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Intimacy Disorder in Sex Addiction

Intimacy has been on my mind a lot lately. Not the kind of intimacy found in the bedroom (although equally true there), but rather the intimacy that exists between spouses or partners. The knowing looks, the inside jokes, the pure depth of knowledge about the other person and their thoughts and dreams and wishes and traumas.

During the first 7 years of our marriage, I thought that Handsome and I were “intimate” with one another. I told him everything. EVERYTHING. I didn’t keep secrets. I thought he was the same, but after Porngate and round 1 of the Flame, I learned differently. He told me only what he wanted me to know. He image-managed quite well.

We are supposed to be doing an exercise now where we share a “transparency of the day” with each other. The share is supposed to be something that wouldn’t be obvious to the other person and, ideally, something that wouldn’t otherwise have been shared. It could be something like “It hurt my feelings when you _________,” or “It made me happy that you _______.” It could be sharing a trigger or a childhood wound or something we’re grateful for or an insight developed. The intent is to get Handsome more comfortable with intimacy and vulnerability, but I have benefited from participating too.

These things aren’t hard for me unless my share might hurt Handsome. As mad or disappointed as I sometimes get with him, there is a part of me that views him as fragile and wants to protect him. I could share all day otherwise though.

For Handsome, these shares are usually visibly painful. A surface level share might be fine, but if he digs deeper they are obviously stressful. He’s not only unaccustomed to sharing what’s on his mind, it pushes him towards fight or flight mode. He intellectually understands that connection is the opposite of addiction, but building that bridge of intimacy feels scary and threatening. If he is like that with me, you can imagine what he’s like with others in his life. It seems such a shame to me that no one really knows him, but it is because it’s so incredibly hard for him to share himself.

There was a point where he told me that he shared “everything” with the Flame. I know now that wasn’t exactly true. He shared the private details of our life with her, for sure, but he never let her see who he really is. He heavily managed his image with her too. She had no idea he drank daily and used sex to numb himself. He never told her about his childhood traumas or his debilitating fear of abandonment. He kept his feelings of worthlessness to himself.

That’s the fascinating thing to me. I know those things… the intimate secrets. He knows that I know those things. I’m still here. I didn’t run away. I have stayed the course even when it would have made perfect sense to leave. In spite of that, it’s still hard to the point of discomfort for Handsome to be vulnerable and open up to me. I’m well- versed in the explanation: the closer we get, and the more intimate we become, the more I trigger his fear of abandonment. Intellectually I understand the concept. Emotionally, it breaks my heart. It must be very lonely to walk through life thinking, feeling, and believing that you are only safe in solitude and secrecy.

Long time, no see…

It was May the last time I posted. I have tried to keep in touch with my blogosphere friends over the last 8 months, but I just couldn’t bring myself to write here. Both COVID and the one-step-forward-two-steps-back process of my husband’s recovery just wore me out.

I’ll look to explore some of what transpired during those months in my upcoming posts, but here is the short version:

The disclosure planned for June fell apart after one of Handsome’s recovery buddies told him it was a mistake to do. His refusal to do the disclosure – despite his acknowledgment of how helpful it could be for me- led to a huge rift and I started to extricate myself from the marriage. Handsome spiraled and shut down. His therapist “fired” him. Our CSAT followed suit (with my consent). He realized FINALLY that he was the problem. He rapidly got his act together. His therapist and the CSAT were reengaged and substantial progress was made. The disclosure was completed (and he put a lot of effort into it), he made it through my impact statement and we’ve made leaps forward into healing and reconciliation.

Just a few months ago I didn’t think we’d get here. The progression has been far from linear, but we are eons away from where we stalled out last summer. It’s night and day. I’m glad to be seeing the sunshine. ☀️

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.

Part 4: They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said , “No, no, no”

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.

Part 3: They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, “No, no, no”

(Missed Part 1 of this series? You can find it here. Part 2 is here.) Handsome’s last week at ST sounds like it was equal parts beneficial and stressful. He remained fully booked throughout the week and had a few sessions he was particularly moved by, including one with a trauma specialist where he reported that things finally just “clicked.” That seemed to set the stage for a lot of therapeutic progress.

At the same time, he was stressed to see many of his new friends depart from both his lodge and his process group and new folks arrive. The shifts in various group dynamics were disconcerting to him. He got a new room mate. His closest friend there left for home. Handsome also had to deal with the reality of what was awaiting him at home. Not only had he scorched a lot of earth here before he left, but I had been crystal clear that he was not coming back into our house. I insisted that he go to an AirBnB or a hotel and that he transition back into both work and home. His therapists at both ST and at home supported this. Throughout his stay Handsome continually tried to manipulate or negotiate his way back home, but I held firm. I wasn’t barring him from seeing our kids or anything like that, and he was welcome at the house whenever he wanted to be there, but he needed to be sleeping elsewhere.

I was reasonably confident that transitioning back to work wouldn’t be an issue for Handsome. He loves his job and he healed pretty completely from his surgeries and injury. Transitioning home, however, was going to be tougher. I wanted to see him have consistently positive interactions with me and with our kids. I wanted to see him put the skills that he allegedly learned at ST to work. This is where the wheels fell off the bus pretty much from the moment I picked him up at the airport.

Handsome requested steak for dinner the night he returned. I didn’t want to buy it too far ahead and the day or two right before he came home was full of sports practices, doctors appointments, and my job, so I stopped at the grocery store on our way home from the airport. He was really, incredibly put out by that. Absurdly so. He didn’t yell or complain. He just steamed about it. There was no “I’m so happy to see my wife after 5 weeks away” or “I’m glad they’re willing to eat with me” or anything like that. He was ticked that I hadn’t shopped in advance of his arrival. To be clear, he was coming home from rehab, not from conquering ISIS or curing cancer.

The guy who came home is better, in some significant ways, than the guy who left 5 weeks earlier, but worse in others. He does seem to have learned how to manage his anger. That’s huge. He is more insightful into his moods and he can admit when he is disregulated. Again, for him, those are major improvements. BUT…(and this is a big one)… the guy who came home had (at least initially) seemingly lost a ton of empathy for me. He re-framed himself from sex addict to trauma survivor. He decided that 12-step was just too negative and had lost some respect for the program. He seemed to have lost some respect for his therapist and our CSAT. And those were the obvious changes. There was one other major change that didn’t become apparent right away.

Those initial obvious changes were incredibly anxiety inducing and stressful for me. It’s hard to be supportive when you’re actively being diminished or discounted. Still, as he got a few sessions with Doc 2 under his belt and a few sessions with our CSAT where she got fierce with him, he started to soften. The chip seemed to fall off his shoulder as days passed. He recognized that all of the individual work that he did at ST was terrific for him, but there was little emphasis on working those concepts into a relationship. It wasn’t really ST’s job to teach him how to fix the damage he caused to his family before he left, but the messaging he received (or at least the messaging as he received it) led him to believe he should ignore it and start fresh. Great for him. Less so for everyone else.

