Tag: forgiveness

What I Know Now

I am 3 years and almost 5 months to the day after my DDay. In the scheme of life, that’s really nothing. A blip. In my heart and soul, however, it feels like decades. I feel as though I have endured a lifetime of pain. In many respects I can’t believe that it has been “only” that amount of time. I have certainly aged more in 3 years than I did the previous 10.

A newer member of this very unfortunate club emailed and asked me what the present me would say to the version of myself that existed on 12/9/17. I’d say a few things, as it turns out. Here are my top 10 in no particular order. Feel free to add any of your own advice to your DDay self in the comments.

1. I know it hurts. It’s like being fully cognizant of your own murder. Days will come when you no longer feel that way. It will take time and hard work but you’ll get there.

2. As hard as it is, don’t waste a minute on the other women. It’s easy to focus on them, but they really aren’t the issue.

3. Each bad day will pass. Relish a good day when you have one. (Good days can be fleeting too, but notice and make the most of them when they appear.)

4. Progress is NOT linear. Whether you stay or leave there will be steps forward and back.

5. The best people to have around you are those who listen well and simply offer nonjudgmental support. It’s okay for someone to say “This happened to me and here is how I handled it and how it played out.” It is less helpful to have people around you who pepper their stories with “you should” or “you must.” Be very picky about who you surround yourself with and who you trust with your story.

6. You’re going to hear a lot about self-care. Just do the best you can. Don’t feel shame if you can’t make time for a walk or yoga or meditation. Some days self-care can be as simple as showering or ordering take out. Some days it can also be crying your eyes out if you’ve been holding it in. What works for someone else might not work for you.

7. Prioritize your physical and mental health needs. It’s very tempting to pour all of your attention into your spouse and focus on getting them help to “fix” them. I won’t tell you not to work to get help for your partner, but make sure that you have good therapeutic support too. And do see your doctor. The physical impacts of betrayal trauma manifest themselves in many ways, from PTSD to Kawasaki syndrome to a laundry list of auto-immune disorders.

8. Gaslighting and lies don’t suddenly end on your first DDay. Trickle truth is real. You can be as understanding and nonjudgmental as can be and your addict may still feel compelled to lie to you. Expect it, and know that your hyper-vigilance is not codependency but a common trauma symptom.

9. This experience will change you. I’m honestly not yet comfortable with the new me, but I have a feeling she’s going to change a bit more before all is said and done. I still mourn the loss of who I was, and working through that grief is both necessary and okay.

10. If you stay with your partner and they do the work you can rebuild trust and mend your relationship. I’ll never, ever forget about what my husband did, but it appears now as an occasional dull ache and not a daily stabbing, blinding pain.

You’ll notice that there is no advice here on whether to stay or leave. I could only tell my DDay self not to make a hasty decision either way. Traumatized brains don’t function really well. I needed space, time, and some therapeutic input to be able to think clearly.

In looking over the list I think I’d like to squeak in a #11: Don’t make your needs small and certainly don’t let anyone else make your needs small. Scream from the rooftops what you need. Those around you will either rise to the occasion or fall by the wayside. Either outcome is fine. Those who wither or fail to show up aren’t worth your time, and those who support you and meet you where you are at are irreplaceable.

Aftermath – and some new trees

Handsome has been home from rehab now for over two months. The first month home was every bit as rough as my previous posts would indicate. His second month home also did not start off well.

Handsome had been living in a local AirBnB since his return from ST. I was fine with that. He was not. A few days before his stay there was due to run out (a stay which I fully expected him to extend), my son texted me at work and happily announced that Handsome was moving back into our house. You can imagine my response. He had apparently started unpacking in the master bedroom but he was clued-in enough by the time I got home that he had moved himself to our finished basement instead. We used to have a guest quarters there, but then he brought Angel Baby to our house and bedded her down there, so the bed went out with the trash. He was supposed to replace it. He never did. He was shocked to find that he would have to sleep on the floor. Oh well.

The initial days with him back in the house were like a battle of wills. The more he complained about being “banished” to the basement, the more resolute I was that (i) I was absolutely entitled to enforce my boundaries, and (ii) he’d remain in the basement till I decided otherwise. In those first days he tried everything to weasel his way back upstairs. Nope. Not happening. Apparently Doc2 told him to knock it off, and our CSAT ripped him a new asshole. It was hard for him to fuss at me when his hand-picked professionals were telling him he was in full jerk/ control freak mode.

Our in home separation was working, but strained. Under lock down conditions we were mostly managing to stay apart, but meals just weren’t working. The kids were confused, the pets were confused, and trying to stay separate seemed to cause more stress than it was worth so we resumed deliberate family meals. Smart move, it turns out, as the overall stress level in the house plummeted. The change was immediate. 

Then, very slowly, as all the professionals kept working to bring out the positives from rehab and to set aside the gunk Handsome picked up, and as his meds really started to kick in, I started to see a better version of my husband. He went out and bought an air mattress without complaint. He delved into helping around the house and with the kids. I saw signs of humility. He started coming to the grocery store getting personally invested in our lock-down meal choices. (I know that may not sound like much but pre-rehab he would leave all of the shopping to me and then sigh about what I bought. We’d have a fully stocked pantry and fridge/ freezer overflowing with healthy options and he’d complain that there was nothing to eat. No more.)

He started initiating our “Intimacy of the Day” exchanges and spending time with me, when it worked for me, just hanging out. I was actually enjoying spending time with him because he seemed healthy and “normal” again. We had CSAT sessions where we could report that things were uneventful at worst and actually going pretty well. Holidays have been fraught for us in the past, but we pulled off a lovely Easter.

Handsome also decided that he wants to do an organized full disclosure. He tells me that there is nothing new to disclose. Nonetheless, he’s (still) on Step 4 at SA and he wants to complete that step and move forward. He also knows that I’ve always been ticked that he couldn’t/ wouldn’t get through the disclosure process before. The impromptu staggered disclosures and trickle truth were devastating while they were going on and, frankly, he’s never had to sit with me or anyone else that I know of and tell them ALL of his story in one dump. He eventually seems to disclose everything, but it has been parsed out in chunks to make it…more palatable? Less likely to cause rejection?

Handsome has been working on the disclosure now for several weeks. To me, the effort matters somewhat more than content. I don’t expect that I’ll ever know everything that went on. There are likely several things he intends to take to his grave. (Remember the mysterious tampon in the master bedroom that he claimed the cat put there? Yeah, I know how it got there whether it is ever spoken out loud or not.) I am also certain that there are things he did that he legitimately can’t remember at this point. (He did a LOT of stuff and his meds have obliterated his memory.) I know how hard it will be for him to pull this off to the satisfaction of our CSAT and Doc2 though, so that effort is meaningful to me even if I wish he had been willing and able to do it two years ago before time and mood adjusting meds took their toll.

