Ellen Rosner Feig

Justine and Howard
I met the love of my life at an alligator farm. Actually, I had just graduated from high school and was working at my family’s alligator farm at the time. My Louisiana family hails from the murky waters of the bayou, and although we were poor, we believed that the Lord would provide for us.

Anyway, Howard and his family had come from the North for a weekend of real Southern, backwater experiences. Dressed from head to toe in raingear, I welcomed Howard and his family and gave them a full tour of our facility. Since my family would have lost the farm long ago if not for the income from tourists, we prided ourselves on the hospitality we showed all visitors.

Howard was extremely good looking, and my heart thumped as soon as I saw him. He was well dressed, had a slight Louisiana accent, appeared to be well educated, and was very polite, even to me, a poor bayou girl. As Howard left the premises at tour’s end, he asked if he could take me out to dinner later in the week. I shyly agreed to accept his invitation.

That initial date went well, and we soon started dating regularly. I always looked forward to spending time with Howard, and when I wasn’t with him, I daydreamed of being in his arms. When I was entertaining tourists, I envisioned becoming Mrs. Howard Gatineau. While preparing meals, I became lost in feelings of love.

Although Howard and I came from different cultural, social and financial backgrounds, we shared the same basic values and morals. Also, we both held similar religious beliefs and acknowledged the importance of Jesus Christ in our lives. I had been raised a strict Catholic and firmly believed in Jesus, the doctrines of the church, and the Pope’s teachings.

After dating for over a year, Howard asked me to marry him. I was thrilled and eagerly began planning a genuine redneck, bayou wedding, much to the dismay of Howard’s upper-middle-class family. Because of our religious upbringings, Howard and I agreed that it was important to consult a priest for counseling so we scheduled a series of pre-marital meetings.

The State of Louisiana takes pride in being one of the few states in the country that allows individuals to join together in a "covenant marriage." The Catholic Church strongly lobbied for such a marriage option, and persons entering a covenant marriage agree to recite an oath before God and the state. The oath declares that the marriage is a binding covenant. The statues of a covenant marriage require couples to seek counseling prior to filing for a divorce, and the statutes make it nearly impossible to dissolve the marriage. In fact, the only justifications for ending a covenant marriage in Louisiana are imprisonment, physical abuse, or death.

During our visits with the Catholic priest, he talked a great deal about marrying under the state’s covenant law. He made it clear that the church supported the covenant marriage and that such a marriage would strengthen our vows of commitment and would make our lives together more purposeful. As practicing Catholics who professed that our faith would be the cornerstone of our marriage and our lives together, Howard and I agreed that it made perfect sense to enter into a covenant marriage.

I headed to the town clerk’s office and informed them that Howard and I would be stating our vows under the covenant-marriage statute. The clerk handed me a package outlining the requirements, including the law itself and the covenant we would be reciting. That day at work, I reviewed everything carefully and was convinced that I really did want this form of marriage. My family, however, offered a contrasting perspective.

My sister, who had been married twice and divorced twice, saw marriage as something of a game where sometimes a person won and sometimes a person lost. My brother, who, in the church’s eyes, had been living in a state of sin the past five years, lived with his girlfriend and their two-year-old son. While my parents had been married for thirty-two years, they openly hated one another and routinely engaged in extra-marital affairs. The only true role models for marriage were my grandparents who had been married for sixty-five years and who continued to hold hands. I wanted to have a marriage like theirs and believed that a covenant marriage would ensure such a union.

One evening, my brother and sister took me out for drinks at the local watering hole and earnestly begged me to reconsider my decision. My brother argued that a strong relationship would last even without the covenant label. My sister, after her fifth drink, told me that a woman always needed to have the option of leaving a relationship in case things went sour. Nodding occasionally to indicate that I understood their points, I listened quietly and respectfully, but I held fast to my intentions.

That spring flew by, and the steamy wet heat made its way over the brown waters of the bayou. The alligators became restless and spent most of their days patrolling the swamps. I became busy with wedding plans and patrolled my own pool in an attempt to fight off the wedding desires of my family. Howard and I firmly believed that we could make our own wedding plans, and we did so, picking our invites, making table arrangements to keep the families separated, and getting ready for our big day.

The wedding day was a beautiful, hot Louisiana one, a perfect day for walking down the aisle and into Howard’s welcoming arms. We recited the words of our covenant and thereby bound our love forever before God, family, and friends. Being young, totally in love, and somewhat naïve, we felt that nothing bad could ever befall us.

