, and he was saying,
I'm working on this. We can get through this. I'm like, okay,
he's making an effort.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
One day, Eileen was driving Paul home from a meeting.
On the car ride, Paul suddenly looked over at her.
He decided to share something.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
This was probably one of the first information pieces that
he volunteered, and he said, I did have a relationship
with this woman in Dublin, and they had carried on
an emotional affair.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
This was someone he'd met years before at a wedding.
He insisted that they had never had sex. Up until
this point, Paul had only confessed to transactional encounters meetings
that were pure sexual. Now he was admitting to much more.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
That one really absolutely completely set me off, because I'm like,
now there's not only anonymous sexual encounters, but there's a
woman that you had this multi year relationship with.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
She was tired of pulling tiny kernels of truth out
of him, of having to ask specific questions or wait
for Paul to volunteer information to get answers.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And I said, that's it. I need to know everything,
write it down.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Right. When they pulled into their driveway, she got out
of the car, walked in the front door, and sat
Paul down at the kitchen table with a pen and paper.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I said, I'm leaving the house. I will be back,
but you better write down every goddamn thing you did.
So he's at the table. I went out, but I
do remember coming back pulling up, and it was probably
like an hour later. I walk in the house and
he's still writing.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
The confession was a full twenty two pages. And if
you think that confession would be the end of it,
you'd be wrong.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
That's still just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
More revelations and Paul's ultimate betrayal were still to come.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
I called my husband, dropped to my knees and said,
what have you done to me?
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Eileen demanded the truth, the full truth, from her husband Paul.
He responded with a twenty two page confession. I Leen
sat down and read through page after page, taking in
all the ways her husband had stepped outside of their marriage.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
He had gone to illicit massage paulos all over the world,
all over the place. It had been strip clubs and
lap dances, hotel visits and glory holes.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
At most of these places, Paul swore there'd been nothing physical.
He said he got off on just being there and
watching others. But there were also times when he did
physically cheat, and it went all the way back.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
That was one of my deep questions, When did this begin?
When did you start this? He had started it right
from the start. He had no intention of keeping his
vows when we got married.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
None. Even with all these pages of stories, hundreds of
incidents of betrayal, Eileen had this sinking feeling that she
was only getting a fraction of what Paul had done.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
When I'd asked him, well, what about on this trip.
He'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, no I did something there.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
She continued to have to ask the right questions.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
So I do have his handwritten notes, but I'm sure
it's nothing compared to the reality of what he was
doing for thirty years. That night I lost it. I
couldn't even incorporate any of this information into my head.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
None of it squared with the man she'd been married
to for three decades.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
If you met him, you would be like, he comes
across as kind of a boring dude. He looks normal,
doesn't draw attention to himself, and a very steady, steadfast guy.
And when this did start unraveling, he actually used the
words I've been unmasked. He loved that people thought of
(28:47):
him as this boring economist, and at night, on weekends,
whenever he had the opportunity, he was living this wild
life that nobody knew about.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
As they sat there talking through all this infidelity, Eileen
did feel like she was seeing more of the pall
she knew.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
He seemed remorseful, He seemed like he was sorry. He
knows that I like harmony, and I think he wanted
to make me feel like, Okay, we need to get
back to an equilibrium.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
After reading through Paul's confession, Eileen did take steps to separate.
She even filed for divorce and moved in with her
mom in Boston for a few months.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
But at some point I did decide, like, Okay, he's
working on things, and so we went back to try again.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
From the outside, it could be hard to understand Eileen's decision.
She judges herself for going back after everything she learned.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
I think maybe my waffling going staying, coming here with
my marriage probably shows the effects of the trauma on
my decision making.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
You have to remember she'd been with Paul for thirty years,
practically since they were kids. This marriage was all she knew.
Living at her mom's contemplating everything that would change with
a divorce, she just kept thinking she didn't want to
have to start over.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
My whole life had been uprooted, and I thought, I
just want to get back to what I know living
in a midwestern university town.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
So in the fall of twenty eighteen, she moved back
in with Paul. She decided to go to work again.
She found a job in the school system.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
I was like, Okay, I'm going to go back. I'm
going to get to work. I need a sense of purpose.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
She went through all the steps required when you work
in a school, background checks, reference checks, and last of all,
a physical exam. She went to her doctor's office to
get what she thought would be a quick and easy
say signature.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
I'm like, you can see that I'm healthy and I'm fit,
just sign off this form. And she's like, no, I'm
going to do a real exam.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
The doctor checked off all the necessary boxes, took her vitals, ransom,
blood work, and she.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Did a pap s mare and it came back positive
for HPV sixteen. I didn't know what that was, and
I looked it up and found out that it was
the most oncogenic strain of a cancer causing sexually transmitted infection.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Human papaloma virus is a common STI Most of the
time it doesn't cause symptoms, but certain strains of the virus,
like HPV sixteen, can cause cancer. Eileen was shocked.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
I've never had an abnormal paps maar never in my life.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
She'd always been on top of her annual visits, and
not only that, she had an STD panel the year before.
When she first found out about her husband's infidelity, but
at the time she wasn't tested for HPV.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
I called my husband and he was at work, dropped
to my knees and said, what have you done to me?