One day earlier this month, Handsome asked me to go to a local nursery and pick out some trees. (As an agriculture-related business our nurseries remain open even during the lock down.) When he asked me what I wanted last year for Mother’s Day, I requested a few new trees for our yard. Despite repeated promises, I never got them. That added  insult to injury because of his conduct on many Mother’s Days during his acting out. I was surprised when he asked me to go, but out we went and we picked out the cool Dragons eye pine (we call it the Dr. Seuss tree) in the picture above, as well as a flowering plum. To make room for them, Handsome spent hours and hours clearing two large trees in our yard that had succumbed to bore infestations two years ago. He probably could have/ should have hired someone or at least rented a stump grinder, but he put all the labor in himself to remove the old trees and stumps to make room for these new additions. I figured that they were for Mother’s Day this year. They aren’t. Handsome told me that he wants to start making amends to me and that he figured he’d start by making things right for last Mother’s Day. That was unexpected. And appreciated.

Things are getting better, slowly but surely. He is still sleeping in the basement, but the separation isn’t strained and seems to be working well. I’m not counting chickens, but I am enjoying this period of relative peace in the midst of the pandemic.

Intent

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Does the intent of our partner matter to the betrayed? To me – others may differ – the answer is “no” with one initial exception.

Handsome and I have been doing a “Transparency of the Day” exercise to improve our communication and, frankly, to get him to exercise his integrity muscles. The idea is for each of us, every day, to very briefly share something that we are feeling or that happened and that may not be obvious or known to the other. At least twice a week Handsome is supposed to share a transparency specifically related to his recovery. Most days the exercise is quite helpful. On a few days the transparency or the resulting discussion has turned into an argument, but I’m seeing that the arguments usually stem not from the transparency shared, but from the editorializing that follows.

Handsome was recently officially diagnosed with ADHD. He is 57, and the understanding that he has lived with this throughout his life – and the impacts it has likely had on everything from his distaste for school to his interpersonal relationships and his addiction – has been somewhat overwhelming for him. In particular, the fact that ADHD is so readily treatable with a variety of meds led him to sadly question whether his self-esteem, judgment, and impulse control would have been any better had he been appropriately diagnosed long ago. He wasn’t throwing out the ADHD diagnosis as an excuse – in fact he noted that it was no excuse at all – but rather he was sharing deep sense of sadness over “what could have been” if he knew and was treated earlier.

Looking back, I’m not quite sure where the word “intent” popped into the discussion, but it did. (Again, the transparency wasn’t the genesis of the debate, the discussion that followed was…) Handsome opined that I should take his intent into account in assessing his actions. I told him that his intent is utterly irrelevant to me except for my initial decision to stay and to try to re-pair with him.

Why did his intent matter then? I had to believe that he did not intend to hurt or to destroy me with his acting out (even though the harm he caused was an obvious and inevitable consequence to anyone with half a brain not mired in disordered thinking). If I believed that my husband meant to hurt me, or that his behavior was vindictive and targeted at me, I would have left. It was clear to me though that wasn’t the case as so much of Handsome’s conduct focused on hiding his secrets and keeping me from finding out the truth about him. He could not have been trying to hurt me because he never wanted me to know.

After that initial threshold decision though? I could care less what his intent is. The analogy that I drew was as follows:

– If you shoot me in the heart on purpose, I’m dead.

– If you shoot me in the heart by accident, I’m still dead.

To me, the injured party, the result is the same either way. Dead is dead. The shooter’s intent is utterly irrelevant to me. It may matter to the shooter, law enforcement, or other people, but I’m still dead no matter what.

The same is true with betrayal trauma and recovery. I really don’t care what Handsome’s intent was in striking up a conversation with the Flame. It doesn’t change the harm to me. I’m not going to try to invent some reasonableness test based on his disordered thinking. I’m not going to waste time trying to justify or figure out the crazy. I can only judge his actions for what they actually are, not what he intended them to be.

Vacation Mulligan

I went quiet earlier in the month for a bit because we packed up the kiddos and my 86-year-old mom and flew to Florida to visit a very famous mouse. You may recall that when Handsome and I tried this as a grown up get-away weekend last September, it all went to hell in a hand basket. This time went much better, even with Valentine’s Day tossed into the mix just to amp up the stress.

The first two days of the 11-day trip were not great. (I think I told Handsome that they sucked ass, to be blunt.) Handsome was tired and irritable and I started to worry that I was going to have a repeat of September on my hands in front of my mom and kids. And then, somehow, things turned a corner and got better. Very much better, in fact. There were a few stressors (my daughter is a challenging tween, my mom is a challenging senior, and my son’s relationship with Handsome is still strained… and then there’s me with all my betrayal trauma baggage), but we had fun and packed as much as we could into each day and night.

Last year I had forbidden any celebration of Valentine’s Day except with regard to our kids. This year, I leaned into it a bit. Finding a suitable card was tough, but I found a good one for Handsome and he picked a lovely one for me. He also gifted me a cute bracelet that pays homage to my favorite Magic Kingdom ride – the Haunted Mansion (everyone in my family hates that ride and I have loved it forever). We had lunch with the princesses in Cinderella’s Castle and then dinner in the California Grille on top of our resort overlooking the Magic Kingdom. It was a pretty perfect day.

We rounded out the trip with a few sunny days of rest and relaxation in Vero Beach and, thanks both to the willingness of our kids to eat pizza and watch movies and the unfortunate flu that wiped out my mom for a few days, we were able to have dinner together, alone, twice. That was a nice treat. My husband was his non-addict self and I was reminded why I fell in love with him in the first place.

I got really sad about two days before we flew home because much of the trip seemed like the best parts of my pre-DDay life. (Because, let’s be honest, ignorance can indeed be blissful.) Knowing that I was coming home to meetings and CSAT visits and unresolved disclosures and other dilemmas (our nanny of 5 years tendered her notice, and hiring a new one is a daunting experience when your husband is a sex addict), all just made me unbelievably sad. It sharply marked the difference between life “before” versus life “after” disclosure.

We were sitting at the beautiful pool, on a gorgeous day, our kids were being kids and having a blast, and Handsome asked why I looked sad. I debated my answer. I could lie or downplay what I was thinking. That seemed counter-productive. So I told him the truth: “Because this moment right now is incredibly awesome and yet it highlights for me how much I hate my new life at home.” He didn’t ask me why. (I’m sure he thinks he knows.) He did tell me that he was sorry and express some empathy. That, I suppose, is progress in and of itself.

