Tag: trickle truth

A Long Time Coming: Disclosure

Some sunshine, at last

Long-time readers know that there have been a few false starts on the way to my husband doing a full therapeutic disclosure. The closest we came was last May or June when it was essentially fully drafted but his buddy from rehab convinced him it was a bad idea.

Prior to that I mostly had 2+ years of staggered disclosures. My husband did A LOT of things during his acting out. I knew just about everything, but it was still more of a Rubik’s cube than a simple puzzle. I didn’t have a good sense as to how various pieces fit together. It was like having almost all of the pages of a book, but none of the pages are numbered, or in order, and you don’t know what you’re missing.

I know that some people can move forward and heal absent a full disclosure. I couldn’t. At some point it became less about what my husband was going to say and more about the fact that he refused to say it. The pain was less centered around what he did, and acutely focused on the fact that he knew it would help me (and us) heal and yet he couldn’t bring himself to show up for me the way that I needed. It felt disrespectful, dismissive, and selfish. When he finally (FINALLY!) moved forward with the disclosure in January it was literally like a ton of weight was lifted off my chest.

The disclosure took place three years and one month after DDay #1.

Yes, it hurt to hear specifics of how my life was undermined and blown apart without my knowledge, but it was also freeing. The pages of the book that told the story of our marriage were finally being put in order. A few of the pages I was missing were added. Questions that arose were addressed. It was hard to hear, and yet so necessary for me.

I know some disclosures take an hour or two. We were at our CSAT’s office for over 5 hours. He had a lot to read through. I had a lot of questions. There was no Earth shattering new information for the most part, except for one thing.

Our CSAT believed that it would be helpful to me for Handsome to walk through the history of how his addiction developed and how it appeared in his prior relationships. (In other words, she wanted him to clearly show that his addiction had nothing to do with me because it had been going on in various forms throughout his life.) During that part of the disclosure I learned that Handsome blew up his first marriage with the Flame. I didn’t know that. I thought she came into the picture after that marriage ended.

As mortifyingly embarrassing as it is to point out, she was a 17 year old high school student at the time. Handsome was 27. 😳 WTF?!?!? Knowing that my husband was once “that guy”… the awkward and creepily out of place adult date at a prom … was always cringe inducing and wildly uncomfortable for me. Finding out that relationship started as an affair?? There are no words. I was flabbergasted.

Our CSAT pointed out that at that time – thirty years ago, and closer in proximity to his trauma-filled childhood – Handsome probably only had the emotional maturity of a teen. True… very true until recently… but still… yuck.

As distressing as it was, it was still “good information” as they say. I didn’t really see the cycles in Handsome’s acting out or understand how early in his life he started his destructive behavior. I also had no idea of the extent of the Flame’s home wrecking resume or that she was Handsome’s go-to side ho for decades. It explains a lot.

Our disclosure was a long, long time coming, but as I walked out of the CSAT’s office that evening I felt … free. I had just heard hours of really terrible stuff, things no one should ever have to hear from their spouse, and yet my relief was palpable. I was really looking forward to the future for the first time in a long time.

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.

An Alternate Perspective on Trickle Truth / Staggered Disclosures

A Happy New Year to you all! I offer a big, hearty “thank you” to everyone who read and commented on my Week of Brutal Honesty posts before the holidays. It was very cathartic to me to write those posts and to participate in the comments, and I hope it was for others as well.

So here we are, rolling into 2019.  Handsome’s primary focus at the moment is eliminating his compulsive lying. To a “normal” brain, it sounds fairly ridiculous, but addicts are relentless liars. Handsome’s compulsive lying likely started in his childhood and escalated in his high school years when he first started living a kind of secret life. (His parents would think he was at school all day when he would actually leave and go hang out at the town library for hours on end. He was dying to learn, but hated school for a variety of reasons.) It certainly set the stage for the decades of addiction-driven secrets and lies that followed.

His assignment is essentially to do two things: (i) not lie, and (ii) journal about every time he thinks about lying, whether big or small, and explore his motivations behind why he was going to or did lie. If he lies he is supposed to fess up and correct the lie immediately. (I am fully aware of the irony in relying on an expert liar to admit to his lies, but it is what it is.)

I was working on some recovery materials this past weekend and one of the topics involved trickle truth and the damage and trauma it causes. As is often the case, this got me thinking very specifically about Handsome’s disclosures. In short, it occurs to me that the use of trickle truth – staggering his disclosures and lying by repeatedly stating that he had told me “everything” – was likely highly effective for him.

To be clear, I am not saying that there were no negative consequences of the trickle truth. I am instead suggesting that – on balance – the negative consequences of the trickle truth for him were likely less severe than the consequences of telling me everything honestly from the beginning. Handsome’s initial disclosure was that he had one physical affair. In those initial, highly charged days after disclosure, I was making a decision to stay or to leave the relationship based on, I thought, his extra-marital involvement with one person. If I had any inkling that there were at least five other long-term emotional and physical affair partners, plus all the pros and online randos, my initial analysis would have been very different. I tend to think that I would have simply thrown him out and filed for divorce.

It’s almost as if to stay in the marriage I had to ease into the concept of being the wife of a sex addict just as he had to ease into the disclosure of his acting out and acknowledgement of his addiction.

With that said, I do believe that we reached a point – probably about 2 months after our 2nd DDay (when his addiction truly came to light) – after which additional disclosures became nothing but destructive. After that point we had both put considerable time, effort, and money into healing separately and together… we were staying together if we both did the work… so further trickle truth just undermined the new foundation we were trying to build.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that trickle truth is a good thing. There are power dynamics and certainly selfishness and self-preservation at play when one is asked to tell the whole truth and they do not do so. It is also unquestionable in my mind that trickle truth exacerbates betrayal trauma. Instead, I think I’ve just come to the conclusion that trickle truth from a cheater is to be expected. It often works, to a degree, for them.

Perhaps I handled it all wrong with Handsome. Perhaps the mantra shouldn’t have been “tell me the truth or I’m throwing you out” but rather “move out until you can prove to my satisfaction that you have told me the truth.” Perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, that would have been the smarter move.

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

This is the third post in my week of soul cleansing. You can find the first two posts here and here.

I’ve been pondering this post for a long time, but frankly it just seemed way too awkward – and revealing – to write. I was on a support group call a few days ago and someone had a very similar experience, so I’m thinking that perhaps I’m not as alone in this as I thought. So, if this makes sense to even one betrayed spouse out there, just know that you aren’t the only one.

I am not a physically aggressive person. I don’t think that I have ever actually struck another human in anger… ever, even as a kid. I did throw a bottle of water at Handsome’s head at some point in the last few months, and it seemed to shock the hell out of him – which is probably indicative of how out of character that kind of thing is for me.

Based on that, it might surprise you to know that I’m reasonably certain that I seriously considered killing him the night he first disclosed his infidelity to me. I feel really weird just writing that sentence out, but it happened. After dumping his initial disclosure of lies on me, Handsome headed downstairs to sleep in our basement. I wept initially, and then… well, then I got mad, (like really, really mad), that he had done such a thing, to me, to our family, and that he only came clean because the Whore’s husband was going to out him. I was seething hot with rage.

Rage is probably the most relatable word that I can use, but it was really far beyond that. I felt with absolute clarity the depths to which he had betrayed and harmed me. I did not want revenge. I wanted him to no longer exist. The maelstrom of fury inside of me was truly like nothing I had ever felt before.

We are not gun nuts, but he is in law enforcement and my dad was an accomplished skeet shooter, so we have guns in our home. For the record I’m all in favor of gun control and background checks and closing the gun show purchase loophole and… well, generally anything that the NRA opposes. Nonetheless, I know how to shoot.

And yes, I thought seriously about where the guns are in our house, where the ammo is, whether he might be expecting my rage or if he actually managed to fall asleep now that his guilty conscience was relieved (ha! if I only knew how far from the truth that was at the time)…. and then one thought popped into my mind. I pictured our kids and how that would be the loss of both parents for them, since I knew I wasn’t going to get away with anything. I recall being absolutely fully aware that I’d go to jail. We had just had an absolutely terrific day with the kids and I couldn’t imagine them without either parent, losing their home, moving to their godmother’s, having to give up their friends and their school and their pets because of me or their asshole cheater-father. I wasn’t going to cause that.

