Catching Up

I’ve been gone for a minute. I needed Summer to regroup and repair my soul a bit. I thought I was coping well enough with my mom’s passing and with the car accident my daughter had that seriously injured my husband. In retrospect that might have been a little wishful thinking. It was a lot, all in a very short time span. I probably didn’t process either of those events very well at the time.

I miss my mom. Holy heck do I miss her. We often battled and she was a tough cookie, but I know she loved me fiercely and always had my best interests in mind, even when we disagreed over what those best interests actually were.

I have been at my (usually) happy place since mid July. In my entire life I have probably never been here for more than a week or two without one or both of my parents. Their absence has left me reeling. I have such amazing memories here with them. I’m trying to rely on those to carry me through. It helps, certainly, but the grief still comes in hard, powerful waves at unexpected times. Even the smell of the beach can bring me to tears if I don’t brace myself. I really feel a bit adrift without both of them. Not lost, just… unmoored. Like I’m trying to find where I belong now that I’m untethered from them. I’m a 53 year old orphan. That’s tough to get my head around.

I’ve had another major life change too. Handsome had to retire from his job due to his injuries from the car accident with my daughter. (I am so lucky and grateful that no one was killed. It was that bad, and easily could have been much worse.) His retirement has me losing sleep for multiple reasons. First, losing an entire salary two years before our eldest heads off to college wasn’t in the fiscal game plan. Not even close. Second, although he has been really wonderful for multiple years at this point, I do worry about him getting bored and spiraling.

Let me explain. I have a dear friend married to a lovely man. He has multiple degrees from Ivy League schools and, before he met my friend, he had an amazing work history. He gave up his last (to die for) job to move to a small Midwest city to be with my friend and he simply fell out of the job market. He went on dozens and dozens of interviews and nothing materialized. (He was often told that he was over-qualified and/or that they couldn’t pay him what he was worth – even when he was ready to take any offer.) After literally years of rejection, they decided he would stay home and she would work outside the home. Cool. I have no issue with that. But if you spend a few hours with this couple you see the mental and verbal gymnastics my friend does to make her husband feel valued and important. We all like to feel valued and important but I don’t have the bandwidth to pump someone’s ego up every day. I can’t fake not knowing how to do something so he can jump in and save the day. I need to be able to make decisions for certain things on my own without prior consultation. (Not big things, but small stuff… what doormat to buy or what flowers to plant, etc.) Most importantly, he can’t wield a credit card like a light saber when I’m the one actually paying the bill. I’ll be certifiably miserable if I have to deal with this with Handsome. I recognize that may be uncharitable and bitchy but I know myself. Valuing his contributions to the household and showing legitimate appreciation is one thing, but having I would seriously resent having to coddle him.

Fortunately, Handsome has been running his tush off shuttling children, running errands, and overseeing major construction on our home (that we contracted and paid for before the accident). He literally hasn’t had time to be bored or feel unimportant. I’m not sure how long that will continue. He has been sober since DDay, and has given me no reason (in several years) to be wary. But recovering addicts are still addicts. It would be cocky to think otherwise. I don’t know if he can find fulfillment in being a stay-at-home dad or if the absence of adrenaline rushes from work will take a toll. (His therapist jokingly told him to teach kids to drive if he’s desperate for a rush.)

These are both “new normals” that are going to take some adjustment. I’m game, but I’m also exhausted from the weight of these things on my shoulders. I know I’m still grieving. And I’ve always been okay being the primary breadwinner but being the sole breadwinner is a unique kind of pressure. It’s no one’s fault. My mom fought valiantly to stay alive and Handsome didn’t cause the car accident and had no intention of giving up his career. Things just happen. Life happens and it isn’t always filled with sunshine. I get it, but I’m already wishing 2023 out the door and hoping 2024 will bring more peace and perhaps some joy.

Unexpected Consequences

On my DDay, almost four and a half years ago, my children were 8 and 11. After assessing who knew of Handsome’s behavior and what the possibilities were of the kids learning anything, I made the decision not to tell them about their dad’s infidelity and sex addiction. There was simply no reason for them to know.

Handsome was drinking often before DDay. While they never saw him drunk, they did see him drink daily. We did have some discussions with the kids when he stopped drinking about why he made that decision. We also talked to them about why he went to Sierra Tucson for 6 weeks for mood disorder treatment and what he hoped to accomplish after his inpatient stay.

Here we are these few years later and, while I still believe that not telling them about his infidelity/SA was what was right for them (given our particular circumstances) I now see some unintended consequences of that decision. Namely, all of Handsome’s prior bad behavior witnessed by the kids has a reason attached to it in their minds. Dad drank too much so of course he was miserable. Dad yelled a lot because he couldn’t regulate his emotions. Dad didn’t have the meds or the skills he needed to control his moods.

Those reasons are true. But…

The cherry-picking of what my kids know vs what they don’t know means that they have some context for his behavior whereas I now see that they have zero context for mine. During an argument, my now 15 year old daughter said “It’s like you woke up one day a few years ago and just decided to be mean.” 💔 I just wanted to hold her close and say “no, darling… one day your father tore my heart apart and irreparably changed me. He took my peace, my patience, my sense of humor, and my sense of self-worth. I’m still working on getting those things back and it’s hard and sometimes I still struggle. Sometimes I fail.”

That lack of context occasionally means that I get blamed for the consequences of my husband’s actions. One child expressed frustration recently that we don’t stay home for Thanksgiving (which would be a trigger for me). I was seen as the one making that decision and thus got the blame. Handsome had to step into that discussion to say “I ruined Thanksgiving at home for mom, so blame me and not her.” They assumed he meant that he ruined it with his drinking, so the explanation was accepted. That doesn’t work so well though for things like “why is mom so quick to anger” or “why does mom startle so easily?” How do we explain my CPTSD when they only know half the story?

Telling them now is unacceptable for the same reasons that were valid 4 years ago. I’m not going that route. They just don’t need to know. It is frustrating though that in my efforts to preserve their relationship with Handsome I seem to have unintentionally harmed my relationship with them in the process. Could we just blame everything on his drinking and call it a day? Sure. It just doesn’t explain everything.

Perhaps the problem is that I’m not the right person to address the issue. Maybe Handsome needs to step up more, like he did when the matter of Thanksgiving came up. That was incredibly helpful. I don’t mind being the “heavy” with my kids when it’s needed and appropriate, but I didn’t anticipate catching flak for things I can’t really control.

Support or Sabotage re: Sex Addiction

I recently stumbled across a site called sisterhoodofsupport dot org .  I’m not going to link to it because you can find it yourself if you want to after reading this. I am actually speechless. If you all knew me in real life you would understand how monumental that is. I literally argue for a living.

I don’t know the woman who runs the site, but someone clearly peed in her Cheerios at some point. She claims “By 2011 my [old] website marriedtoasexaddict dot com was bursting at the seams. Tens of thousands of women visited the site each month and were asking for a private place to discuss their experiences. They needed a place away from the prying eyes of the public and their families. A place where they could feel safe sharing the most intimate details of their ordeals with others who understood. In February of 2011 The Sisterhood of Support was Launched.” Hmmmm… “tens of thousands of readers” (a claim she states more than once) yet only a few comments and no substantive back and forth discussions on posts. And, in spite of the name of her old site and the mission of her new site, she flat out denies that sex addiction is real.

