FROM ANONYMOUS IN SALT LAKE COUNTY

Dear Utah,

I’ve sold a company. Sit on boards you’d recognize. Handle mergers and acquisitions, and get paid to help other people do the same.

I also struggle to have access to my own money, despite enlisting attorneys to help. Go days without being acknowledged. Live under a microscope of judgement, isolated from people who care about me.

When I reached out for help, my LDS bishop told me Satan wanted me to get a divorce and to consider what would happen to my husband if I left. The bishop told people who told my husband I talked to clergy. You only do that once.

My husband is so nice. Maybe the nicest guy you know. You’ve probably told me so more than once. Maybe you made a joke about what it must be for a guy like him to live with a woman like me. He seems shy, maybe even like an underdog who needs sympathy. And you’ll only ever know that guy.

My inlaws are cruel in ways sane people don’t believe and I wouldn’t have until I lived it. All very nice LDS people with “big” callings, so who would trust me?

Which is why I stay. He’d ruin me, I’d have no allies. I would probably have detractors who would make my professional and church life, my two safest places, miserable too.

I guess I’m a lucky one- he’s pulled knives and threatens to hurt himself, but never me or the kids. Maybe I don’t even belong here, but just in case there’s another woman out there wondering how it can hurt so bad with no bruises, you aren’t alone.