betrayal – Betrayedwife.net

Safe Places

While I cannot believe that it’s July already, I am excited that means that my family’s annual summer sojourn to New England is just around the corner.

Handsome has a younger brother who, throughout the entire 20+ years I’ve known him, was in a long term relationship with a lovely woman my kids have known as “Aunt _____.” They never married but they were together as a couple during that entire time. In January, Aunt ____ was summarily replaced with a 23 year-old new girlfriend. (Handsome’s brother is 57.) It is reasonably clear that this relationship started as an affair. They were living together within days of the breakup with Aunt _____.

I’ve met the new GF. She’s what you’d expect from a young woman willing to date a recovering alcoholic who is older than her parents and whose last long term partner still had clothes in the closet when she moved in.

Handsome asked if I “minded” if his brother and the GF would stay with us on vacation. 🤔

Yes. Yes, I do mind. Very much so.

I worked incredibly hard to reclaim my happy place there from any acting out Handsome engaged in while in that house. While she isn’t an OW of mine, the GF is an OW of someone I still think of as family. I don’t need that gigantic trigger around me on my vacation. I also don’t want to normalize any of that for my kids.

I note that Handsome did not ask whether they could vacation in the same place at the same time. Evidently, they are planning to be there. (To be fair, I’m confident Handsome didn’t invite them or suggest that. I believe they planned their own trip.) The only question is whether they stay at our house so I’m compelled to see them 24/7. I think not.

Thoughts? Am I being unreasonable? Should I just suck it up and not make waves? Old me would have done that, to be honest. I’d have chewed on that poop sandwich throughout the main vacation I look forward to all year just to avoid rocking the boat. New me would prefer to burn it all down and have a bourbon while watching the flames.

My Person

I married a man who had become my one of my best friends over the course of our four year courtship. I have two “ride or die” friends from childhood, but Handsome was a different kind of friend. He was my partner in life. By the time we walked down the aisle I felt that he was as much a part of me as anyone could be. To pull out an old-timey Grey’s Anatomy reference, he was my person.

I was all-in with Handsome. I told him everything. Always. I was an open book. As we now know, he was not the same with me. He kept a lot of very damaging secrets. The way that betrayal trauma screws with your attachment to your betrayer is nothing short of a mind f**k. When your person rips apart your soul, it changes things.

Our CSAT is looking at utilizing a new assessment tool in her practice. Having worked with us for a pretty long time, she asked us if we would take the assessments so she could get a feel for its validity and usefulness. We agreed. On my assessment, for the betrayed spouse, one component was the “Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support.” That’s a high falutin’ name for 12 questions that triggered the heck out of me.

The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet et al., 1988) is a 12-item measure of perceived adequacy of social support from three sources: family, friends, & significant other; using a 5- or 7-point Likert scale (0 = strongly disagree, 5/7= strongly agree). Here is what it often looks like:

Answering this threw me off my game for hours. In particular, these statements geared towards your relationship with a “significant other”:

– There is a special person who is around when I am in need.

– There is a special person with whom I can share my joys and sorrows.

– I have a special person who is a real source of comfort to me.

and the kicker…. – There is a special person in my life who cares about my feelings.

Ugh. Pre- DDay every single one of these would be “Very Strongly Agree.” Today though, I struggle with reconciling that my person very nearly destroyed me. Literally. Today, on a good day, I would probably check “neutral” or “mildly agree” with each statement… at best. I don’t yet know how I can get back to “strongly agree” when my “special person” is the sole source of trauma in my life.

Handsome clearly wasn’t around when I needed him when he was checked out in his addiction, and for a long time after discovery I couldn’t open up about my pain because he couldn’t handle the shame it caused. That occasionally still happens. He’s fabulous if a crisis has nothing to do with him, but if my pain is at all related to his acting out he sometimes still fails to show up for me.

As far as being a source of comfort…? Again, if my pain is unrelated to him he does fine. I’d actually say he’s awesome in those instances. More often than not though I need to be comforted as a result of something he did, and seeking comfort from him then is often futile. He still struggles with how to show up for me. So, does he care about my feelings? Yes, but…

He would say that of course he cares deeply about my feelings. I would say he occasionally cares only to the extent that my feelings don’t interfere with the prioritization of his feelings. If he can console me without feeling bad about himself, fine. If he can meet an emotional need of mine without cost to himself, fine. Anything else is something of a crapshoot. I have seen where I stand. I know from experience that if he perceives something as a choice between my interests or his, he will almost always pick his. There is not a self-sacrificing bone in his body.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about practical things. He’ll take his day off and get up early to run errands or shuttle kids or handle any of the home drudgery at any time. But I could hire someone to do those things. It’s when I’m sad or lonely or hurt or whatever and I need my life partner’s support that I want him to be there for me. That’s when -even if it’s hard or uncomfortable for him- I need my person.

