This is the last piece of this series. (Missed earlier parts of this series? You can find Part I here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.) I should point out that I’m not writing in real time. These events happened several weeks ago. I haven’t seen a partner write about their loved one’s inpatient treatment though, so I wanted to cover it here in some detail. That’s particularly true since Handsome’s didn’t go as quite as planned.
Handsome’s struggle with integrity didn’t end with lying about his missed SA meeting and his drinking. A few days after our brutal CSAT session, Handsome asked me out to lunch. It was an olive branch, so I took it. This was weeks before the virus was keeping people home, but the restaurant was mostly empty. We actually had a lovely time together. During the meal, Handsome raised the issue of his communication with the older woman he met in rehab. (I’m not a complete idiot… I had already googled her and confirmed her age, long term partnership, and other pertinent facts.) He assured me that he understood how awful it was that he broke the boundary and that he was willing to cease communication if it was what I wanted or needed from him. He relayed that he thought she was smart, insightful, and that he felt she would be helpful to him in implementing what he learned at ST at home. It was the discussion he should have initiated with me before he broke the boundary.
My boundaries have always been focused on keeping me sane, safe, and secure. I know that they have seemed punitive to Handsome, but that was never their point. This woman isn’t a threat to me or my marriage. I told Handsome that as long as he didn’t communicate with her in secret and as long as he didn’t communicate with her instead of with me, I could live with him staying in touch with this one particular well-vetted woman. I explained clearly that although it was still triggering, I’d deal with that trigger if it would be helpful to him. He thanked me and said he was absolutely clear on the limitations of what I had agreed to.
A few days pass. Things were actually quite good when I’d see Handsome. He was still living at the AirBnB and miserable about it, but he was great when he was at our house. And then, quite out of the blue, he asked me a question about when our kids were going to be in summer camp. Not a broad “July or August?” kind of question (which would be typical for Handsome) but a very pointed, date-specific question. Handsome doesn’t care about those kinds of details and he especially doesn’t care about them 3-4 months ahead of time. The last time Handsome asked a similar question was during his acting out. I had been clueless and answered him. I found out later that he had promptly reached out to his brigade of whores and gleefully announced that he’d be alone for 6 weeks in the summer and started plotting. Immediately, there were sirens going off in my head. I dodged the question and changed the subject completely. It was triggering. He took one more shot at it and I again avoided answering with any specificity.
When he went to take a shower that night I checked his phone. As I feared, he had been texting with a young girl (she’s about 20) he met at ST who lives in a town that’s about 15 minutes from our summer home. I confronted him. He initially denied it. Then he admitted it. That’s when it got really fun because he tried to gaslight me “I thought you said at lunch that my ST friends were okay to stay in touch with.” But you see, I’m smarter now. I know exactly what I had agreed to. He quickly saw that the manipulation of reality that worked so well for him during his addiction is a complete non-starter now.
I specifically did not agree to this girl because, frankly, she scares me. She has serious daddy issues. She is one of the women I felt Handsome had a weird dynamic with at ST. He told me on a call that she was “like a daughter” to him. The last time I heard that about a young girl, she ended up in my house in bed with Handsome while I was out of town. He has access to this girl (via our summer home). And, to boot, unlike his other APs this one is drop dead gorgeous. She is waaaaay out of Handsome’s league… like laughably out of his league… but sex addicts don’t seem to notice such things. Nothing is improbable to them. (Hence the success of the “girlfriend experience” part of the sex trade).
And therein lies the less obvious thing that Handsome brought home from ST. His treatment – sitting in a process group of mostly women for 150 minutes a day for 5 weeks – apparently reactivated aspects of his sex addiction. All of the support, the empathy, the bolstering of morale, and yes, the 8 second hugs (not kidding) had to be like a tsunami of hits to his addict brain. After 26 months of sexual sobriety, Handsome was again communicating with a woman in secret, and when confronted about it he lied, deflected, minimized, and tried to gaslight me. In my book, that’s a relapse.
So what was this communication? Nothing sexual. He complained to her about how he knew he had made strides at ST but that no one at home could readily see it. No one appreciated what he had done and how hard he had worked. And what gem of advice did this very sage almost-still-a-teenager have to offer. “Oh, forget about them! No matter what your family says you know how awesome you are and how much progress you’ve made. Keep being you! Don’t let them bring you down!!”
That’s just genius, right? “Eff your family. Who are they to get upset by your lies? Zheesh!”
I had three fairly simultaneous responses to this. First, I seriously considered restoring his phone to the factory settings and thus deleting all of his contacts, photos, apps, etc. (He doesn’t back up with any regularity). Then I realized that would be my trauma response… to hurt him back. Plus, he certainly knows how to buy and use a burner phone. I won’t police him.
Then I scheduled an emergency session with our CSAT. She is clearly fed up with Handsome but desperately trying to stay marriage-positive and neutral. Or as neutral as she can be when he’s engaging in mayhem.
Last, I waited several hours and then I called Handsome at work. And I vented in a way that I likely haven’t done since the very early part of 2018. I let him have ALL of my sadness, angst, anger, fear, distrust, disgust, and every other emotion I was feeling. I held nothing back and I certainly didn’t coddle him. There was nothing left to coddle, in my book. I’m not going to bend over backwards to keep him from doing something stupid when he’s already doing stupid stuff. He’s used to me being angry or sad but I’m usually reserved and dignified. This was far from that. I think the rawness of it terrified him. I dumped it ALL on him.
In closing that discussion I reminded Handsome how much love for him the kids and I had. I used the past tense on purpose. It wasn’t lost on him. I pointed out that he was sabotaging the very thing he claimed to want most in the world and that it was, indeed, all his fault. ALL. HIS. FAULT. Yes, he had a terrible childhood. It doesn’t mean he gets a free pass to torture his family now. Yes, he has cadre of previously undiagnosed mental health issues, but he’s also had 2+ years of treatment by a virtual team of therapists and multiple intensives. At this stage in the game, it’s all on him. ALL. OF. IT. He was sobbing by the time I was through.
And me? I knew that the re-entry from 5 weeks at inpatient would be hard. It’s a sad reality that once those intensive supports are removed, many people struggle and some completely fail. I KNEW that. I anticipated it. And yet it was still brutal to see my own husband fall on his face the way he did. I had hoped he’d be different, or even that we’d finally catch a break. Nope.
The measure of a person isn’t really how hard they fall though, it’s how they pick themselves back up. Handsome fell hard. Really hard. Watching him pick himself back up – step by step – actually gives me hope.