I’m actually marginally okay with the addiction deniers. There are crazy people everywhere and as long as they don’t force me to join them, they can do as they please. I am, however, indignant when someone with no applicable expertise tries to pass themselves off as an expert. The author/host backs up her opinions by stating “Because of my medical background I also bring a vast amount of scientific research.” Oh really?  She was (is?) a nurse. Nurses are awesome. My mom was a nurse. I love nurses. I am, however, unaware of any RN degree that comes with a psychiatry or psychology degree, or even a deep dive in the DSM. According to the site her medical background seems to have been in hospice care. There is  no peer reviewed research on her site. None. And yet she makes proclamations like this:

It’s one thing to tell a Partner “Hey, nothing is for certain. He might relapse. He might not.” That would be fair. Telling someone to bail upon the discovery of their spouse’s acting out because “long term change simply does not happen” and using one’s “medical background” as some indicia of authority or expertise??? That is seriously screwed up.

I’m 25 months out from my first DDay. Had I found that site back then? Holy crap. And sadly, the few stories that accompany the blog posts are heart breaking. Partners are reaching out, looking for facts and support, and what they are getting is nothing more than doom and gloom. She somehow manages to make ChumpLady look like Little Suzie Sunshine by comparison. I’m surprised she doesn’t accept ads from divorce lawyers.

To be clear, I don’t think that any partner of a sex addict should be hoodwinked into any assurance that their spouse will recover or that they will stay sober. I also don’t think anyone should put all their marbles in the “my marriage is so much better post-affair” hopper. Maybe it will be, maybe it won’t be. It all depends on what it was truly like beforehand and how much work both parties put in post-discovery and every day of your life thereafter. To me it is also true that there is a sex addiction industry blossoming that includes a number of questionable practitioners and methodologies. That said, the mantra of “Abandon hope, all who enter here… [insert wailing sounds]” seems a bit hysterical. And like sour grapes.

I agree with her that there is a lack of peer reviewed research on sex addiction and the benefits (or lack thereof) of certain treatment methods. Her position that data can’t come from surveys or statements from the addicts themselves, however, would invalidate almost all studies of psychological and psychiatric issues, including those regarding betrayed spouses. There is no objective, observable measure of my trauma, for example. You have to ask me about it and I have to tell you or describe it to you. A researcher would need to depend on me to be truthful and/ or build in a margin of error to account for untruths. The author/ host simply can’t have it both ways: citing Dr. Minwalla on one hand (whose own research involves partner interviews), and yet undermining and invalidating addict interviews on the other.

I fully and freely acknowledge that my own husband may fall flat on his face and our marriage may end. Only time will tell. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t think Handsome knows for sure either even though he would bet the farm that he won’t relapse. That being said, this “expert” certainly doesn’t know – or have any legitimate basis to know – and is in no position to make these absurdly definitive proclamations.

2 Years Later – Life Goes On

My world imploded at around 11:00PM on December 9, 2017. The next four months of my life were pretty much a complete sh*t show. It wasn’t until DDay #2 that I really grasped that my husband’s behavior crossed a line into compulsive sexual behavior. (CrazyKat had pegged it earlier, but I couldn’t grasp the truth of it until the facts were laid bare before me.) That was a turning point of sorts, but December 9th is the day that triggered everything that has flowed forth thereafter.

Last year, I was pretty much a mess in the week leading up to the anniversary. I was irritable, sad, quiet, angry… and just generally lacking balance. This year was better. Not great and not without issue, but better.

At worst, I was somewhat agitated on the 8th. On the 9th itself I felt like I had a heavy cloak on all day. It was as if there was this invisible weight I was carrying that I could feel but no one else could see. It didn’t distress me. It didn’t hurt. It was just… there.

It happened to be a particularly stressful work day as I had my compensation meeting for next year. (Each December we have to make a case to one of the firm muckety mucks about what we should be paid and why for the next year, back it up with data, and then we wait about 7 weeks to see if we were persuasive enough.) I was a little scattered, but I thought that overall the meeting went well. It just so happened that Handsome and I had tickets to one of a series of literary lectures we attend, so we went out for dinner together and then to the lecture. That was probably a good thing as I believe the change of scenery and routine was helpful.

Last year, Handsome tried to ignore the day and make believe it didn’t exist. That didn’t go well. It felt as though he was ignoring my pain and distress. To be fair, I hadn’t asked him to do anything, but I felt like he should have known. This year, after we got home and put the kids in bed, he approached me and said “I know these anniversary days are really awful. If there is anything I can do to make it better, I’ll do it. I’m so sorry I caused you all this pain.” It was sincere. It didn’t sound like he was regurgitating something from his sponsor or therapist. He remembered that just ignoring it hurt me. It was a meaningful gesture.

If you told me two years ago that a DDay anniversary would come where I wouldn’t be a wailing mess, I’d have thought you were nuts, but 24 months later that seems to be the case. I still bear the weight of the history of the day, but it doesn’t control me. I have changed and grown. I am certainly stronger than I suspected back then. Rebuilding myself is an ongoing process and Handsome still has a lot (A LOT) of work to do on himself, but I do recognize and take some comfort in how much progress he has we have made.

Fear & the Future

My recent emotions about Handsome are no doubt heightened by two other issues in my life. After 4 months of mammograms, ultrasounds, ductograms (yep, it’s a thing), MRIs and the like, I was told that I have a small mass in one breast that requires some attention.  I’m seeing a wonderful surgeon. We did an MRI-guided biopsy and, blessedly, it’s not cancer. Surgery may not be necessary unless my genetic testing reveals that I carry  either of the BRCA genes, but she is still withholding judgment on a definitive plan of action.

My thoughts on this? A part of me is scared, for sure, but I keep telling myself that it’s no big deal until the doctor tells me otherwise. It does, however, feel like just one more sucky thing to have dumped on my plate.

I have updated my advance directive to make my 86-year old mother my representative. I know she has my back, has fine judgment, and that she would carry out what I want. Could Handsome do the same? Today, probably, but I’m not putting those eggs in the Handsome basket right now. His judgement until recently has been alarmingly off, to say the least, so I’m better off to rely on my mom. It makes me sad to say that, but it is what it is. (For the record, it’s not that I think he’d have an itchy trigger finger on pulling the proverbial plug. Quite the opposite, in fact. I fear he wouldn’t pull it if it needed to be done.)

To be fair, Handsome has stepped up in the way that I deserve and need from him. He attended all of my appointments, even taking off work to do so. He sat with me and held my hand while the IV team turned me into a human pin cushion last week. He has been gentle and thoughtful and caring.

It could be worse. We’re catching whatever this is early. I’m in a city with fabulous health care options. I do have great insurance and a supportive – if often dimwitted – husband. I don’t want to board the “Why me?” train, but c’mon… sex addict husband, HPV, and now this? My gypsy great grandmother believed that bad things happen in threes, so maybe this is the end of the bad luck? Maybe I’m due for whatever good luck is out in the ether? I hope so because if that whole “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” thing is true then I’m afraid someone upstairs has grossly misjudged my capacity to cope.

I’m also turning 50 tomorrow. It’s fine. I’m not exactly bummed about it (cake!), but I’ve been more reflective than usual. Half my life is in the can. I think I’m a kind and decent human. I’m happy with my achievements and accomplishments. I enjoy my job and find it rewarding. I have two healthy and great kids. My mom is still here and reasonably healthy. I have everything material that I need and a whole bunch of stuff I simply wanted. Our cat doesn’t hate me. The only thing I long for is a mentally healthy and stable partner. Handsome is coming up on two years of sexual sobriety so there is a part of me that feels like a jerk for complaining, but I’ve seen firsthand that sobriety isn’t the whole enchilada. It’s the baseline essential item,but I need more from him.