This was not, to be honest, as linear an argument in my head as this makes it seem. I sat with these thoughts running through my head for longer than I care to admit. I did not ever touch a weapon that night (nor since then), but I had run through about every scenario I could think of in my mind. In the end, it wasn’t my great love of my husband that saved him that night. In that white-hot fury I truly did not give a shit about him. He was saved by my great love of our kids and my own moral compass.

I used to think that crimes of passion were some BS concept that defense attorneys used to get their clients off. That’s likely true in some cases, but if I could be driven to seriously evaluate the pros and cons of homicide, then I’m reasonably certain that just about anyone can. I’m pretty even keeled (or, more precisely, I was before DDay). I don’t have anger management issues, and I’m very often more pushover than powerhouse at home. I’m also a pretty law and order kind of girl. Today though? If I were on a jury and a betrayed spouse had whacked their mate in an incident worthy of 48 Hours, I get it. I can empathize. I would sign on the “not guilty by reason of temporary insanity” line in a heartbeat. I’m not talking about someone who plots and schemes for weeks, but in that heat of the moment after discovery or disclosure? I know that crazy pain and the crazier thinking that goes along with it. I’ve been there. I’m not saying that it’s right or that it makes sense (and, in fact, that’s precisely why it’s so crazy… because it makes no sense). I’m just saying that I understand.

Tomorrow: A Week of Brutal Honesty – #4 – L is for Loser

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)

One Year After DDay #1

Yesterday was precisely 365 days after my husband blew our lives apart last December. It was the day everything that seemed reliable and good in my life felt like it was instantaneously sucked into a black hole, never to be seen again.

The intervening year has, I think, largely been devoted to triage. Yes, there have been signs of progress, but there have also been set backs, even recently. The wounds are still potentially fatal, and they are still bleeding.

In the “good” or positive column I would list that Handsome goes to SA, he goes to his individual therapy, he joins me and participates with our CSAT, he is not drinking, he has been sexually sober for a year, he has made additional disclosures when he didn’t have to, he journals daily, and he says he wants to get better.

I have made progress too. I’m more willing than ever to speak up for myself, I’ve developed a reasonably good sense of objectivity about this mess that is my life. I call Handsome out when the need arises. I’ve taken steps to protect my health and financial well-being apart from Handsome. I no longer cry every day (although I did have a good cry today so I feel like a fraud writing that, but it’s been a few days since the last one so it’s not a lie). I could become a private eye if my regular day job doesn’t work out since I’ve had so much training this past year.

There is a flip side though, and it isn’t as small as I’d like. Handsome still struggles to tell the truth. He remains terrible at availing himself of the resources available to him. He acts out in non-sexual ways (anger). He broke his vow to not drink for a year. After 9 months in SA he has yet to complete Step 1. He continues to struggle with self-awareness and empathy. I believe there are likely additional disclosures to come.

I haven’t been a picnic either. I yell more than I used to or I get exasperated and sigh (which is just a crappy, sad response to anything from an adult). I have said unkind things to Handsome… and often meant every word of them. Some days I still resent him for breathing. I hate that his recovery is a drain on our time and money. I struggle with knowing how broken and damaged he really is. I am devastated that he cared more about self-soothing and filling the void within himself than he did about the consequences to his family. I still ask myself more often than I think I should be at this point whether I should stay or go.

I figured that Handsome would forget the significance of the day. He didn’t. Most likely he remembered because it coincides with his sobriety date, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he’d have remembered anyway.

If I take a moment to reflect, his life is likely better than it was a year ago. He’s sober and is getting help for his various issues. Is my life better? If I’m really honest, I don’t think so. That’s hard to admit, but I think it’s true. The lies and secrets were still going strong as recently as two weeks ago. The only obvious improvement is that my husband isn’t actively cheating on me. No small thing, for sure, but that seems like a really low threshold. Yes, Handsome often tells me that he loves me and I believe he means it. But he did that before DDay too. Yes, he surprises me with the occasional sweet, loving gesture, but he did that before DDay as well. He is endeavoring to be more kind and patient with me and with the kids. What I think I still lack are the basic building blocks for a marriage: trust, respect, loyalty, honesty, integrity, empathy. Those are fundamentals that are still works in progress.

As I told Handsome yesterday, “The next 12 months cannot be like the last 12 months or I will not be here 365 days from now.   To be clear, I can’t endure 1 more month of it let alone 12, and I shouldn’t have to. … My “reward” for staying – for continuing to be a part of the shit show – is supposed to be a better marriage and all of the honesty, respect, loyalty, and other good things that go along with it.  When is that going to start, because I’m tired of waiting?”

Show me the love

Apparently Handsome spent his individual therapy session this week talking about the difficulty he has showing me he loves me in the wake of our 3 – count ’em, three – disclosure days.

Well… duh.

I think we come at this from very different perspectives. First, to put it diplomatically, Handsome’s social/ emotional skills are stunted. Blame it on his family of origin (I do). Second, he is dumbfounded that it is hard for me to believe that he loves me simply because he now very often says he does and he has ramped up the thoughtfulness and kind gestures. To me, that’s all truly lovely, but insufficient.

At 10:00PM on December 9th last year, I knew without a doubt that he loved me. By 11:00PM…? Not so much. And we all know now that initial disclosure was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Almost a year later, I do believe Handsome loves me (though I admittedly waffle on whether it is romantic love), but I also believe his interest in self-preservation is even stronger. I can’t exactly say that he loves himself more, because it’s clear to me that his compulsive behavior arises from self-loathing. Nonetheless, if it’s between him or me, he picks himself. Each and every time.

Forget (if you can, and I cannot) the individual aspects of the five (5!) simultaneous, long-term affair partners and the 20+ encounters with paid sex workers. How about the fact that condoms do not prevent all STDs and STIs? How about depriving me of the knowledge of this high risk sex life for at least three years, thus ensuring that I couldn’t protect myself? Imagine sleeping next to someone you say you love, knowing your behavior could literally kill them, and yet continuing to engage in that behavior without a care in the world? (Or, maybe you care… but not enough to give them a heads up or anything.)

Is that loving? I think not. It’s beyond selfish. As a lawyer I would label it “deliberate indifference” (reckless disregard for the consequences of one’s own actions or omissions).

To me, that’s the hurdle that Handsome has to overcome. I’m not hung up on the idea that he gave a crap about any of these women. I don’t think he did, with the possible exception of the Flame, and he appears to now see her for the homewrecker she is. I even believe that he loves me in his own way. I just believe that he prioritizes himself over me. His behavior over time (including now with his staggered disclosures) evidences that when there’s a choice between him or me, he almost always sacrifices me to save himself.

When you come at the issue of how he should go about showing me he loves me from that perspective, it’s very different from the norm. Hugs and snuggles aren’t going to cut it.

Step 1 – Stop lying (even by omission).

Step 2- Stop engaging in other behavior that is harmful to the marriage (we can call this the “just quit being a dick” step).

Step 3 – Display appropriate empathy and compassion.

Step 4 – Prove that you can be self-sacrificing for the benefit of others (not to the point of martyrdom, but just recognizing that the world doesn’t revolve around you… a point most other adults already understand). Do this without the expectation of anything in return.

Step 5 – Repeat steps 1-4 daily.

Step 6 – Do what normal people do to express love (this is where the thoughtfulness, consideration, and romance comes in).

Note that there is nothing in this list that is really about his recovery.  That’s for him. While it’s helpful to him and that trickles down to be helpful to me, at the end of the day it is for him. His new emphasis on thoughtful gestures, neck kisses, hand holding and saying “I love you” is wonderful, but talk is cheap after what I’ve been through. If I am important to Handsome, he needs to prove it, every day, with meaningful actions (see steps 1-5).

*** I’ll be mostly offline for a week for our holiday trip, but I wish my blogging friends in the States a very happy and safe Thanksgiving!! And a good, safe week to all of my blogging friends outside the US as well!