Maybe I’m the weird one for being willing to give anything or do anything for my partner. Maybe I give more than is normal. I don’t know. Even if I do though, it’s not a crime.

Strange Things

I’ve relocated to my happy place in Massachusetts for the remainder of the Summer. I’m at peace here. It’s just me, my kids, and my mom for now. Handsome may come up later for some vacation. We’ll see.

Before we left home, a series of strange events started. Some may have nothing to do with Handsome. Or they might have everything to do with him. I’ll likely never know for sure.

About a month ago, an Amazon package arrived at our house. It was addressed to someone by the name of Chelsea R Kelly. I initially thought it was just mis-delivered, but it had our exact address on it. I figured that maybe someone just made a mistake in their ordering so I did the good citizen thing and called Amazon. They told me that Ms. Kelly – whoever she is – deliberately sent the package to our address, but that if I didn’t want the “gift” they would send me a return slip. What was in the package that came via UPS and cost about $8 to ship? A single box of Good n’ Plenty candy. I sent it back. We received about six similar packages, all from Ms. Kelly, in the weeks after. I just started writing “REFUSED” on them and tossing them back in a UPS box. (I would have just trashed them but I didn’t want it to appear that we had accepted any of them.)

Handsome pleads ignorance but has apologized if it has anything to do with someone he was involved with. Amazon wouldn’t tell me where this woman lives, but an internet search seems to show no one in our state by that name, but two women (I’m thinking mother/ daughter based on their ages) in a neighboring state about 45 minutes away. The rando that Handsome met online said she lived in that state. She also told him her name was Katie, but I’m guessing that was BS. Why might this woman have come back out of the woodwork 18 months later? Because bit$@es be crazy. Or he was still in touch with her. I don’t think that’s the case, but again, who knows?

Also, about a week before I left I walked into my office one morning and found an email in my work in-box from an anonymous mail.com account. There was no message. It had 2 pictures attached and one very short video. The photos and video were all grainy and poor quality and pretty clearly taken from multiple home surveillance cameras. The images were Handsome at work, talking to different women. There was nothing blatantly wrong in any image. He appeared to be at least 6-10 feet away from them. There were other law enforcement officers and members of the public around. Clearly the photos were sent to try to hurt him by getting me upset. It worked, but not in an obvious way.

As I was looking closely at the photos, something seemed weird about Handsome’s face. I thought maybe it was photo-shopped and then I realized what I was looking at. Handsome had a gob of chewing tobacco (dip) in his lip. Now, that might seem gross but not a terribly big deal, but to me it was huge. Long before sex addiction and infidelity became a part of my life, dip was something Handsome and I argued about and that he lied to me about. Multiple times. I never knew he used dip until about two months before we got married. I would get upset with him about it, he’d promise me that he quit, and then he’d get caught with a can and we’d start the cycle over again. He would never dare do it in front of me, but he did use it at work. It’s hideous and he actually had to have a biopsy on his lower lip right before DDay. After DDay, it was something he assured me he was giving up for good and that it would never be an issue again. It’s another big betrayal to find out that he was using it again.

Since then, I feel hurt, and yet oddly empowered. I’ve been abundantly clear that I’m not playing Wack-a-Mole with his addictions. It’s simply not happening. Also, quite clearly his integrity disorder is still in full (or at least moderate) swing. He’s been using dip for months and lying about it the entire time. I told him before he went to his therapist that he needed to come home with an actual structured plan for dealing with the lying. Instead, he came home with some wishy-washy “I need to treat it like work and run towards the danger” BS. I’m not hearing that. I told him he needs a structured and cohesive plan to address the integrity disorder or – if his therapist is unwilling – then he needs a new therapist who “gets” his addiction better and understands the role that lying and deceit plays and the harm it causes his family.

If I was home I would have told him to find a wee apartment and go figure out what he wants. My departure was planned for months though, so it just came at an opportune time. We had also planned for him to come up for a few weeks of vacation starting late next week. I have mixed feelings about that now. I’m not worried about him. I’m focusing on me. Will the next weeks be better if he is here, or no? I’m not opposed to telling him to stay home if that seems better for me. I just don’t know yet if it is. Today, I don’t have an answer. Hopefully one will become more clear in the next few days.