The first two years of our marriage were basically good ones. That’s not to say that being married was easy. After all, learning to live with another person has its challenges, and many nights I went to sleep frustrated and angry. I maintained a positive outlook, though, and felt secure in knowing that Howard and I believed in the sanctity of our union, that we could always work things out, and that we would never abandon each other. I took extreme comfort in our covenant agreement, and I silently thanked the state of Louisiana for that peace of mind, a peace that I was about to discover would not last.

I will never forget the day I first heard the gossip of my husband’s misbehavior. Some close friends of mine stopped by the farm and scooted me off to my favorite restaurant for a lunch of fresh fish. I was truly enjoying the catfish and conversation until the girls began telling me the stories circulating about Howard. They said that my husband had been seen around town with a number of different women, cavorting and having a good old time. I have always hated gossip so I tried to ignore what they told me. Even though I tried to brush off their reports as unfounded gossip, their words tore at my insides.

After that lunch with my girlfriends, I began looking at Howard’s actions with a sense of distrust. I would sniff his shirts for feminine scents, empty out his pockets for evidence, check his collars for lipstick stains, and the list goes on. Since my family had warned me about going "covenant" and the possibility of getting stuck in a disastrous marriage, I was reluctant to discuss my concerns with them.

One morning while Howard was sleeping, I went through his suit coat and discovered a credit card slip. My suspicions were aroused since I didn’t have any credit cards, and as far as I knew, Howard didn’t have any either. Upon examining the receipt, however, I saw that my husband had spent a small fortune at a lingerie store in New Orleans. Well I knew that I wasn’t the recipient of any lingerie goods so someone else must have been wearing them and most likely taking them off as well.

Settling into a detective mode for the next month, I collected plenty of evidence that Howard carelessly left behind. That evidence clearly indicated that my husband was having plenty of Southern fun without his Southern bride.

At this point, I realized I had placed myself in a terrible situation by entering a covenant marriage, a union that could be divided only by death, imprisonment, or abuse. While any woman will tell you that infidelity is surely abuse, even a type of death, the state of Louisiana would not agree. Even though there were not bars, wires or men named Sue, I felt as if I was imprisoned. Here I was a woman stuck in the muck of her desired covenant.

Having no one to turn to, I visited my parish priest to seek counsel. He spoke of the vow I had taken, the need to work on restoring my marriage, and his concern for my mental well being. He offered to meet with Howard and me to discuss our options and to hopefully resolve our differences. Upon leaving his office, I questioned the priest’s counsel, and for the first time in my life, I questioned my faith. How could the God I believed in want me to remain in a marriage with an unfaithful husband who no longer loved me? I decided to face Howard and get the matter out in the open.

When I confronted Howard with the evidence I had gathered, I was shocked by his reaction. He denied nothing and was not embarrassed at all by his infidelity. He felt that his actions were simply what normal American, Louisiana men do. He then reminded me that we had a covenant marriage and I was stuck with him. From his perspective, he had the best of both worlds. He could be a cheating man, and his wife had to be at home for him when he returned. My perspective, however, was totally different so I decided then and there to make his life a living hell. I was one alligator who had no intention of getting back into the same old water hole.

Recognizing that the strict statutes of a covenant marriage were going to make it difficult to escape my horrendous situation, I took all of my savings and hired the best divorce attorney I could find. I begged and pleaded with her to find a loophole that would allow me to get out of my marriage, to find a way to get Howard to admit that he had been an abusive husband. I told her to get down and dirty, to get out the boxing gloves so that I could get out of my handcuffs.

My lawyer was smart and assertive, and she decided the best bet was to go after his business. After looking into Howard’s spending habits, she found that here were hints of misuse of company funds. There was no clear evidence of embezzlement, but there were enough discrepancies to make Howard squirm. My lawyer threatened to expose what she had found, something that would likely lead to closer examination of the business’ finances, if Howard didn’t agree to mutually end our marriage on the basis of his abuse of me. And so, the union we had entered in faith and love was ended in anger and disgust.

I have now been divorced for over a year, and I currently enjoy a sense of freedom that I never imagined possible. I remain a faithful Catholic but would disagree with any priest who advises a couple to enter a covenant marriage. In theory, it’s wonderful to think that a couple can declare a lasting covenant before God, but the reality of married life sometimes thwarts such declarations. My reality was that I married one of those men who follows a body part that does not think, and I was one of those women who follows her man until the pain becomes too much to bear. I don’t believe the Lord wanted me to remain in an unhappy marriage where my heart broke every single day.

I still love Howard, and each day I pray that he find happiness. Even though I wish our marriage could have been the covenant relationship of my dreams, I thank God that I was able to find an exit door.