The Confession – DDay #3

Patience may be a virtue, but I don’t have any to speak of, at least not when it comes to Handsome’s lies and secret keeping. I received a very insightful comment from Joshua Shea to my last post. To paraphrase him, his question was “So your husband is still withholding. What are you gonna do about it?” Fair point.

For the reasons I explained in reply, my hands were a bit tied, but I told Handsome that he needed to make calls to his sponsor and SA contacts every day before our Thanksgiving vacation, and attend three meetings this week and one meeting next week before we hit the road. That is way more than he normally does, and I knew the calls would take him far outside his comfort zone. He agreed.

Nonetheless, the very fact that he was still keeping secrets (even if they would be included in the big therapeutic disclosure planned for early January), burned  – and burdened – me deeply. As I asked him: “How am I supposed to tolerate hugging you or being physically or emotionally intimate with you when the knife is still sticking out of my back and you are twisting it every day?” He was frustrated. He thought we had both freely agreed to hold everything until January. Indeed, I had agreed, but (1) I had been blindsided at the CSAT’s office by the development that what remained secret was “big” and (2) I didn’t feel as though I had the agency in that moment to insist that I hear it then. After pondering it endlessly I decided to go back to my long-held position that whatever Handsome has disclosed to someone else he sure as hell had better disclose to me. Why was I agreeing to have that anvil hanging over my head until January… or later? No thanks.

For the record, I don’t believe that our CSAT intended to put this stress upon me. I think that her suggestion of the therapeutic disclosure at this time of year was well intentioned but missed the mark, and that Handsome should have been encouraged to disclose what he had to disclose to me, and it could then be rolled together with his prior disclosures and addressed again in some organized and orderly fashion in January. I also think that she believes that I am stronger than I really am. I put on a good public show, but inside? Some days it’s like a cyclone inside my head.

So, what was all the hoopla about? He was withholding one additional physical affair (if you can call it an affair… he claims to not know her last name and claims he only knew her by “Katie”), and the use of escorts and a local massage parlor. All of this allegedly occurred from 2015 forward -the same period as all the other mayhem.

How do I feel?  Some combination of hurt beyond belief and numb. There are so many things about this that I only believe with difficulty. I am dismayed that he so compromised his morals and values that he committed illegal acts. I am dismayed that he is an embarrassment to his job and that he is no better or different from the people he arrests. I am dismayed that he would ever EVER scream at me about money when this is how he saw fit to spend it. I am dismayed that he put my health at risk without a care. (He is in dire need of a very basic 6th grade lesson on how HPV and other diseases are spread and how a condom isn’t a magical shield.)

The flip side, of course, is that as disgusting and repulsive as I find this behavior, the escorts and massage parlors were business transactions. Nothing more. It’s not as if these women liked him. Based on the hooker/ prostitute/ escort blogs I’ve read they were likely (1) high, (2) revolted by him, (3) completely faking it, and (4) terrified. I find it pathetic that he’d be turned on by that, but at least he wasn’t talking with and texting them daily. There were no real relationships. He claims to not even know the physical affair partner’s last name – despite texting with her for the better part of 3 years and screwing her at least twice. It was just cock + scabby cum dumpster = release. The very reasons that made it so difficult for him to admit these things are, ironically, the very things that make them somewhat manageable to my brain.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that if he only had sex with pros that this would all be a cake walk.  Far from it. I’m simply saying that in the scheme of what my husband did, this is not the most damaging disclosure to me. His emotional affair with the Flame (and the related lies and secrets) is far more painful to me… less disgusting and vile, for sure, but much more painful.

At the end of the day, my husband has to live with what he did. I have lived through our marriage with honesty and integrity. Handsome is my last first-kiss. I am likely not even in the 5 most recent first-kisses for him. I’m probably not in the 20 most recent first-fucks. That’s on him. I do not need to worry that anything that I have done may harm his health or well-being. He has to wonder what might pop up on his STD tests or mine in the future (since HPV can go latent). At least since 2015 he has not been the person I thought I married, for sure, but I loved him with every fiber of my being and I was present and committed. I did not waste time or opportunities. He has to account for his years in his addict bubble. It has taken months (and months) but I’m good with me. I honored my marriage vows and my husband. I will not bear his shame.

Do I think I finally know everything? Nah. I’ve been around this block before. There are a few details I could still call bullshit on, but we’ll see how it all parses out in the therapeutic disclosure he’s working on. My gut tells me that he’s nearing the end of what he’s keeping inside, but maybe I’m just sensing that he’s as exhausted  with this process as I am.

Learning to Say No

The Way It Was

Breaking a stranglehold has been a lifesaving technique since such training first began in the late 19th century. In fact, turn-of-the century rescuers were taught to break a victim’s “death grip” by knocking the person unconscious.

I can relate. After learning from our CSAT that “there is new information that will be coming forward” from Handsome, I’ve been pondering what that means for me. Conclusion? I feel like a lifeguard that’s about to be drowned by the very person she’s trying to save.

I see very clearly now that Handsome has for years (and continues to) prioritize himself (his comfort, his fears, his needs, etc.) over me. The trauma that staggered disclosures cause for betrayed spouses is well known and, particularly, it is well known to Handsome after two intensives – including one with an expert in the field of betrayal trauma – and a ton of therapy. Yet rather than tell me the whole truth at any point along our journey, he has continued to keep secrets knowing full well the impact of his lies, secret keeping, and staggered disclosures on my health and well being.

I asked yesterday if we were going to do a check-in last night since it has been about two weeks since the last one. I just wanted to get it over with because I was already in “affair mode” from our appointment with the CSAT. He asked if we could do it another night since he was tired. Since I so very often go along to get along, I automatically replied “okay.” It wasn’t okay, however. It was, on a micro scale, just me trying to keep him happy at my own expense.

When I got home I explained that I shouldn’t have said okay because I really wasn’t okay with it, and that we’d have to put it off till next week because I do not want to deal with it on the weekend. I went on to explain that I finally concluded that I’ve got to look out for my own  interests since he has demonstrated clearly that he will not do so. I told him how incredibly disappointed (not surprised, but definitely disappointed) I am that after all this time and everything, EVERYTHING I have been through with him, he still chooses his own comfort (keeping secrets that are “too hard” to tell) over my health and mental and physical well being.  I feel as though he is the drowning victim that I swim out to save and, when I get there, he pushes me under the water so he can stand on my shoulders and breathe while I drown underneath him.

I asked him to sit and really ponder what it would be like if I, his spouse, constantly and to his detriment prioritized myself over him. I asked him to contemplate what our kids would be like, and what their lives would be like, if he and I both acted that way. Finally I asked him, when push comes to shove, what kind of husband always picks himself over his wife and family? And what does he think that must be like for me and our children, to realize that if it’s us or him it will seemingly always be him?

He admits that he has been (and is) a selfish asshole used to doing things his own way. He says he’s “working on” changing that and being less selfish and self centered. He tells me he’s trying to change that about himself. I told him to screw trying. He simply needs to do it. Immediately.

Therapeutic disclosure (DDay #3??)

Been gone for a bit. We just wrapped up the second of two long family weekends away. We had a decent time in NYC (Handsome was highly agitated all weekend, but the kids and my mom were good fun), and we just got back from the Breeder’s Cup in Louisville. That was an awesome trip. Beautiful horses, great racing, fancy hats, Derby pie, and bourbon.  Lots of bourbon. What could be better?

Before we left for NYC, our CSAT said that she thought a formal therapeutic disclosure would be a good idea for us. She has been able to see what Handsome has voluntarily disclosed versus that which I’ve had to investigate on my own. She has observed his responses to various questions about his acting out and, in particular, how certain answers just don’t make sense or seem a bit lacking. She also sees the frustration this causes me.

