Our CSAT threw a monkey wrench at me yesterday. Handsome was working, so I saw her alone. We were supposed to be touching base on the therapeutic disclosure.
After our last joint session, Handsome had made two comments to me that I just couldn’t really seem to process well. I didn’t know what to make of them, so I wrote them down to discuss with her. That led the session in an unexpected direction.
The comments? I had told Handsome that I thought I was doing pretty well prior to the most recent disclosure, but that his new revelation (after he had months of opportunity to disclose it and instead continued his denials), really set me back. Yes, I expected it to a degree, but it was nonetheless devastating. I had a guess about the prostitutes and massage parlors, but the additional long-term whatever (anonymous physical affair? relationship? sext buddy?) caught me off guard. Handsome’s reply was “I don’t think you were doing well before this. I think it was a facade.”
The CSAT nailed her dissection of that comment. It’s a sneaky combination of gas lighting and defensiveness all rolled together. He didn’t hurt me anew because I was already miserable. Uh, wrong, ass hat.
His second comment? Remember that this was made one day after DDay #3… “Because of my integrity disorder you are always going to believe there are things I am lying about.” Well, for the time being at least, yes, yes I am because to date I have been absolutely correct to doubt his veracity. As the CSAT pointed out, it begs the question of what he’s willing to do to address that issue. Pointing out the problem (a fully justified problem that he created) does nothing. It’s a pointless comment that frames him as a victim of my supposedly unjustified disbelief. What’s he going to do about it?
Then, the bombshell: given Handsome’s two intensives and his nearly one year of sobriety and his individual therapy and 9 months in SA, she would expect him to be further along than where he is now. She feels like he’s “stuck” and still too defensive to move forward. She equated him to a dry drunk which, when I think about it, is likely not too far off the mark. He’s sober from his acting out, but I’m seeing a lot of the pre-DDay bad behaviors that accompanied his acting out (like being unkind and picking random, pointless fights with me) because he hasn’t yet developed the coping skills to prevent those things from occurring. His brain doesn’t even usually register that he’s doing them.
She’s planning to meet with him individually next week to talk through this with him, and tell him flat-out what she thinks of his progress, and then we meet with her together the following day. She told me to be prepared to answer the question of what I intend to do if he won’t/ can’t move ahead? What if he is sober, but not really recovering? What if he hasn’t actually hit rock bottom yet? What then?
Yeah, what then? And why on Earth is this the second holiday season in a row that I have to make weighty, significant decisions to deal with his addiction and the related fall out?