Handsome knows this. He just had a surgery that will keep him home and off work for 3-4 months. He is pouring himself into his recovery work. Some things are going better than others (Anger management work = good, Step work = not so much), but he’s dedicating serious time to it each day. He’s going to try ADHD meds and see if they make any difference. He’s getting to more meetings and making calls. I am starting to see him shift back to a healthy place. He had the epiphany a few days ago that it’s not my job to ensure he doesn’t get “hangry”. Seems like a no brainer to me, but you’d have thought he invented the wheel. He realized that for all of his adult life he has abdicated responsibility for his own needs and unilaterally delegated that responsibility to others – some who were incapable of meeting those needs and others who simply aren’t responsible for them. He was really sad and frankly embarrassed as he realized he’s been acting like a demanding toddler for years.  It’s hard to see him realize what a mess he’s been (and for how long) but if this leads to some lasting growth and improvement it will be the best birthday gift he could give me.

Intent

Image result for intent

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.

The Gum on my Shoe Returns

Yep. She’s baaaaaack! (No thanks to Handsome.)

It seems like ages ago that I last wrote about the Flame and the havoc this woman created in my marriage. Twice. After our DDay #1, when I learned that Handsome had been communicating with her again by text for nearly 3 years, it was crushing. It was actually worse than his physical affair (the one I knew about at the time) because I knew that she actually mattered to him. He had pined away for her for almost 30 years. He admitted that he thought she was “the one who got away” for him and said that a part of him would always love her. I was squarely in my angry stage, so I think I told him to take that part of himself, stick it up his ass, and move to a hotel. That didn’t happen, but he did eventually send her a short and to the point no contact letter – in his own unique handwriting so she would know it came from him. He sent it to her at work. I sent a copy to her husband (sorry, not sorry).

Time flashes forward to the present. Our son, who is outwardly pretty chill, started to develop some odd habits in the late Spring (not wanting to touch door knobs or share certain items, coupled with a big increase in hand washing). We scheduled him with a therapist to evaluate him and see if it’s just a phase or an issue of concern.  The week before Labor Day I was away at my happy place, so Handsome took him. He walked into the waiting room and BOOM, there sits the Flame with her son.

Now, if I had the ability to write the script of how this played out, my sex addict partner would have taken a seat in the furthest corner of the large waiting room, ignored her, read his Kindle and kept his damn mouth shut. Alternately, if overwhelmed, he would have grabbed our son and fled. (I would have gladly paid the therapist’s late cancel/ no show fee.) Or he could have called his sponsor. Or called me. Or something. Just crossing paths with her – although surprising because she lives far from the therapist’s office – isn’t a problem because in his circle plan that’s just unintentional contact with an affair partner. He didn’t do anything to cause that contact.

Handsome, however, didn’t follow my script. For that matter, he didn’t follow the script he previously agreed to numerous times and that we actually role played with our CSAT, knowing that he’d likely encounter some of his APs at work. (If approached he’s supposed to say “I have nothing to say to you. Stay away from me,” and walk away.) Nope. And he ignored his circle plan and shifted the incident from unintentional contact with an affair partner to intentional contact. Handsome admitted that he approached her and asked her to go out in the hall with him AND THEN HE APOLOGIZED TO HER.

Recall that the first time he allegedly cut off contact with her, he called her to apologize for MY behavior for calling her out for her three months of highly inappropriate messages with him. He left that door open to future contact by parting on good-guy terms. He knew full well how incredibly disloyal, disrespectful, and flat-out wrong and hurtful I found that to be then. And I wasn’t wrong. That “I’m so sorry my wife is such a nut” apology set the stage for a 3-year emotional affair. Imagine how I feel about him doing it again?

Did he disclose this to me that day? No. The next day? No. The day after that, during which we had a long conversation about transparency and honesty? Nope. He told me the day after that – four days after the incident. In the first iteration of the story he said he spoke to her because he knew he needed to lay the groundwork for doing his Step 9 amends. When I blew my gasket about that (talking to her for the purpose of continuing to communicate with her??? wtf?) he walked that back and said that no, he was actually trying to do his amends with her right then.

Folks, he’s still on Step 4. He’s nowhere near Step 9, hasn’t discussed Step 9 with his sponsor, and WHY ON EARTH DOES THIS WOMAN GET AN AMENDS???

I think the women my husband cheated with deserve the miserable lives they lead, but I can dig up a sprinkle of empathy for most of them because he lied about everything to them and they bought it. They got suckered. (They suckered him too, but that’s because he was an absolute fool.) This woman, however, knew better. She knew he had a wife and kids who loved him. She knew we weren’t living apart or getting divorced or anything else. She still became his affair partner, cheating on her own husband in the process.

While it is true that there is room in Step 9 for amends to affair partners, the amends are subject to the important exception “when [doing] so would injure them or others.” I am the embodiment of the injured “other.”

I went all kinds of bananas. I moved out of our bedroom and when he asked me after a few days when I was moving back in I calmly replied that I’d move back in once he found a new place to live. He cried. It must have terrified him because he reached out to our CSAT and she saw us for an emergency session on Labor Day.

He has no good explanation for what he did. He claims he panicked and didn’t think though any consequences. His new therapist read him the riot act for that (hurray! the Doc would have spent weeks convincing him he shouldn’t feel bad for making “a stupid mistake”). I think he understands – as much as he is capable of doing so – that he deeply hurt me again.

As a basic condition of him remaining in the house (because in my mind his bags were packed) he has to have daily contact with a recovery resource. So far, he’s been diligent about it, but let’s be honest… that’s no big thing. Our CSAT and the new therapist are putting their heads together which feels much more reasonable to me than the Doc who was so intent on going it alone that he had to be begged to even talk to Dr. Minwalla after Handsome’s intensive with him. I am fine. My head is in a decent place. Our marriage is very strained, but we are talking normally and doing normal things – just with zero romance, affection, or sex – and he’s trying to figure out why his recovery plummeted. (There was no slow descent out of a healthy place. It’s like he fell off a cliff.) I’m dealing with my own betrayal trauma. He can deal with the circus of his recovery. Or not. He didn’t initiate seeing her (the reason our CSAT implored me not to toss him out) but he did initiate the communication with her to try to manage her image of him, yet again, which is frightening to me. It’s imperative to him that she thinks highly of him, even if it destroys me in the process. He denies this, but I think his actions prove otherwise.

If there is a silver lining here, it’s that apparently her home and marriage are in a sorry state. I had to ask the receptionist to move our standing appointment with our son’s therapist to avoid seeing the Flame each week and she let slip that the Flame already switched days to avoid Handsome. She apparently claimed that he “devastated her life” thus necessitating her son’s therapy. (Um, more likely her son needs therapy because he has a traitorous ho for a mom, but… whatever.) If Handsome did destroy her life somehow?  Good. Karma sucks.

Summah (as they say in New England)

Vacation mood.

In July, as of my last post that month, things were crazy at home, but calm and peaceful at my happy place. I had a few weeks of bliss there after I arrived.That stayed true. Mostly.