If you’ve been on this roller coaster with me for a while, you recall that our first DDay was December 9th last year. At that time Handsome disclosed parts of his affair with the Whore. He minimized the heck out of it, but most of the truth trickled out about their involvement once I got a chance to go through her burner phone. On February 26th, we spent hours doing what was supposed to be a full disclosure on our own. Within days it became apparent that 90% of what I had been told was absolute BS. March 3rd became our DDay #2 when I learned about his numerous other affairs and acting out behaviors. It’s also when it became obvious that Handsome has serious issues with compulsive sexual behavior. I knew then, even before he was formally diagnosed, that Handsome is a sex addict. Since that day there have been smaller disclosures, most of which I would consider to be “filler” around the broader stories of his acting out. Many of those little disclosures have been during our weekly check-ins in response to the question in his check-in format from Dr. M regarding a lie or secret he is keeping. I do believe that he has told me the majority of what he did. I also believe, however, that there are certain things that he has decided he should keep secret. Some of those things have become obvious in our therapy. I, on the other hand, believe that the absolute least he can do for me is tell me the full truth. I have always said that I don’t need the color of someone’s lingerie or who was on top, but I do need to know the totality of what I am supposed to be forgiving him for.

The CSAT sent us a template for the format of the disclosure and, frankly, I find all of the limitations “for the protection of the betrayed spouse” to be utter BS. To me, if it is supposed to be a disclosure it had better be exhaustive and thorough. A therapist or his SA folks should not know things that I do not. If he knows something and fails to disclose it to me, it’s a secret and that’s a problem for me. I really wish that everyone else, including Handsome, would accept the fact that I’m an adult and quit perpetuating secrets under the guise of “protecting” me. I find it insulting, patriarchal, offensive, and unnecessary.

I raised that point with the CSAT and also said that if all Handsome intended to do was to waltz in and tell me only what he has told me thus far, we should just skip it. I’m not going to put myself through torture so he can check off a box to say he accomplished something. If I’m going to go through this, it had better have a point. She informed me today after meeting with him privately that “there is new information that will be coming forward.” Lovely. So much for telling me 300+ times that he has told me everything. It’s a good thing I never bought that completely. (Does anyone wonder why we betrayed spouses develop trust issues that we never had before after all of this??)

Despite this development, I know that I’ve made personal progress over the last 11 months because I’m not in tears or a basket case over whatever might be forthcoming. I have assumed that he slept with everyone he says he didn’t, and then some. I have assumed that he engaged in other acting out behaviors that have yet to be disclosed. In short, I’ve already steeled myself against the worst of the possibilities. That’s not to say that the new disclosures won’t hurt me. They just won’t destroy me. He did that already, but I feel as though I’m doing a commendable job rebuilding myself in this new epoch.

Our CSAT wanted to get the disclosure scheduled and completed in December, but the holidays are upon us and I refuse to destroy another Christmas and New Year’s with new disclosures of Handsome’s acting out. I would love to start 2019 fresh, but I’m not willing to sabotage my 2018 holidays to do so. He can toil away at his part in this disclosure till the new year rolls around. Let it weigh on him for the next few weeks, not me.

Inertia

In the example in the photo, I feel like my happiness is the human and my melancholy days are the elephant. My happiness can (and for the last 10 months has on multiple occasions) shift in an instant, whereas my feelings of sadness are much more difficult to change. They tend to linger.  It’s like trying to turn the Titanic.  It will happen, but slowly and not in enough time to avoid the iceberg.

Handsome and I have been… fine since we got back from our trip. Not great. Not bad. Just… fine. My problem then? It’s not good enough for me. I feel as though I’m working really, really hard and achieving mediocrity. That’s not my style. I’m not bouncing back to happiness in the wake of our trip.

A few things have happened since I last wrote.  First, I made it very clear to Handsome that while I support him and I’m always available to him I do not want to be his accountability partner. I tried to explain why. He said he understood and he walked me through his safety plan. It does not include me. I’m fine with that. Time will tell if he uses it and we’ll see if it works.

Handsome had his vasectomy last week. He was a miserable ass in the morning beforehand, but it went well and he’s off work for about two and a half weeks. Is it wrong that I slept really, really well that night?  We won’t know for a few months whether the surgery was entirely successful but, assuming that it is, the reassurance that our kids and I do not have to worry about any unexpected progeny lifted a huge weight off my sagging shoulders. I take no delight in seeing him in discomfort, but with his history and the two kids recently born to his AP’s, I was more overwhelmed by fear than I had expressed. There are plenty of things that I still worry about, but Handsome has taken a big step to ensure that one comes off the list.

We did our check in a few days ago and Handsome is back to dodging the question about lies and secrets he is keeping. He says there are no more. After years of acting out, I’m reasonably sure that’s BS. I understand that he doesn’t want to sit and ponder his bad acts because it makes him feel like a turd. Nonetheless, it’s something Dr. M told him he needs to do. Our CSAT told him he needs to do it. Thus, in my book, he needs to do it.

I think my failure to bounce back is likely due to what happened on our trip (Handsome went back to his vices) and also all of the triggers that surround me  this year based on what I now know was going on behind my back last Fall. When I was away at a work conference Handsome was texting and sexting like crazy and trying to have another hotel hook up with the Whore. I leave for that same conference today. The day last year that my in laws were to arrive to celebrate Halloween with us, Handsome spent the morning sexting and recording a masturbation video in our master bathroom and sending it to the Whore. A few weeks later when I went out of town for a work meeting for two days, Handsome was again sexting and texting and trying to hook up with the Whore before I had even pulled out of our driveway. Finally, just before Thanksgiving, Handsome sent the Whore a ton of text messages complaining about cooking for the holiday and devaluing and diminishing me. Their exchange which, frankly, probably pisses me off more than any blow job, went like this (crap grammar/ punctuation is all theirs):

Handsome: I get off at 7:30 in the morning and then I have to cook. 🙁

Whore: No you don’t REALLY?

Handsome: REALLY

Whore: WTF!!!

Handsome: Exactly

Whore: Why????

Handsome: Just the way it is.

Whore: That’s fucked up big time  that pisses me off

Handsome: You and me both.

Whore: You work all night you should be able to come home take a hot shower go lay down for a bit and eat

Handsome: Not if I want to eat.

Whore: Is that every holiday

Handsome: Yep

Whore: Does she cook at all?

Handsome: Lasagna @ 3 times a year. That’s it.

Whore: I have no words. What do your kids eat if your (sic) not home

Handsome: Babysitter cooks [note from BW – As to dinner during the work week when I get home from work between 7:30 and 8:00PM, he’s correct. All other meals, including holidays? Not hardly.]

Whore: So everyone cooks but not her  wtfh

Handsome: Lots of pizza lately because I have been saying F it    no wonder I’ve gotten fat 🙁

[note from BW – Riiiight Handsome… it couldn’t possibly be the case of beer you’re downing every 2-3 days, your failure to exercise (because masturbation isn’t exercise), or your disdain for healthy foods… it must be the failure of your lazy bride to play chef for you… .]

Whore: Does she work

Handsome: Yes

Whore: As much as you

Handsome: No

[note from BW – That one word response still makes me want to throat punch him, almost a full year and a shit ton of counseling later, as I contemplate my 50-60 hour+ work weeks and what I bring to the table economically and otherwise for our family. What an absolutely delusional bunch of bullshit.]

Whore: I’m sorry handsome  That’s just messed up in a lot of ways Wish I could cook for you so you wouldn’t have to

Handsome: Me too

***

Three days later the Whore’s husband found her burner phone. Had I known of this exchange prior to Thanksgiving last year, I would have kicked Handsome out so he could celebrate with her. She likely got a free turkey from the food pantry and her fraudulently obtained food stamps covered the rest. I’m sure it would have been delightful for him to eat with the drunk, pill-popping, child abuser in her filthy house with 22 cats running around. Yum.

This year?  We’re going to Williamsburg for Thanksgiving. If he thinks I didn’t cook before, try me now.

Never Have I Ever…

Over time, I’ve come to realize that a good number of my conversations with my husband regarding his years of acting out have seemed an awful lot like a sadistic round of the “Never have I ever…” game.

Absent a betrayer who vomits forth disclosures, we partners are left to ask question after question, trying to get answers. We have a million questions, and we also ask the same questions multiple times. Nonetheless, we only know to ask certain questions based on the limited sphere of information we have at hand. I, for one, cannot ask what I cannot even fathom I should ask. I’m left with seemingly random guesses or barely educated stabs in the dark. “Have you ever…?” or “Did you ever…?”