You need to get home right now. I'm literally crying
on the phone telling him that I have a sexually
transmitted infection, and he still went through with a staff
(32:33):
meeting before he came home. He does eventually come home,
calms me down, says, we'll get it treated, we'll take
care of it, We'll go to the best doctors.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
But before long, Eileen received another diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I went in to a gynecologist and had a little
nodule removed that had been bothering me, and it turned
out that was vulver cancer from the HPVA.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Unfortunately, that wasn't all.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
In March, I'm going to Boston to get what they
call is a cold knife conization of your cervix, which
pulls out just a portion of it to see how
invasive the HPV is.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
The doctors didn't see much during the procedure itself, but
when the tissue results came back from the lab.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
I find out I have invasive cervical cancer. So I
found out I had vulver cancer and cervical cancer within
about a month six weeks of each other.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Cancer and she wasn't just fighting one form of it.
She was fighting too from an STD her husband likely
gave her the painful irony was it now felt like
she couldn't leave Paul.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I was getting insurance through him. I needed to stay
married because I needed treatment.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Leaving him could disrupt the care she desperately needed. Eileen
immediately began treatment. Her life became consumed by doctor's visits,
blood workups, and painful surgeries. Meanwhile, she stayed married to Paul.
He was in the Midwest continuing his work at the university.
She was in Boston, receiving treatment and living with her mother.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
I have to have a radical open hysterectomy, so I
have that in May, and he comes back to help
me recover. And my father had died a number of
years before this, and my parents' anniversaries in June, and
he was there for it, and I said, oh, let's
go get a cake from my mother. She loves thinking
(34:41):
about my father and this is their anniversary. And while
he went out to get a cake from my mother,
he had left his backpack there and I went through
his backpack and I found a sheet of paper that
he had written on a list of people he needed
to inform that I had cancer because he had had
sexual relationships with them, And on this he had kind
(35:04):
of like a script for a phone call. My wife
has HPV sixteen. You might want to get yourself checked.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
All these years he never told Eileen to get herself checked.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
I thought you put my life in danger and never
gave me the option to opt out.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Paul now claimed he had reformed his behavior, that he
wasn't hiding anything anymore, but she soon found out his
escapades had never stopped.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
I needed to have my labia removed. And on the
day he finds out that I need my labya removed,
my husband invited a man into the hot tub at
our house.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
The two of them were naked together. Eleen only found
out because the man was someone they knew, and he
told her Paul was doing what he'd always done, prioritizing
his pleasure and ignoring her. Her life was now in jeopardy.
She was undergoing major surgeries and suffering the consequences of
(36:07):
his actions. But even after couple's therapy and a twelve
step program. Paul was unwilling to change Rileen. This was
the breaking point.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
That was really the first time that I was absolutely
sure that I could never have anything to do with
this human being again in my life. And I was like,
there's no redemption, there's nothing here that can be salvaged.
And since that time I have not heard his voice
or seen his face.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
They began the divorce process, and Eileen drew firm boundaries
about communicating with him outside of the proceedings.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
We've had a grandchild. I'm at the baptism. He's not.
My daughter graduated from Chicago. I'm there, he's not. I
will not ever breathe the same era that he will breathe.
Not because I'm vindictive, but because, after so many years
of turmoil and lies and deception, I need to remove
(37:08):
myself from his presence. He is the epitome of evil.
Every time he had the choice to do right, he
did wrong. And if that's not the definition of evil,
I don't know what is. The years since she and
Paul separated have been difficult. Her cancer has spread.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
On top of the vulgar and cervical cancers, Eileen was
diagnosed with anal cancer in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
I undergo surgery for that every six months, and I'm
put under It's horrific, it's painful, it has lifelong consequences.
But I'm actually one of the lucky ones because mime
were found early.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
These cancers made her reevaluate everything in her life, including
her decision not to vaccinate her kids for HPV. She
remembers having the choice to get her daughter vaccinated back
in the early two thousands when the Gardisil shot was
first rolled out.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
My daughter, my youngest, was nine, and they weren't offering
to boys at that point, and I talked to my
pediatrician at that time and he said, you know, you
should get your daughter vaccinated. And I didn't because it
was very new, and I thought, I'm going to hold
off on that because I'm not really sure about the
efficacy or the safety of this vaccine. I am not
(38:27):
anti vaccine. My kids have been vaccinated for everything else,
but that one I thought needed to have a little
test of time.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
She hadn't gotten the vaccine herself either.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
At that point. I was over the age of twenty six,
which was the upper limit, and I didn't think I
was vulnerable to STIs, how would I, a faithful woman
in a faithful marriage, be vulnerable to an STI.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Once she got these cancers, she did more research into
the HPV vaccine.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
It's now been proven extremely safe and my kids have
all been vaccinated now, and actually I was just vaccinated
last summer.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Adults of any gender up to the age of forty
five can easily get the shot. Above forty five, you
can also get the vaccine in some cases. Once Eileen
realized the importance of this vaccine, she wanted to educate others.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
I felt that I needed to put purpose to my pain.
And I was like, I can use my narrative to
help other people. And so I just started doing little
TikTok videos about HPV and its importance on my own.
Here's my big shout out, my push on National Cancer
(39:43):
Survivor's Day. Go get your pat tests, get screened. I
hope you never get a cancer that is almost one
hundred percent preventable.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
In telling her story, she's met so many women like her.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
I have been contacted by I kid you not, thousands
of people who have shared that they also were married
to men who lived completely deceptive lives and that they
hadn't thought about the health consequences that might come with that.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Her experience and the experiences of the people who've written
to her, have also changed her views on infidelity. She's
always thought stepping out of a marriage is wrong, but
now it goes beyond that.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
I do believe that infidelity is domestic violence. My body
would have recovered faster if he had shot me. My
body would have recovered faster if he had stabbed me.
