This picture is the view from my hotel room on Sunday night. Unfortunately, it was not the room that I had booked months ago with Handsome. It was a room that I had booked less than an hour earlier after Handsome left me sitting on a bench, by myself, at our resort. One Uber ride and a couple hundred bucks later, I at least had a safe place to lay my head.
I should stop being amazed at how quickly things in my life can go from “great” to “hell in a hand basket” territory. You would think I would have learned by now, but no. As I sat in my unexpected home for the night I could not grasp that my husband was sleeping somewhere else. I could not fathom that he hadn’t called to see whether I was safe or to ask where I was. I couldn’t believe that our vacation devolved into disaster.
About 96 hours earlier we had been sitting in our CSAT’s office talking about how I was struggling with the triggers surrounding the trip and what I perceived as Handsome’s lack of empathy and deflection relating to those triggers. When we left there, I thought we had worked through a lot of the issues and I was (cautiously) optimistic about the weekend.
A day later we had happily packed for our trip, driven to the airport, and found ourselves at the first of two hotels we planned to stay at over the weekend. Twenty minutes after arriving we were at an outside bar/ restaurant waiting for our room to be available and Handsome started to get highly agitated and to complain about everything (the heat, the bugs, why isn’t the room ready, etc.). I said something like, “we just got here. Are you going to be upset about the heat the whole time, because we knew it was going to be hot, right?” He looked me square in the eyes and responded flatly, “It’s not like I wanted to come in the first place.”
He should have just slapped me. It would have hurt less. Knowing how completely insecure I was about the trip after last year, it was a brutal thing to say. Either it’s true and we shouldn’t have bothered to take the trip, or it was a lie but targeted to inflict pain. So, twenty minutes into the vacation and I’m already having a good cry. In public.
We managed to salvage the rest of that day, but the following day he went through a bout of acting like a turd because he forgot to bring a backpack to carry all of his stuff. Evidently that was my fault or at least enough of my fault to elicit swearing and fit-pitching like a toddler. Cue more waterworks from me (who pre-DDays normally didn’t cry). I kept thinking that what was happening was exactly why I was worried about traveling with him. He apologized, but “I’m sorry” doesn’t just wipe away a bunch of hurtful words. I sucked it up though, pushed the feelings down deep inside, and we ended up having a fine day.
Saturday, it was my turn to get snappy. It was incredibly hot and humid and we went into a building to sit down and, although there was plenty of room, Handsome sat so close to me that his shorts literally lapped over on top of my thighs. He could not have gotten any closer to me without actually sitting on my lap. I was sticky and sweaty and grumpy and I think I gave him an eye roll and said something about him not leaving me any room. Apparently, although he can get ticked off whenever/ wherever, I am not permitted to display any negative emotion without it becoming a national calamity. He sulked, he pouted, he didn’t speak to me for over an hour. It was utterly absurd. (Right now I am sure you are thinking “my goodness BW, what an entitled asshat he is” and on this trip you would be completely correct. This is acting out era Handsome, not Handsome 2.0. Post DDay I would see flashes of this behavior, but it has been relatively infrequent. He must have stored it up just for this trip.) We pretty much recovered and ended up having a good later afternoon/ evening, but I was exhausted feeling like I was on an emotional roller coaster.
The next day, the wheels just fell off our bus. They say that timing is everything and, in this case it surely was. We had a lazy morning in bed and Handsome was talking about how he wanted to go visit his hometown sometime soon. We talked about when that might happen and what we might do there. All good. Then Handsome told me how he really wants to visit the place where he went on summer vacations as a kid. Sounds fine, except that place had been the subject of a blow-out argument we had about two or three months ago wherein I flat out told him that I would never ever go there. I did not tell him that he couldn’t go or that he couldn’t take our kids, but I was abundantly clear that I would not go. (To make a long story somewhat short, my refusal to go stems from his repeated acting out in our summer home and how he tainted my “happy place” with impunity. As of right now I won’t go and celebrate his happy place when he shat all over mine.) I might have been less reactive to him bringing it up if the circumstances were different (like we weren’t in bed together) or if he appeared to give a crap at all if bringing it up might be triggering for me, but that didn’t happen. And the day fell apart from there. After completely ghosting on me for about 5 hours, by around dinner time he was so mouthy and defensive and blaming everything on me that I just couldn’t take another moment of it. I packed my bag, dropped it with the bellman, and went off to find dinner. I didn’t hear from him.