Handsome has slept poorly every night since we got home. At our CSAT appointment yesterday, he blamed it on my statement about hating my life. He said that makes him think there is no hope and it makes him think of running away. Handsome starts researching houses to buy when he gets in these woe-is-me moods, seemingly forgetting that we’d need to divorce before he could buy a house and that he’ll not be able to afford to maintain his current lifestyle if that happens so he’s looking waaaay over his actual budget.  That “poor discouraged me” victimization crap drives me insane. CrazyKat wrote eloquently about it this week on her blog. It is indeed destructive and cowardly. It also highlights the difference in thought processes between my brain and his.

Let’s switch scenarios. Assume for a moment that I ran him over with my car. There he is, the person I say I love most in life, bleeding out in need of aid. Personally, I would be elbows deep in the gore trying to save him, ease his pain, and comfort him. After he received treatment, I would be fully dedicated to assisting him with rehabilitation or taking him to appointments, or doing whatever else is necessary for him to heal. I wouldn’t have to be asked (much less begged or cajoled). I would just do it because I love him and it is the right and decent thing to do, to try to make things right when you cause harm. I cannot even imagine running from the scene, but that is exactly what Handsome’s house hunting mode equates to. One response is pure childish selfishness, and the other is not.

I shouldn’t have to tell him that a thoughtful response to my truth would be to reflect on his efforts to heal the marriage to date and consider how he might more actively support our healing as a couple. It shouldn’t have to be spelled out for him that maybe whatever efforts he was making on the vacation – which had been truly terrific aside from the initial bumps – need to continue at home. I would think those things are obvious. Apparently not. I did ask him to read Kat’s blog post. The irony of the timing of her post, coupled with the similarity of our experiences, was not lost on him. That too is probably a bit of progress, but I’m not sure it balances out the BS that Kat describes so well. Nonetheless, I’m chalking up the vacation as a success, even if it shed light on some serious work to be done in the coming cold winter days at home.

A Week of Brutal Honesty – #2 – Regrets: I have a few (but maybe not what you think)

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This is the second post in my week of soul cleansing. You can find the first post here.

My best friend is one of the few people I have told about what is going on with Handsome. She is supportive of me, for sure, and also of the marriage (if Handsome does the work needed). She is also frank with me in a way that only a best friend can be. She asked me if I regret marrying Handsome in the first place. Hmmm…..

Do I regret marrying him? No. I don’t. I made the choice to marry him based on what I thought to be true. The lies only recently came to light. I can’t undo 14 years of marriage (and 2 awesome kids), but if he wants to continue in this relationship he needs to double down on his efforts to rebuild what he has carelessly and selfishly destroyed. He can’t just float through and be occasionally nicer to me and think it will fix everything. He needs to figure out how to show empathy without pouting. He needs to be able to articulate how he is going to work to make things better, and then he needs to follow through and do those things.

That said, I do have other regrets:

I regret the way that I handled Round 1 with the Flame back in 2012. Here was my husband, in daily inappropriate communication with another woman and, after I found out and pitched a hissy fit, I took him at his word that it was over and done with and that we were all good. I believed him when he said he was sorry. (He wasn’t sorry. He thought that I had over reacted. He had no intention of not communicating with her ever again.) I believed him when he assured me that he wouldn’t humiliate me that way again. (Ha! Little did I know…) I was upset enough to leave him over the incident. I told him that very bluntly, but I don’t think he ever believed it. Still, I didn’t insist on counseling or take any other protective steps.  That was stupid on my part.

I regret how I handled Handsome’s drinking. After this episode with the Flame, Handsome’s drinking escalated for a time. He had always had a few beers (2-3) but this is when it got really bad, seemingly out of nowhere. It was taking a toll on our family and on Handsome’s health. I grew so worried about him that I actually reached out to his dad and asked him to come stay with us and talk to Handsome about his drinking. Handsome’s dad has been sober for a few decades and still attends AA. I thought he might be helpful. He was useless. First, Handsome didn’t drink in front of his dad the entire time his dad was at our house (heaven forbid that daddy see him drink 8-10+ beers a night). His dad left thinking I was just a crazy wing nut. I also know now that Handsome’s dad is likely a key component in his family of origin issues. He is squarely in the man-box, and is seemingly incapable of empathy let alone much self-awareness. He probably couldn’t have helped if he had wanted to and my sense now is that he could never admit that his golden child is also an alcoholic (like him, and Handsome’s mom, and Handsome’s brother…). Again, I would have been better off to insist on marriage or family counseling and see if the drinking could have been addressed there.

I regret the way that I handled Porngate. When Handsome finally stopped gas lighting me and came clean, I should have insisted on counseling of some kind. I didn’t. Again, I believed him when he said he was sorry and that it was “just for fun” and that it was over. (Yep. I was such a freaking idiot!) If it was no big deal he would have owned it and brushed it off. He didn’t. Today, I kick myself for not seeing (1) that a pattern of acting out behavior was emerging, and (2) that Handsome was escalating, and (3) that he was lying through his teeth. Perhaps more importantly, I was crushed to find out about all the porn. Handsome never had to deal with that devastation. He never addressed how it impacted me. I just had to push it down inside, and he marched on and started engaging in increasingly outrageous behavior about a month later.  What followed was by no means my fault, but I do feel as though I missed an opportunity to possibly prevent things from blowing up in such epic fashion. If he had help earlier, maybe his addiction could have been identified and addressed before it got so terribly out of hand.

Finally, I regret not trusting my gut more and not speaking up for myself. I’ve written about that here on multiple occasions, and it continues to be true. I did not know about Handsome’s affair with the Whore (or all the others) prior to DDay #1, but there were things that gave me a great sense of unease and I just tamped that feeling down and ignored that gut warning. I’ll never do that again. I trust my gut now. If something seems wrong, it probably is, and Handsome no longer gets the benefit of any doubt. Quite the opposite, in fact. Moving forward I am highly likely to always side with my truth (or my sense of it) over his.  That’s his fault, of course, and perhaps it will change with proven integrity over time, but we aren’t anywhere near that yet when staggered disclosures continue to occur.

Tomorrow: A Week of Brutal Honesty – #3 – A Crime of Passion (a.k.a. Why I’ll never get picked for a jury)

Fighting for One Another

It’s been a long couple of days since we returned from our trip. Handsome and I have been civil. We pulled off a nice date night a few days ago. And yet I still had the feeling that we were both suffering, separately, and in silence lest we rock the proverbial boat.

For my part, I know that to be true. Immediately after the weekend I was simply sad about the happenings of the day and night we spent apart. It just seemed like such a wasted opportunity for us. Then, the more days that passed, I started to get ticked off. No… really pissed off… at how things turned out.