The packages from the unknown woman came to an end sometime in early August. Handsome handled them and dealt with Amazon while I was gone and whatever he or Amazon did seems to have worked. There were 20+ packages by the time it was all over, but none for the last month.

Since I blocked all mail.com emails, I’m also not directly getting the emails someone sends me with videos and photos of Handsome at work. I checked my junk folder last week and there were several in there, but they seem to have stopped a few weeks ago as well. I didn’t open them so their content remains a mystery, but that’s fine. Those I saw in July before I blocked them showed nothing of note.

Handsome did come up to my happy place for a few weeks of vacation. To be blunt, the first five days were simply hell. He was not in good recovery when he arrived (still sober, but nasty and hostile) and he made everyone miserable. We had an emergency call with our CSAT on the 5th day. During the call, when he saw how distraught I was at his conduct, his tune changed… a little. He was less harsh, but still not quite the guy working hard on his recovery that he was in late Spring. We did have some really good times with our kids though, including a beautiful day on the water for a whale watch.

There was one gigantic triggering event before he left that derailed me for longer than I care to admit. Our daughter was ill, so while she was resting we took our son out for the day. He picked up a stuffed whale toy at the National Park gift shop. He names all of his stuffed friends so, on the way home, he was asking what Handsome and I thought he should name the whale. I’m volunteering silly names like Blubber and Whaley and Shamu, and Handsome picks up the suggestions with “…or Natalie or Sarah or Angel Baby… .” Yep. Let that sit a minute. My husband suggested that our son name the stuffed toy after one of his APs. Mind you, I’ve never heard of Natalie or Sarah, but I can guess who/ what they are and I certainly know who Angel Baby is.  I had a real, immediate, full blown PTSD reaction. I knew Handsome and our son were still talking, but the sound seemed like I was hearing it under water. Everything slowed till I could hear my own heartbeat. My vision became blurry. I thought I was going to vomit in the car. I was trying to remember my grounding techniques but it had been ages since I had to use them. They were just out of my mental grasp.

Fortunately we were less than a mile from the house. Handsome knew he screwed up royally. He apologized and then tried to joke me off the ledge when we were alone (he often thinks if he can make me laugh or smile, we’re all good… not true). It took a few days to try to work through that pain. I’m fine hearing that same name in any other context and from any other person and I’m even fine using her name to discuss her with him. Coming completely out of the blue and out of his mouth (and to our son, nonetheless) it was like a shotgun blast. Do I think he intended to hurt me? No. I just think it was an incredibly thoughtless addict thing to do/ say. We did get back on track, but when his departure day came, I wasn’t at all sad to see him go. It was a relief.

I had a chance to see a few friends while I was away. These are people with whom I’ll always have a connection, even though we mostly keep up to speed via Christmas cards and an occasional email. I’ve known them for 30 years. In talking with them and having them ask me about certain things (like “where’s your camera?” since I was never without one) I realize how I’ve steadily made myself smaller to account for Handsome sucking all the life air out of the room. I resolved to quit doing so. Immediately. About 4 weeks out from that realization, I’m doing pretty well making time for my interests and my needs. I’m also shopping for new cameras.

We had a CSAT appointment just days after I returned home. It wasn’t pretty. I was far more emotional than I normally am, and I didn’t hold back. I left in tears that day, and emotionally exhausted, but I felt good having spoken my mind. It gave me strength which I would very much need just a few days later.

[By the way, my son ended up naming his toy Whaley, thank heavens. Can you even imagine if I had to hear him saying that name constantly??]

 

It only seems like I fell off the face of the Earth

The beach at my happy place.

I haven’t written here in almost two months. That’s probably not a good thing as blogging here is a part of my own self-care. It’s also not because there was nothing going on. Summer was a bit of a roller coaster. I’ll write more on that later, but just know that at this moment, in this instance of time, things with Handsome are okay. Often, they are quite good. He’s actively working his recovery (meetings, outreach to SA contacts, therapy) and he finally – FINALLY – switched from the Doc to a psychologist who is a highly experienced CSAT.

That last bit simply had to happen. I think the Doc had a lot of insight into Handsome and he certainly helped him through a lot of things, but my sense was always that he was ill equipped to address Handsome’s sex addiction. Could they devote weeks to delving into Handsome’s family of origin and early upbringing? Sure. Was it helpful? No doubt it was in certain respects. Did it help with Handsome’s integrity disorder? No. Did it help with his resentment towards me? No. Did it help him transition from dry drunk to a place of good recovery? Not that either. Handsome just needed something more… and thankfully he agreed to try this other, well regarded psychologist to see if he might be able to bring whatever was missing to the table. He came to the conclusion on his own that he needed to make the switch, so it’s a resentment-free transition. We’re only a few weeks in, but I’ve seen enough differences and improvements to make me hopeful.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might wonder why I’d ever have hope about my husband. I had dinner last week with a fellow blogger and this question came up in discussion. While my husband’s addiction was apparently always a part of our relationship (unbeknownst to me), 2012 is my defining line for my husband “before” and “after.” If there was no “before” version of Handsome, I would have walked 20 months ago (or, frankly, earlier). During the roughly 11 years we were together before 2012, not everything was perfect, but I didn’t suspect his addiction and enough was spectacular that it all balanced out to what I thought was a really good marriage and partnership. Handsome was present and an active and enthusiastic parent and partner. By way of example, our son contracted bacterial meningitis during delivery and was hospitalized for 46 of his first 48 days of life. After he was allowed to come home, 18 months of weekly in-home occupational therapy followed to ensure he stayed on track developmentally. Do you know how many of those 78 in-home sessions I attended? Exactly one. Handsome swooped in and made it his mission to ensure that our son got the services he needed and that I had one less thing on my plate. Not only did he schedule and attend every session, but he did all of the work with our son in between the visits. Spending copious amounts of time with an infant is taxing on anyone, but add in our son’s needs at the time and what Handsome undertook (and accomplished – our son is now a healthy 4th grader who counts swimming, lacrosse, flag football, and Tae Kwon Do among his loves) and it was noteworthy.  He did all of that while also staying present and involved with me and our then-toddler daughter. Life didn’t revolve around him. It revolved around our family. I’m happy to add that’s just one example of the awesome, loving, giving, supportive things he did before his addiction knocked the wheels off our bus.

I have hope because that’s the guy I married. That’s the guy that I know – because I saw through proven behavior over time – my husband can be. Our Summer had some great times, but it also had some very raw, rough spots. Recovery isn’t linear. As I write about the incredibly crappy times we just went through, understand that my hope for the future is based on a very real and long term past. Just bear that in mind as I bring everything up to speed in my next few posts.

Another Anniversary

Yesterday was our 14th wedding anniversary. Last year, I forbade any mention/ reference to/ acknowledgement of the day from Handsome. It was simply too much to bear. It was too soon.

This year, I thought I was doing okay with the concept of acknowledging the day in some way. Over the weekend my mom wanted to go to this fancy schmantzy jewelry store in the city to have work done on a ring. Handsome and I drove her and while she was handling her business I was checking out the Mikimoto pearls and Handsome was off looking at watches when the sales lady came up behind me and said, “Hey, I hear it’s your wedding anniversary this week. Congratulations! How many years is it?” (thanks mom!) I did the math and answered her and then the walls closed in around my brain. I have zero recollection of how, exactly, I extricated myself from the store. I seem to have “lost” about 15 minutes of time as the next thing I knew I was across the street in a shoe store. I don’t think I fled. I went on autopilot of some sort. My brain just shut down.