Flipping the switch to focus beyond himself was incredibly hard for Handsome. Of course it was, right? In rehab he hadn’t betrayed anyone. He hadn’t instilled anxiety in anyone. Everyone focused on him and supported him. Within a week of his arrival home, Handsome had a night where he had an appointment with Doc 2 and then he planned to go to an SA meeting. Normally, he’ll call me to chit chat while he’s driving between two places like that. My phone didn’t ring. I can’t explain why, but I just had a really, really bad feeling. For the first time in almost a year I tracked his phone and saw that he was at a bar. Shortly later, he moved on to a second bar. I didn’t call him. I didn’t text him. I wanted to see if he would reach out to me. He didn’t.

The following morning he stopped by the house and I asked him how the SA meeting was. He stood in our kitchen, looked me in the eye, and told me it was great. I asked him if any of his buddies were there and he told me it wasn’t all that crowded. I thought my heart might literally break open in my chest. I asked him how they managed to find the meeting since it had moved to Bar ____. He had no response. Then he didn’t speak to me for the better part of 4 days. He flat out refused to discuss it.

As this was transpiring, so was something else. Handsome was a part of a group chat of his ST friends. Apparently, whatever addiction issues these folks had transferred over to texting because his phone was pinging constantly whenever I saw him. Handsome is not supposed to text any woman other than me except for work or child care. He knows this. Yet he started texting with a woman from his ST process group and then presented it to me as “she is so helpful to me, you don’t mind, right?” Uh, yeah. I do. And I wasn’t really asked. I was told when it was already going on. That’s a point I made to our therapist. I’m not an unreasonable ass. This woman is both older and a lesbian in a very long term relationship. She was his bestie at ST. If she can be of help to him, and if he isn’t communicating with her to the exclusion of me, I might be open to it. But he never gave me the courtesy of asking. He just broke the boundary and figured I’d get over it.

A week later in therapy I pointed out that he’d still never bothered to have a discussion with me about it. I felt like all of Handsome’s energy was flowing out of our family and into this clique of ST folks. (Not to this one older woman, but rather to the group chat 15+ ST folks had going.) Handsome strenuously denied this, but he couldn’t deny the hundreds of text messages exchanged with them or the fact that he wasn’t in touch with his sponsor, any SA buddies, or even his best friend. In addition, he wasn’t communicating with me about anything other than logistical parent stuff. His whole world revolved around this group. He wasn’t showing any interest in relational healing. Well, that’s not quite accurate. He expressed feeling very sad and lonely and unloved. He said he wanted a good and loving relationship. I didn’t even have to respond to that because the CSAT jumped in and said, “But you haven’t done anything in furtherance of that. You caused a ton of damage but you’ve done nothing to repair it. You have to do more than just show up here and sit on my couch. Do you want this marriage or do you want a divorce? Make up your mind.” It was a heartbreaking end to the session, but very necessary. He insisted that he wants the marriage, but the next week would call that into question.

Part 2: They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, “No, no, no”

(Missed Part 1 of this series? You can find it here.) I was told Handsome would be able to call to say he arrived safely at Sierra Tucson, but that was not the case. His phone, along with all of his luggage, was taken immediately upon meeting the ST representative at the airport. He wouldn’t see any of his belongings again till very late the following day, and he wouldn’t see his cell phone again for over a week.

Handsome was in lock-down for the better part of two days after his arrival. It’s mandatory and involved blood testing and urine samples and the like, as well as getting a grip on the medications he came in with and making an initial determination about what might be working and what might need adjustment. For those with substance addictions I’m sure this serves as a detox period, but for Handsome it was fairly torturous. No tv, no internet, no games, no books, and yet exposure to people coming off their drug of choice and being extremely dis-regulated emotionally. I think he looked at it as something to be endured, and so he did.

This was where Handsome was first exposed to some of the… quirky… rules at ST. For example, Handsome took bandanas to wear on his head during yoga and hikes. They took those from him (presumably to prevent self- harm) yet he was allowed to keep his shoelaces and he actually had extra bed sheets in his room. Another example… if you brought your own dental floss from home a nurse kept it and would dole it out back to you in roughly 2 foot increments, but they sold dental floss in regular packs in the on-site store at ST. Go figure.

After the lock down, Handsome was moved to his lodge. He describes it as a timbered Motel 6. (His accommodations and food service at OnSite in Tennessee last year were considerably more upscale by comparison.) ST had three lodges: all women, all men, and co-ed. As I wrote in a previous post, however, they moved the women who caused too much trouble in the women’s or co-ed lodges into the men’s lodge. Weeks later, I still find that disturbing and baffling. As you might expect, my sex addict spouse had some issues with that.

Once settled in his lodge, Handsome seemed to fall pretty easily into the routine of the facility. The days were incredibly long (6:30 AM to roughly 9 PM with minimal down-time), but Handsome dove in without much complaint. To the extent he complained at all it was mostly about the lack of Coke or Pepsi when coffee and tea was permitted and abundant.

When I say that the days had little down time I want to be clear that Handsome’s day was scheduled thoroughly through that time. He was expected to attend everything he was scheduled for. Failure to appear for a session meant that a team of security folks went looking for you (tracking patients by Fit-Bit-like devices). That said, the common work-around at ST was for folks to go to a session, stay 5-10 minutes, long enough to ensure that they were logged in, and then leave and blow off the remainder of the session. Handsome reports that was pretty typical for about a quarter of the patients there. Usually, but not always, the younger patients who were there on mom and dad’s dime.

From a partner’s point of view, my perception is that the treatment at ST was incredibly holistic. In addition to what you might expect at a rehab, they arranged physical rehab sessions for both an injury he had operated on a few months ago and to address the more recent injury he suffered just after Christmas. They paid close attention to a heart issue he has and would have taken him to be treated by a nearby cardiologist if he hadn’t already been under the care of a cardiologist at home. When he developed a sudden and severe tooth ache, they got him to a local dentist.

Moreover, while the offering of a veterans and first responder’s program was of little consequence to me (Handsome’s trauma is rooted in his family of origin, not his job, although that certainly added to the complex nature of his PTSD), being a participant in the program meant that Handsome could avail himself of treatments that were add-ons or “extras” for everyone else. He could do acupuncture, EMDR, somatic experiencing, equine therapy, and quite a few other things at no additional cost. While he did not find benefit in all of those things, he was at least encouraged to try them to see what might click for him. Some really clicked, and others had no impact at all.

Initially, Handsome was calling home every day, but that was just mentally exhausting for me. I wrote a bit about that here. He frequently wrote to our kids, but not to me. I got one letter the first week and after that, nothing. When we did speak by phone, it was often a disaster. The first two and a half weeks, he sounded like a zombie. I still don’t know if his meds were altered or what the issue was, but he sounded very flat and, frankly, un-empathetic and distant. I cut the calls down to once a week. In week 3, things shifted and he just started sounding like an arrogant douche.