Handsome has a circle plan which, if you aren’t familiar with concept, is supposed to identify inner circle behaviors (those that are de facto relationship damaging), the middle circle behaviors (those that may lead to the inner circle and are serious enough to be addressed but which may or may not damage the relationship), and the outer circle (good behaviors used to cope in healthy ways and to help the addict avoid the inner and middle circle).  By way of example, a circle chart for a gambling addict might look like this:

As a sex addict, Handsome’s inner circle includes things like sexual contact with anyone other than me, using or viewing dating/ hook up/ massage sites, voyeurism, possessing a burner phone, etc.  His middle circle includes things like drinking alcohol, objectifying women, working excessive overtime, and unavoidable contact with any of his affair partners.  His outer circle is filled with great ideas for self-care.

When he responded to our fight by going to the hotel bar and having a few beers (thus tossing 7 months of sobriety from alcohol out the window), I was hurt. Then, I got mad. I was (am?) mad that he ran back to one of his old tricks the minute things got tough. I was mad he didn’t use a single tool at his disposal. I was mad he utterly disregarded his outer circle items. I was mad he didn’t reach out to anyone, including me, to talk him off that ledge. I was mad he felt no need to apologize for it at the time.

He talked with his therapist last week about what happened and the therapist directed him to develop a safety plan to keep in his wallet. It’s supposed to be a list of people he can call and things he can do to avoid his inner and middle circles. Sounds great, but since he threw the circle plan out the window in his time of need I’m not sure what one more piece of paper will accomplish. I know that sounds really cynical, but I can’t  articulate how stunned I was that he so readily dove back into his old behavior. The plan is worthless if he refuses to consult it and follow it when needed.

His explanation?  He says he thought it was all hopeless and that we were over. Thus, fuck it all, he’d have a beer. Why did he think it was over? Because I left our hotel. Because I told him I wouldn’t put up with the verbal nastiness. (For his part, he said the same thing to me during the fight.) To be clear, I never mentioned the word “divorce” or threatened divorce. In fact, I really don’t think that I’ve ever brought up divorce since telling him after DDay #2 that if he still loved the Flame that he should go and be with her, and explaining around that same time that I would leave and seek a divorce if his sexual acting out did not come to an immediate end. So, his rushed conclusion all these months later that we were over pisses me off. If anyone has justification to get a divorce, I certainly think I fit that category. Four affairs, years of lies, porn, bringing skanks to our home and…, and…, and…? It would surprise no one if I left, but I haven’t. I’m still here. I swore for better or for worse and this has got to be the “for worse” part, right? I’m still fighting for him and for us, and it rocked my world that he just threw in the towel at the drop of a hat.

I see Handsome’s recovery work as his way of fighting for himself. I also believe it is valuable to our entire family for him to be healthy and sober and for him to have self-esteem and confidence. When the shit hits the fan though, if he just gives up… ? After a bad but not exactly exceptional argument? I agree that the fact that we were away from home likely contributed to his excessive reaction, as did the fact that I did something different by standing up for myself and distancing myself from the situation, but c’mon… after all we’ve been through?  Is his skin really so thin?  I didn’t tap out after finding out that he was juggling all those other women and his other forms of acting out. It admittedly sounds righteously indignant, but is this the thanks I get for hanging in there? I’m angry that he didn’t care enough in that moment to fight back against his own demons for me. For us. Even for himself, for that matter.

Will we get through this?  Sure. It’s just going to take time. It’s a set back, but not an insurmountable one. We need to get back on the same page where we both feel supported and where we are fighting for each other instead of with each other.

Maybe it’s time for separate vacations?

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.

The CSAT Returns

I’m not certain that I have ever looked so forward to seeing another woman as I did to seeing our Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) yesterday upon her return from maternity leave.  We were able to meet with her only once prior to her leave, and I was confident I could get by till she returned, but it was tougher than I thought.

It has been three and a half months since we last met with her. In normal people years that isn’t a very long time, but when you’re well within your first year post DDay, it seems like a lifetime. There were new disclosures to face, accountability and boundary issues to navigate, and although progress was definitely made there remains a lot of individual and couples work to be done. In short, we need her. I need her.

As torture goes, it was a good session.

She asked me how Handsome’s sexual acting out and the partners he chose made me feel, and asked me to tell Handsome. My main answer? Diminished. I feel like everything about me and my life is “less than” because of what he did.  I am looked at with pity by those who know what he did whereas I used to be viewed as a person of strength. Dealing with the betrayal trauma has negatively impacted me as a mother and as a daughter. It has impacted my work. I have withdrawn socially. At least for the last 5 years I did not have the marriage I thought I had. I could go on.

I’m accustomed now to thinking through these thoughts and to writing about them here, but this was the first time that I actually got to express them to Handsome where he was a captive audience.

We talked briefly about Angel Baby and the CSAT asked Handsome about his relationship with her and whether it was sexual. He said it wasn’t. Since I’m sitting RIGHT THERE though, I was able to turn to him and say “… but you’ve admitted you wanted to have sex with her. You actually slept with her in a bed in our house and supposedly had an erection…?” He then fessed up and acknowledged that yes, in the end, it got sexual even if (he maintains) they never had sex.

This is going to be a different therapy experience for him. He doesn’t just get to tell his version of events without challenge. He can still minimize and deflect the way sex addicts love to do on things I don’t know about, but on anything else he cannot hide.  I think I’m going to find this to be very refreshing.

Beep beep’m beep beep… Nah…

I’m back from my month away from home. Sadly, it wasn’t all vacation as I worked remotely for three of the weeks, but a good time nonetheless. Handsome made it for almost three of the weeks and was brilliant for about the first 12-14 days. Then the wheels started to get wobbly on his bus. I started to see the anger, venting, and frustration that were all too commonplace with the old Handsome. I’ve generally only had glimpses of that at home since April, but this was like a trip back in time. My response? No more cajoling him, trying to de-escalate him or placate him. I’m done with that. I simply told him that I wasn’t having it. No way am I going back to where that’s what I have to deal with every day. I think he got the picture because he made noticeable effort after that.

We arrived home to find that he had been scheduled for 56 hours of overtime this week. You read that correctly. That’s 56 hours of work in addition to his regular 40 hour week. To put it simply, I have issues with him and overtime. It’s a trigger for me. During the prior three years he would take every overtime he possibly could because it gave him an extra 8 hours a day to act out, and he’d get angry to the point of hostility with me if there was a family related reason why he couldn’t take an offered shift.  Post DDays, he threw himself into work as an alternative to his sex addition, leading to his workaholism and the triggers it caused me becoming a source of contention. At present, our deal is that he can take overtime as long as it works for us (with our kids, activities, etc.) and it isn’t on his long weekends off or days off. He tried mightily to chuck that deal out the window this week, but I held my ground and he’s working “only” the 32 OT hours (plus his regular 40) that worked for us. He’s grumbling about it, but we’re sticking with our deal.