One other strange thing happened as well. The very day before I left I received another anonymous email at work. Whoever is sending these to me is clearly trying to hurt Handsome though me. It was an absolutely vile written message, accompanied by a photo that Fire Dude apparently posted of the Whore recently on social media wherein she looks like a complete and total… you guessed it… whore. Again, think skinny, meth head version of Mimi Bobeck from the Drew Carey Show, in a bikini top that she’s pulling down to the tops of her nipples. Blue eyeshadow. Greasy, stringy hair. It’s not hot. It’s literally quite revolting. She looks drugged and dirty, probably because she is both. Yuck.

Fortunately, I seem to have left the drama several states away. The first 2-3 days here I was still in high anxiety mode, but now I’m calm and at peace. I don’t think I’m ever quite mellow, but I’m as close as I can get right now. Last night I went to one of my favorite restaurants here. It’s where Handsome and I had our rehearsal dinner. It’s also someplace he appallingly recommended to the Flame the summer before DDay when she came on vacation here. Last night I didn’t think of that. I just enjoyed some awesome food with a ginger martini, a view of the ocean on a blustery night, and the sound of the waves in the background. No drama or strange things here. I’ve left those at home, for now.

Weekend Vibes

I wrote a whole post yesterday about how Handsome is really turning the corner. I clicked “post” and the WordPress gremlins chewed it up and banished it to the ether. It simply vanished. Sigh.

It was a long, stressful day at work yesterday and all of my plans to simplify things for myself over the next week seem to have been thwarted one by one. I was frazzled and in a crap mood when I got home. Handsome was at work, but he left me this lovely note on top of the book I’m reading on my nightstand (the perfect place for me to find it). It turned my mood around completely.

I am happy that he loves me too.

It’s a long holiday weekend here in the US and I hope that everyone has a chance to relax for a day or two.

A New Member of the Club We Never Wanted to Join

I work in an office with about 100 other people. It’s large enough to give most folks the ability to vanish into their offices and tune out, and yet small enough that on the lower staff rungs there is a fair bit of gossip and schadenfreude going on.

My legal assistant, Sunny, is young, both in terms of her age (23 – very, very young for her position at my firm) and her outlook on life. The effect of this on others is likely compounded by the fact that she is 5’3″ and looks about 6 or 7 years younger than she actually is. She will be the woman getting legitimately carded well into her 30’s or 40’s. She is bright, fit, and simply gorgeous, with the kind of symmetrical features and sharp cheekbones that are usually purely aspirational absent the assistance of a good plastic surgeon. She had a somewhat disadvantaged upbringing, but she has her act together. She has a great job, she owns a car, and she’s in the process of buying her first house. (Did I mention she’s only 23??) She is kind and funny and is a really hard worker.

One day last week, Sunny went home early from work because she developed a severe migraine. She walked in on her live-in boyfriend (of 4+ years) in bed – their bed – with another woman. There was the predictable “It’s nothing,” and “You mean everything to me,” and all of the other things we’ve all heard. She was utterly crushed. Gutted. I don’t exactly know how she made it through the days at the end of the week, but she showed up and did her job and went off to cry when necessary, trying to avoid the stares and comments of her coworkers. The rumor mill got cranking, but the truth of what happened to her is actually worse than what they ginned up about it.

Over the weekend this young woman who has an entire lifetime in front of her and who is wonderful and fierce and and kind and who has the world at her feet… she tried to end her own life with a bottle of pills. Why? Not because of him exactly. Even in her pain she knows he isn’t worth exiting this life and hurting her family over. No… instead it was because in that one instant her entire self-worth was stolen from her. Vanished. Gone.

I talked with her briefly yesterday. Her words were incredibly triggering, but I get where she’s coming from. “I thought I mattered to him and that the future we were building was real. If nothing else, I always felt certain that he was my friend, but even just true friends don’t destroy each other like this.” And also, “Nothing I thought was real is true.” Sunny is young, but her pain is raw and real and not very different from a lot of betrayed partners here in the blogosphere.

Sunny did not ask my advice and I didn’t give her any. I did assure her that she could always talk to me. (I’m pretty sure she has heard me weeping in my office on many an occasion, and I know she knows why.) She has ended the relationship. (“If he can’t keep from cheating before we get married what’s to stop him from cheating after we get married?”) Her family will pack and move her out of their shared apartment this weekend. She found and started seeing a good therapist. Sunny has reached out to her lender and has removed her boyfriend from her mortgage application. She’ll buy the house on her own. She’ll be fine one day. It just won’t be tomorrow or the day after that or maybe the month after that. Sunny will get there, but right now she is suffering. I am just hoping that she will see that speck of light at the end of the tunnel and keep reaching for it, however long it takes.