As an example, Handsome did not volunteer that he was pic collecting from the “massage services” section of Craigslist (which should really more appropriately be called the “prostitution services” section) from places clear across the country. In talking about Craigslist he happened to mention the word “massage” by accident, I think, and that led to me asking if he pic collected from massage services postings. Until that point he had always insisted that he only perused the Woman Seeking Men section of our local Craigslist ads because he was “looking for criminal activity” where he worked. (He had admitted that he would save some of the pictures).  When I asked, he admitted utilizing the massage services ads as well. Then I remarked “Really? It seems unusual to me that you would limit yourself to those postings in _________ [where we live], because there aren’t that many of them and I understand that many pic collectors search postings from all over the country.” He then answered casually, “Oh well, yes, I did that too… from basically everywhere Craigslist has a presence.” This statement was an admission that his pic collecting was a much more pervasive part of his acting out than I had previously imagined in that it included both the massage services and the dating/ hook -up sections of Craigslist (and probably Backpage), and he was in touch with women all over the country. It totally undermined his whole “I was mostly on Craigslist for work” BS – not that I ever bought that for a second.

Does he get a thumbs up for finally being honest? Sure. He could have lied and claimed he never did any of that. I’m mindful though that had I not done any reading or research on pic collecting, I never would have known to ask the question that I did. It might squeeze its way into the definition of an admission, but it sure doesn’t seem like rigorous honesty to me. I shouldn’t have to guess at what he’s done.  Otherwise, maybe I’ve got the wrong game in mind. Perhaps this disclosure process is more like Battleship, where I just randomly toss out the most hideous things I can think of that he might have done and see if any hit their mark.

Updates & Tying Up Loose Ends 1.0

I enjoy shows like 20/20 or Dateline that cover true crime cases, but I’m always a bit sad if there is no conclusion or a “since this story was filmed” postscript. Thus, please accept these updates (in no particular order) to some issues raised in my previous posts:

Fire Dude & the Whore:  Having the Whore’s burner phone in my possession was like keeping a flaming coal in my pocket. It’s mere existence hurt me, and as long as I had it, I had an unsettling link to Fire Dude. He would text me at all hours of the day and night and send me pictures of people he thought looked like Handsome driving by their house. I finally managed to have the burner phone copied and I returned it to him in June. I haven’t heard from him since. He and the Whore welcomed a baby girl to the world on August 4th. That child would have been conceived during the Whore’s affair with Handsome, although he swears that he hasn’t had sex with her since 2015.

Vasectomy: Handsome had his initial consultation with the urologist and scheduled the surgery for mid-October. Given the amount of time he will need to be off – about 2 weeks since he doesn’t have a desk job – it may be delayed due to his work schedule, but he did follow through and make the appointment.

Post-nuptial agreement: This is a work in progress. Handsome tells me that he’s open to it and willing to discuss it, and then it never happens. He avoids it like the plague.  When we do manage to talk about it he says that he feels as if I’m discounting his contributions to our family and that he fears that I’m asking for the agreement only to hurt him. Those are fairly big accusations. I can understand why he might perceive those things to be true. Neither is true. This is solely about sharing the risk of staying in the marriage and protecting me and our kids in the event he is unfaithful again and the marriage ends in divorce. This is a major item on my “I need this to stay” list, so I’m not giving up and I’ll raise it in front of our CSAT if he continues to dodge the issue.

Beyond Affairs:  We just wrapped up the last of the post-intensive calls following our participation in their Healing From Affairs weekend. In retrospect, altogether it was a very worthwhile experience for us. We are (generally) communicating much better than we did before and I think we have a better understanding of how we have each viewed certain things that occurred in our marriage. We have identified our vulnerabilities in tremendous detail and talked through them in a way that most couples never do. While Handsome’s SA puts a slightly different spin on certain things, he still cheated and I’m still a betrayed spouse. There was enough relevant material in the weekend and in the after-care that we both agree it was worth the time and expense. I note for anyone considering their intensive that there are six big follow-up group calls after the intensive. Those are spaced out and are just for the participants of the particular recently concluded intensive. They also have calls every other Wednesday night throughout the year that are essentially open in perpetuity to the people who participate in any of their programs (there is a call for women and a separate call for men). The men’s calls seem to always be pretty secular (as was the intensive itself), but the women’s calls shift through both secular phases and bible-study related phases.

The Flame: Perhaps the gum is wearing off my shoe. Handsome realizes (now, finally, duh!) that The Flame isn’t all sunshine and light. He recognizes that just as he was having an emotional affair with her, she was also equally cheating on her husband. He seems to have gained some insight into why she was such a willing participant with him and what that says about her.  The Flame has gone underground on social media. I had heard that her husband was filing for divorce, but I’m not checking. She seems to have lost one of her two jobs in the last few months. One way or the other she will get what she has coming.  (Karma!)

The Unicorn: Believe it or not, but things appear to be working out for Handsome with his unicorn of an SA sponsor. I’d even go so far as to say that perhaps The Unicorn is an ideal match for Handsome. They resolved their initial communication issues and now talk fairly regularly. He has given Handsome space and time to do recovery work outside of SA, like our affair recovery work from the intensive, and because his schedule is crazy he is forgiving of Handsome’s crazy schedule as well. In short, things seem to be just fine with the two of them.

Today Handsome hits 9 months of sexual sobriety. On Sunday we will be 9 months out from our first DDay. I would say that it seems like a lifetime ago, except the pain is still so very fresh and close to the surface. We are hanging in there together though. I am trying to stay strong, one breath at a time and one hour at a time and one day at a time. Some days I do a better job than others, but writing here helps me through good and bad patches. I didn’t start blogging because I thought anyone would ever see it. I just needed to shout on paper (or a screen, to be more precise). The fact that I have received so much terrific advice, commentary, and support here from men and women that I’ve never met – even when we agree to disagree – has been both a wonderful surprise and a tremendous blessing.  I don’t really have the words to express how much you have all helped me in my healing, but I want to say that I appreciate each of you. Thank you all. ❤️

Financial Infidelity – Show Me the Money

This is a tough post for me to write, and I apologize in advance for the length. My reasonably blue-collared upbringing impressed upon me the decidedly blue-blooded notion that you don’t discuss money with people outside your household. Ever. Nonetheless, it plays a big role in my story with Handsome and I’m guessing that I’m not the only betrayed spouse who feels this way.

Before the Spring of 2012 (when Handsome’s acting out really commenced) Handsome and I would bicker, but rarely fight over anything other than politics. Maybe we’d feud over a scheduling/ child care issue, but these were fleeting matters, and quickly smoothed over. Starting in 2012, however, Handsome suddenly started to pick fights about our finances.

A touch of background: Handsome and I work full time (plus) and our jobs permit us a comfortable, culturally rich life. We have a lovely home and a summer home and retirement savings and we take nice vacations. We carefully pick and choose what we spend our money on and we are generally in agreement. We aren’t buying the $14 organic peanut butter at the grocery store, but we have taken our kids to Europe and South America. Our kids are a big source of spending (activities, camps, babysitter, etc.). Collectively, I don’t think that we live beyond our means, but we don’t live below them either. There is no great big pot of money left at month end, and a major unexpected expense (like a big home or car repair, for example) can still sting.

I’ve written here before about how Handsome and I divide our finances. I bear the vast majority of our expenses, but my income is significantly higher. The idea has always been that we each bear our proportionate share of expenses and neither of us should be penniless throughout the month. Imagine my surprise when I would be having a discussion with Handsome about paying for something relatively minor and he would suddenly start SCREAMING at me about how he has “no money” and “can’t live like this anymore.” When these outbursts started in 2012, I just started bearing a greater portion of the financial obligations, both to try to help him out (was the division unfair or overly burdensome to him? I didn’t know…) and to avoid the conflict. The outbursts continued, and they got more frequent.