Our CSAT helped me drill down on the problem. We’ve been married for 14 years. For at least 5 of those years my husband was actively engaged in acting out behavior related to his sex addiction (initially emotional affairs, masturbation and porn, and escalating after two years of that to physical affairs, massage parlors, escorts, etc.). I am terrible at math, but 5/14 means that more than a third of my marriage was not much of a marriage. I was all-in and thought he was too. He wasn’t.

Her advice? Stop counting years for a while. Ignore the number and simply take a moment to appreciate each other here and now. That 5 year window is just too overwhelming for me at present. It may be for several more years. In the future, hopefully the “dark years” will get swallowed up by good years book-ending them on both sides. It’s good advice.

I don’t want to just erase those years from my memory bank because there are so many awesome memories from that time (our son ages 3-8, our daughter ages 6-11, my last months with my dad…), but it is still painful to know that my reality was being manipulated. I was real though, and so were my kids and friends and other family members. I rely on that to move forward.

I took the CSAT’s advice to heart. It did help. Stepping back and focusing more broadly on the big picture and where we are at right now was absolutely the perfect suggestion. Handsome seems to be in a good place at the moment. I am too (most days). Our kids are happy and healthy. Rather than focusing on the anniversary as a marker of the duration of our relationship, I’m choosing to look at it as honoring the first step in the creation of our family. That is something that I can be proud of and happy about. It’s something I can celebrate.

One Step at a Time… Literally

Shortly after our DDay #2 – about a year ago – I was communicating online with another partner of a sex addict and she related that her husband had been active in SA for several years but had only completed Step 1 and Step 2 of the program. I was kind of baffled and couldn’t help wonder if she was being played or strung along. Why would it take him so long to work through the Steps? Why not make progress if he could?

Fast forward: As of April 9th, Handsome has 18 months of sobriety. He has attended SA for 13 months. The number of Steps he completed? Zero.

I was feeling like a hypocrite. (I know, I know… his recovery is his recovery, not mine… I do get it. And I know that 12 Step isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but if you pick that as your path to recovery shouldn’t you actually make the effort to work the Steps?) I stewed in silence wondering whether Handsome really had any interest in recovery. I pondered whether I was being played and strung along. I mostly kept these thoughts to myself, but every now and again I’d ask him whether he thought I was giving him 12 years to complete the 12 Steps. He always assured me that he was working on it.

This morning, Handsome completed Step 1 with his sponsor. I don’t really think there was ever any sincere doubt that he is powerless over his sexual compulsion and that his life had become unmanageable, but it took as long as it took for him to make the effort to complete the Step. Handsome reports that he feels tremendous relief to have completed Step 1. I can’t really relate, but I’m glad he feels good about it. He has planned with his sponsor to meet a few times over the coming weeks and complete Step 2 by the end of next month.

This has been a good couple of weeks for us. Not perfect, but peaceful and mostly happy. We are connecting pretty well and he’s making a lot of effort, both with me and with his recovery. That’s good. I know it can be fleeting at this stage, but I’ll gladly bask in it for as long as it lasts.

Beware the Ides of March (Part II)

To the extent my last post made it seem like I’m handling things with aplomb, I am not. In addition to being sullen and petulant, for the past two weeks Handsome has also been extraordinarily contrary. I am seemingly incapable of providing a correct answer or opinion to save my life. Everything I have done for the last two weeks has been wrong, apparently. This, combined with the HPV and my mom’s health issues, has taken a toll on me.

One week ago, Handsome and I had the worst fight we have ever had, hands down. I had taken my mom to the doctor that morning and it was a miserably unfortunate appointment. There was not an ounce of good news to be had. I drove her home and stopped to check in with Handsome. He saw me walk in the door and immediately returned to fixing his lunch without a single word to me. I asked if he wanted to talk (no kids around) and he basically said that he didn’t think there was anything to discuss. In hindsight, I should have seen the futility of continuing and I should have walked away.

I didn’t do that, of course, so we ended up in one of those fights where I ask repeatedly why he’s giving up and throwing our family away and he says that he doesn’t know what I want from him. It was ugly. Again, I should have walked away. I didn’t. I was convinced that if I just found the right mix of words and said them in the right order that he would “get it” and … well, you can imagine the foolishness and futility of that endeavor.

And then the argument shifted… almost imperceptibly at first. Rather than the vacant stare and shrugged shoulders and “whatevers” I started to hear statements filled with deep resentment. Things about how I’m trying to change him as a person and he doesn’t like who I’m trying to turn him into. (Um, yeah, you’ve been a selfish liar and a philandering addict and I’d very much like you to have integrity and empathy… my bad, as I thought that’s what you wanted too.) Statements about how not everything that happens to me is his fault (well, the HPV certainly is, asshole). Rants about how there is no point in him calling any of his SA or intensive support people because no one is going to tell him how to feel.

I asked him if he was more interested in protecting himself and his pride than he is in preserving his family. He looked at me with the dead-eyes stare that I’m sure you’ve all seen, gave a little, insolent shrug of his shoulders, and said “I guess so, maybe.”

I am utterly humiliated to say it, but I completely snapped. I lost it on him. If I could put my hand on it, I threw it at him… medicine bottles, a tape measure, the tv remote, his Kindle and phone. He made the mistake of passing by our son’s lacrosse stick, so I grabbed that and nailed him on the arm and shoulder with it before I fell into a sobbing, snotty heap in our foyer.

I cried because he’s biting off his nose to spite his face. I cried because he’s going to hurt our kids and he doesn’t seem bothered. I cried because they are truly innocent victims in all of this. I cried because everyone loves him but he doesn’t love himself. I cried because everything has gone to hell since I shared my HPV result with him. (why?) I cried because he has acted like the HPV is some burden I’m unjustly inflicting on him. I cried because he has broken me.

I never throw things. I think it’s ridiculously childish. I don’t tolerate my kids throwing things. I don’t hit people. Ever. I don’t recall ever hitting another human being in my life. (I don’t even like to point at people for goodness sakes.) And yet I hit him, beating on his arm with my fists. Did he intentionally provoke me? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think it’s more likely that he just grossly overestimated my ability to hold my crap together in the face of all of his insolence, and the other stress and drama.

I left the house to create some space and returned later and I apologized profusely for my behavior. I owned what I did completely. I did not blame him for causing me to snap. He said he deserved it and probably more. (Far be it for me to suggest that, but since he mentioned it… ) And in the days since then? More of the same detached, disinterested, woe-is-me behavior. He did call his sponsor that day. It didn’t seem to help. He had a chance to go to his preferred SA meeting on the weekend. He chose not to go. No journaling. No phone calls to his SA buddies.

Five days later, at our CSAT session yesterday, late into the hour, he referred to me as an abuser. Technically I did abuse him that day, even if it lasted for mere seconds. (If the shoe was on the other foot there would no doubt be comments suggesting that I get a protection from abuse order or get him into anger management counseling and the like.) He told the CSAT that I injured him. I don’t actually believe that to be true – he has absolutely no bruising or other visible signs of injury on his arms or shoulder (the only places struck by me or anything I threw at him that found its mark).  He said that I didn’t apologize “enough.” He may indeed feel that way, but I did apologize profusely and sincerely and with great remorse. I gave him the kind of apology that I always hoped to receive from him. Unfortunately, he didn’t choose to hear it. As I have long suspected, he is not willing to show me the kind of grace that I have been showing him for the last 15 months.