Derby Week 2019

Here in the US we are about to start the biggest week in horse racing in the lead up days to the Kentucky Derby. The Derby itself is called the most thrilling two minutes in sports for a reason, and the event is pure spectacle.

I have loved thoroughbred horse racing since I was a little girl, often watching the races on TV with my dad. We would place imaginary bets and cheer on our favorites. I don’t have a clear memory of Affirmed winning the Triple Crown in 1978 – but in 1979, Spectacular Bid was the first of many horses I’d watch capture the Derby and Preakness, only to fall short of the Triple Crown at Belmont. Attending the Derby was on my bucket list for a long, long time.

Back in late 2011 things were going well for our family. We had moved into our new home. I had switched firms earlier in the year and, in doing so, I managed to nearly double my salary and exponentially increase my daily flexibility. Life was so good that it felt almost surreal. As a bit of a splurge, I bought a box of seats for the 2012 Kentucky Oaks (the Friday before the Derby when the fillies race) and the Derby itself. I found a hotel room reasonably near Churchill Downs, and got our nanny to agree to watch the kids for a few days. The race itself was about 8 months away, but I was incredibly excited.

Of course, if I was going, I was going all-in. Dresses, hats, boxed lunches… you name it. I spent months getting my sartorial game on, and Handsome did too. We found him the most beautiful Ralph Lauren spearmint colored sport coat (classy and a bit over the top… perfect) for Derby day and got him a new classic navy blue sport coat, dashing pink shirt, and a beautiful pair of linen pants for the Oaks.

We secured great dinner reservations in Louisville and made arrangements to connect with friends. We turned the two days of racing into a long weekend get-away and spent countless hours preparing and looking forward to the first weekend in May.

That weekend was not without rain, but it was spectacular nonetheless. I hit the trifecta on the Oaks and the exacta on the Derby. We laughed and enjoyed each other’s company. When I think back on that trip, the first image that comes to mind is Handsome in that green jacket, and the resulting smile that brings me reminds me how much I was in love with him then. I felt like that whole period was the beginning of the wonderful rest of our lives, with stability, happiness, and financial security.

We shared our box with some young newlyweds and the wife told me repeatedly how she thought we were amazing as a couple. I thought so too.

I now know that Handsome was a few months into his first emotional affair with the Flame at that point. He was apparently texting or emailing her throughout the weekend, including when he went to the betting windows to place our bets between races. I would later learn that every sartorial choice I thought we enjoyed making together had also been run by the Flame for her approval. (Since her social media highlights photos of her full-figured frame in threadbare leggings decorated with pumpkins I’m not certain what expertise she has, but evidently he felt it was greater than mine.) Our travel arrangements were apparently also fodder for discussion with her. I had no idea.

I was so incredibly happy to be there WITH HIM, but apparently being there with me wasn’t enough to keep him from feeling a need for her. That’s an ongoing theme with Handsome: actually being loved by me or our kids has not been enough to make him feel loved. He looks elsewhere for validation and affirmation of his self-worth. I wrote down a quote once that seems to capture this phenomenon: “The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.” That was (is?) Handsome. That particular Derby weekend he seemed to have everything a man could want, a truly enviable life, and yet he still had a void inside him that led him to look for “more” elsewhere. Handsome is working on that, but I wish he realized back then what already had before he went and ruined it.

I’ll watch the Oaks and the Derby this year from home. I’ll hit the OTB parlor ahead of time and I’ll bet on my picks and cheer them on with my kids. I’ll sing along to “My Old Kentucky Home” when it’s played before the Derby. At the same time, in the pit of my gut I’ll be trying to fend off a mass of melancholy feelings as I’m reminded of that very first Derby trip. Maybe Handsome feels the same?

Dopamine Strikes Again

I have suspected over the last 14 months that terrible news is having more of an impact on me than I’d care to admit. I hear it and it mostly just washes over me, and yet I seem to live in a perpetual state of just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I sense that I have grown more fearful and apprehensive generally. I was not, I don’t believe, a fearful or apprehensive person prior to DDay #1. Quite the opposite, in fact. I spent months traveling alone in a third world country as a young single woman without much of a care. A few weeks ago I had to pop an Ativan just to board a plane to attend a work meeting an hour-long flight away. I believed this unfortunate development was just the residue of trauma, but based on an article I read, it seems there may be something more to the story.