By our first DDay, I had been subjected to these screaming tirades about money every few months for the better part of five years. Tirades from a man who, when he needed to replace a Ford Escape that was aging into a money pit in 2015, called me one day out of the blue because he found a new Land Rover he wanted to buy that very day. He wanted to get me to agree – sight unseen – to the purchase of a car that didn’t meet our needs (we had discussed getting something with a third row) and which I sincerely doubted he could afford to maintain. That proved to be true. He couldn’t afford the dealer maintenance. (I now know he bought the car when his physical affair with the Whore was at its pinnacle, in an apparent pathetic attempt to impress a woman who has neither a car nor a driver’s license and spends the vast majority of every single day on her cat pee- stained couch.)

In the back of my mind I always kind of wondered – why is he always broke? If anything his monthly expenses decreased while his income increased, so what’s the issue? He was so very highly agitated about it though, that I figured it wasn’t worth the battle to get into it with him. For the past few years I mostly bought my own Mother’s Day and birthday gifts for our kids to give me so that they could feel like they were actually participating in the celebration. I almost solely and exclusively bought our kids’ birthday and Christmas gifts because he plead poverty.

In the wake of both of my DDays I’ve come to learn where his money was going. Several hundred dollars a month went to buy beer. Then there was the porn he purchased, the expense of his burner phone, the fancy meals he squired the skanks to, the hotel room for the Whore, and all of the cash he showered on them. Hundreds of dollars out the door each month. By my general estimation, he blew at least $16,000 on his acting out from 2012 through 2017. All the while he would stand in our house and scream at me till he was red in the face about not having money.

For Christmas in 2016, Handsome told me that he was “short on cash” so he couldn’t buy any of our kids’ gifts. He seemed sincerely remorseful about it and I just did what I always do and handled everything. Our kids had an awesome holiday. He has since admitted that he found Angel Baby “outside on the street at work, crying in the rain” (note: that bitch needs to get an umbrella because in his tales of woe she’s always outside in a downpour) and that he gave her “a couple hundred dollars” to buy Christmas gifts for her kids. There are no words that I can think of to adequately articulate my white-hot rage at that scenario… her brood and her opening gifts purchased through my husband’s largesse when he didn’t spend a dime on his own kids.

I know that Handsome’s screaming fits are what Dr. M considers “intimate partner abuse.” They were uncalled for, offensive, and yes, abusive. I am still terribly scarred by them. Handsome complaining about money is an extreme trigger for me. To put it into perspective, as of today I have as great a physiological response to his financial infidelity as I do to his physical infidelity. Any hint of a complaint from him about money is enough to send me spiraling into nausea and misery.

This past weekend – over the holiday – our hot water tank decided to die a quick and untimely death. You say “no big deal BW, they’re cheap.” Well, not ours. We apparently have the Ferrari of hot water heaters and replacing it is a several thousand dollar expense. We replaced the condenser for our AC just a few weeks ago for another few grand. This, of course, led to a dreaded discussion about where all of this cash was to come from and Handsome said “well, I’ve been saying for years that we really need a slush fund for these kinds of things.” Yes, Handsome, you asshole, you have been saying that and we certainly do. All or any fraction of the $16,000 you spent on your acting out would have made a lovely pot of cash to rely on for these things. Or the tens of thousands of dollars we’ve spent just this year on your SA recovery or our betrayal recovery.  Yes indeed. That would be quite helpful now, wouldn’t it?

I went there. The place I normally bite my tongue and avoid like the plague. I pointed these facts out to him. His initial response?  Deflect with anger. Blame me for bringing it up. Act as though the problem isn’t that these things occurred, but that I dare mention them. Shortly thereafter, the shame appeared, but I fear that this too is an addict’s manipulative tool. Pout and sulk enough that I feel badly for raising the issue. Make me never want to raise it again. Here’s the new thing though… it doesn’t work on me any more. If he apologizes to me sincerely for creating this predicament and stops acting like he had nothing to do with the situation, I’ll show empathy. We’ll figure it out together. Otherwise? I love a hot shower as much as the next girl, but I’ll freeze my tushie off on principle. The burden to fix what he broke cannot fall on me alone. I didn’t put us in this position and I’m tired of coming to the rescue.

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.

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.

He’s doing everything he should be… and it’s still hard for me

A few days ago, I was feeling overwhelmed. During our last check-in Handsome disclosed both something that he had been holding back and one thing he says he just remembered last week. I appreciate and respect the effort (late though it may be) for transparency, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still painful.

He had, apparently for months, been holding back that the relationship he had with the woman he took out on a date last summer was more involved than he had led me to believe. I haven’t even given her a nickname here because I was initially led to believe it was of such short duration and insignificant that it didn’t merit further discussion as compared to his other APs. He minimized it. (Minimization is a part of Handsome’s Compulsive – Abusive Sexual – Relational Disorder (CASRD) according to Dr. M.) While they did only have one restaurant date, he was at her house once, briefly (no sexual contact), and she was in his car one night (touched her breasts), and he apparently made out with her multiple times outside her house, in the town where he works… while he was in uniform and working. (Because, apparently, risking your job and getting disease at the same time is… sexy???) This just squeaked through his polygraph because his answer to a single question about her was accurate. The question simply wasn’t comprehensive enough.

The new thing he says he just remembered is that last June when Angel Baby stayed at our house for two nights while I was away, on one of the days they got up and went for lunch at a trendy restaurant near my office, then to a museum, then to a nice restaurant for a drink before he drove her home. To exacerbate this issue, he had originally told me a sob story about picking Angel Baby up in the rain because she was standing on the street crying with nowhere to go. Allegedly it was her temporary homelessness that led him to bring her to our house. (A pathetic excuse and by no means justification, but that had been his story.) After learning of their “field trip” I checked his financial records and pinned down the precise day. It was three days after I left to take our kids to summer camp. Moreover, there was no rain where we live that week. None. (Thank heavens for the internet.) I was/ am less upset about the detail he was revealing (the field trip) than I was/ am about the dismantling of the already bullshit excuse for how she could have possibly ended up in our home in the first place. He insists that what he told me originally is what he actually remembers. Maybe. Who knows? In my mind though he has lost the benefit of the doubt. Plus, it is objectively impossible and untrue. Given the timing – his first two days off after I departed with the kids – my belief is that he premeditated to get her to our house. He denies this. He may even believe it to be true. I do not.

The following days have been tense, to say the least. I struggle with being appreciative of the transparency yet not hiding the fact that I’m crushed, yet again. Over the weekend we talked one day while the kids were off at activities and he made the mistake of telling me that it’s “hard” for him to admit to bad things when life seems to be going well between us. I proceeded to then explain to him that if he thought telling the truth was “hard” he should walk a mile in my shoes, and then I lit into him with a diatribe about all the things that are hard that I deal with every moment of every day because of what he did.

I then sent him this message a day later:

“I know that over the last weekend you were, I think, surprised to hear me express some of the very specific reasons why I am so sad and continue to find this all so very overwhelming and hard. It occurs to me that you are surprised because I don’t ever actually share these thoughts with you. You get bits and pieces of my anger, confusion, and hurt, but I seem to have adopted your method of stuffing things down inside and trying to keep my chin up.  Long term, that doesn’t do us any good. So, in no particular order and without any suggestion that this list is complete, here is a list of ten things that I am finding excruciatingly hard and challenging at the moment. Perhaps we could talk through each of them together?

  1. It is hard to know that there were so many (yes, 3 or 4 is “many” in this circumstance) other women that you wanted to sleep with when you chose not to sleep with me.
  2. It is hard to know that you communicated so much with these women when your kids and I could often barely get a few kind words from you.
  3. It is hard to know that you maintained a wholly separate life that your family was neither welcome in nor acknowledged in, except with complaints.
  4. It is hard to pay witness to your over-familiarity with these women, when you lack anywhere near that level of familiarity with your own family and things related to your family.
  5. It is hard to hear you talk about not wanting to hurt their feelings when my feelings were utterly irrelevant.
  6. It is hard to kiss you without wondering who taught you to kiss the way you do now when it was not the way you kissed me for years.
  7. It is hard to have sex with you without wondering where you learned all of the completely new things that you started doing last year and which were never part of your previous repertoire.
  8. It is hard not to feel that you gave the best of yourself to these women in desperate attempts to woo and impress them, and you didn’t care when you had nothing left for your family (emotionally, physically, financially).
  9. It is hard to know that you were spontaneous and kind and took initiative with certain of the other women when I have longed throughout most of our relationship for you to do that with me.
  10. It is hard to know that these women all believed that you picked them over me.”