I believe that an apology has three important parts: acknowledge what happened, express sincere empathy and remorse, and make some kind of reparation or atonement. With his own apologies, Handsome struggles with the second step and never manages to get to the third step. Ever. I am trying to make my way through those steps, not solely for him, but because they are important to me. They are important to my own integrity. That behavior is not who I am. (Or is it now? Have I really been damaged and changed that much? My god that’s sad if it’s true.) It is certainly not who I want to be. As easy as it would be to blame him, the years of Handsome’s acting out and deceit and manipulation don’t justify what I did. Explain it, perhaps, but not justify it.

Last evening was blessedly better as he seemed to be trying to get himself back on track. I noticed that he had taken his journals to work (where he normally writes in them) and he had called someone from SA. In a quiet moment I apologized to him, again. He cried and told me how sorry he is that I have to deal with whatever the HPV is going to throw my way. He assured me that we would deal with it together. I hope that is true. He made it to a meeting and came home visibly more grounded.

Was this a “rock bottom” event for us as a couple? I think so. I certainly cannot see myself – cannot allow myself – to sink any further. I cannot wallow in a miserable place. I need to rise, to be the person I was/ am/ want to be so that I can be the mom/ daughter/ friend … and wife… that I know I can be.

The Angry Wife/ Jean-Baptiste Greuze

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.

Dopamine Strikes Again

I have suspected over the last 14 months that terrible news is having more of an impact on me than I’d care to admit. I hear it and it mostly just washes over me, and yet I seem to live in a perpetual state of just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I sense that I have grown more fearful and apprehensive generally. I was not, I don’t believe, a fearful or apprehensive person prior to DDay #1. Quite the opposite, in fact. I spent months traveling alone in a third world country as a young single woman without much of a care. A few weeks ago I had to pop an Ativan just to board a plane to attend a work meeting an hour-long flight away. I believed this unfortunate development was just the residue of trauma, but based on an article I read, it seems there may be something more to the story.

“When you experience stressful events, whether personal (waiting for a medical diagnosis) or public (political turmoil), a physiological change is triggered that can cause you to take in any sort of warning and become fixated on what might go wrong.”

Yep, that’s me in a nutshell. And what triggers this reaction, you ask? Dopamine. After living with an addict and now reading this article I’m beginning to think of dopamine as the root of all evil. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that affects many things; most significantly, pleasure. When our brain is working normally, we receive a positive reward in the form of pleasure from dopamine induced by things like normal eating, drinking, and sex. Of course, humans like these dopamine bursts so if we find ways to increase our happiness and pleasure – like more eating, drinking, and sex – and some of us go to extremes to keep the hits coming. Just as dopamine feeds our pleasure response, apparently it also feeds fear and dread. So that very thing which fueled my husband’s addiction also makes me fearful. Awesome. Betrayal and infidelity are truly the gifts that keep on giving.

The article makes complete sense to me. Hyper-vigilance isn’t just obsessively checking up on your spouse or cyber-stalking. It can also be the plain act of sensing danger where you wouldn’t have considered it before.

After Handsome returned from his intensive I learned that he gave his phone number to many people he met there, including one woman. She was one of about 8 people he ate meals with each day. To say that was an error on his part is an understatement. It should never have happened. When she asked for his number he should have politely wished her well but declined. Nonetheless, I’m mindful that Handsome has long had female friends and colleagues who appear to have been legitimately “just friends.” That never troubled me before. In fact, I thought it was healthy. Now, where women and my husband are concerned I sense overwhelming danger.

You might say “well, yes, but that’s based on your betrayal experience” and that is completely true. It is also true, however, that for all I know this woman was 70 years old and covered with warts. He never said. I didn’t ask because it doesn’t matter. If she’s female, she goes into the “threat” category. I am, indeed, fixated on everything that might go wrong. I dread the other shoe dropping.

I’m glad this “neural engineering” as the article calls it, helped our ancestors to survive. Perhaps it is even helping me to survive the onslaught of other women and my husband’s addiction. I only know for sure that it is exhausting to anticipate danger everywhere. While I am glad that I am no longer living in ignorance, I have to admit that I do miss the bliss.

Help wanted, please!

Our CSAT has given me some homework for next week, and I would like to request your help. We had a good and very productive – but highly emotional – session with her yesterday. In advance of our next session, I am supposed to create a list of needs that I consider to be baseline needs from Handsome in order for me to stay in our marriage.

Here is what I have so far, ranging from the subjective to the more quantifiable/ provable:

  • truth (Stop lying!)
  • fidelity/ loyalty
  • respect
  • integrity
  • empathy/ compassion
  • exclusive love
  • intimacy (emotional and physical)
  • healthy selflessness (demonstrate that you can be self-sacrificing – not a martyr – for the benefit of others without the expectation of something in return)
  • give me your first and your best
  • sobriety (sexual/ alcohol)
  • full disclosure
  • financial and other transparency
  • complete and abide by an updated circle chart
  • post-nuptial agreement
  • annual STD testing
  • ongoing weekly attendance at individual therapy
  • ongoing weekly attendance at SA meetings
  • participation in group therapy if available
  • ongoing weekly CSAT appointments
  • stop engaging in other behavior that’s harmful to the marriage (e.g. deflection, minimizing, workaholism)
  • dedicated time to talk about the marriage/ check-in
  • dedicated quality time (i) as a couple and (ii) with family

This is where you come in, dear readers. I’ve pondered this list till I’m bleary-eyed. What am I missing? No matter where you are on your journey, and no matter whether your spouse cheated once or is an addict, please let me know in the comments what you think I’m missing – even if it might be aspirational. What would you ask for? Similarly, if there is something on the list you think shouldn’t be there, let me know that as well.

I should note that Handsome is doing a lot of this already. The list of what he isn’t doing is fairly small. There are, however, significant things on that list.

As always, I look forward to and appreciate your thoughts.

Dissecting a Marriage to Foster Healing

My marriage satisfaction timeline

I decided, just prior to Christmas, that I was done pulling punches with Handsome. I was in crisis mode – and thus we were in crisis mode – and I needed him to understand how bad I thought it actually was (particularly after he lied, again,about breaking his sobriety from alcohol, again). It appears that he received and understood the message. Just in case, I reiterated it with our CSAT and she has drilled into him that he is seriously at risk for blowing the most meaningful relationship he’s ever had. His individual therapist has done the same. I cannot say that it will matter in the long run, but I am confident that he cannot say that he didn’t know/ understand/ realize that I have reached my breaking point.

I say that honestly, but the interesting thing is that I’m reasonably sure that I’m at peace where I’m at. Yes, if he screws up again he’ll be working on his recovery in a bed-sit far from his kids and me, but I know that’s on him and not me. Yes, things could still end up in flames. Again, I feel as though he has been given every freaking opportunity possible to succeed. If he fails, it’s not on me. I have not given up… not at all. I’m just placing the burden of his recovery where it belongs: on Handsome.

One thing that he shared with me recently is that he feels like his recovery is in fits and spurts because he struggles to avoid getting burnt out or bored after a bit (this is the adult ADHD in effect). We realized that, to a degree, things were more productive when we were task oriented. You would think that would be easy for him since he is supposed to be working the 12 steps. He asked for other things to be added to the mix.