“When you experience stressful events, whether personal (waiting for a medical diagnosis) or public (political turmoil), a physiological change is triggered that can cause you to take in any sort of warning and become fixated on what might go wrong.”

Yep, that’s me in a nutshell. And what triggers this reaction, you ask? Dopamine. After living with an addict and now reading this article I’m beginning to think of dopamine as the root of all evil. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that affects many things; most significantly, pleasure. When our brain is working normally, we receive a positive reward in the form of pleasure from dopamine induced by things like normal eating, drinking, and sex. Of course, humans like these dopamine bursts so if we find ways to increase our happiness and pleasure – like more eating, drinking, and sex – and some of us go to extremes to keep the hits coming. Just as dopamine feeds our pleasure response, apparently it also feeds fear and dread. So that very thing which fueled my husband’s addiction also makes me fearful. Awesome. Betrayal and infidelity are truly the gifts that keep on giving.

The article makes complete sense to me. Hyper-vigilance isn’t just obsessively checking up on your spouse or cyber-stalking. It can also be the plain act of sensing danger where you wouldn’t have considered it before.

After Handsome returned from his intensive I learned that he gave his phone number to many people he met there, including one woman. She was one of about 8 people he ate meals with each day. To say that was an error on his part is an understatement. It should never have happened. When she asked for his number he should have politely wished her well but declined. Nonetheless, I’m mindful that Handsome has long had female friends and colleagues who appear to have been legitimately “just friends.” That never troubled me before. In fact, I thought it was healthy. Now, where women and my husband are concerned I sense overwhelming danger.

You might say “well, yes, but that’s based on your betrayal experience” and that is completely true. It is also true, however, that for all I know this woman was 70 years old and covered with warts. He never said. I didn’t ask because it doesn’t matter. If she’s female, she goes into the “threat” category. I am, indeed, fixated on everything that might go wrong. I dread the other shoe dropping.

I’m glad this “neural engineering” as the article calls it, helped our ancestors to survive. Perhaps it is even helping me to survive the onslaught of other women and my husband’s addiction. I only know for sure that it is exhausting to anticipate danger everywhere. While I am glad that I am no longer living in ignorance, I have to admit that I do miss the bliss.

A Week of Brutal Honesty – #5 – Handsome’s Clock is Ticking

This is the fifth and final post in my week of soul cleansing. You can find the first four posts here, here, here, and here. If you’ve hung in there with me all week, thank you. Getting these things off my chest has been cathartic and I appreciate all of the comments.

I keep waiting for Handsome to do a number of things: express empathy appropriately and when needed, get his head out of his alternate reality, and demonstrate a feeling of urgency about his recovery (including addressing his integrity and intimacy issues). So far, I’m mostly still waiting.

I had intended this post to be broadly about the issue of staying versus going and how I continue to struggle with that decision. And then… well, then this past Monday happened. Two things occurred on Monday that have amped up my sadness and apathy about Handsome’s recovery. Note that I didn’t say “anger.” I find myself slowly shifting away from anger and disappointment and into apathy.

Over the weekend I was going through our bathroom closet looking for a particular product I needed and I came across not one, but two boxes of condoms. The first box, a 40 pack (must have been wishful thinking), I recall purchasing myself after our son was born in 2009. He was born in May and I had to wait until September of that year to get an IUD. Thus, the condoms. Handsome hates condoms with the fire of 1,000 suns, and I think we used no more than 3 or 4 of them. After I got the IUD, we had no need for condoms and the box sat in the back of the closet collecting dust. Imagine my surprise at finding a second box of condoms with a much later 2016 expiration date (which would mean they were purchased in roughly 2012 or 2013). It was a 12 pack. Six were left. Handsome and I have not used condoms together since September of 2009.

My truth = Handsome bought the condoms to act out and have sex with his APs.

His “truth” = “I’ve never seen those before, but they must have been for us.”

Mind you, the issue isn’t actually the condoms. I know he had sex with other women, of course. (And a part of me would be glad/ relieved if he actually did use condoms with them because even though he insists he did, he hates them so much that I tend to doubt that.) The issue is the distorted thinking and/ or the lie. He knows he bought them. Even if he doesn’t remember buying them he at least knows that I did not buy them and that we did not use them together. And yet he can’t bring himself to own that reality.