I'm living with life long mutilation of my body because
of his behaviors and his cowardice.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
To this day, Eileen continues to discover new details about
Paul's secret life.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I just found out about in the last year from
his former boss's wife that on the day my daughter
was born, she saw him pick somebody up at a bar.
There are still things that can absolutely cut me to
the quick. As far as I know, he has not
(41:21):
faced nearly the consequences I faced.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Paul is now living down South working a new job
in academia.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
He will, I am sure upon his retirement return to Ireland.
I don't care. I've detached myself. I feel nothing but
relief at not having any contact with him.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
She continues to get treatment for her cancers, but she
also lives a full, beautiful life despite her diseases.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
I played tennis, I work on my advocacy, and I
have a beautiful granddaughter and another one on the way.
I think I might soon join the workforce again. I
think that I have more to contribute to the mental
health field. I think I have more to contribute with advocacy,
and so that feels very affirming and very hopeful.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
We end all of our episodes with the same question,
why do you want to share your story?
Speaker 1 (42:22):
My first purpose is showing that you can live through
this and you can craft a life that is authentic
to you. And the second purpose is you might not
think that you're vulnerable to an STI, but you might be.
And I just want people to be aware so that
(42:43):
their life story does not include what my life story
now includes. We have one vaccine to protect against cancer,
so let's use it. And this is why, even though
I'm a fairly private person, telling my story with all
of its horrendous, egregious, soul shattering details, so that other
(43:07):
people don't go through this.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
Just panicking Amber, I'm being arrested. I need you to
come get my car and my gun. I'm like, what
the hell is going on?
Speaker 2 (43:37):
If you'd like to share your story on Betrayal, please
email Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That is Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com. Please note that we are not
a mental health organization. If you are in crisis or
currently experiencing domestic violence, we encourage you to seek local
(43:58):
help or dial nine to one one. Please contact organizations
that offer immediate support. And our show notes, we've included
a list of US based resources. You can follow us
on Instagram at betrayal Pod or find me at It's
Andrea Gunning. To access our newsletter and additional content, and
to connect with the Betrayal community, join our substack at
(44:21):
Betrayal dot substack dot com. We're grateful for your support.
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and
review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. Big
thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a
production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group,
(44:42):
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced
by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason. Hosted and produced by
me Andrea Gunning. This episode was written and produced by
Caitlin Golden and Olivia Hewitt. Our story editor is Monique Lebord,
also produced by Ben Fetterman. Our associate producer is Leah Jablow.
(45:05):
Production management by Kristin Mercurie, Booking support by Curry Richmond.
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Tresica Crimecheck. Audio
editing and mixing by Matt Albcchio with additional editing by
Dean Welsh. Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library
provided by my Music And For more podcasts from iHeart,
(45:27):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts,
When this did start unraveling, he actually used the words
I've been unmasked. He loved that people thought of him
as this boring economist, and at night, on weekends, he
was living this wild life that nobody knew about. I
thought you put my life in danger and never gave
(00:25):
me the option to opt out.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Sometimes on our show we tell stories of
a life destroyed in an instant. The betrayal is like
a rock thrown into a window. With one strike of
(01:01):
the glass, everything shatters. But then there are other stories
where the window doesn't break on that first throw. There
are many secrets, many discoveries, sometimes uncovered weeks or even
years apart. Each discovery sends a crack through the glass
until finally it all falls apart. That was the case
(01:25):
for Eileen. Eileen grew up in the sixties and seventies
just outside of Boston. She was part of a big
Irish Catholic family, the fourth of seven children.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
It was a happy house full of very strong opinions,
and our family was always trying to one up each other.
With storytelling and jokes.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
In a house of nine, she learned to speak up.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I can be a little bit feisty.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It's no wonder she gravitt towards politics in high school.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I was kind of driven to do things that I
thought would be important for the country. I had been
a page in Congress in Washington, d C. In my
high school years and had interned down there, and I
had a very defined vision of going into politics.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So right after she graduated college, she moved to d C.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I was working in Washington for a political consulting firm.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
After a few months on the job, she began to
doubt whether politics was really for her. This had been
the career she'd always imagined, but she hadn't ever really
considered other options.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I probably wasn't a bit of a crisis in my
life at that moment, questioning, oh am I really doing
the right thing. I was kind of bobbing around in
the water, looking for my purpose and really missing Boston.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
That summer of nineteen eighty six, she had to travel
back home for a wedding. One of her cousins also
happened to be in town.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
A distant cousin of mine was over from Ireland and
he was living in a household full of Irish people
who were working there.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Eileen decided to spend a night out in Boston with
her cousin and his friends.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
We were all going out tonight and let's all go
to this party.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
They went out to an Irish pub and that's where
she met a man we're going to call Paul. He
was friends with her cousin.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
He was a little shy, and that's sort of why
I began talking to him. I wanted to draw him
out very quickly. She could tell he was smart. He
was the oldest of five children, the only one to
go to college, and going to university in Ireland in
those days wasn't common. I think only about ten percent
(03:56):
of the population went to college at that point, he
told Eileen.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
And he was only in Boston for summer break. He
was in the middle of a five year degree back
in Ireland, and he was serious about his studies.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And I kind of perked up because I thought, oh, okay,
here's another ambitious, driven person, and that was really what
piqued my interest.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
But Paul was more than just a brain.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He showed me kind of a little hidden side of him.