One of the tasks that we were supposed to do for our couples retreat last year was a marriage timeline. We did cursory ones at the retreat and, to put it mildly, they were quite different. Handsome’s was more or less a straight line along the “highly satisfied” axis, while mine started to look like a roller coaster starting in about 2012 when his acting out started (unbeknownst to me). I think we were each stunned to see the other’s graph. I couldn’t figure out how/ why he would cheat – relapse into his sex addiction, really – if he was so “highly satisfied” and he seemingly had no idea that I was truly unhappy so often during the time he was acting out. We clearly needed a more careful discussion to really share what was going on with each of us. We finally had that chance. That’s my actual timeline at the top of this post. I’d love to tell you that the discussion went well. I can’t. It didn’t (but it turns out  okay in the end).

Prior to 2012, the only big dip in my satisfaction with our marriage came when I found out that I was pregnant with my son. (It really wasn’t a slide to that point as the timeline seems to indicate… that’s just a function of the milestones mapped out. It was a sudden drop.) It wasn’t that I didn’t want another child… it was simply that I had just figured how to balance one small child with a full-time job and the rest of life and I found myself suddenly overwhelmed trying to figure out how to keep it all together with the addition of a second child. Handsome seemed to think it was no big deal, and I felt like he ditched me to figure it out on my own. It was not until our son acquired a deadly bacterial infection two days after he was born that Handsome and I immediately re-connected as a team and started to get ourselves back on solid ground. We stayed there until The Flame made her first appearance three years later in mid-2012 (that’s the gigantic 2nd dip you see).

Since then, the roller coaster of our marriage – to me at least – is evident from my chart. Some things are obvious: I am not happy or satisfied in my marriage if I am being cheated on (like his initial emotional affair with The Flame) and lied to. Others are less obvious: times when I was unhappy because he was so detached from me, our kids, and the marriage in general because (I know now, but didn’t then) he was really far down the rabbit hole of his addiction.

I asked Handsome to re-do his timeline thinking that perhaps he was just delusional at the couples retreat and, indeed, his chart looks very different now. He insists he was almost always “somewhere between happy and very happy” in the marriage but his new chart is like a roller coaster during his acting out too.

Data analytics aren’t my thing, but after Handsome started acting out in 2012, the majority of his “happy” periods correspond with vacations and family events. It’s when we were home (and he was acting out daily) that he’s reporting that he was unhappy in the marriage. Coincidence? I think not. He recalls that at certain points we were bickering a lot and he was upset about any number of things but, as our CSAT pointed out, he has only just recently had the epiphany that some of my behavior was driven in large part by his crappy addiction-driven behavior. To use her analogy, he can’t complain about the taste of the water when he’s the one peeing in the well.

I’d love to be able to say that we completed this exercise and hugged it out, but that didn’t happen. I asked why he had indicated that he was “very unhappy” in our marriage when his mother died. Simply stated, he recalled being alone at her funeral. Nope. I handed off our 2 tiny kids (a herculean endeavor that’s a story in itself) to an army of sitters/ nannies… and got on a plane and flew to him and was there for 3 days, all the services, and the 11 hour car ride home. Over time, he just wrote me out of the experience in his mind. Sadly, I’m sure that historical re-write was one of his mental justifications for his acting out. I’m sure he whined about it to his APs. I can picture it… “she’s so mean she didn’t even bother to come to my mom’s funeral… .” In that moment, I got slapped in the face with exactly how deep his illness goes. I am not perfect, but when I KNOW I stepped up and was every bit the wife and partner I was supposed to be? Knowing that he had erased me from the entirety of the experience of the death of his mom? It made me feel every bit as “irrelevant” as he told his APs I was.

So, where’s the happy ending? We talked through this process with the CSAT yesterday. She walked him slowly through a number of things where Handsome’s reality and actual reality differ. She told him that moving forward in life he is going to have to question every negative “season” from that period of time and decide whether the memory is real or not. He’ll have to assess what role, if any, his addiction played in his perceived experience (was he peeing in the well or not?). Since our 2nd DDay Handsome has always acknowledged that he’s an addict, but I’m not sure that he even recognized the extent of his illness and how it truly corrupted his brain. This session was probably the first time that I saw that light bulb go off for him. As pissed as I am that he erased me from such a life altering event, I’m sympathetic to the fact that it surely couldn’t have been pleasant for him to think he was abandoned by me when his mom died. It breaks my heart that his almost sole memory of those days is of standing in the cemetery at her graveside with no one else around. There’s a lot his therapist could unravel in that one memory. (Did he view his mom’s death as abandonment and switch us somehow? Was this really the driver behind his relapse?)

We did end up in each other’s arms at the end of the session, because he realized that yes, I was there for him then, just as I’ve always been there for him. He realized that while his addiction may have been telling him that I didn’t love him, surely I did and still do because otherwise I’d have left a year ago, if not earlier. He realized that the negative narrative he told himself to justify his addictive behavior simply wasn’t real. Now, we can move forward and focus on reality.

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

Image result for regret meme

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)

A Week of Brutal Honesty – #1 – An Intro – Sex with My Sex Addict Husband

Let me assure you that nothing bad has happened (recently, that is), I haven’t lost my marbles, and I’m not out for pity or sympathy. I use this blog to share my experiences and feelings and there are some very specific ones that, to date, I’ve been too embarrassed/ hesitant/ insecure/shy/reluctant/ whatever to share.

I don’t want to carry this baggage into 2019, however, so I’m going to pound them out over the course of this week by posting one per day. I just need to get them off my chest and toss them out into the ether and move into the New Year without the burden of these thoughts. If something resonates, great, or maybe it will just be me cleansing my soul, but that’s fine too.

Today’s topic: sex with my sex addict husband.

My experience, like many on this journey, is likely really different from what others experienced. I can only speak to us. You might think that sex with a guy who had numerous sex partners, including pros, and who watched more than his fair share of porn, would be awesome. He must have learned something, right?? In our relationship, throughout the entirety of our relationship, it was rarely so. Were we having sex? Yes, but not usually a lot. Was it fulfilling? Not usually for me.

Pre-DDay, Handsome was quite selfish in bed. I see this very clearly now. I didn’t then. I was always just so happy for the attention when it came my way. In bed, I fell into that trap where I was so focused on trying to please him that I became irrelevant to the process. Foreplay was minimal, intercourse was usually brief, and when he was done, it was over for both of us. By DDay #1, I couldn’t even remember the last time he brought me to orgasm, but it would not be an exaggeration to say that it had probably been a few years. I always told myself that our relationship was about more than sex and that I could deal with barely adequate sex since I had an otherwise great husband [insert laugh track here…]. It makes sense, and it’s foolish, all at the same time.

Two other factors certainly didn’t help: his ED and his compulsive masturbation. It’s hard to have anything left in the tank if you’re engaging in daily solo play and you have ED. I can honestly say that I never, ever did anything other than try to be supportive about the ED. I told him often that it wasn’t a big deal and not to worry. I am, however, really f-ing resentful that he could somehow manage to get it up for the harem of whores while he couldn’t manage that most times with me. That simply sucks. He claims that he very often couldn’t perform with them either and that that’s why he preferred oral to straight sex, but I doubt that’s the case. He wasn’t spending $200-300 a pop for blow jobs. If he was, he’s a bigger fool than I think.