Those ten struggles are probably the best status report that I could give for myself at the moment. It’s not a pretty picture. I would love to be “better than” or “above” this, but today I am not. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Thinking about betrayal (and driving myself nuts)

I try mightily to be fair(ish) to Handsome when I write here. Yes, I often vent, but I aim for rigorous honesty and if it looks bad for him, that’s on him. I don’t need to portray his actions in a negative light because they were horrific enough all on their own. When good things happen, I try to recognize that too. For example, Handsome finally got a sponsor. He’ll have six months of sexual sobriety and three months of sobriety from alcohol this week. This coming weekend we are going to the couples intensive he arranged for us a few months ago and he’s doing the pre-session homework. He’s keeping up with the after-care from his intensive with Dr. M including journaling every day (which I never thought he’d do, but he actually says he likes it).  All good things.

Occasionally though, things come up that I just have no idea how to process. Perhaps they are too overwhelming, or create too much confusion, or are too triggering. Or maybe they just make me ask myself, “What the actual fuck am I dealing with?” One example: during his intensive with Dr. M, Handsome was incredibly raw and overwhelmed. We were talking one night about his cheating in broad terms and I asked him out of the blue whether he had ever cheated on me during the 27 months I lived and worked on the other side of our state, when we were commuting back and forth to see each other. I had never had occasion to ask him that before, because it never occurred to me (before DDay #2) that he would have cheated all the way back then. Keep in mind, we were either married or engaged for 21 of those 27 months.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when someone asks me if I’ve done something awful and I haven’t, I answer immediately, emphatically, and without hesitation. When Handsome’s answer was “Welllllllll… (crickets chirping during long pause)… not exactly.” I knew the answer was just “yes.” His story is that we had a big fight, he didn’t think we could recover, we didn’t talk for “weeks” and he went to a local bar and he met a girl and he later took her out to dinner. During dinner he says he realized it was just absurd and not what he wanted, so he finished dinner, took her home, and that was the end of it.  I didn’t want to sound like Ross and Rachel, but I grilled him on whether he was under the impression we were on a break or that we had broken up. No, he wasn’t. He acknowledged we had never broken up.

What do I make of this revelation now, years of marriage and two kids later? His story simply isn’t plausible for a variety of reasons. First, we have never, ever gone weeks without speaking. In fact, we’ve never gone more than 48 hours without speaking. Memories can be faulty, so I actually went back and reviewed my cell phone records from back then (I swear I’m not a hoarder…I have them only because at the time the phone was a plausible work expense, so they’re in my tax files). There are only a handful of times we didn’t speak each and every day. Next, I simply have zero recollection of this allegedly big fight. I went back through my calendars to see when this might have happened, and over the 6 months I lived there before we got engaged we saw each other regularly every two weeks if not weekly. We talked daily, sometimes several times a day. We took trips and vacations together. It just doesn’t add up. Plus, this was not a hook up. By his own admission, he chatted her up at the bar, got the girl’s number, called her, set up a date, and then took her on that date. That takes a few days, and we’d have been in touch in that time. In short, my conclusion is simply that he cheated. We hadn’t broken up and he took someone else out on a date. That’s cheating.

By my best guess, this occurred sometime in late January 2004. We had seen each other over the New Year holiday and then again over the long holiday weekend mid-month. Then we didn’t see each other again for three weeks (we spoke daily) until we took a long-planned vacation together to Punta Cana the week of Valentine’s Day. Why do I suspect that window? When we got to Punta Cana, Handsome was an asshole. I mean a miserable jerk face. He snapped at me so badly before we checked in that I thought about turning around and flying home alone. The vacation improved greatly over the week, but those initial few days were incredibly difficult. At the time, I attributed it to a dozen things: his hatred of flying, exhaustion from work, maybe I really was a bitch? Now, post DDay, it’s the same behavior I saw throughout his acting out… picking fights and blaming me to “justify” to himself whatever crap he was up to.

So, then I start to wonder… now that I know, what exactly do I do with the information?  To me, this ties to my post a few weeks ago on betrayal and whether our choices would have been different if we, the betrayed, had the whole truth (click here for that). Would I have kept dating him if I knew he did this? Hard to say. Maybe not. Yes, I was in love with him, but I was also living hours away and had plenty of other non-cheating, educated, employed, single guy options at hand. I’m not entirely sure what I would have done. Would I have agreed to marry him? Even more doubtful, and certainly not so soon afterwards. I most definitely would have wanted him to do some serious work on himself first.

Just like now, he had choices then. He could have actually had the balls to break up with me before dipping his toe (or anything else) back into the dating pool. He could have admitted what he did at the time he did it. Or, better yet, he could have chosen to work through whatever disagreement he claims we had and stay faithful to his devoted girlfriend of three years that he kept talking to about marriage.

Many of my decisions that have flowed forth since then have been based on my ignorance. I used to confidently tell people that I actually thought our long-distance romance was helpful to us early on because we had to learn to communicate really well with each other. Unbeknownst to me, it also seems to have been when Handsome started honing his compartmentalization and deception skills. I had no idea.

So, what am I going to do? Likely nothing, other than ruminate on how long he has actually been betraying me. That’s the sad fact of it. I don’t see a point in driving myself more nuts over something that happened 14 years ago. I can dissociate myself from that. Compare and contrast that though with driving myself nuts over whether he’s been keeping secrets throughout our entire marriage, as opposed to just the last five years. (I say “just” now as if that number of years is de minimus, but it isn’t. It’s a hair  under 40% of our marriage, to be precise.)

Does it matter?  I don’t believe the answer makes his cheating better or worse depending on the answer.  It’s all bad either way. Nonetheless, the more time passes the more I reconsider previous events that I thought I had processed and moved beyond. I’m not suggesting that Handsome is still overtly lying (of course, he very well might be). He is, however, a master at lies of omission. I am left to wonder what secrets he may still be holding on to for dear life… the tightly held mysteries of our marriage and the vestiges of his addiction.

Our weekly check-in follows a format from his intensive program, and one of the  questions is “What is a lie or secret that you are keeping?” No matter how much thought or effort Handsome puts into the rest of the check-in, and it’s usually considerable, he inevitably glosses over this question. He has, on occasion, tried to skip it entirely. When he does address it, either the “secret” will be something hardly secret or the lie will be something along the lines of a white lie. (“Daughter asked if I liked her haircut and I said yes, but I really don’t care for it.”) It’s maddening. I’ve started to call him out on it, to hold him somewhat accountable for half-assing that part of the exercise. You would think that 5+ years of acting out would give him fodder to come up with legitimate, meaningful answers to that question, but he can’t (or won’t) as of yet.

I know he’s an addict. I know that secret keeping is as much a part of his addiction as what those secrets are about. There is probably very little more he could disclose that would shock me. We’ve been through a polygraph that he passed with flying colors. Certainly, what I can imagine in my head is likely worse than anything else that may have happened. (As I commented on another blog, I’ve told Handsome in all seriousness that if someone called me tomorrow and said “Hey, BW, I just saw Handsome fucking a monkey,” I would politely thank them for calling, hang up, and then start Googling intensive treatment programs for monkey fuckers.) That’s the tragic part here. I just want to know the totality of what I’m dealing with, process it, forgive, and move on. He wants to keep his secrets to save his pride and to protect himself from further shame. The two are fairly mutually exclusive, and so I continue to drive myself a little nuts over things that are totally outside my control.

 

Loss of Privacy

In spite of the fact that I blog about my husband’s infidelity and sex addiction, I am actually a reasonably private person. I have maintained some degree of anonymity here, other than for those who have reached out to me privately with questions or those who I have reached out to on my own. I was taught early on in life that you don’t air your dirty laundry in public and that there are things you keep within your family circle. I was taught that this is true for both possibly good things (money, for example) or bad things (illness or scandal). I was taught that generally nobody cares to know your business and that those people who do generally have ulterior motives.