During the calls he never asked me questions about my health or well-being or what was going on at home. He talked a lot about himself and about the “amazing” and “tremendous” people in his group. That was when I learned that his process group was Handsome and one other guy and 6 women. I started to pick up on comments about how I “just wouldn’t understand” something or how his trauma and mine are “a lot alike.” During a session with our CSAT that week, I asked her to call Handsome’s therapist at ST and find out what the heck was going on. I had previously spoken to Handsome’s assigned therapist at ST. I liked her. I thought she was quite insightful about Handsome’s issues, so when it was relayed back to me that she hadn’t considered the possible correlation between the validation Handsome was getting out of his mostly female therapy group and his sex addiction, I was floored. The more he got comfortable and buddy-buddy with his group, the worse our calls went.

This phenomenon wasn’t unique to me. I don’t complain to our kids about Handsome and I try my hardest for them to see us as a united front. To the extent they have opinions about their dad, those opinions are based on their own experiences with him. Starting in week 2, my 13 year old, who I would generally describe as daddy’s girl, respectfully declined to get on the phone with her dad. She asked me if she had to talk to him. I asked her to please try to talk to him 2x a week and she was reluctant to do even that. She said he was completely uninterested in her, didn’t ask her anything about her, and that the sound of his voice made her sad. I didn’t tell her, but that was my experience on the calls too. Most of them ended with me in tears. It was brutal.

I had an incredible bond with my dad. I think Handsome believes he has a similar relationship with our daughter, but he overestimated it. He glosses over the yelling and the tension in the house while he was fully engaged in his addiction. Both kids noticed how peaceful and calm it was when he was gone. When our daughter basically cut off her calls with Handsome it was a bit of a wake-up he needed. My guess is that somewhere in his mind he believed that even if our marriage ended his kids would never find fault with him. He saw how untrue that assumption was. Our daughter was holding him accountable in her own way and while he was hurt by it, on some level he recognized that he caused it. At the tail end of week 3, there was a huge and noticeable shift.

Handsome started to sound more positive and upbeat. He started making plans for home. He started making a transition plan that would hopefully help him integrate some of his practices from ST into life at home. I heard reports back that he was making significant therapeutic progress and that he was exercising good boundaries. He won an award for his participation in sessions and overall dedication to his recovery at the end of the 4th week.

In spite of the sudden burst of progress, it wasn’t lost on anyone that the three weeks prior were rough. He had to work through a lot of anger and resentment to start actually internalizing the messaging he was receiving. For that reason, and because he had the time off from work and insurance to cover the costs, ST had him stay for an additional week. From a partner perspective, that’s when things started to get a bit dodgy again. …

What do you mean by “a**hole”? – an interlude

After my last post about my husband’s journey to rehab, a newer reader asked me what exactly I meant when I said that my husband was being an a**hole pre-rehab. It’s a good and fair question, because the answer may not be what you might imagine.

Handsome does a lot of things right. He diligently attends marriage counseling. He diligently attends individual therapy twice a week. He goes to 12-step meetings at least once a week. He’s not the guy who denies he’s a sex addict or one who tries to gaslight others about his addiction despite being caught red handed.

He has sought out therapeutic intensives for him and for us as a couple and by all accounts he was cooperative and participated fully and appeared motivated to put what he learned to good use.

He is an involved and caring father. He has tried, with varying degrees of effort and success, to be empathetic towards me and to support me.

All of that is wonderful. And yet this is also a guy who could lose his mind over me taking too long to pick out ice cream at the grocery store. Or shut down and accuse me of having control issues if I ask him a reasonably simple question about our family scheduling. Or reduce both of our kids to tears for no good reason within an hour of them getting off the school bus. On the surface he presents as reasonably fine, but right beneath the surface is a maelstrom. That’s the anger aspect of his a**holery.

There is also a liar, liar aspect. Like many addicts, Handsome is an accomplished liar. As a child, he learned to lie to prevent harm and neglect from his two functionally alcoholic parents, and he honed those skills through his lifetime of addiction. He has been working on regaining his integrity, but there are still times where he lies to me for no apparent reason (in addition to the times he still lies purely for self-preservation purposes). For example, if asked, he might tell me that he talked to his best friend and he might go so far as to tell me something they talked about. Then I’d get a call from that same friend a day or so later asking how Handsome was doing since they hadn’t spoken in weeks. Why the lie? I don’t really care if he spoke to his friend, I was just making conversation. Knowing that he lied, however, is a big deal to me when he’s supposed to be reestablishing his integrity.

Last, there is a distorted reality aspect to his a**holery. For me, this is actually the hardest to deal with because I am so often cast as the enemy in his distortions. Frustratingly, when he’s living inside the distortion, I can’t talk him out of it. Usually our CSAT can, but I cannot. I’m viewed as an untrustworthy enemy in those moments. I offer two examples:

1. Handsome and I both have slightly warped senses of humor. We often laugh about some dark stuff. After he returned home from the hospital following his emergency surgery he was in dire need of a shower. Knowing that soap was likely to sting in his fresh wounds I jokingly said “Hey, watch out for the soap!” (As in “wow, I feel for you because that’s really going to suck…”) He chuckled along with me, as usual, and that was that, I thought. It wasn’t though. He repeated the interaction throughout that day and the next and in each telling my few joking words were painted as increasingly sinister and mean. I literally watched this happen before my eyes. By the time several days passed and we showed up for our weekly CSAT appointment, he told her the story as if I had actually wished him harm. He wasn’t lying or trying to be manipulative in that moment. He had fully convinced himself that I wanted him to be in pain. (How awful that must be to believe your spouse wished you harm?? To talk yourself into a scenario where you can’t tell what’s real?)

And another example…

2. Handsome and I had an argument about something – I don’t recall exactly what – but the argument was heated. It was a good ole’ fashioned argument, but there was no screaming or swearing or name calling. None. And yet he convinced himself that I called him a f**k up. I have never called him that. Ever. (And, let’s be honest, there have been times these last two years where that wouldn’t have been entirely unreasonable.) It has always seemed to me like one of those things that if I said it I would never be able to take it back or apologize enough or make it better, so I have never said those words to him. In his mind, however, he took my displeasure, frustration, and anger that I did express during our discussion and boiled it down to “She called me a f**k up.” Then, he used that as an excuse to shut down all communication for 3 days. He rationalized his withdrawal by inventing an incident that really didn’t occur. It’s kind of like how he used my failure to attend his mom’s funeral as some of the justification for his acting out. (“She doesn’t love me, because if she did she would be here, so she abandoned me.”) Except, I WAS AT THE FUNERAL.