He was sitting acrass for me, and I was sipping
a drink through a straw, and he said, oh, to
be a straw. I was flabbergasted because I thought I
was totally not expecting that from you.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
She liked a sense of humor. Even more so, she
liked how Paul put her at ease with him. She
just felt calm. This was a transition point in her life.
She was looking to ground herself, and I.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Liked the idea of a comfortable stain a person by
my side to help me do that. He was safe
and soothing.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Soon after that night at the pub, Aileen left DC
for good. She moved back to Boston and found a
job working at an art gallery. That's when she and
Paul went on their first real date.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
It was about a twelve hour date. We started in
the morning and we were walking around Boston, went to
a movie Blue Velvet, I believe, we went out to
dinner on Newbury Street. We just had this marathon date,
and then he put me in a taxi to go home,
and I remember glancing over my shoulder and he had
been kind of like waving goodbye and sort of blowing
(05:42):
kisses to me and That was my last image of
our first day and I thought, wow, this guy.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Around that time, Paul decided that he wasn't ready to
leave Boston just yet. He took a year off from
school and got a construction job to make some money.
So through that fall Paul and Eileen started officially dating.
They got into a rhythm.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
He would meet me in Cambridge and we'd go and
have pizza, and we'd walk around, go to museums, go
on walks, things like that. It was a very peaceful
time in my life and very routine, and I think
I needed that at that moment.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So Eileen Paul was an anchor. Being with him just
felt right.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And then we had been dating about ten months eleven
months when I became pregnant.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Eileen was only twenty three, Paul was twenty two.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
I had mentioned that I'm from a Catholic family and
so is he rural Ireland, and so we had decided
we're having this baby and we'll get married at some point.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
At some point didn't exactly go over well with their
Catholic parents, so when Eileen was seven months pregnant, they
had wedding.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
We got married in December, two days after Christmas. Our
son was born actually on Valentine's Day in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
While Paul went back to school to finish his degree,
Eileen stayed home with the baby. She loved those early
years of motherhood.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I think I took like a duck to water being
with my son and doing this with my husband.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
We were a team in many ways. Their relationship was
happening backwards. They got pregnant, got married, and only then
did they have the opportunity to really get to know
each other.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And I think as I got to know him more,
our relationship deepened.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Even though Paul was busy with school, he made time
for her and their son. She admired how thoughtful he
was when it came to their little family.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
He grew up in a very unhappy household, and so
I think he was learning how to be a husband
and a father, not in the mold of his parents.
He was still trying to please his family. But I
thought he was doing his best by us too. You know,
(08:11):
he was going to school, working hard, coming home, helping
with the baby. Our life was continuing as I thought
it would with family as center.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Paul graduated A couple of years after the baby came
and new opportunities quickly opened up for him. He got
a PhD in a specialty of.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Economics, and during those four years we had two more
children had just had my third when he got an
offer to become a professor, and I could not have
been prouder of him.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I thought, this is great.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
They moved to a university town in the Midwest with
their three kids in tow and then within two years
of being there, we.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Had a fourth child, and that completed our family.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Their life was starting to look a lot like hers.
Growing up. They had a full house, and as the
kids got older, their home became a hub of activity.
There was always a sports practice, to drive someone to,
a science project to get done, a school play to see.
Paul and Eileen held it down together.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
We were literally dividing and conquering for attending events, and
he was a very present father at their sports events,
taking them to soccer tournaments, taking them to track meets.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Still they managed to find calm amidst the chaos.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
We would have dinner every night as a family, whether
it was at eight o'clock after sports ended, or whether
it was at six o'clock when everybody was home for
that night.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
But they would also carve out time for just the
two of them.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
You know, going for hikes on the prairie, and he
would plan little getaways.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Paul also made a point to show Eileen how much
he loved her with small everyday gestures.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Bringing me coffee in bed, or you know, on Sundays
he'd bring me the New York Times. I mean, when
you see what we looked like as a family, we'd
be the last people you would imagine. This would be
what happened to them.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
The years passed without incident, with Paul teaching at the
local university. The kids all grew up and went off
to college. After many years as a stay at home mom,
Eileen got a master's and went back to work in
the school system. But after twenty two years, and they're
small Midwestern town, things got a little boring. Paul and
(10:41):
Eileen were ready for a change.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
So he decided to apply for a department head at
another Land Grant university, and he ended up getting that job.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
They'd be moving eight hours away to a bigger city
in the Midwest. At this point, Paul and Eileen were
in their fifties. They were now empty nesters looking forward
to retirement. This would be the final chapter of Paul's career,
and he was finishing out in a prestigious position as
the head of his academic department.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I was extremely excited, not just for him career wise,
but for us as a couple, because we never had
that time at the beginning of our marriage to embrace
each other and get to know each other. And I thought,
now we get it. Now's our time to connect on
a deeper level and to have that. And so almost
thirty years later, we get to be newlyweds again, and
(11:38):
I was super excited about the future.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Paul moved to the new city first in January of
twenty seventeen. He spent a few months getting oriented to
his new job. I Leen stayed back packing up their
family home. Finally, when summer arrived, Eileen joined.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Him, and that's where my life imploded.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
That summer, they had to drive out of state for
a wedding. But one day, as they were gearing up
for the trip, Paul sat, I leaned down.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
He had to tell me that he had lost his
license and I was like what, And I said what happened?