I reached out to our CSAT and basically asked what I should do. Leaving my SA husband alone seemed like a bad idea, but I also didn’t think I needed to stay and have the weight of the world dumped on me. She suggested that I try to talk to him, so I texted him and asked him to meet me. He came but was just angry and hostile. He admitted that he spent the previous few hours sitting in the hotel bar, drinking (there goes 6 months of sobriety from alcohol). I tried a dozen ways to get him talking and to try to reach past that impervious armor of callousness, but I was getting nowhere. I finally realized it was almost 10PM and I didn’t think he had eaten, so I mentioned it to him because I was concerned that the restaurants would close and he’d be starving. He just got up off the bench we had been sitting on and walked away from me off into the night.
I managed to collect myself enough to get the bellman to find my bag and to get into an Uber. Unbeknownst to me, Handsome apparently watched me leave. I didn’t see him off in the shadows. He said nothing. He never asked where I was going. I simply got a text from him at 1 in the morning telling me that he was sorry that he squandered the opportunity to talk to me. The next day – the last of our vacation – he asked me to please come back to the hotel to meet him. When I got there he hugged me and started crying and apologized profusely for the night before. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until about 5PM that he even asked where I had spent the previous night.
We made it through the remainder of the day (we actually had some fun) and flew home together. He apologized again this morning for “ruining the vacation.” For my part, I’m just very sad. I’m sad he threw 6 months of sobriety from alcohol out the window at the drop of a hat. I’m sad he didn’t/ wouldn’t call his SA sponsor. I’m sad he didn’t/ wouldn’t try to participate in a phone meeting or an online meeting. I’m sad that he didn’t try to call me, even though he was mad at me, to try to talk through things. I’m sad that he did not use a single tool at his disposal to help him deal with whatever was going on inside his head. I’m sad that the high I normally get from travel is just stunningly absent this time around. I can’t shake the feeling that I wasted three vacation days and that if this is what vacationing with my recovering SA husband means, I’d rather go alone.
(((Hugs))) to you, my beautiful friend. My heart filled with sadness reading this, and aches along with yours. I wish I could run right over with a box of tissue so I could share the tears with you. Or throw the box at the wall. Whatever you need. ❤️
Thank you Cynthia. Hugs are good always. We had our weekly CSAT appointment today and talked through a lot of what happened. There are no good answers. Just a lot of maybe missed opportunities to keep the wheels from falling off the bus. Hopefully we can do better next time.
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I’m so sorry to read this. Take care of you xxx.
Thanks Paula!
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Oh hun, I am so sorry. These guys just don’t know how to deal with their shit, but I really hope he learns how to – and soon. I wonder if he had actually stopped drinking? His behaviour sounds an awful lot like withdrawal.
How are you taking care of yourself right now? I’m available now/anytime for a facetime if you need to see a face who understands ok?
xo
I so very much appreciate that offer. I’m okay now. I think he had managed to not drink for the last 6 months, but I also believe that he underestimates the draw that alcohol has on him. Here, he clearly fell back on it to cope with his emotions and what was going on. And that’s exactly the reason he shouldn’t drink. Our CSAT started to explore that with him today, but we ran out of time.
Just taking it one day at a time at the moment. I hope all is well with you.
xo
The offer is always open BW xo and thank you, I’m actually in a good place right now, I definitely feel a shift towards the light ❤️
Run to the light !!!!! Run!!
lol
Enjoy it. Being in a good place is infinitely better than the alternative. ❤️
I’ve run so fast people think I’m Usain Bolt!
I’m sorry it was a difficult trip for you. I can relate to your apprehension in going and then to have it go south is such a disappointment.
I remember almost a year past D-Day when my husband would take me out for dinner in order to get us back to a semblance of normalcy. On a couple of occasions he would say something innocently that would trigger me and we would finish our dinner and rush to the car before I burst into tears and him holding in his anger, which was really frustration.
Triggers suck. Their embarrassment/remorse sometimes turns defensive and angry. Hopefully Handsome re-discovers his tools to deal with his issues and gets back on the wagon!
xoxo Dolly
Yes Dolly, triggers do suck, don’t they. The wave of raw emotion can be just so overwhelming it literally takes your breath away. I have faith that Handsome can get back on the literal and figurative wagon, but this is a set back for sure.
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This is really sad, but I understand it from both of your sides. Usually, I read you entries like he’s the bad guy, but there’s something about going on vacation, away from your stuff and the life you know that I can relate to here. It’s a lack of control. Forgive me for playing armchair shrink here, but it seems like the weekend was nothing but a giant power/control struggle. It seems like he was having trouble not controlling the situation and you were having trouble not controlling him. It sucks that he broke his sobriety, but for him, it was a defiant act of control in a situation where whether it was heat, insects, or the thought of a future trip, he saw himself as having no control. Being away from home probably made that feeling even worse. I know it well. It’s like, “If shit goes bad here, I don’t know my first move” and that’s scary. If not being home threw him off-kilter, he may have needed to exert extra control to feel centered, even if that’s just complaining. I don’t know. This just made me kind of sad for both of you.