There was a third factor too: his drinking. On a daily basis I’m sure it didn’t help his ED, but it otherwise didn’t come into play. Date nights or special occasions where he drank a lot were a different story. I detest sloppy drunks. I’ve felt that way ever since college. I find that slobbery, stupid drunk stage just intolerable. Handsome seemed to think it was cute (not!). On nights when most couples would have carried the fun of the evening into bed, I’d spend an extra 3-4 minutes in the bathroom until he fell asleep/ passed out. I’m incredibly happy that I haven’t had to deal with that dynamic for a year.

Finally, even when we were having sex he often seemed disconnected. He was there physically, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. Was he fantasizing about someone else? Maybe. Probably. I’ll never know for sure. I just know that he wasn’t connecting in any real way with me most of the time.

Why do I struggle mightily with this? None of his APs or paid pros are anything like me. He deliberately chose them and lusted after them and somehow managed to perform with them. I’m sad, and yes resentful/ bitter/ angry/ hurt, that he could perform with them and not me. I feel like I played the chump for years, trying to be a good wife, putting up with a crappy vanilla sex life, all the while he’s getting his rocks off unbeknownst to me. (As an illustration of how clueless I was, about a month before DDay #1 I started to research doctors that might be able to help him with what I guessed was low-T or general mid-life funk, because that’s the level our sex life was at. He had four (4!!) active affair partners at the time.)

With some caveats that I’ll address in another post this week, the good news is that things are generally better post-DDay. It took a few months, but the selfishness is mostly gone. He is more connected and attentive. He has remembered that I have a clitoris and that it can be fun to pay attention to it. He’s not drinking, so that eliminates the sloppy drunk issue. Sex is no longer just about him. I occasionally wonder if he’s really present with me or if he’s elsewhere in his mind, but I’m guessing that’s normal and just another gift of the betrayal trauma (the gift that keeps on giving).

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

Why I think Miss Kentucky and my husband have a few things in common

I would like to share a few pictures with you:

Miss Kentucky 2014

…with our kiddo at the Kentucky Derby in 2015

…and her current status…

When we met this beautiful, bright young woman at the Kentucky Derby, she was absolutely delightful. She was kind and gracious and went out of her way to make our daughter’s day special. (My daughter told her that she looked like a magical princess and that she loved her crown.) I was dismayed to see last week’s news and the sad developments in her life.

What do I see when I look at these photos? I see a woman not entirely unlike my husband. For the record, Handsome did not act out with minors. Otherwise, I see this as a “there but for the grace of God” kind of thing. I see a physically beautiful human being who is apparently afflicted with some gaping hole in her soul. I see a wife (married just under 3 years, to a wealthy coal family scion) and mother who apparently couldn’t self-soothe or find sufficient peace or joy in her life and who made really, unbelievably bad decisions. She violated a position of trust. She acted out through her place of employment. It all caught up to her.

I am sure that it would be distasteful to my husband to be compared to her. It would probably piss him off. Handsome draws that bright line (minors vs non minors) in the sand. Yes, there is a legal bright line there for VERY good reason, but I’d suggest that bedding down with your “mentee” 32 years your junior is creepy and immoral too. So is being a cog in the sex trade/ human trafficking wheel, and sexting/ meeting up with anonymous folks online (who we hope and believe were over 18, but…?). So is engaging in some of your acting out during your work day, in your work uniform. Handsome would say that there are big differences. I don’t think so.

A year ago, I’m not sure that I would have felt much sympathy for this young woman. Now, I do. And I certainly empathize with her husband and kids. Every single day I am thankful that my family didn’t end up with news crews parked on our front lawn or my husband’s pictures all over the local news. Having them on Facebook was bad enough.

I hope that she gets whatever help she needs to address her issues. I hope that for her husband and kids as well. I also take this as a reminder that you never know what struggles someone has in their life just from looking at outward appearances.  A few years ago, she seemed to be on top of the world. Now, it’s all gone.

Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.

André Malraux

Did our CSAT just pull one over on me?

Looking back at my session last week with our CSAT, it was pretty hard-core. We talked about Handsome’s lack of real progress in his recovery, how a physical separation might be necessary, how long I was willing to be patient for that recovery that may never come, how a separation might trigger a relapse, etc. etc. It was fairly doom and gloom. She met with Handsome yesterday, individually, for what I surmised would be something of a “Come to Jesus” meeting. She flat-out told me that if Handsome couldn’t find that turning point/ change of heart that he needs to move into real recovery, there would be little she could truly do for us as a couple other than helping to moderate the temperature of the relationship.

Imagine my surprise when Handsome returned from the session yesterday and reported that it went “great.” Did they talk about his lack of progress? Not in so many words. She recommended an intensive program in January for him. Did she raise the possibility of a physical separation? Nope. She told him that I’m at the end of my rope, but that’s no surprise to him. I’ve told him that point-blank at home and in our sessions. She had asked me in some detail about how long my patience would last and when a separation might make sense. She also told me she would need to share that with him. Did she? Nope. WTAF???? I lose sleep for a week and virtually none of what we discussed is actually raised with him?

I like and respect our CSAT, but I was ticked. I felt let down that she soft-sold her points, to the extent she made them at all. I felt like that played into his “you blow things out of proportion” victim mode (he did not say that, but he did question why I was so highly agitated after last week since there was “nothing really wrong”). I felt more than a bit misled. One of three things seemed to have happened:

  1. Handsome was minimizing and downplaying the session; or
  2. She had her own change of heart on how to deal with him in the last week; or
  3. For some reason she felt the need to scare the crap out of me last week.

I’m no shrinking violet, so I went to our couples session today fully prepared to ask what, exactly, happened either over the course of the previous seven days or what I was completely missing. I warned Handsome in advance that I was ticked because I wanted him to understand that I wasn’t mad at him. He knows me well enough to know that I would be frank in conveying my surprise at what I perceived as a turn of events.

So, today, I put my fancy suit for an after work cocktail party and as I’m driving to the CSAT’s office I’m rehearsing what I’m going to say (both because I’m a dork and I get unusually rattled in there). I decided to go with “I was kind of surprised yesterday when Handsome came home from your session and said that it went great. It doesn’t sound like many of the issues you and I discussed last week were covered…” and leave it open-ended. I couldn’t tell if she was surprised that Handsome shared his session with me or that I shared our doom and gloom session with him yesterday (See, we do communicate!! lol), but I think she was a bit unprepared for that. Handsome sat there during the start of the session like:

I jumped right in. I was calm, but collected. It turns out that what transpired was a mix of #1 and #2 and general soft peddling on her part. Handsome did, to some extent, minimize parts of their conversation. That said, she reconsidered some of her statements to me in the intervening days, so he didn’t exactly get the full impression of her concern. And she admittedly walked back her comments about essentially firing us if Handsome doesn’t make progress. I walked her through those again, in front of Handsome, so he could hear her concern – as it was told to me – from her. I think that was helpful because it showed him that I had not blown the comments out of proportion and that yes, she is looking for him to have a sincere and meaningful change of heart, and that we cannot heal without it.

Building off of that, I added that even though I love Handsome with all my heart, this faux recovery (love that term, Maggie) or dry drunk state, just isn’t good enough for me and that I believe the next step may very well be a separation so that Handsome can focus on his recovery. I needed Handsome to hear that from me, and I wanted the CSAT to hear me say it too, in no uncertain terms. Interestingly, after that, today was the first time that I saw what I think was real, honest vulnerability from Handsome in months.

It seems that there is something to this detachment thing after all.