“Absolutely preposterous” – I agree, to you and me and to probably most if not all here (and thank goodness for that!) – but would it have been absolutely preposterous to JH?
If he was wanting a divorce so badly, why did he keep expressing anxiety about both losing his job
and his wife? Why was he afraid to talk to his wife and tell her the story about him being "robbed"? I think they had a lot of problems in their marriage --- both of their statements testify readily to that --- but I don't think that either of them necessarily wanted out of the relationship at that point. I think he was walking around feeling like a freak, I think he felt guilty about his *advertiser censored* behavior, I think he was upset about his wife feeling "abandoned", but I think he lacked the capacity to understand his own role in that other than to feel beaten down by what likely felt to him as a mess beyond his control. I think that he didn't know how to change or even that he felt like he
could change. I think that his behavior and the wall of non-communication in the way he treated his wife resulted in her constantly being thrusted into a parental role with him, including her being forced into a breadwinner role, and that is why he couldn't face her with his outright lie about being "robbed", or even be able to sustain non-sexual intimacy in their relationship. She stated many times that he was "secretive" and would "take off"... in a healthy relationship, partners are able to talk about their problems and work on finding solutions together. It sounds like she was attempting to talk to him, but he worked hard at maintaining a barrier between the two of them that was leading to a relationship breakdown.
I think he both created the chasm between the two of them and was suffering from it as well. It seems like he had genuine and clear ideas about how he
should be living, but there was a dramatic difference between the ideal and how he was actually living. I think he wanted to be a "normal"... so he got married, but I don't think he knew what to do once he got there, obviously. And that's a dangerous place to be, because at some point, I think, his behavior crossed a line from obsessive to outright dangerously pathological and this eventually led to what he did to Whitney. I really wouldn't be surprised to find out that he'd seen prostitutes before, though, perhaps even to the point of abusing or raping them.
So I think he
knew he was becoming a screw-up, and he knew that he was living a lie, and he knew that his *advertiser censored* obsession made him, at the very least, a hypocrite as a Christian of any stripe, and I think that knowledge made him a little nuts, too. I'm thinking at some point, his relationship with his wife became little more to him than a cover for what he was doing behind the scenes. He was trying, and eventually, failing, to lead a double-life. I think his wife's characterization of him as someone who "freaks out" and "can't deal" is spot-on. Unfortunately, nobody saw what he was doing as warning signs of something worse to come, or had enough knowledge of what he was doing to notice warning signs.
I really don't think this was all some sort of underhanded attempt to get a divorce. I really don't. I think that his ties to his religion were tenuous at best, and as he became more obsessive/secretive/pathological, I think the only reason he stayed involved with the church was because of his wife. I think if divorce was his real motivation, he would have just gone and done it.