I was chugging along just fine till he called to tell me that he finally had a run-in with one of his skanks. I say “finally” because three of the skanks live where he works, and he hadn’t seen or run into any of them since early December. It was simply bound to happen sooner or later.

He was approaching an intersection with a 4-way stop, and saw Angel Baby in her car at one of the stop signs. He says he turned onto a side street and she took off through the intersection after him honking her horn repeatedly and flashing her lights and tailgating him, trying to get him to stop or to pull over. She continued this for a couple of blocks. He ignored her and just turned off the street calmly and deliberately at the next possible intersection. Then he called me.

I knew that call would come eventually – and I’m really grateful both that he followed through with what we previously discussed he should do in such circumstances, and that he called me right away. Nonetheless, I got cold chills up my spine and my stomach turned in knots. She still wants to have contact with my husband, even though he told her it would never happen again and was unwelcome and even though I expressed the same thing to her. Frankly, that scares the crap out of me. I’m sure she has by now convinced her crazy-ass self that he just didn’t see her car or hear her repeated honking. She has likely told herself that he certainly would have stopped if he  knew it was her… because he absolutely would have done that before (and likely taken her out for an expensive meal and given her a wad of cash). I warned him that I believe he’ll hear from her again in the not too distant future. He is convinced that she gets the picture, but if she did she wouldn’t have tried to chase him down like she was auditioning for Angel Baby Driver. I’m well served to not underestimate the level of her devious intent… or her plain old stupidity.

The Tale of the Tampon

I wanted to write here about an incident that happened some time ago, but that I’ve been forced to revisit in the wake of DDay #1 and DDay #2.  I have said that if you had told me before December 9, 2017 that my husband had a long-term physical affair, I would have thought you were crazy. That is true, but that’s not to say that I never had a period of doubt.

In the Fall of 2015, I had a work trip to LA for five days. It was a longer trip than usual by about two days, but it was across the country and I had two speaking engagements and a series of meetings and a few work events to attend. Handsome and the kids were at home. During those days, when Handsome was working, our kids were either in school or with our nanny at home. Our youngest was in kindergarten and our oldest was in 3rd grade. Handsome was home alone for several hours a day by himself while the kids were at school and the nanny was off at another job.

I got home late on a Sunday night and everyone was in asleep, so I just abandoned my luggage in our foyer and snuck into bed. The next morning was a jet-lagged blur of getting the kids dressed and off to school before I finally found myself with a few moments of peace in our bedroom. I was making the bed and I turned around and noticed… a packaged tampon resting on the window sill beside the bed. On my side of the bed. Aside from the fact that I haven’t needed a tampon in years (shout out to the Mirena inventor!! woot! woot!) it was neither my size nor my brand. It was unopened and appeared carefully placed there, at the edge of the window, closest to the head of the bed. It was, in fact, where you might put something if you wanted it close at hand but you didn’t want to put it on my very crowded nightstand.

This was post “Porngate” that I’ve written about here, and also post the first email incident with the Flame. I immediately assumed that Handsome had another woman in the house while I was gone. I took the tampon, found him in the basement watching ESPN, and flung it at his head while doing my best impersonation of a screaming banshee. I hurled accusations and he denied, denied, and denied. He seemed astounded, shocked. I wasn’t buying it. I did not believe him. I wanted to believe that he knew nothing about it, but he seemed to almost be trying too hard to convince me or, alternately, dismissive of the entire incident.

I later inquired of the nanny if the tampon might be hers (yep, that was an embarrassing conversation) since she was to have been the only other woman in the house in my absence. She was a lovely girl (completely and utterly unimpressed by Handsome so I wasn’t concerned that was an issue), but a bit of an airhead, and her response was along the lines of “I don’t think it’s mine, but I don’t know.” Now, the ladies out there likely understand that once you have a tampon you trust and rely on, that’s the one you are willing to go to three stores to find in your preferred brand/ size. It’s not something you switch up. I think she was trying to not get Handsome in trouble (even though I was the one paying her), but I was unconvinced.

Ultimately Handsome settled on the story that our cat, who likes to play with crinkly things, swiped it from the nanny’s bag and deposited the contraband neatly on my window sill. (Again, that pins ownership of said tampon on the nanny, and that is far from certain.) I never bought that story, although the cat was indeed in the midst of a streak of doing just those kinds of weird things. I would find the plastic wrap from a tissue box under our kitchen table, or a piece of foil on the stairs. The perfection of the placement though was always the nagging issue in my mind. It was tucked away on the sill, on a window the cat was rarely, if ever, on. Also, there were no teeth marks on it. None.

Handsome told me that he relayed the story to his buddies at work and lamented getting blamed for something he “didn’t do.” He laughed about it and acted as if I was crazy. The thing is, at that very moment I now know that he was in the midst of two emotional affairs and his physical affair with the Whore was in full swing. He may have been wrongly accused about the tampon (although I doubt it) but he was nonetheless guilty as sin at that moment. In retrospect I believe this was likely his best effort at gaslighting me.

Before my DDays I really wanted to believe that Handsome was truthful. I wanted to believe that my kleptomaniac cat just grabbed the wrong thing to play with and that it was all a big, bad coincidence. I never fully believed that – my logical brain wasn’t buying it – but I really wanted it to be true with all my heart.

Today, even after all of the disclosures and all of the therapy and the intensives, Handsome still insists that he has no idea how that tampon got there other than by way of the nanny or the cat. He says yes, he engaged in complete and utter shithead-fuckery, but that there was no other woman in our house while I was away on that trip. I want very much to believe that, but having been through what I’ve been through, I just don’t.  I don’t think I will ever believe it.

I believe in my head and my heart, based on Handsome’s other behavior, that there was another woman in my house while I was away. I don’t know who it was, and I guess it doesn’t matter. In my mind, he slept with the Whore or some random anonymous skank in my house, in my bed, while I was off working. It’s basically the same thing he did last summer with Angel Baby (except they supposedly didn’t have intercourse, although I don’t believe that either). I’ve dealt with that to some degree, and I’m dealing with this by lumping it into the same pot. Do I wish that I could just believe him?  Of course!!! He has 8 months of sexual sobriety under his belt. And for all I know he may very well be blameless as to this one instance and telling the truth about the tampon. But like the little boy who cried wolf he no longer gets the benefit of my blind faith and trust.

It’s his loss, but it sure seems like mine too.