When I write these things down, I know my husband sounds bonkers. I completely understand how absurd these things must be to those who haven’t lived it. And yet I’ve now had over a half dozen different, unrelated therapists tell me that these actions are all indicia of various mood disorders which are all in turn tied to Handsome’s childhood trauma. Does he get to rage, lie and distort just because he had crappy parents? No, he doesn’t. What he gets is to go off to rehab for several weeks to: (1) learn the emotional regulation skills he never learned as a kid, (2) get him on the right medications and on the right dosages that can help him, and (3) dig deep into his family of origin traumas to try to address them.

Part 1: They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, “No, no, no”

Several weeks ago Handsome headed off to rehab. Not, as you might imagine, for sex addiction. He was sober and not struggling with his sobriety. He was, however, struggling with being an a**hole. Yes, there’s a rehab for that.

When I say that Handsome was not struggling with sobriety, what I mean is that he wasn’t feeling compelled to masturbate, view porn, pic collect, go to massage parlors, or any of the other things he did to act out. He is repulsed by his old, addictive behavior. So what’s the problem? He was struggling mightily with recovery. He was sober, but still not in a good place mentally. On some level, his acting out helped him regulate his emotions.** If you’re used to having an orgasm or two to release your stress when you have a crappy day, what do you do when that’s not readily available? Without the right tools (or willingness to use the tools you have) you bottle that stress up and become miserable. Then you take that misery out on everyone around you.

It’s not that every day with Handsome was awful. Far from it. Good days were often great days. That said, there were enough cruddy days that something had to change. Pre-DDay, Handsome was prone to angry outbursts (never physical, just ranting about whatever he was upset about) and moody. Very moody. In the aftermath of DDay, his temperament improved tremendously, probably because he was terrified and trying to be on his best behavior. You can only fake it for so long though and the moodiness and anger seemed to come back in full force from last May forward.

I admit to tolerating a lot of that before DDay because I foolishly thought it was all some kind of a mid-life crisis passing phase, but I just can’t now. Why? Two reasons: (1) I see clearly the toll his moods have taken on our kids, and (2) I can’t walk on eggshells in my own home. Our kids and I deserve better than that from him. When I met with Doc 2 prior to Thanksgiving, he thought that with two sessions a week he might be able to get Handsome to make some progress with emotional regulation. I was skeptical, but willing to give it a shot. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work. We went on a two week vacation over Thanksgiving and he was often a hostile jerk. That was a last straw for me. I told Handsome that either he could go to rehab or one of us needed to move out. When he dragged his feet, I picked a firm date and told him that either he would be getting on a plane that day or I would be packing my car and leaving. I did not run that by our CSAT or waffle about it. I know he was stunned. I know he resented having a line drawn in the sand. I have a feeling he felt betrayed. (Welcome to my world…)

He opted for rehab. There are a million to choose from, but after a good bit of research on our own we opted for Sierra Tucson in Arizona. We picked ST for three primary reasons:
– fully covered by our insurance;
– they have a mood disorder treatment protocol; and
– they have a program for vets and first responders.

Of those 3 factors, the first two were by far the most important to me. Would I have found a way to cough up the money for him to go somewhere? Probably, but I also strongly feel as though we’ve spent a fortune on him already and that comes at the direct expense of everyone else in the family. Not having to pay out of pocket was a huge consideration. (To quantify this, the fees for Handsome’s treatment at ST exceeded $90,000. Of that, we paid $173 for a medical visit he needed off site. The rest was fully covered.) Having him get very specialized care at a highly regarded facility was also incredibly important. There was no point in sending him for treatment if they weren’t equipped to address his particular issues.

In the days right before Handsome departed, he vacillated between being incredibly kind or shockingly mean. When I dropped him at the airport I was truly glad to see him go (and also sad it had come to this). He didn’t say goodbye. He gave me a half-hearted hug and walked into the terminal. I would not have been surprised to find that he changed his ticket and just bailed. He didn’t. He got on the first of his two flights. He called me from his connecting airport in tears. I think it finally hit him that the coming weeks were a Hail Mary to try to save his family. That was, however, the last heartwarming conversation we were to have for many weeks. Things would get much rougher before they got better.

** My dear friend Crazy Kat pegged this too. I swear she is a savant. She would write about how her husband’s addition seemed to help him stay regulated and – for a long time – I just couldn’t relate because my husband seemed so much “better” in his sobriety. It took nearly 18 months, but starting last summer I got to see how hard it truly is for my husband to regulate his emotions and stay on keel without relying on his addictions. This is especially true when it comes to dealing with anything that causes him discomfort or unease. He dealt with those emotions before by tamping them down with alcohol or sex. Absent those things, more recently he often turned to anger and frustration. None of those coping mechanisms are acceptable though, so there was a lot of friction in our home.

Things I wish I knew before my husband went to rehab

I intend to write in detail about my perspective of Handsome’s inpatient experience after he returns home, but in the interim I thought it might be useful to someone to put some of this down in my blog right now. I should clarify up front that although Handsome is a sex addict, he went to inpatient care for his mood disorders, trauma, and to endeavor to manage his medications including new medication for ADHD.

In no particular order, here are things I wish I knew beforehand:

1. I did not know that he would have extensive contact with women. While he is not in an SA program, the fact that he’s a SA is woven throughout the intake materials. The facility did put him in the housing unit for men, but that is also where they put all the women who create too much trouble in the women’s housing unit or the co-ed housing unit. (That fact continues to blow my mind.) His daily group meeting was also 6 women, plus Handsome and one other guy. Handsome is over two years sober, and by the account of his therapist he maintained good boundaries, but I’m told it’s not unusual for these process group folks to keep in contact after they leave. That’s awkward since one of our boundaries involves Handsome not texting, emailing, or calling women outside of work, childcare, or relatives.

2. I did not know how little time he would have to communicate with anyone. I knew he’d be on literal lock down when he checked in, but I figured things would loosen up afterwards. Not really. In the 3rd week he earned the ability to use his cell phone 2x day for about 20 minutes. Given that one of those sessions is when I’m at work and the kids are at school, that leaves 20 min or less a day to read some news, take care of “life stuff”, work, and family. And that’s only if the class he has before his media time ends on time.

3. I did not realize how iffy a discharge date can be. We were under the impression that Handsome was pre-approved for 30 days. Nonetheless, on day 25 the insurer did a review and could have cut off his coverage that day. They didn’t – and in fact they authorized an additional week of treatment – but Handsome watched others in his unit get sent packing early because their insurance ended coverage earlier than expected. (People were pulled out of meals and classes and told “Hey, your insurer cut you off so you can switch to self-pay or you will be discharged right now.” Like pack-your-bag-and-don’t-say-good-bye-to-anyone kind of right now.) My advice? Don’t buy a return ticket that isn’t easily refundable or changeable.