Handsome and I sat down today for our weekly check-in. I understand that there are schools of thought that the spouse shouldn’t ask much during these check-ins, but my personal opinion is that failing to do so defeats the purpose.  My husband should not be talking at me, he should be talking with me about his addiction, its effect on me and on our family, and his recovery. I let him go through his check-in list, and then I ask a few questions.

Lying – more specifically, not lying (overtly or by omission) – is something that Handsome has to work on each day. He has spent the last several years lying to me daily. I have read that sex addicts are “relentless liars” and that was certainly true of Handsome. In the present, however, if Handsome is doing his recovery work properly he needs to (1) not lie, and (2) acknowledge any lies that are told. This means that some of our conversations are now more substantive than they were in the past. The “I don’t know/ remember” spiels are slowly getting replaced by answers.

Today, for example, in response to a question about what precisely he communicated with the Flame about every day for 3+ years, instead of feeding me the usual “nothing big, just day-to-day stuff” response, he said “Everything. Everything in our lives.” It turns out that he did indeed share every blasted detail with her. That includes everything our kids were doing, each of their illnesses, attitudes and academic highs and lows, as well as his health, my health, his job, my job (mostly how it impacted him), our travel planning and intimate details of that travel, and – of course – all about our married life. Mind you, he conveniently forgot to mention the Whore, Angel Baby, the woman he tried to date last summer, the porn, masturbation, Seeking Arrangements, or anything that might make him look bad to her, but everything else was fair game.

In sum, for the last 3+ years, my kids and I have had absolutely ZERO privacy. We didn’t know that we might as well have lived our lives on the front lawn of our house because every single thing we did or felt or experienced was being communicated to at least one person outside our family. I did not consent to giving up my privacy. It was taken from me and it was taken from each of my two children.

Things that should have never left the confines of our house were fodder for conversation with someone who is a stranger to me and a threat to my marriage. Arguments that I had with Handsome – if not prompted by her – were shaped, in part, from feedback he got from her. I wasn’t just dealing with his criticisms, I was unknowingly fending off hers as well. Our vacation plans weren’t just filtered through me for suitability, they were always run by her too, as were the kids’ extracurricular activities and decisions about their upbringing. Mind you, I have never met this woman. She has never met my kids (thank heavens) and she has never seen us together as a family. According to Handsome, he has only seen her in person three times in the last 30 years. In spite of that, she was apparently allowed and encouraged by Handsome to have opinions about us all, and he gave those opinions credence and sought her counsel…  every.single.day. In the betrayal recovery world there is much discussion of walls and windows. The Flame did not only have windows into our life, there simply were no walls.

To be fair, I have a few friends and acquaintances, and I occasionally talk to those people about different aspects of my life, but never about anything that would be construed as a violation of trust if discovered and nothing that would cause embarrassment. The only person who has ever had that level of comprehensive detail about me or Handsome or our family is Handsome himself. Maybe the odd reason my marriage feels somehow more full and rich these days, in spite of the shit storm that has transpired, is that for the first time in forever it’s just the two of us. No interlopers, ghosts in the room, or extra people in the marriage. Together with our kids, we are a tribe, just trying to make it through the storm. We are a small tribe, for sure, but perhaps we can work together to build our family’s walls back up and regain our precious privacy.

Pic collecting and eye stalking – what next?

(Apologies if this has posted twice… somehow it reverted to draft form…)

I’ve been gone from the blog for a bit as Handsome spent a chunk of the last two weeks in an intensive program in LA and I took the opportunity to try to have a few days where his SA was not the focus of my world. He’s back home now and I had my debriefing with the doctor who ran the intensive.

On the bright side, he said that Handsome was fully engaged in the intensive, put a lot of thought and effort into the homework, showed up every day on time and ready to participate, and he feels like Handsome’s prognosis is good if he continues to do his recovery work. Terrific, right? That’s what I had hoped to hear. No complaints there. I’m truly proud of Handsome for that because I know it was incredibly difficult for him and yet he went “all in” with the program.

The doctor ran me through a lot of information that Handsome had shared during the intensive and although there were a few childhood things I wasn’t aware of, the acting out and affair activity was essentially exactly as Handsome had disclosed to me… with two exceptions.  The doctor was running through the list of Handsome’s acting out behaviors and I was almost tuning out because the list is long and hurtful, and then I heard “…pic collecting, blah blah blah, eye stalking, blah blah blah… .” Wait, what? I had to ask him to go back and read those two to me again. And then, because I am apparently the world’s most ill-informed spouse of a sex addict, I had to ask him to explain to me what those two things are.

Per Urban Dictionary:

Pic collector – A leery anonymous person who replies to your personal ad for the sole purpose of collecting your pics to inflate his or her poor ego. An encounter with a pic collector is always short and obnoxiously one-sided.

Eye stalking – The act of stalking with one’s eyes. [duh]

The eye stalking was not particularly surprising and, in the scheme of things, kind of low down on Handsome’s acting out totem pole. Troubling (and sad and pathetic) for sure, but I didn’t consider the omission of it from prior disclosures to be a crisis.

The “pic collecting” though is a bit of another story. Whose pics?  Where were they from? Was he talking about the pics from the Whore? Those I knew about for sure, but were there others? I learned that this is one of those situations where Handsome didn’t overtly lie to me, but rather he left out a part of the story that makes him look bad.

Knowing that he had signed up for Seeking Arrangements and failed at that endeavor, I grilled him about his use of Craigslist and Backpage. He admitted to visiting both intermittently but insisted that it was for work (prostitution stings and the like). He and his colleagues would reply to ads from women and try to determine if they were hooking out of houses in town and, if so, they’d try to shut them down. That may be true – or not, time will tell – but what he failed to mention is that he would keep the pictures that he was sent in communicating with those women. I can guess what he did with them.

So, I went there… against my better judgment, I asked why he did this. His reply, which I think was honest, was “Because I wanted to look at real women.” That crushed me. Forced the air from my lungs. He said what he said, but what I hear in my head is “Because I wanted to look at real women other than you.” It’s not as if I was absent, gone away, missing. Nope. I was there in our house virtually every single day of our marriage, including the times when Handsome was indulging his addiction while I was struggling with a full-time job, two kids, an aging parent suffering from complex grief, and a checked out husband. Clothed, naked, whatever… he could have looked at me, but he made repeated decisions to look elsewhere.

Would I have been more real if I posted titty photos online? If I had time to troll for men on sites like Craigslist and Backpage? If anonymous sex was my thing? I don’t think so. I certainly feel pretty real each day when my alarm clock goes off and I get the kids clothed and fed and off to school and I head for my job, to return home ten or eleven hours later to wrap up the day and return the kids to bed, ensure our bills are paid, and check that my mom is okay. To me, that’s the definition of reality.

Therein lies the rub… as I’m discovering more and more, my sex addict husband’s reality is very different from what I consider to be actual reality. I don’t (or didn’t) exist in any real way in his land of pornography, masturbation, physical affairs, emotional affairs, voyeurism, sexting, pic collecting, eye stalking, etc. etc. There, I’m not his Wife who loves him and finds him handsome and sexy and who supports him no matter what and is just waiting for him to get through his midlife crisis, or get his head out of his ass, and be a good husband and father again. No. In that land, I’m simply the “Boss Lady”  or the uncaring wife who denies him sex that he’s entitled to gosh darn it. (Because he’s such a great catch, of course… once you ignore the drinking, screaming, and cheating… whose panties wouldn’t just fall to the floor?) Forget that he was never, ever denied sex… that fact doesn’t fit his story.

I would love a break from reality. It would be glorious to stick my head in the sand or put on my noise cancelling headphones and drown out all the SA chatter around me with white noise. I can’t do that, however, and neither can Handsome if this marriage is going to work. He’s had at least a five-year break from reality. It’s time for him to join me in this delightful mess we call married life, both in the highs and lows of it, the fun and the sad, exciting and boring, but above all things, real. Hopefully he can gain (or re-gain) an interest in collecting pictures from our family’s happy life instead of those of random sad, broken strangers online.