Rent Morals

By Juliet Cartier Tissot

Rent Morals is a book about a picture-perfect marriage that ended with a woman not knowing the man who slept in her bed for twenty years. The relationship started with an explosive first introduction where Juliet vowed to never see Michael again. Soon after, against all odds, it turned into a year of exciting courtship that involved Ohio State football games and a Carribean cruise. The couple’s whirlwind dating transformed into a storybook image of two parents madly in love with each other. They had a football player for a son and a dancer for a daughter. The couple was a team. Michael was football coach, and Juliet was team mom. They were regulars at church, and their house was where all the neighborhood kids gathered on a regular basis. To the naked eye, no cracks could be seen in their glossy smooth exterior. The Tissots looked like they had it all.

Then one day…it happened. Juliet found out Michael was having an affair. As if that wasn’t heartbreaking enough, over the course of the next few months, she would learn an affair was the easiest part of her story to accept. Turns out Michael, the devout Christian leader of their family, had many affairs over many years. Message after message and story after story came rolling in. Rent Morals has many unexpected twists and turns about sexual harassment, strippers, suicide, and lies.

Rent Morals is the culmination of the notes Juliet took and messages she received throughout the course of her divorce. It highlights the conversations she had with the women her husband cheated with. It also describes how she mustered up the strength to counsel others going through similar situations and how she became a role model for women crushed by the discovery their husbands weren’t who they pretended to be. It’s a story of discovery and depression, strength and courage. It’s a story of a woman who used some very unconventional methods of fighting back to expose a man who lived two shockingly different lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662449406

Book preview

Chapter 1

What Happened

Sunday, April 2, 2017, starts out like any other Sunday in the Tissot house. It is five thirty in the morning. I am up alone, enjoying a steaming cup of coffee in the quiet and still of the house before the hustle and bustle of the day begins. My daughter, Paige, and I had just returned the night before from a week at our house in Florida for her spring break. In two weeks, my husband and son, Michael and Jacob, would go to the same house in Florida for Jacob’s spring break. We must split up because Jacob and Paige attend different schools, and their spring breaks fall on different weeks. I hate that our family isn’t together those weeks, but until next year, when Paige is in high school, this is the schedule we make work.

I start a load of laundry from the beach and try to stop the sand falling from the clothes from scattering all over the kitchen floor. Then I grab the large family calendar that sits on my desk and keeps Team Tissot organized. Team Tissot is the pet name the four of us gave to our family because we always said if we were together, we could not be beat! I flip the calendar page from March to April with the intention of placing the kids’ activities for the month on the appropriate days. To my surprise, I see Michael has marked off the very first week of April for a trip to Dallas.

Now that is strange, I think to myself. This was not a trip he had told me about. Probably some last-minute business decision. Still, Paige and I were gone the week before. If he goes to Dallas this week and then to Florida with Jacob the following week, that would mean Paige and I would not see him for three weeks. That is a very unusual occurrence, and it makes me a little uneasy. It is either really poor planning or some sort of emergency.

It is still super early in the morning, but my curiosity gets the best of me, so I go upstairs, where Michael is sleeping. I walk over to his side of the bed and whisper, Hey, honey! Honey… Why are you going to Dallas this week?

He is lying on his side, facing the edge of the bed with both of his hands by his face. He is curled up and looks so peaceful. He hears me and scrunches up his face a bit. He seems a little confused as to why I am asking this question so early in the morning but manages to say, Healthcare meeting, honey.

I know the thirty-seven retail stores we own keep him busy, and the board positions he holds require travel as well, but three weeks away from me and his daughter seems excessive. I go back downstairs. After all, what are my options? After a few minutes of dwelling on it, I come up with one intriguing option—maybe I could go with him! It has been a while since we traveled anywhere alone together and while he was in his daily meetings, I could entertain myself and then we could enjoy a few adult evenings out on the town. I head back up to tell him what I have decided. As long as I could get the kids covered, I didn’t see why there would be an objection. It would be fun!

I am back at the side of the bed again and this time I say, Hey, honey! I’m gonna go with you. To Dallas! I’m gonna get the kids covered and go with you! Won’t that be fun?

Can we talk about this later? he says as he tries to remain asleep.

I head back downstairs and decide to grab his phone from the office to get his flight information from his email so that when I have worked out an arrangement for the kids, I would be ready to buy a ticket on his same flight. To my surprise, there is a password on his phone. That is odd because neither of us used to have passwords on our phones. I figure he put it on there because of work and start back upstairs to get it from him.