4. I did not know how hard the limited communication he could have with us would be on me (and at least one of my kids). I’m not sure what I expected, but the first two weeks he sounded miserable. Angry. Withdrawn. He actually sounded worse than before he left. I hadn’t expected that, and it was awful and disheartening. I cut our calls down to once a week (just me, he could still call the kids). It didn’t help. I’m not sure if I was expecting to hear something that I didn’t hear or if he was just drugged (they were certainly adjusting his meds regularly) but I ended up being a ball of anxiety after each call. My daughter held out a bit longer and then asked me if she had to do the calls. I asked her to try once a week. Handsome was devastated, but it might have been the wake up he needed because things seemed to turn a corner after that.

5. I did not know what an IOP is. If you’re like me, an IOP is an intensive outpatient program. After an inpatient program, they like to discharge patients to the care of an IOP as a step-down process. Broadly speaking, most are about 3 hours a day, 4 to 5 days a week. It sounds like it would be helpful BUT the burden of finding such a program seemingly falls to the family at home and, to a lesser extent, on the patient’s home therapists. Through my involvement in that research I learned a lesson about the single biggest issue with IOPs. If your loved one is coming out of an inpatient program, especially a good one with highly trained staff, they are likely to be (at best) gravely disappointed and (at worst) possibly set back by the way many IOPs are run. Very often there is no discernment between substance and process addictions so the treatment isn’t individualized. Also, it seems to be the case that much of the care is provided by interns working towards their degrees. After investigating every option within a 50-mile radius of our home, Handsome’s therapists opted to develop a Plan B – a custom plan that they would coordinate among themselves that would involve individual, group, and marriage counseling as well as EMDR. I am honestly not sure how well this will work, but time will tell.

More to follow…

The Backslide – Anger

Handsome is off at an inpatient rehab. More on that to follow in a week or three.

I’m putting pen to paper because suddenly, I am experiencing my own two-steps-back in my recovery. Even though Handsome did not relapse and he went mostly willingly to rehab, I am angry at him. Like really, really mad as hell. I thought that I had worked through and processed my anger after all of the DDays. I thought that I had worked through and dealt with my anger at all of the screw up and bombs in between. Yes, there were occasional flares of what seemed mostly like exasperation and frustration, but not like this. Yet, this is where I find myself recently.

I’ve noodled it for a few days. Why now? Why is the anger back with such force? I have come up with a few theories:

1. Yes, he’s in a locked down medical facility, but he’s also playing with horses and going on hikes and singing songs around a campfire while I am breadwinner, chef, taxi driver, washer woman, dog walker and homework helper. There’s some resentment there. While I know it isn’t helpful it also isn’t unjustified. He’s the addict and yet the burden of this treatment falls squarely on me and my kids. That sucks.

2. I’ve never really had the luxury of letting my anger come out before. Yes, I cursed at him under my breath and out of earshot of our kids for weeks after DDay 1, but after that life simply had to go on. Our kids needed me to not be a banshee in front of them. My anger took a back seat to preserving our family. Once it became clear he was a sex addict, my anger seemed somewhat inappropriate (you wouldn’t scream at a schizophrenic for their disorder, so how do you scream at a SA, I thought). I’m sure I was angry – I was devastated, so it was surely in that mix – but I shifted to trying to get him appropriate help and giving him space to work his recovery. I marched on and plastered a smile on my face. Life went on. Without him around every day though, it’s like a pressure valve has been released. It’s all coming out. I tried to change our cat litter last week (a task that I’d never done before in my life) and managed to overturn the garbage can and dump dirty litter all over our laundry room. An hour of clean up, bleaching, and repeated carpet shampooing later and I’m pretty sure that I wished him death in a fire-filled pit of kitty poop hell. I was alone, so the anger poured out without consequence. So did the tears.

3. He simply isn’t here. While it’s clear something is missing, it’s not all bad. Far from it, in fact. Our kids are helping out and literally getting along better than I’ve ever seen them. I’ve rolled up my sleeves and found time to clean and to clear clutter that hadn’t been touched in years. I’ve made such a dent that one thing became evident – Handsome did nothing around our house other than laundry. Before he fell back into his addiction he would dust and vacuum, polish woodwork, mop and things like that. It’s clear to me that hasn’t happened in forever. Given what I’ve been able to accomplish in a few weekends on my own even with working full time + and all my other inherited tasks, any reason he has for not helping is pure BS. I always gave him the benefit of the doubt about being busy (among other things) but the reality is that it’s just another example of how I made my needs small to cater to him. I am dedicated to ensuring that doesn’t happen again.

That is what I think leads to the main root of my anger. I am living a nice, normal, hectic but happy life right now. With Handsome temporarily out of the picture I see clearly how devastating his behavior was both during the throes of his addiction and at the lowest points during his recovery. I am happier and less lonely than I was for the last six months, and yet HE IS NOT HERE. I miss him, but not the “him” I’ve seen since last May, and certainly not the “him” I saw during his acting out.

What I thought was tolerable when I was in the fish bowl with him is clearly intolerable from outside. Addicts can suck all of the oxygen out of a room and, in our case, I see how much he sucked out of this family. I’m really angry at him for that, but I am almost equally mad at myself that I couldn’t see that in real time and that I allowed it to happen.

Before Handsome left for rehab I made it clear that upon discharge he wouldn’t be coming straight home. He can spend a week or three in a tiny AirBnB or economy hotel while he reintegrates into his job and our family. He needs to meld to our new normal. Not the other way around. One good thing to come from this anger is a hard commitment by me to ensuring that things don’t go back to the way they were before.

Support or Sabotage re: Sex Addiction

I recently stumbled across a site called sisterhoodofsupport dot org . I’m not going to link to it because you can find it yourself if you want to after reading this. I am actually speechless. If you all knew me in real life you would understand how monumental that is. I literally argue for a living.

I don’t know the woman who runs the site, but someone clearly peed in her Cheerios at some point. She claims “By 2011 my [old] website marriedtoasexaddict dot com was bursting at the seams. Tens of thousands of women visited the site each month and were asking for a private place to discuss their experiences. They needed a place away from the prying eyes of the public and their families. A place where they could feel safe sharing the most intimate details of their ordeals with others who understood. In February of 2011 The Sisterhood of Support was Launched.” Hmmmm… “tens of thousands of readers” (a claim she states more than once) yet only a few comments and no substantive back and forth discussions on posts. And, in spite of the name of her old site and the mission of her new site, she flat out denies that sex addiction is real.

I’m actually marginally okay with the addiction deniers. There are crazy people everywhere and as long as they don’t force me to join them, they can do as they please. I am, however, indignant when someone with no applicable expertise tries to pass themselves off as an expert. The author/host backs up her opinions by stating “Because of my medical background I also bring a vast amount of scientific research.” Oh really? She was (is?) a nurse. Nurses are awesome. My mom was a nurse. I love nurses. I am, however, unaware of any RN degree that comes with a psychiatry or psychology degree, or even a deep dive in the DSM. According to the site her medical background seems to have been in hospice care. There is no peer reviewed research on her site. None. And yet she makes proclamations like this:

It’s one thing to tell a Partner “Hey, nothing is for certain. He might relapse. He might not.” That would be fair. Telling someone to bail upon the discovery of their spouse’s acting out because “long term change simply does not happen” and using one’s “medical background” as some indicia of authority or expertise??? That is seriously screwed up.