Happy and hurting

This is our week of family vacation, sandwiched between three other weeks of my working remotely each day from our summer home in New England. Handsome has been here for a week already. Things are going pretty well. It is very much Trigger City here, but I’m trying to take back the places and things that were tainted by his acting out and we’re making new memories together and with our kids.

I put my big-girl pants on yesterday and went with my family to the church that Handsome and I married in over a decade ago. Despite never attending services there, I have loved this historic church since childhood when I attended puppet shows there with my dad on summer vacation.  When Handsome and I were here in February, two months post DDay #1, it was literally physically painful to look at the building. I had to turn my head when we drove past, deep pangs of pain shot through my body, and my eyes repeatedly filled with tears. Yesterday, well, I lived. I made a happy new memory with my family, but I can’t shake the feeling of sadness as I think back to how absolutely hopeful, joyful, and happy I was on my wedding day… and for years thereafter.

The beautiful windows in the old sea captains’ church where Handsome and I were married.

It’s not that I’m unhappy now. I don’t believe that I am. At least not every day. Maybe not even most days…? I feel like I’ve hit the point where I generally have more good days than bad.  If I think too much though, I still feel like a naive fool. Perhaps not so much on our wedding day, but certainly the last several years. It’s hard to shake that. Today, for example, we were at the beach and Handsome told me what an amazing vacation he’s having. Great. I thought the last 3+ years of vacations were amazing too, but now I know that within minutes of getting home from each of those trips Handsome was on his burner phone texting or sexting other women, often bad mouthing our vacation while lamenting the fact that the recipient of his attention wasn’t on the trip with him. He’s extremely apologetic about all of that now. He has 8 months of sexual sobriety under his belt. That’s great, to be sure, but it does not change the fact that these things happened and that I know about them now, nor does it change the fact that I was an oblivious fool for a long time. (Yes, I was actively and intentionally deceived, but I feel like I should have been smart enough to see through the BS or to put 2+2 together… I wasn’t/ didn’t and that makes me feel stupid. And feeling like you were stupid for years is absurdly painful and humiliating.)

I continue to tell myself every morning that I’m going to have a great day, and that I’m going to enjoy my family. Then I set out to try to do just that.  At the moment, aside from fending off the waves of sadness, my  biggest issue is that I find myself getting preemptively defensive or upset based on the way Handsome would have responded to something in the past, like a meltdown from one of our kids. I just assume that he’s going to start screaming and fly off the handle, and then I get defensive and protective. I’m not giving him a chance to respond based on the tools he now has at hand. I need to stop doing that, provided that he responds in a healthy way using those tools. That’s a goal of mine for our remaining time together. I want my hurt to stop, but I also need to be sure that I’m not currently hurting Handsome.

As we spend the next few days here in this place of natural and man-made beauty, I’m going to continue to seek out wonder every day with deliberateness and intention. Whether it is to be found in the panes of a church window that were handmade in another century, or in the rocks and shells carried by the tides to the beach, or in the laughter of my children as they play and dance in the sunshine, I will find it, and I want very much for my husband and kids to share it with me.

Dispelling a Myth or Two About Sex Addiction (hint: it’s not always about intercourse)

I am not a mental health professional. Nonetheless, having lived with a man who has been diagnosed as a sex addict by not one but two medical professionals on opposite ends of our country (including one who is far from being fully on the sex addiction bandwagon – but that’s a whole other post), and having read as much sex addiction literature (scholarly and otherwise) as the internet and Amazon can provide, I feel like I may have something small to offer here.  Maybe.

The World Health Organization’s recent decision to include compulsive sexual behavior as a mental health condition  on its International Classification of Diseases list (the ICD-11) has brought the sex addiction deniers out of the woodwork. To be clear, whether you call it “sex addiction” or you call it “compulsive sexual behavior” is mere semantics. The nature of the conduct at issue is indistinguishable.

On DDay #2, I learned that at this time last Summer Handsome was juggling me PLUS four other women, PLUS he was involved in pic collecting, voyeurism, pornography, and a laundry list of other sexual behaviors. It was instantly clear to me that something was very, very wrong. This was more than just casual pleasure-seeking and random self-indulgence. Why? Because Handsome was clearly miserable, distraught, and depressed. He wasn’t just sad he got caught (although there was likely a bunch of that going on). He did these things compulsively and rather than bringing him pleasure, they were literally destroying him. His drinking had escalated. His anger management was abysmal. He was alienating our family. He jeopardized his job to the point that I am still amazed he managed to keep that job. He looked unwell. It was like he was being poisoned from the inside out. I see this in hindsight. At the time, the day-to-day destruction was almost imperceptible – kind of like how you might not notice a parent aging and declining if you see them every day.

Imagine that you are throwing a birthday party for a friend. All the guests arrive and you head to the kitchen to put candles on the cake and you find that your spouse has cut a piece of the cake and eaten it. You might think “Wow, what a jerk.” Maybe you could write it off as a misunderstanding or a bout of selfishness or poor judgment. You would be mad and perhaps hurt, but not alarmed. Now imagine that instead you walk into the kitchen to find that your spouse has eaten the entire cake, all of the appetizers, the entirety of the main course, and that he/ she had started eating their way through the refrigerator and freezer. You would instantly realize that something was terribly, terribly wrong and that help was needed. That’s exactly what I felt like on DDay #2.

In those early days I would read voraciously and clip out text that spoke to me or that I found really helpful to my understanding of what was going on… what I was dealing with. I wanted to understand what Handsome was feeling and experiencing during the time he did these things. I was also skeptical about the legitimacy of sex addiction and yet I intuitively knew that Handsome wasn’t exactly enjoying himself… that he seemed caught up in something he couldn’t break free of. He wasn’t living like a happy man. He was using others and being used by them and, on some deep, dark level, he knew that sad fact. It just took a few months of therapy to surface.

I wanted answers to my questions. How could he risk everything? Why did it continue even though it made him miserable? I found the following text on a now defunct blog written by the wife of a sex addict [note: I just had these lines copied into my notebook without citation, but thanks to Maggie for her comment below with the correct reference to the now inactive blog “Living with a Sex Addict.” http://livingwithasexaddict.com/ and the post  “Sex Addiction as a Fantasy Addiction.”] The following paragraphs are about intercourse, but they could just as easily describe the pursuit of a voyeuristic encounter or sexting or pic collecting or the use of pornography. Handsome says that this is remarkably what it was like for him:

“…[s]ex addiction may not be exactly what it sounds like. He isn’t addicted to good sex or sex with beautiful women. This isn’t a case of him wanting “better” sex. I know this only because he wasn’t getting better sex when he acted out. He was getting terrible sex with whomever he could find or pay. The important thing for the addict is the fantasy that accompanies the act, rather than the act itself, which is often disappointing. Fantasy transports him from his real life. Sex blots out what is really happening inside him. And what is happening inside him is terrible, debilitating shame.