Honey, what’s your password? I whisper.

What? Why?

I just need to get to your emails so I can get your flight information. I’m gonna book a flight! I tell him, still holding the phone.

He sits up for the first time and says, You can’t have my password.

That was an unexpected response. Why not?

You just can’t. I have too much business stuff on that phone, and I don’t want you to mess it up, he says.

Well, that is just ridiculous! I am well-aware of what’s going on in the business and how to use a phone without messing stuff up. For the first time, things do not seem right. Is he hiding something from me? Why else would I not be able to have his password?

Gimme your password, Michael I say a little more sternly.

No. You can’t have it! he says more adamantly this time.

Michael, there’s only one reason one spouse can’t have the other spouse’s password. Are you cheating again?

No! Of course not! he says, looking shocked by the accusation.

Five years earlier, I caught him doing just that. Now, I am back to that time, those emotions, and the other women.

I want your password, Michael.

You can’t have it.

Are you cheating?

No.

Then give me the password!

The conversation continues on like this for about ten minutes. I keep demanding answers and he keeps offering none.

Finally, he gives in, Fine. Yes, I’m cheating again.

When you hear your husband say something like that, it rocks you to your core. Your heart stops and so does your breath. In that moment, your world changes. It becomes dark. I felt this way once before. Five years earlier. It was not any easier the second time around. As a matter of fact, it was that much harder. What a fool I was to trust, to believe in love, to believe in my husband and our marriage and our vows. What a fool! But I could not think about all that now. I want answers. I want information. I need to know.

Okay, I say. Well, how long has it been this time? Do I know her?

You don’t know her, he says looking down. He is sitting at the foot of the bed now. He looks ashamed or maybe scared. He should be scared. I am mad. I am really mad. The hurt from repeated betrayal would come later but right now, anger is all I know.

You don’t know her, he says. She works for another company.

Is she married?

Yes.

Does she have children?

Yes

She’s married with children?

How long has this been going on?

About six months.

Do you love her?

Until now his answers have been coming pretty quickly, but after that last question, there is a long pause. He is looking down at the ground again. It makes me even more mad that he cannot look me in the eye. He is man enough to cheat with another man’s wife, but he is not man enough to look his own wife in the eye. What a coward my husband has become.

Yes, he manages to barely whisper, like somehow in the last three minutes his voice had escaped from his throat.

I begin to act without thinking. I am on autopilot. In hindsight, I might have done things differently, but Monday morning quarterbacking is always 20/20, and frankly, it is too late for that now. I walk out of our bedroom and head down the hall. I throw the doors to both my kids’ bedrooms open and I say, loud enough to wake them up, Hey, kids. Time to get up. Your father has something to tell you.

How many were there, dad?

I stayed quiet five years ago. I never told a soul that I had caught him cheating, and look where it got me, right back in the same place. I kept quiet to protect my husband’s reputation, to protect my marriage, and to protect my children. In the end, my marriage and my children would still end up suffering. The only one who was protected by my silence was the same person now glaring at me as if I were guilty of something. As if he had a right to be mad.

Well? I say looking at him. Tell them or I will.

The kids are standing there confused, but they are smart. They know something is very wrong. Michael is extremely intelligent. He was valedictorian of his high school class, and he was able to grow his small family business into a multimillion-dollar corporation, yet for some reason, in this moment, while facing his own family, he cannot seem to find the words (or the courage) to speak. So I do what any good wife does, I help him! I am done being silent, and I will not protect him one minute longer.

Kids, five years ago, I caught your father cheating on me with two women…an employee and a hooker. I called both of those women and put an end to it. Your dad promised me it would never happen again, and I believed him. It was very hard for me to keep quiet, but I trusted your father. Now, he says he has been cheating again, or maybe still, who knows. This time it’s with a married woman with children who works for another company in our same industry. He sees her when he goes out of town to conventions.

I stop speaking. I see their pain. It magnifies mine because I will never understand how he could not put these two gifts from God before himself.

They both start crying, and I know this is the beginning of a long journey ahead of us. The beginning of our heartache. The beginning of a new life.

My son, Jacob, a 6'1, muscular young man with jet black hair who is always very calm and even-tempered, clenches his fists so tightly. I can see not just pain but anger. Real anger. He scolds his father the way a child should never have to, How could you do this, Dad? You were supposed to be the