I’m 25 months out from my first DDay. Had I found that site back then? Holy crap. And sadly, the few stories that accompany the blog posts are heart breaking. Partners are reaching out, looking for facts and support, and what they are getting is nothing more than doom and gloom. She somehow manages to make ChumpLady look like Little Suzie Sunshine by comparison. I’m surprised she doesn’t accept ads from divorce lawyers.

To be clear, I don’t think that any partner of a sex addict should be hoodwinked into any assurance that their spouse will recover or that they will stay sober. I also don’t think anyone should put all their marbles in the “my marriage is so much better post-affair” hopper. Maybe it will be, maybe it won’t be. It all depends on what it was truly like beforehand and how much work both parties put in post-discovery and every day of your life thereafter. To me it is also true that there is a sex addiction industry blossoming that includes a number of questionable practitioners and methodologies. That said, the mantra of “Abandon hope, all who enter here… [insert wailing sounds]” seems a bit hysterical. And like sour grapes.

I agree with her that there is a lack of peer reviewed research on sex addiction and the benefits (or lack thereof) of certain treatment methods. Her position that data can’t come from surveys or statements from the addicts themselves, however, would invalidate almost all studies of psychological and psychiatric issues, including those regarding betrayed spouses. There is no objective, observable measure of my trauma, for example. You have to ask me about it and I have to tell you or describe it to you. A researcher would need to depend on me to be truthful and/ or build in a margin of error to account for untruths. The author/ host simply can’t have it both ways: citing Dr. Minwalla on one hand (whose own research involves partner interviews), and yet undermining and invalidating addict interviews on the other.

I fully and freely acknowledge that my own husband may fall flat on his face and our marriage may end. Only time will tell. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t think Handsome knows for sure either even though he would bet the farm that he won’t relapse. That being said, this “expert” certainly doesn’t know – or have any legitimate basis to know – and is in no position to make these absurdly definitive proclamations.

When You Can’t Catch a Break

To be clear, the guy in the photo above isn’t Handsome, but it might as well have been him.

When we last left off, Handsome was scoping out rehab centers for a 30-day inpatient stay. We had basically reached the point where he either needed another leap forward or we needed some kind of a therapeutic separation for my sanity. He’s sober, but not in good recovery otherwise. By Christmas Eve he had his choices narrowed down to two rehab centers. We had a lovely Christmas. On the 26th he learned that our insurance will pay for 100% of either rehab center. All that was left was to pick a location and book a plane ticket. Cool.

But also way, way too simple. And NOTHING is ever simple these days. I should have seen the storm clouds moving our way on the horizon…

Handsome thoughtfully decided to get a few chores done around the house before vanishing for 4 weeks. One task involved changing the light bulb in the decorative fixture over our foyer stairs. The light is about 2 stories over the closest landing. There is no good, safe way to remove the glass shade and change the bulb, except possibly driving a rented cherry picker or bucket truck onto the lawn and coming in through a window. Opting not to do that, Handsome tried to stand on the railing of the stairs as he has done other times. This time he lost his balance… with the glass shade in his hand. (Yep, start cringing here… you see where this is going…) He basically fell 2 stories ONTO the glass shade.

I was at work. How do I learn of this? By this text from my 10 year old:

So I call Handsome and my hysterical 13-year old answers the phone. I knew it was bad when she told me that Handsome told her to call 911. (This is a guy who would try to drive himself to the ER in almost any kind of emergency.) Two ambulances and a trip to our nearby Level 1 trauma center later, and he is taken into surgery within hours to clean and close the wounds to his arm and abdomen. He was exceedingly lucky as no major organs were damaged and he didn’t break any bones.

So, in some ways, perfect time to go to rehab, right? Can’t exactly go skiing or even to work. Nope. Apparently he will not be accepted at rehab until his sutures are removed in about two weeks. We’re working on seeing if there is any flexibility on that issue, but if that remains the case a 30-day stay won’t be possible. He’ll have exhausted his available leave and will be just a few days short of the full 30 he needs.

This was an awful accident that could have been much, much worse. I’m relieved that Handsome is home and healing and nothing is broken or severely damaged. I’m sad for Handsome that he’s hurting. I’m also sad that what seemed to be coming together so well for his recovery is at risk of being blown out of the water. It was a big step for him to commit to a 30-day inpatient stay. Having it fully paid for is amazing. I’d hate to see that opportunity disappear. The implications – for both of us – are serious and material. We were both counting on this to help us. It’s not how I wanted to roll into 2020. Please send some good vibes our way in the hope that we can get this all sorted out.

I hope everyone has a safe, healthy, and Happy New Year!

2 Years Later – Life Goes On

My world imploded at around 11:00PM on December 9, 2017. The next four months of my life were pretty much a complete sh*t show. It wasn’t until DDay #2 that I really grasped that my husband’s behavior crossed a line into compulsive sexual behavior. (CrazyKat had pegged it earlier, but I couldn’t grasp the truth of it until the facts were laid bare before me.) That was a turning point of sorts, but December 9th is the day that triggered everything that has flowed forth thereafter.

Last year, I was pretty much a mess in the week leading up to the anniversary. I was irritable, sad, quiet, angry… and just generally lacking balance. This year was better. Not great and not without issue, but better.

At worst, I was somewhat agitated on the 8th. On the 9th itself I felt like I had a heavy cloak on all day. It was as if there was this invisible weight I was carrying that I could feel but no one else could see. It didn’t distress me. It didn’t hurt. It was just… there.

It happened to be a particularly stressful work day as I had my compensation meeting for next year. (Each December we have to make a case to one of the firm muckety mucks about what we should be paid and why for the next year, back it up with data, and then we wait about 7 weeks to see if we were persuasive enough.) I was a little scattered, but I thought that overall the meeting went well. It just so happened that Handsome and I had tickets to one of a series of literary lectures we attend, so we went out for dinner together and then to the lecture. That was probably a good thing as I believe the change of scenery and routine was helpful.

Last year, Handsome tried to ignore the day and make believe it didn’t exist. That didn’t go well. It felt as though he was ignoring my pain and distress. To be fair, I hadn’t asked him to do anything, but I felt like he should have known. This year, after we got home and put the kids in bed, he approached me and said “I know these anniversary days are really awful. If there is anything I can do to make it better, I’ll do it. I’m so sorry I caused you all this pain.” It was sincere. It didn’t sound like he was regurgitating something from his sponsor or therapist. He remembered that just ignoring it hurt me. It was a meaningful gesture.

