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.