Why does the distinction between being addicted to sex and being addicted to sex fantasy matter? Perhaps it doesn’t. But it helps to understand the fantasy component because then it makes sense that he’d engage in sex even when his physical sex drive is low, even if he can’t get an erection while doing so, or even when he’s getting plenty of sex at home.

…The rituals that come before an episode of sexual “acting out” have been observed to be very similar to those used by narcotics addicts before taking a drug. A state of hyper-arrousal (not sexual arousal, as such, but a kind of awakened excitement of the addict’s entire being) precedes the event, and sex addicts enter a state they often refer to as “the bubble” in which they are completely consumed by the planning and execution of their next sexual encounter.

The addict then does everything he can to elongate the time that sex occupies in his mind, to stay in the fantasy. His experience of addiction begins with these first moments of anticipation. He may or may not have any specific partner in mind or any specific act, but this preamble to sex pulls him away from negative feelings about himself and his life at least for a while.

Once the act is completed (the fantasy being dashed ultimately by the awful reality) the addict despairs. First, because the act was so fruitless—he’s back where he started, the same as last time. The sex [if any] almost certainly wasn’t what he’d hoped for, and didn’t accomplish whatever he’d imagined it might (yet again). And now he’s opened the possibility that you will find out and the only real love in his life will be taken away. He regrets what he’s done. He’s deeply sorry; he has almost unbearable shame.

Even worse, he knows he is likely to do it all again.”

I would only add to this description to emphasize again that for many who engage in compulsive sexual behavior, if not perhaps most, actual intercourse is neither the goal nor the point, and not even necessarily desired. Handsome was addicted to sexual attention and fantasy. He got his hits from showering the OW with attention (texts, sexts) and to receiving attention in return. If that attention was sexual, all the better. Bonus points if it was explicit. The intercourse he did have with the Whore was short and unsatisfying, and even all the unprotected oral ultimately wasn’t worth continuing (for her at least). Would he have slept with the others if he could have?  Maybe, but he also seems to have passed up multiple opportunities to do just that. Regardless, the end result would have been the same… unsatisfying, impersonal rutting followed by deep shame. On some level, I think Handsome knew that  and so his developing addiction focused on attention, fantasy, and self-pleasure instead.

There are, without a doubt, serial philanderers and folks who simply love as much strange as they can possibly get. That doesn’t make them addicts. I don’t believe that they experience what is described above. For them, it is a pleasurable process and there is no shame because, well, they just don’t feel bad about what they’re doing. They enjoy themselves and find pleasure beyond the encounter in their actions. They aren’t embarrassed and, while they might not want to get caught, that’s due more to their concern about consequences than to any deep internal shame. That certainly doesn’t describe Handsome or the other men he has encountered in his recovery.

Did Handsome enjoy driving by the Whore’s house to see her flash her boobs at him? In that singular moment, yes. And then sometimes minutes later he would be screaming at himself in frustration because the hit had passed, the momentary high had gone, and the shame train came barreling into the station. He’d resume texting her and sexting to try to stave off that bad feeling for as long as he could. In those fleeting moments he felt wanted, or at least special enough for a trashy married mother of three to stand topless in the dirty window of her dilapidated house and play with her nipples for him and the neighborhood to see. Now, in hindsight and after months of therapy, he sees it for what it was: desperate, pathetic, and just like a heroin addict chasing the proverbial dragon no matter the costs.

While there was a part of Handsome that hated having to come (partially) clean on DDay #1, there is another part of him that felt abject relief. He was exhausted, literally, trying to keep all of the pins he was juggling up in the air. (With my dark sense of humor I occasionally joke that most guys can’t deal well with one woman, let alone FIVE, on a daily basis, so what guy in his right mind would even try.) A part of him wanted desperately to just stop doing what he was doing, but he lacked the fortitude to make the break on his own. As with other addictions, he would make a mental decision to stop, only to slide back down the slope into the compulsive behavior. Having Fire Dude “out” his affair with the Whore to me was the shove he needed to end everything. It was his NARCAN revival moment – a second chance at life. It still took him several more months to come clean with his disclosures and he made a half-hearted effort to cling to a few last vestiges (saying goodbye to Angel Baby, dragging his feet on the letter to the Flame, etc.), but he says that he has had zero contact – other than sending the no contact letter to the Flame – in almost 9 months and maintained sexual sobriety throughout that entire time, and I believe that to be true.

Sex addiction deniers spend a lot of time on the issue of withdrawal, but I think, again, that this misunderstands the nature of the addiction. Does Handsome miss the skanks? He says not and I don’t think he does. I believe he does, however, miss being fawned over throughout the day, each and every day. He misses that attention factory. He misses the constant “hits” throughout his day. How can I tell? He is more obviously emotionally needy. (Something I never, ever detected previously over our 15+ years together.) Early on we also had to focus a bit on gratuitous touching versus that which is timely, appropriate, and mutually pleasurable. There are clearly some gaps where the addictive, compulsive behavior used to reside, and we are working on filling those gaps with healthy, positive thoughts and behaviors. It is a work in progress.

Will Handsome’s world end if sex addiction/ sexually compulsive behavior doesn’t gain further traction as being “real” in the sphere beyond the WHO? No. Handsome is more than his diagnosis. He is making strides in his recovery. It is, however, an added challenge to conquer a problem when you start behind the 8-ball because others deny that your problem even exists.

 

 

 

 

 

The surprising benefits of celibacy

I know you’re seeing the title and thinking “BW has lost her damn mind.” I haven’t, I assure you. I have, however, done something I initially mocked as ridiculous and found it to be a very worthwhile, if challenging, experience.

Before Handsome headed off to see Dr. M a few months ago, I was in touch with Kat from Try Not to Cry On My Rainbow, and she was getting me up to speed on the likely post-intensive after-care that might be recommended for Handsome. Among other things, Kat mentioned a period of celibacy. I was aghast. Neither Dr. M nor Handsome had made any mention of such a thing. Was anyone going to bother to consult the wife? (I was completely pissed at what I perceived to be more decisions that affected me being made without my input.) I thought, if a betrayed wife was actually willing to be intimate with her husband, why would you put an end to that? Why interfere in that aspect of the relationship? It seemed silly, short sighted, and frankly a bit patriarchal to me.