And he said, well, I got pulled over for a
duy I was shocked.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Paul drank, to be sure, Still, she never expected Paul
to drink and drive. But that revelation was only the beginning.
Eileen soon learned that during their time apart, Paul had
been building a new life.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And he said, well there's more, And I said, what
more could they be? He got a duy and he said, well,
it happened on my way back from a nudist resort
in Indiana.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Eileen had been married to her husband for thirty years,
and for thirty years she known him to be a shy,
even kill guy. He was a mild mannered professor the
study and hard working father to their four children. In
July twenty seventeen, they had just moved to a new
city in the Midwest so Paul could start as a
(13:36):
university department head. But just as they were about to
begin this new chapter, Paul made a shocking revelation. He'd
gotten a DUI and lost his license while on the
way home from a nudist resort.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
My heart stopped. I was like, what in the world
are you talking about.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Nudist resorts weren't part of their life together. He'd been
hiding this from her, but Paul was acting like it
was all no big deal.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
And he said, I went to Indiana and I went
to a nudist resort and they had an aft party
and I got drunk and on the way home, I
was stopped for drunk driving and they arrested me and
they kept him in a drunk tank for the night.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
This was the first Eileen was hearing of any of this. Remember,
Eileen had just joined Paul. She'd been getting ready to
move while Paul was settling in at his new job
that first semester. While they were apart, Paul had tried
to sweep all of this under the rug. He hired
a lawyer and argued that since this was his first defense,
(14:46):
he should be let off. But at the court hearing
for his DUI, he was hit with some serious consequences.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
The judge in his case said, I'm revoking your license
for a year.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Eileen couldn't tell what's done her more, the DUI or
the party at the nudist resort.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
And he said, I was just curious. It was my
first time. I've never done anything like this. You were gone.
I just wanted to see what this was like. And
then I remember, actually googling is it cheating to go
to anudist resort.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
She began to wonder what else had he been up
to before she moved.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
We used to leave our laptops out on tables, and
I was like, you know, I sometimes see your email.
I've never seen anything from a lawyer. And I said,
show me the emails from your lawyer. And he's in
front of me and he's tapping away, and he's like,
I don't know where I put them on. They must
be in some other folder. I don't know where they are,
(15:48):
and so I left him. I said, well, show me
when you get them, and I left the room and
he came in ten minutes later, put the laptop on
my lap and said, here they are. And there were
the emails, but I could see that they had been
imported from an email address I had never seen and
didn't recognize, and I was like, there's something very off.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
So the next day, while Paul was at work, she
tried to log into that unfamiliar email address.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I started plugging in some of his known passwords, and
I think about the tenth eleventh one that I was
just sloofing. It popped open and I see hundreds of
messages from Craigslist. I saw him responding to hundreds of
Craigslist ads for anonymous meetings with men.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
She scrolled and scrolled, trying to wrap her mind around
what she was reading.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
It was a lot of sexual conversations like where do
you go for a glory or what sex store is
the best? He replied to somebody who wanted to give
a Mother's Day gift to their wife by having two
men at the same time, and my husband had answered
(17:13):
it and said, that's my dream come true.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
She never knew her husband was interested in men or
group sex, even if he never acted on it. This
was all shocking information to Eileen. And this wasn't a
new habit. His email showed that he'd been sending messages
like this for years.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
It was like a kick in the gut, like I
had just been stabbed, something at my core had been violated,
and I just couldn't even absorb it. I don't know
this person, I don't know how this happened. My mind
(17:58):
could not grasp then normity of what he had been
doing and what he had been hiding. And then I
just absolutely got furious. I am not a yeller, even
with four kids, very rarely lost it. But I remember
going back into the backyard and calling him and screaming
(18:20):
at him and saying, get home right now. I know everything.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
In the moment, she thought that was true. Eileen waited
for him on the front porch, and when he got home,
he groveled. He told her he was so sorry and
insisted that he never met up with anyone in person.
These were all online fantasies.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
That's what he fed off of, is sending out these
messages getting them back. And I said, are you addicted
to pornography? And I can still remember he had sort
of a little relief in his eyes. He's like, yeah,
that's it. I'm addicted to pornography.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
This was the man she'd been with for thirty years,
her entire adult life. If he was saying this was
just an online habit, she felt like she had to
take his word for it.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I gave him the assumption of trust because we were
married and we had taken vows. I wanted so badly
to believe that he was still the same person I knew,
and that my marriage was not a sham. I was like, Okay,
you know, it's pornography. We can handle that, we can
deal with that.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
And yet I.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Knew deep down that his story didn't ring true. That night,
we were in bed and I'm lying next to him,
and it's three am and he's sleeping.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
She stared at the blank, white ceiling, unable to get
the messages out of her head. Eventually, she couldn't lie
there alone with her thoughts any longer, so she woke
Paul up.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I just started poking him on the shoulder and saying,
what did you do? I know you did something. What
did you do? And he's like nothing, nothing. I swear,
and he's groggy. I just kept poking him and saying,
I know you did something. Tell me and he said
nothing nothing. I said, okay, swear on your grandfather's head.
He was close to his grandfather. I said, swear on
(20:17):
your grandfather's head that you have never done anything during
our marriage with another person physically. And he leapt out
of bed and said, okay, okay, I did. You're right?