If you told me two years ago that a DDay anniversary would come where I wouldn’t be a wailing mess, I’d have thought you were nuts, but 24 months later that seems to be the case. I still bear the weight of the history of the day, but it doesn’t control me. I have changed and grown. I am certainly stronger than I suspected back then. Rebuilding myself is an ongoing process and Handsome still has a lot (A LOT) of work to do on himself, but I do recognize and take some comfort in how much progress ~~he has~~ we have made.

Inpatient Rehab for Sex Addiction – Suggestions Needed

No, Handsome hasn’t relapsed. Yes, he is still sober (2 years next week) but he is … stuck. He goes to his meetings and he makes all of his appointments. Intellectually he knows what he needs to work on and how to go about working on it. He just can’t seem to bring himself to actually DO much. His emotional regulation is still crap. He has a decent pool of resources to rely on, but when his ship is sinking he is unable (unwilling?) to reach out to anyone or to do much of anything about it. He simply can’t bring himself to call on anyone for help when he needs it and yet he remains utterly unable to right his own ship.

Both our CSAT and Doc 2 have strongly suggested that he attend a 30+ day inpatient rehab where he can focus on family of origin issues, traumas, and other things and where he could hopefully develop the emotional regulation skills he so desperately needs. I believe that for proximity issues alone, they’re pointing him towards KeyStone Center outside of Philadelphia. I hear that Russell Brand did a stint there. He writes fondly of his recovery but less so of the facility. Also, rather than staff physicians and counselors they use an “independent contractor” model which seems a bit sketchy to me.

Handsome can go anywhere in the country. He isn’t stuck on the East coast. If you or your partner have insight on any inpatient rehab programs, whether positive or negative, please share them. We originally connected with Dr. Minwalla through relationships built here in the blogosphere (and he was an absolutely fabulous asset early on in Handsome’s recovery), so I value and appreciate any recommendations or criticisms you may have for any facility. Information would be particularly helpful on the program broadly (particularly substance versus fluff), duration, family involvement (if any), and insight on whether sex addiction is truly a specialty or area of expertise. It seems that there are a number of facilities that profess expertise in sex addition when they actually have little training or meaningful experience in that area.

It’s not a sure thing that Handsome will be going, but I’m type A enough to try to get some ducks in a row just in case it actually happens. As always, I thank you all for any assistance you can provide.

In the Moment – Part II

I met with Handsome’s new doc for the first time last week. It was not, to be honest, quite the calamity I expected. Handsome was mostly controlled and, for him, almost unusually reserved. I didn’t see any resentment till we were in the car on the way home, and only a very small dose.

I’m a person who never turned down a good visual aid, so I showed up with one. I prepared a “trauma timeline” covering the bigger traumas caused by my husband in the last two years. Think DDays, discoveries (lies uncovered), vacations ruined, waitress-gate, and the like. To each of the 16 traumas on the timeline, I attached a small image: a plain dot for a smaller trauma (but one still big enough to make the list), a small explosion for a slightly bigger trauma, and a red bomb for the biggies. Of note, there were three red bombs on the timeline since June. I asked Doc 2 how I could be expected to heal or stay in the marriage when the traumas are unrelenting. My simple comment was that Handsome needs to stop hurting me.

We talked about Handsome’s struggles with integrity. We talked about his anger. Doc 2 did, at one point, start talking about how wonderful it is that Handsome is throwing himself into this recovery process and how committed he is to his sobriety and… I just kind of sat there. It’s not that I disagree necessarily, but I’m ambivalent at best. Doc 2 seemed befuddled that I didn’t jump for joy so he went on about how Handsome is so forthcoming about what he did and how he is so willing to share all of that with me. Again, he looked to me seemingly for some kind of validation and I said “Well, Handsome has always been willing to tell me things about what he did, it’s just that 90% of the time those things were untrue or grossly minimized. As far as his sobriety, I’m sure that being sober from one’s addictions is very hard. I’m sure it’s a challenge every day. That said, while I appreciate the point you are making about my husband’s sobriety I’m not going to get excited over him not sleeping with other women and having emotional affairs for two years. I never agreed to anything less from him. If all I get out of this is a sexually sober husband, but I still have to put up with all this other BS, that’s not enough for me.”

I realized after I left that the last part is really the essence of my current state of mind. I’m glad he’s sober (beats the alternative) and I’m sure it’s not easy (really, while I can’t say that I understand it I do believe that it must be hard for him), but there simply has to be more for me. More empathy, more kindness, more thoughtfulness, more patience, more honesty, more connection, and more love. That is where I think Handsome has struggled most. It’s as if it takes all he has to stay sober and do his recovery work and so there’s no “more” left for me. (To be fair, he often has little left in the tank for his own needs, which may also be part of the problem.)

Doc 2 intends to increase his sessions with Handsome to twice a week while Handsome is off on medical leave. I think that’s a great idea. He says he has a plan for what he wants to focus on. Fabulous. I’m supposed to go back in 5 weeks to assess any progress from my perspective. Fine. I just hope it all helps.

We did have a lovely road trip. Handsome and my kids had never been to Niagara Falls, so we jumped in the car and did an overnight stay. It was the birthday present I asked for. Grand gestures are not in my husband’s wheelhouse so, although we celebrated his 50th on the Rhine somewhere around Amsterdam, I was unlikely to get anything like that or a theater weekend in New York or a stay in some lovely spa somewhere. I asked for what I thought he could possibly pull off. He had booked a beautiful room overlooking the Falls and bought tickets for different activities and he even helped pack. Aside from some brooding and snark from my soon to be 13-year old daughter (where did my sweet girl go????), it was two great days of fun. We had adventures and some misadventures but I’m glad we did it and I’m glad it was wonderful.

In the Moment

I don’t normally post here in real time. I generally take a day or two to draft, revise, and re-think. Not today.

I am scheduled to meet Handsome’s new therapist tonight. Unlike Doc #1, this gentleman is a CSAT and specializes in treatment of sex addicts. (He adheres to the trauma model as far as spouses are concerned, not codependency.) I’m anxious for this meeting as I feel as though Handsome spun his wheels with the last doc. I’m not intending to walk in there and dump all over Handsome, but I am intending to be honest. That means some of it is going to be tough for Handsome to hear.

Even though I’ve been looking forward to this opportunity, I’m nervous to have this appointment as well. Scratch that. I’m start-popping-Ativan-level freaked out. Why? In no particular order:

– On some deep, dark level, I want this guy to fix my husband. I know and fully understand that he can’t. (I get it. I really do. It’s just…)

– Talking about Handsome in a frank but honest way can still elicit a good bit of resentment and anger. If there was a fairly immediate follow up appointment between Handsome and the doc to address any of those emotions that arise, I’d feel better. There isn’t. Seems like wildly poor planning to me.

– My family is heading out of town on a road trip Saturday morning. Trips with Handsome have been hit or miss during recovery. I am not excited to get in a car with him for a 4+ hour drive if he’s in an angry or resentful place. Again, the lack of immediate follow up seems like a really bad idea.