I appreciate your perspective. I think the drinking was absolutely a defiant act of control, especially since we had just talked at length with the CSAT the day before the trip. There were other choices he could have made. I’m sad he made that one. I think he is too.
Was I trying to control him throughout the weekend? I just wanted to get along and not rock the boat, but I did get snippy with him on Saturday for sure. I kind of felt like I’d had enough. I’m not perfect either.
I do try mightily to be fair to Handsome when I write. It is hard, to be sure, because I am still licking my wounds and those wounds run deep. Nonetheless, I try to laud the great things he does or is doing. I also try very hard to be sure to tell him those same things in person. I want him to know that I see the changes, the effort, the hard work. And I do know that this is all difficult for him. I try to be mindful that seeing my pain is a reminder of the crappiest things he’s ever done. That has to be tough to live with, especially when you’re staying and trying to get better. It’s just that here, when the shit started to go bad, I would have hoped that he would recognize that his first move shouldn’t be to drink or act out, but to reach out for help. I can’t make him do that or will him to do that, of course. He has to get there on his own and it just didn’t happen this weekend.
Let me ask you this. As you know, I’m writing the next book geared to wives and girlfriends who just went through discovering their partner is addicted to porn. I know sex is different, but same city, different part of town.
I’ve interview a handful of therapists and they keep saying the same thing. If you’re in a situation where he is trying his best, he’s doing the work and he’s not slipping, at some point, the partner has to decide to let go of the resentment. Like they have to make an actual decision to let things go. I thought like grief, it would be something that dissipates over time, and they say for some it is, but for others, they either agree to let it go or the marriage eventually ends because it can’t be fixed. Do you think these therapists are correct?
Well, I’m only 6-7 months out from finding out about my husband’s compulsive behavior (DDay #2). I think that still makes me a newbie, so take my response for what it’s worth. I do, however, think the therapists are basically correct. I believe that it is very much like grief where you can either process what has happened and move forward or you get stuck or mired in it and it becomes “complex grief.” I believe some betrayed spouses get similarly stuck. If the betrayer is doing everything they could possibly do (proven behavior over time) and you still can’t stand to look at them or touch them years past the betrayal, that’s a bad dynamic. It’s unhealthy for both parties.
That said, where I perceive a disconnect is the window of time someone may need to work through these issues. For example, if a betrayed partner is still struggling 18 months in, I believe that’s perfectly normal even if their spouse has been on his/ her best behavior since DDay. I would think that a good rule of thumb is that the healing shouldn’t be expected to take less time than it took to inflict the harm. So, if someone cheated/ acted out for a period of years the spouse shouldn’t be expected to process everything, release the resentment, and forgive in a matter of months. I believe it’s unfortunate that spouses read about these “timelines for healing” and get frustrated when their healing isn’t on the same path or they feel pressure to heal by a date certain. There are so many variables that it seems really very hard to peg a precise time to say “you should be fully capable of coping with this by now” that suits everyone across the board.
I hadn’t thought about a timeline for healing, but I could see the fallacy of trying to create an artificial one. Thank you for sharing your opinion on this. It does help me get additional perspective.
In situations like you describe, all you can do is take care of yourself. You did that by leaving and getting your own room. You know very well that you can’t hurry his recovery. All you can do is focus on yourself and do what you need to do to take care of yourself. Clearly he is struggling, or at least he was that weekend. He needs to learn to reach out to his group members, sponsor, accountability partner, therapist, etc. for help and not take it out on you. But that’s his work. You need to take care of you. My sponsor would say, as she did many times to me, “detach.” There’s a book on detachment that helped me, that my therapist recommended, “Let Go Now: Embracing Detachment” by Karen Casey. I even downloaded on my phone and referred to it often back then. LOL xoxo
It’s funny… in that moment I didn’t see it as detachment or enforcing a boundary, but in retrospect it seems that’s really what I was doing. I never exactly contemplated what that would look or feel like. I separated for my emotional well being and it was also a consequence of his inner circle behavior (that, at the time, he was utterly unapologetic for). I don’t want to say that it felt good, but it was oddly comforting to remind myself that I could be okay no matter what.
Thank you for the Karen Casey book suggestion. You always suggest the most terrific materials! ☺️
Xo