See what you made me do?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Paul finally admitted it. His infidelity wasn't just online. On
many occasions, he'd snack away to meet people and engage
in sexual activity. He'd lie to her about where he
was going and cover his tracks afterwards, and he'd woven
this all into their everyday lives. In the middle of
(20:54):
days that might otherwise seem normal, Paul was having sexual
encounters all while keeping up the image of being a
family man and respected professor.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Anytime he went to a professional meeting or was asked
to speak somewhere, he was seeking out sexual opportunities. On
the trip to interview for the University of department head position,
he had gone off and met somebody at a glory hole.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
He'd also met up with people on trips years back,
when he'd travel with his kids for sporting events.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
How do you drop your kids off at a volleyball
tournament and turn around and look for a sex store.
How do you tell your kids you'll be back for
their next soccer game and go out and meet somebody
at a glory hole.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Eileen could hardly process what her husband was saying.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
He had been masterful at keeping me in the dark
for thirty years. He's putting himself up as a family man,
committed to his faith, and he was doing everything in
opposition to what he was putting out there. Talk about
an inauthentic double life. Everything he did was designed to
(22:10):
deceive those around him from knowing the truth.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Her mind snapped the immediate risks. Could he have given
her an STD.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
I insisted that we go to the health department, and
I had said, we're getting some STD testing, and then
those all came back negative. But I was like, you
did all of these things without even a thought to
what you were doing to me, And I was like,
thank god, I didn't get any diseases.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
As the shakrare off, Eileen felt her anger rise to
the surface.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I trust you to do right by me. You trust
me to do right by you, and I was robbed
of that.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
On the other hand, she was incredibly relieved, not just
that she was healthy, but that she was finally getting
the truth out of him.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
At that moment, I felt like, Okay, now we're getting somewhere.
Now I know that you have stepped outside the bounds
of our marriage.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
If they were going to have any chance at repair,
the first step would be Paul's complete transparency.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
You have to bring light into a dark situation. And
that really was my attitude. Let's bleach all of this
so you can be the person we always thought you were,
and then you can overcome your dark behaviors. I said,
I need to know everything so that we can begin
to repair this. I don't want to find out in
(23:36):
five months that you did something else.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Paul said he was ready to do whatever it took
to save their marriage. He swore he was done cheating
and that she now knew everything. He even went so
far as to tell their friends and family and even
their children what he'd done to Eileen. It meant a lot.
At last, all the cards were on the table. They
(24:00):
started couples therapy, and every week Eileen began driving Paul
to a twelve step program for sex addiction.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
We did that about an hour outside of our own town,
and we would go up there together, and he was saying,
I'm working on this. We can get through this. I'm like, okay,
he's making an effort.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
One day, Eileen was driving Paul home from a meeting.
On the car ride, Paul suddenly looked over at her.
He decided to share something.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
This was probably one of the first information pieces that
he volunteered, and he said, I did have a relationship
with this woman in Dublin, and they had carried on
an emotional affair.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
This was someone he'd met years before at a wedding.
He insisted that they had never had sex. Up until
this point, Paul had only confessed to transactional encounters meetings
that were pure sexual. Now he was admitting to much more.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
That one really absolutely completely set me off, because I'm like,
now there's not only anonymous sexual encounters, but there's a
woman that you had this multi year relationship with.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
She was tired of pulling tiny kernels of truth out
of him, of having to ask specific questions or wait
for Paul to volunteer information to get answers.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And I said, that's it. I need to know everything,
write it down.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Right. When they pulled into their driveway, she got out
of the car, walked in the front door, and sat
Paul down at the kitchen table with a pen and paper.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I said, I'm leaving the house. I will be back,
but you better write down every goddamn thing you did.
So he's at the table. I went out, but I
do remember coming back pulling up, and it was probably
like an hour later. I walk in the house and
he's still writing.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
The confession was a full twenty two pages. And if
you think that confession would be the end of it,
you'd be wrong.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
That's still just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
More revelations and Paul's ultimate betrayal were still to come.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
I called my husband, dropped to my knees and said,
what have you done to me?
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Eileen demanded the truth, the full truth, from her husband Paul.
He responded with a twenty two page confession. I Leen
sat down and read through page after page, taking in
all the ways her husband had stepped outside of their marriage.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
He had gone to illicit massage paulos all over the world,
all over the place. It had been strip clubs and
lap dances, hotel visits and glory holes.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
At most of these places, Paul swore there'd been nothing physical.
He said he got off on just being there and
watching others. But there were also times when he did
physically cheat, and it went all the way back.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
That was one of my deep questions, When did this begin?
When did you start this? He had started it right
from the start. He had no intention of keeping his
vows when we got married.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
None. Even with all these pages of stories, hundreds of
incidents of betrayal, Eileen had this sinking feeling that she
was only getting a fraction of what Paul had done.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
When I'd asked him, well, what about on this trip.
He'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, no I did something there.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
She continued to have to ask the right questions.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
So I do have his handwritten notes, but I'm sure
it's nothing compared to the reality of what he was
doing for thirty years. That night I lost it. I
couldn't even incorporate any of this information into my head.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
None of it squared with the man she'd been married
to for three decades.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
If you met him, you would be like, he comes
across as kind of a boring dude. He looks normal,
doesn't draw attention to himself, and a very steady, steadfast guy.
