Stolen Dreams

March/April 2009 Issue | Posted by Kate Wicker in Marriage

By Kate Wicker

During their two-year courtship, Henry Markston stole Cecilia’s heart. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first or the last time he would steal something. More than 20 years into their marriage, Cecilia would discover that her husband harbored a secret that would tear at the very fabric of their life and marriage.

For Henry, college was more than a rite of passage, a time for broadening his mind and his social circle. Like most young people, he went to school looking to find himself, but what he found along the way was the love of his life.

“We were assigned to work together on a project for one of our classes. She was a year ahead of me and was in charge of the project. I noticed her smile immediately,” Henry says of Cecilia, the co-ed who caught his eye. “While we were working together, I really enjoyed listening to what she had to say and hung on to her every word.”

Henry wanted to ask Cecilia out, but he found her fluid conversation and natural effervescence intimidating. “I was just a shy country boy, so it was Cecilia who eventually asked me out, and we had a great time together.”

“It brought on a real high for me. I needed to continue to achieve it.

Just to know I could get away with something without anyone knowing

and feeling like I was ‘good at it’ made me feel more powerful.”

The Early Years

Even before Henry and Cecilia were engaged, they spoke openly about their future life together.

“We talked about where we’d like to see ourselves down the road and decided we’d devote our future to my career,” Henry says. “When we could start a family, she would stay at home and care for our kids.”

“We focused on working hard and living frugally during the early years of our marriage, so we could achieve our goal of a home and a family,” Cecilia says. “I worked two jobs and Henry worked lots of hours.”

Their hard work paid off. “By the time we celebrated our second anniversary, we were in our home and no longer renting — yeah!” says Cecilia.

The couple was also expecting their first child.

“Two years later we had a second child and then in another two years we had another child,” says Henry.

Henry and Cecilia’s family kept growing, and soon they were blessed with three more children. “I felt like we had the perfect family, a loving life, and six great children,” says Henry. “It was all the start of the American dream.”

But like most dreams, Henry eventually had to open his eyes, and when he did, he awoke to a nightmare.

Paradise Lost

The couple’s vanilla living all came to an abrupt end when Henry came home from work just over one year ago. Cecilia remembers the day all too well.

“Henry came home and I could tell he’d been crying,” she recalls. “He had a follow-up doctor appointment that day for something routine. The first thing that came into my mind was that he had cancer or something else horrible.”

But Henry wasn’t sick — at least not physically. Cecilia’s husband of 22 years broke down and confessed to having a shoplifting addiction. Not only had he been fired from his job for theft, but he admitted he had been stealing since his teens.

What Cecilia remembers most about the day was the shock.

“I just couldn’t believe my ears. Henry had helped catch shoplifters at the very store in which he worked,” she says. “He’d actually wrestled with a few customers until the police came.”

The shock was quickly replaced with anger.

First, she was angry with herself for not seeing the signs.

“Looking back, I should have questioned why we had so many movies and then CDs, but he always had an answer like someone from work bought it and passed it along to him,” she says. “When you’re busy raising a family, you just don’t stop to think about things or to question someone you love and trust.”

Then, of course, Henry himself became the target of Cecilia’s anger.

The sense of betrayal she felt weighed heavily on her soul.

“Why would he do this to our family? I mean, if you want to do something like this, don’t take us down with you,” she says.

Meanwhile, Henry was faced with his own inner demons and an addiction that had taken hold of his life.

The Dark Side

“There are approximately 30 million shoplifters in America,” says Terrence Shulman, an attorney, counselor, author, and recovered shoplifter since 1990.

The vast majority of them are just like Henry — ordinary citizens, not juvenile delinquents or lifelong criminals donning ski masks. What’s more, people who compulsively and repeatedly shoplift usually aren’t desiring things; their need to steal is a vehicle for coping with other feelings.

As Henry puts it, “Shoplifting for me is an addiction, not just a choice I make. I used to go weeks on end before thinking about taking anything, and then one day I would think about the last time I took something, and the feelings would all come back — the need for the rush, the need to prove to myself that I could do it without getting caught, and the need for the high I would feel. Then I would go out and do it again.”

Henry first started stealing in high school.

He had a job that gave him access to the keys for his entire school. With these keys came power.

“One day I decided to check what other rooms I could get into,” Henry says. “While in one of the teacher’s rooms, I found the answer key for an upcoming midterm. I decided to make a copy, so I could do better on that test. I thought it was no big deal since I wasn’t hurting anyone.”

Then he noticed a billfold that was often just sitting out in the locker room. It was stuffed with a wad of cash, so Henry started taking a few bills here and there. “He had so much that I figured he wouldn’t notice if he was missing $10,” he says.

Henry never got caught, and this drove him to keep on stealing.

“It brought on a real high for me. I needed to continue to achieve it,” he says. “Just to know I could get away with something without anyone knowing and feeling like I was ‘good at it’ made me feel more powerful.”

