Month: September 2019

The Gum on my Shoe Returns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summah (as they say in New England)

Vacation mood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

The beach at my happy place.

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

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

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

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