And when this did start unraveling, he actually used the
words I've been unmasked. He loved that people thought of
(28:47):
him as this boring economist, and at night, on weekends,
whenever he had the opportunity, he was living this wild
life that nobody knew about.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
As they sat there talking through all this infidelity, Eileen
did feel like she was seeing more of the pall
she knew.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
He seemed remorseful, He seemed like he was sorry. He
knows that I like harmony, and I think he wanted
to make me feel like, Okay, we need to get
back to an equilibrium.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
After reading through Paul's confession, Eileen did take steps to separate.
She even filed for divorce and moved in with her
mom in Boston for a few months.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
But at some point I did decide, like, Okay, he's
working on things, and so we went back to try again.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
From the outside, it could be hard to understand Eileen's decision.
She judges herself for going back after everything she learned.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
I think maybe my waffling going staying, coming here with
my marriage probably shows the effects of the trauma on
my decision making.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
You have to remember she'd been with Paul for thirty years,
practically since they were kids. This marriage was all she knew.
Living at her mom's contemplating everything that would change with
a divorce, she just kept thinking she didn't want to
have to start over.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
My whole life had been uprooted, and I thought, I
just want to get back to what I know living
in a midwestern university town.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
So in the fall of twenty eighteen, she moved back
in with Paul. She decided to go to work again.
She found a job in the school system.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
I was like, Okay, I'm going to go back. I'm
going to get to work. I need a sense of purpose.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
She went through all the steps required when you work
in a school, background checks, reference checks, and last of all,
a physical exam. She went to her doctor's office to
get what she thought would be a quick and easy
say signature.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
I'm like, you can see that I'm healthy and I'm fit,
just sign off this form. And she's like, no, I'm
going to do a real exam.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
The doctor checked off all the necessary boxes, took her vitals, ransom,
blood work, and she.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Did a pap s mare and it came back positive
for HPV sixteen. I didn't know what that was, and
I looked it up and found out that it was
the most oncogenic strain of a cancer causing sexually transmitted infection.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Human papaloma virus is a common STI Most of the
time it doesn't cause symptoms, but certain strains of the virus,
like HPV sixteen, can cause cancer. Eileen was shocked.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
I've never had an abnormal paps maar never in my life.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
She'd always been on top of her annual visits, and
not only that, she had an STD panel the year before.
When she first found out about her husband's infidelity, but
at the time she wasn't tested for HPV.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
I called my husband and he was at work, dropped
to my knees and said, what have you done to me?
You need to get home right now. I'm literally crying
on the phone telling him that I have a sexually
transmitted infection, and he still went through with a staff
(32:33):
meeting before he came home. He does eventually come home,
calms me down, says, we'll get it treated, we'll take
care of it, We'll go to the best doctors.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
But before long, Eileen received another diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I went in to a gynecologist and had a little
nodule removed that had been bothering me, and it turned
out that was vulver cancer from the HPVA.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Unfortunately, that wasn't all.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
In March, I'm going to Boston to get what they
call is a cold knife conization of your cervix, which
pulls out just a portion of it to see how
invasive the HPV is.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
The doctors didn't see much during the procedure itself, but
when the tissue results came back from the lab.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
I find out I have invasive cervical cancer. So I
found out I had vulver cancer and cervical cancer within
about a month six weeks of each other.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Cancer and she wasn't just fighting one form of it.
She was fighting too from an STD her husband likely
gave her the painful irony was it now felt like
she couldn't leave Paul.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I was getting insurance through him. I needed to stay
married because I needed treatment.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Leaving him could disrupt the care she desperately needed. Eileen
immediately began treatment. Her life became consumed by doctor's visits,
blood workups, and painful surgeries. Meanwhile, she stayed married to Paul.
He was in the Midwest continuing his work at the university.
She was in Boston, receiving treatment and living with her mother.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
I have to have a radical open hysterectomy, so I
have that in May, and he comes back to help
me recover. And my father had died a number of
years before this, and my parents' anniversaries in June, and
he was there for it, and I said, oh, let's
go get a cake from my mother. She loves thinking
(34:41):
about my father and this is their anniversary. And while
he went out to get a cake from my mother,
he had left his backpack there and I went through
his backpack and I found a sheet of paper that
he had written on a list of people he needed
to inform that I had cancer because he had had
sexual relationships with them, And on this he had kind
(35:04):
of like a script for a phone call. My wife
has HPV sixteen. You might want to get yourself checked.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
All these years he never told Eileen to get herself checked.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
I thought you put my life in danger and never
gave me the option to opt out.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Paul now claimed he had reformed his behavior, that he
wasn't hiding anything anymore, but she soon found out his
escapades had never stopped.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
I needed to have my labia removed. And on the
day he finds out that I need my labya removed,
my husband invited a man into the hot tub at
our house.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
The two of them were naked together. Eleen only found
out because the man was someone they knew, and he
told her Paul was doing what he'd always done, prioritizing
his pleasure and ignoring her. Her life was now in jeopardy.
She was undergoing major surgeries and suffering the consequences of
(36:07):
his actions. But even after couple's therapy and a twelve
step program. Paul was unwilling to change Rileen. This was
the breaking point.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
That was really the first time that I was absolutely
sure that I could never have anything to do with
this human being again in my life. And I was like,
there's no redemption, there's nothing here that can be salvaged.
And since that time I have not heard his voice
or seen his face.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
They began the divorce process, and Eileen drew firm boundaries
about communicating with him outside of the proceedings.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
We've had a grandchild. I'm at the baptism. He's not.
My daughter graduated from Chicago. I'm there, he's not. I
will not ever breathe the same era that he will breathe.