When Henry left for the big city, he missed his “release,” so he ventured into the realm of shoplifting.

“First it was small stuff like candy bars that were easy to hide. Then it turned into VCR movies,” he says. “I had worked in retail before, so I knew about the security devices.”

Eventually, Henry used his knowledge to outsmart security and started stealing DVDs and CDs.

Still, Henry always promised himself he would never steal from work.

“I don’t know what made me do it, but one day I walked out without paying for something and I got caught,” Henry says. “This cost me my career of over 20 years that I’d worked so hard for.”

However, Henry’s biggest concern was his family and what they’d think of him.

“This was my dark side that nobody knew anything about,” he says. “How was I going to tell my wife and kids? How would I ever be able to face my own family or Cecilia’s? One of my first thoughts was to just run and leave everything behind so as to not bring shame to my family. Then I thought of all the questions I’d have to answer — questions I didn’t even understand the answers to.”

In his agony and darkest moment, Henry was looking for the slightest glimmer of hope and decided to talk to a priest he knew and respected.

“Thank God he took the whole afternoon to sit with me,” Henry says. “If he wouldn’t have shown his compassion and concern, I don’t know where I would have ended up.”

During their conversation, the priest emphasized God’s mercy and forgiveness.

“He wanted me to know that even though as humans we make mistakes, God’s mercy is unconditional. He does not judge us on what we do or how we do it,” Henry says. “As far as God’s forgiveness, the priest reminded me that this is something that we should ask God for. Not that we need to — God already knows what we have done wrong and the sins that we have committed. But it is one way that we as humans can make it even more real.”

So he asked for forgiveness from God — and from his family.

The Road to Recovery

For Henry and Cecilia, Henry’s addiction was very real and something they still struggle with.

They have both been in couples counseling as well as individual counseling for more than a year. Although Cecilia admits their marriage is still fragile in many ways, she never thought about abandoning Henry or her marriage.

“I take my vows very seriously and knew we would have to work through this,” she says. “We’ve had to start over on building trust, which is very hard. Henry tends to be very quiet, and he’s actually had to learn to talk and share more, so I don’t feel left out of his thoughts.”

It also helped Cecilia to realize that her husband was wrestling with a real addiction.

“One counselor explained to me that they can actually map the brain and show how addiction works and the adrenaline high shoplifters get,” she says.

Above all, Cecilia’s strong faith has helped give her strength.

“The Rosary helped me through many sleepless nights and frustration over unemployment. Attending Mass as a family also helped us to keep the normalcy of life,” she says.

A Blessing in Disguise

One of the problems with a shoplifting addiction is that the shame and guilt is so intense that people do everything they can to hide their problem.

Thankfully, Henry made the decision to face up to his addiction. In many ways, his stealing from work was a blessing in disguise. If he’d never stolen from his workplace, he may have never hit rock bottom and might still be wrestling with his “dark side.”

Instead, he confronted his addiction and with God’s grace is on his way to recovery and to healing his marriage.

“We’ve always been practicing Catholics, but since this has happened I feel our faith has pulled us closer than ever before. I find it easier to talk to Cecilia now about everything, and there’s nothing I would hide from her now or ever. I’ve seen the pain and distrust it caused her to have and I never want to put her through that again,” Henry says. “I hope that we can somehow move on to bigger and better things for the future, and I hope that my kids and Cecilia can see that I’m not a bad person but a person who has made bad choices.”

Kate Wicker is a wife, mom, and writer living in Georgia. She writes about faith and family at KateWicker.com.

Resources for Shoplifters and Their Families

ShopliftersAnonymous.com, a division of the Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft and Spending: Offers myriad resources, including telephone counseling and an online email support group.

ShopliftingPrevention.org, home of the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention: Committed to spreading awareness about the problem of shoplifting and how it hurts businesses, consumers, and family, NASP also offers rehabilitation programs and support services for shoplifters and their families.

Portrait of an addict

Terrance Shulman is the author of Something for Nothing: Shoplifting Addiction and Recovery and the founder and director of the Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft and Spending. He shares this insight into the shoplifting addict:

It’s about the high.

• “Shoplifting often begins as a spontaneous reaction to stress. People may have suffered a sudden loss, are feeling betrayed or angry about something, or they’re feeling that life has been unfair.”

• “If they can get away with it, there’s something satisfying about getting something for nothing. Even though they feel guilty, knowing it’s wrong, they often feel like they got their power back, like they made life a little fairer. Not to excuse it, but it can be very intoxicating.”

The shame is crushing.

• “For most people, shoplifting is illegal or immoral to them. They often don’t feel inclined to tell anyone about it because of the heightened shame.”

• “There are very few resources and support groups for people to investigate, so usually what they do is try to talk themselves out of resorting to the behavior again. The secret festers, and it creates a sort of internal tension that becomes very uncomfortable and unpleasant. Then the person feels like they need to get their ‘drug’ to make those feelings go away. It’s a vicious cycle.”