– This doc has been listening to Handsome talk about me for 3+ months. I have no idea what he’s expecting. I feel oddly like it’s a major job interview. I don’t need him to like me, but I do feel like I’m in the hot seat. I’m accustomed to pressure, but I’m feeling overwhelmed.

I have tried to talk to Handsome about how I feel. He assures me it will all be fine. I’m less certain, and I really can’t take another iffy trip with Handsome. My thought is to open with my concerns and offer to postpone if the doc cannot follow up with Handsome tomorrow. I’d rather waste an hour in the waiting room and kick the can down the road than have it all blow up on me this weekend. I have enough posts in the can about long- planned get-aways gone awry.

Fear & the Future

My recent emotions about Handsome are no doubt heightened by two other issues in my life. After 4 months of mammograms, ultrasounds, ductograms (yep, it’s a thing), MRIs and the like, I was told that I have a small mass in one breast that requires some attention. I’m seeing a wonderful surgeon. We did an MRI-guided biopsy and, blessedly, it’s not cancer. Surgery may not be necessary unless my genetic testing reveals that I carry either of the BRCA genes, but she is still withholding judgment on a definitive plan of action.

My thoughts on this? A part of me is scared, for sure, but I keep telling myself that it’s no big deal until the doctor tells me otherwise. It does, however, feel like just one more sucky thing to have dumped on my plate.

I have updated my advance directive to make my 86-year old mother my representative. I know she has my back, has fine judgment, and that she would carry out what I want. Could Handsome do the same? Today, probably, but I’m not putting those eggs in the Handsome basket right now. His judgement until recently has been alarmingly off, to say the least, so I’m better off to rely on my mom. It makes me sad to say that, but it is what it is. (For the record, it’s not that I think he’d have an itchy trigger finger on pulling the proverbial plug. Quite the opposite, in fact. I fear he wouldn’t pull it if it needed to be done.)

To be fair, Handsome has stepped up in the way that I deserve and need from him. He attended all of my appointments, even taking off work to do so. He sat with me and held my hand while the IV team turned me into a human pin cushion last week. He has been gentle and thoughtful and caring.

It could be worse. We’re catching whatever this is early. I’m in a city with fabulous health care options. I do have great insurance and a supportive – if often dimwitted – husband. I don’t want to board the “Why me?” train, but c’mon… sex addict husband, HPV, and now this? My gypsy great grandmother believed that bad things happen in threes, so maybe this is the end of the bad luck? Maybe I’m due for whatever good luck is out in the ether? I hope so because if that whole “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” thing is true then I’m afraid someone upstairs has grossly misjudged my capacity to cope.

I’m also turning 50 tomorrow. It’s fine. I’m not exactly bummed about it (cake!), but I’ve been more reflective than usual. Half my life is in the can. I think I’m a kind and decent human. I’m happy with my achievements and accomplishments. I enjoy my job and find it rewarding. I have two healthy and great kids. My mom is still here and reasonably healthy. I have everything material that I need and a whole bunch of stuff I simply wanted. Our cat doesn’t hate me. The only thing I long for is a mentally healthy and stable partner. Handsome is coming up on two years of sexual sobriety so there is a part of me that feels like a jerk for complaining, but I’ve seen firsthand that sobriety isn’t the whole enchilada. It’s the baseline essential item,but I need more from him.

Handsome knows this. He just had a surgery that will keep him home and off work for 3-4 months. He is pouring himself into his recovery work. Some things are going better than others (Anger management work = good, Step work = not so much), but he’s dedicating serious time to it each day. He’s going to try ADHD meds and see if they make any difference. He’s getting to more meetings and making calls. I am starting to see him shift back to a healthy place. He had the epiphany a few days ago that it’s not my job to ensure he doesn’t get “hangry”. Seems like a no brainer to me, but you’d have thought he invented the wheel. He realized that for all of his adult life he has abdicated responsibility for his own needs and unilaterally delegated that responsibility to others – some who were incapable of meeting those needs and others who simply aren’t responsible for them. He was really sad and frankly embarrassed as he realized he’s been acting like a demanding toddler for years. It’s hard to see him realize what a mess he’s been (and for how long) but if this leads to some lasting growth and improvement it will be the best birthday gift he could give me.

Intent

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Does the intent of our partner matter to the betrayed? To me – others may differ – the answer is “no” with one initial exception.

Handsome and I have been doing a “Transparency of the Day” exercise to improve our communication and, frankly, to get him to exercise his integrity muscles. The idea is for each of us, every day, to very briefly share something that we are feeling or that happened and that may not be obvious or known to the other. At least twice a week Handsome is supposed to share a transparency specifically related to his recovery. Most days the exercise is quite helpful. On a few days the transparency or the resulting discussion has turned into an argument, but I’m seeing that the arguments usually stem not from the transparency shared, but from the editorializing that follows.

Handsome was recently officially diagnosed with ADHD. He is 57, and the understanding that he has lived with this throughout his life – and the impacts it has likely had on everything from his distaste for school to his interpersonal relationships and his addiction – has been somewhat overwhelming for him. In particular, the fact that ADHD is so readily treatable with a variety of meds led him to sadly question whether his self-esteem, judgment, and impulse control would have been any better had he been appropriately diagnosed long ago. He wasn’t throwing out the ADHD diagnosis as an excuse – in fact he noted that it was no excuse at all – but rather he was sharing deep sense of sadness over “what could have been” if he knew and was treated earlier.

Looking back, I’m not quite sure where the word “intent” popped into the discussion, but it did. (Again, the transparency wasn’t the genesis of the debate, the discussion that followed was…) Handsome opined that I should take his intent into account in assessing his actions. I told him that his intent is utterly irrelevant to me except for my initial decision to stay and to try to re-pair with him.

Why did his intent matter then? I had to believe that he did not intend to hurt or to destroy me with his acting out (even though the harm he caused was an obvious and inevitable consequence to anyone with half a brain not mired in disordered thinking). If I believed that my husband meant to hurt me, or that his behavior was vindictive and targeted at me, I would have left. It was clear to me though that wasn’t the case as so much of Handsome’s conduct focused on hiding his secrets and keeping me from finding out the truth about him. He could not have been trying to hurt me because he never wanted me to know.

After that initial threshold decision though? I could care less what his intent is. The analogy that I drew was as follows:

– If you shoot me in the heart on purpose, I’m dead.

– If you shoot me in the heart by accident, I’m still dead.

To me, the injured party, the result is the same either way. Dead is dead. The shooter’s intent is utterly irrelevant to me. It may matter to the shooter, law enforcement, or other people, but I’m still dead no matter what.

The same is true with betrayal trauma and recovery. I really don’t care what Handsome’s intent was in striking up a conversation with the Flame. It doesn’t change the harm to me. I’m not going to try to invent some reasonableness test based on his disordered thinking. I’m not going to waste time trying to justify or figure out the crazy. I can only judge his actions for what they actually are, not what he intended them to be.

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)

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??]