Handsome went to the intensive, came home, and began implementing all of Dr. M’s recommendations… except that one. We, together, avoided that one like a hot potato. We joked about it, actually. Then I had my post-intensive follow up call with Dr. M.  He had recommended that Handsome not just stay sexually sober for three months after the intensive (which does not require that one abstain from sexual intimacy with their spouse), but that he actually maintain complete celibacy during that time. I was fully prepared to grill him on that, but when I asked him to explain his reasoning he stated very simply, “Because Handsome has to learn to cope with emotions and day-to-day existence without relying on sexual conduct, even if that conduct is with you.” Oh. Well, yeah, that made a ton of sense. It was so obvious and so simple, yet I had missed the point entirely.

We did not, to be fair, immediately get on the celibacy bandwagon. We talked a lot about how beneficial the intensive was and how helpful to Handsome’s recovery other recommendations seemed to be … and then we bargained for another weekend or a few more days of togetherness. Finally, we ripped off the band-aid and went cold turkey.

We have a few final weeks to go on the recommended three months. Has it been easy? No. In fact, for me the whole process is somewhat triggering because it reminds me on occasion of the months Handsome chose not to pursue any kind of intimacy with me while he was acting out with others. I tell myself that at least now this is a choice we are making together.

Has it made any difference? Much to my surprise, yes! I can say emphatically that it has been beneficial for Handsome and for me.  How so?

-I can see Handsome struggle with feelings, really experiencing them and not shoving them aside. He is learning to actually process them. He has, at times, been overwhelmed by his emotions, and yet he has used his non-sexual coping mechanisms and made it through just fine. (For someone who relied on masturbation as a release/ self-soothing tool for decades, long before we ever met, this is a HUGE deal.)

-He is more emotionally connected to me and to our young kids. Our kids have noticed this and commented on it.

-He is more self-aware. (Not ideally so, yet, but far better than he was.)

-It has helped Handsome realize that he can have physical contact and tenderness with me without it leading to intercourse. This has been an issue for us as I once told him in frustration “You know you can give me more than a peck on the cheek even when we don’t have the time or energy to have sex,” to which he replied “What’s the point?” We now have hugs, hand holding, kisses, and touches throughout the day just because we can, not because sex is expected or anticipated in return.

-Any purely gratuitous sexual behavior has mostly stopped. (No more untimely and inappropriate boob grabs or the like.) More specifically, it is so obvious now that we can both call it out for what it is as soon as it’s apparent. His overall behavior has normalized.

-Seeing him vulnerable and working hard on himself serves as a reminder to me that this is a person I love and that although he did horrible, offensive things, he is more than those actions. He is more than the worst things he ever did. (So are we all.)

Have we been perfect in this endeavor. Nope. I admit we fell off the wagon once. It was during our couple’s intensive weekend and while it was lovely, in retrospect, I think we both wish that we had held out. Am I looking forward to the day when this exercise concludes?  Yes, but I’m really glad we went through this experience. I think it helped Handsome move further down the path to his own recovery and it has helped me to see him in a different, more vulnerable, light as well. Celibacy always seemed like such a draconian concept to me, and I thought this was going to be punitive, but in this case it has been well worth a few weeks of our time and a couple of brisk showers.

Moving Beyond the Affairs

Like Olaf of Frozen fame, I love warm hugs. From the front, from behind… wherever. I think a good hug is like a tactile reminder of comfort and security and, in the right circumstances, of love.

I got lots of hugs this past weekend. Some great, some I’m still chuckling about. More on that later.

Handsome and I headed off to the Healing From Affairs intensive weekend put on by Anne and Brian Bercht from Beyond Affairs. I was really tense in the days leading up the intensive, and I wasn’t sleeping well at all. Handsome signed us up for the intensive back in January after DDay #1, and we had a couple of phone sessions with Brian over the last few months. In those sessions I found Brian to be a down to earth, frank, no-nonsense guy to talk to, and I wasn’t put off by his history as the betrayer in his marriage to Anne. They appear, by all public measures, to have healed both individually and as a couple. Given where I’m at right now, I laud them for that. It’s inspiring.

There were 20 couples in attendance and my only shock was that so very many of the couples were in their late 50’s and 60’s and measured their marriages in numerous decades and grandchildren. There appears to be no expiration date on infidelity. Among the betrayed spouses, the collective group faced physical and emotional affairs (some, only one such affair, others a few, and several faced many), porn addiction, use of paid sex workers, and a myriad of other horrors. Two of the betrayed spouses were men. One commonality? People can be freaking resilient. While there were spouses there all along the “stay or go” continuum, and at various points away from discovery, not a single one was operating from a position of helplessness.

This was a full weekend of activity, with each night running past 10:00PM. As with any program like this, there were parts I wasn’t crazy about (for example, sex addiction gets short shrift but is at least acknowledged and discussed). For me, the most impactful part of the weekend was a talk that Brian gave where he literally walked the group through each step of his affair, showing how it started innocently enough and then, over time, how his boundary of what was acceptable versus not acceptable moved to accommodate where he was at the moment (cognitive dissonance), and ultimately how he ended up far on the other side of his own boundary and felt “stuck” there. It was deeply personal, raw, and was a much more articulate way of explaining what Handsome has struggled to explain to me. Most importantly, Brian didn’t try to justify or to normalize how he got from one side of his boundary to the other or to make excuses for it, he just told his story.

We also did a vulnerability assessment (for the 18 months prior to the start of the affairs) and Handsome and I broke the scale apparently. On a scale of about 0-168, with 0-10 being low risk of an affair, I think our score was 125 or so. Ouch. While our current vulnerability level is quite low, based on the assessment there are definitely things we need to be mindful of over time. I think it’s something that we’ll do from time to time just to stay on course as a couple.

I left feeling really glad that we went. It was an expense we didn’t need, but it taught us several new tools we can use and it opened each of our eyes to new things and it certainly increased the level of empathy we have for one another (and I had been thinking that we were doing okay on that front, but we are doing even better now).

Now, those hugs…

I’m not a “let’s hold hands and sing Kumbaya” person. I’m just not. I can do it if I’m compelled to, but that touchy-feely thing with strangers just isn’t me. There are a number of times during the intensive when music is used to communicate a concept. On the last full night of the intensive, just before closing the day out, they played a song (it was some 80’s hair band anthem Handsome and I found terribly corny, but the lyrics were on point for the night) and the couples were encouraged, if they were comfortable doing so, to hug one another deeply. Fine. Handsome and I are enjoying the hug with my hands around his neck/ shoulders and his hands (I count them…one, two…) around my waist, and I’m enjoying the moment and then… hey, wait! One, two… three? I felt a new arm on me. Again, I count Handsome’s hands in my head and I’m thinking WTF!, but before I could start throwing elbows I quickly realize that it’s just Anne joining us in a surprise group hug. Handsome apparently had the same reaction I did, and I think Anne is likely oblivious to how close she came to getting pummeled. 🙂 We’re still chuckling about that one…