Not because I'm vindictive, but because, after so many years
of turmoil and lies and deception, I need to remove
(37:08):
myself from his presence. He is the epitome of evil.
Every time he had the choice to do right, he
did wrong. And if that's not the definition of evil,
I don't know what is. The years since she and
Paul separated have been difficult. Her cancer has spread.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
On top of the vulgar and cervical cancers, Eileen was
diagnosed with anal cancer in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
I undergo surgery for that every six months, and I'm
put under It's horrific, it's painful, it has lifelong consequences.
But I'm actually one of the lucky ones because mime
were found early.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
These cancers made her reevaluate everything in her life, including
her decision not to vaccinate her kids for HPV. She
remembers having the choice to get her daughter vaccinated back
in the early two thousands when the Gardisil shot was
first rolled out.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
My daughter, my youngest, was nine, and they weren't offering
to boys at that point, and I talked to my
pediatrician at that time and he said, you know, you
should get your daughter vaccinated. And I didn't because it
was very new, and I thought, I'm going to hold
off on that because I'm not really sure about the
efficacy or the safety of this vaccine. I am not
(38:27):
anti vaccine. My kids have been vaccinated for everything else,
but that one I thought needed to have a little
test of time.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
She hadn't gotten the vaccine herself either.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
At that point. I was over the age of twenty six,
which was the upper limit, and I didn't think I
was vulnerable to STIs, how would I, a faithful woman
in a faithful marriage, be vulnerable to an STI.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Once she got these cancers, she did more research into
the HPV vaccine.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
It's now been proven extremely safe and my kids have
all been vaccinated now, and actually I was just vaccinated
last summer.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Adults of any gender up to the age of forty
five can easily get the shot. Above forty five, you
can also get the vaccine in some cases. Once Eileen
realized the importance of this vaccine, she wanted to educate others.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
I felt that I needed to put purpose to my pain.
And I was like, I can use my narrative to
help other people. And so I just started doing little
TikTok videos about HPV and its importance on my own.
Here's my big shout out, my push on National Cancer
(39:43):
Survivor's Day. Go get your pat tests, get screened. I
hope you never get a cancer that is almost one
hundred percent preventable.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
In telling her story, she's met so many women like her.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
I have been contacted by I kid you not, thousands
of people who have shared that they also were married
to men who lived completely deceptive lives and that they
hadn't thought about the health consequences that might come with that.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Her experience and the experiences of the people who've written
to her, have also changed her views on infidelity. She's
always thought stepping out of a marriage is wrong, but
now it goes beyond that.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
I do believe that infidelity is domestic violence. My body
would have recovered faster if he had shot me. My
body would have recovered faster if he had stabbed me.
I'm living with life long mutilation of my body because
of his behaviors and his cowardice.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
To this day, Eileen continues to discover new details about
Paul's secret life.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I just found out about in the last year from
his former boss's wife that on the day my daughter
was born, she saw him pick somebody up at a bar.
There are still things that can absolutely cut me to
the quick. As far as I know, he has not
(41:21):
faced nearly the consequences I faced.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Paul is now living down South working a new job
in academia.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
He will, I am sure upon his retirement return to Ireland.
I don't care. I've detached myself. I feel nothing but
relief at not having any contact with him.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
She continues to get treatment for her cancers, but she
also lives a full, beautiful life despite her diseases.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
I played tennis, I work on my advocacy, and I
have a beautiful granddaughter and another one on the way.
I think I might soon join the workforce again. I
think that I have more to contribute to the mental
health field. I think I have more to contribute with advocacy,
and so that feels very affirming and very hopeful.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
We end all of our episodes with the same question,
why do you want to share your story?
Speaker 1 (42:22):
My first purpose is showing that you can live through
this and you can craft a life that is authentic
to you. And the second purpose is you might not
think that you're vulnerable to an STI, but you might be.
And I just want people to be aware so that
(42:43):
their life story does not include what my life story
now includes. We have one vaccine to protect against cancer,
so let's use it. And this is why, even though
I'm a fairly private person, telling my story with all
of its horrendous, egregious, soul shattering details, so that other
(43:07):
people don't go through this.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
Just panicking Amber, I'm being arrested. I need you to
come get my car and my gun. I'm like, what
the hell is going on?
Speaker 2 (43:37):
If you'd like to share your story on Betrayal, please
email Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That is Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com. Please note that we are not
a mental health organization. If you are in crisis or
currently experiencing domestic violence, we encourage you to seek local
(43:58):
help or dial nine to one one. Please contact organizations
that offer immediate support. And our show notes, we've included
a list of US based resources. You can follow us
on Instagram at betrayal Pod or find me at It's
Andrea Gunning. To access our newsletter and additional content, and
to connect with the Betrayal community, join our substack at
(44:21):
Betrayal dot substack dot com. We're grateful for your support.
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and
review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. Big
thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a
production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group,
(44:42):
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced
by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason. Hosted and produced by
me Andrea Gunning. This episode was written and produced by
Caitlin Golden and Olivia Hewitt. Our story editor is Monique Lebord,
also produced by Ben Fetterman. Our associate producer is Leah Jablow.
(45:05):
Production management by Kristin Mercurie, Booking support by Curry Richmond.
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Tresica Crimecheck. Audio
editing and mixing by Matt Albcchio with additional editing by
Dean Welsh. Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library
provided by my Music And For more podcasts from iHeart,
(45:27):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts,
Host
Andrea Gunning
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