After that discussion on Monday, Handsome headed off to his weekly therapy appointment. He generally calls me afterwards and I wanted to ask him to stop and pick up milk at the grocery store. When 20+ minutes had passed, I checked “Find Friends” on my phone to see if he was still at the doc’s and saw that he was apparently parked at a beer distributor between his doc and home. I didn’t freak out. Find Friends is often less than precise. I called him and asked him where he was. He told me that he was several miles away in a different town. Find Friends is not that inaccurate. I said nothing further. I can’t make him get a grip on his integrity. I can’t force him to tell the truth.

And that brings us to today. He admitted in our session with the CSAT that he drove from his therapist’s office to the beer distributor and bought and drank a beer on Monday. Handsome will still lie to protect himself. He will still gaslight me even when it’s obvious that I know the truth and I’m not buying his BS. I’m not sure what happened in his therapy session, but it clearly stressed him and rather than using any of the tools in his toolbox to deal with it he resorted to drinking. Again.

And me? I believe he is engaging in self-sabotage. It’s as if Handsome thinks he can’t recover so he is going to ensure that he won’t recover. It’s sad. He does so well on some things and on other things he is just floundering, but I’m the collateral damage. I’m going to enforce my boundaries. He needs to get himself to another multi-day intensive program of some kind within the next month. He needs to ramp up his meeting attendance and make daily calls to his sponsor and SA buddies. He can, as always, choose not to do these things, but then he needs to find an apartment to live in.

Boundaries and consequences are great, but my patience is wearing very thin. The goodwill I have for him is diminishing with each lie, with each incident of acting out (not sexually that I know of, but he’s clearly acting out in other ways). I’m not getting mad. I’m sliding into apathy. Our CSAT told him today that if I’m not mad he should be terribly afraid because it means that I’m finding my life jacket and putting it on and getting ready to jump ship. If he can right the ship, I’ll stay on board, but I’m not going to be dragged down with him. I love him more than he can imagine, but the clock is truly ticking. I cannot endure this for much longer. That’s the brutally honest truth here: I wanted deeply to move into 2019 with renewed hope and faith and energy, but I see that I’m still dealing with the same BS I was dealing with a year ago. I don’t think that I can do it for one more year, and that breaks my heart. 💔

Show me the love

Apparently Handsome spent his individual therapy session this week talking about the difficulty he has showing me he loves me in the wake of our 3 – count ’em, three – disclosure days.

Well… duh.

I think we come at this from very different perspectives. First, to put it diplomatically, Handsome’s social/ emotional skills are stunted. Blame it on his family of origin (I do). Second, he is dumbfounded that it is hard for me to believe that he loves me simply because he now very often says he does and he has ramped up the thoughtfulness and kind gestures. To me, that’s all truly lovely, but insufficient.

At 10:00PM on December 9th last year, I knew without a doubt that he loved me. By 11:00PM…? Not so much. And we all know now that initial disclosure was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Almost a year later, I do believe Handsome loves me (though I admittedly waffle on whether it is romantic love), but I also believe his interest in self-preservation is even stronger. I can’t exactly say that he loves himself more, because it’s clear to me that his compulsive behavior arises from self-loathing. Nonetheless, if it’s between him or me, he picks himself. Each and every time.

Forget (if you can, and I cannot) the individual aspects of the five (5!) simultaneous, long-term affair partners and the 20+ encounters with paid sex workers. How about the fact that condoms do not prevent all STDs and STIs? How about depriving me of the knowledge of this high risk sex life for at least three years, thus ensuring that I couldn’t protect myself? Imagine sleeping next to someone you say you love, knowing your behavior could literally kill them, and yet continuing to engage in that behavior without a care in the world? (Or, maybe you care… but not enough to give them a heads up or anything.)

Is that loving? I think not. It’s beyond selfish. As a lawyer I would label it “deliberate indifference” (reckless disregard for the consequences of one’s own actions or omissions).

To me, that’s the hurdle that Handsome has to overcome. I’m not hung up on the idea that he gave a crap about any of these women. I don’t think he did, with the possible exception of the Flame, and he appears to now see her for the homewrecker she is. I even believe that he loves me in his own way. I just believe that he prioritizes himself over me. His behavior over time (including now with his staggered disclosures) evidences that when there’s a choice between him or me, he almost always sacrifices me to save himself.

When you come at the issue of how he should go about showing me he loves me from that perspective, it’s very different from the norm. Hugs and snuggles aren’t going to cut it.

Step 1 – Stop lying (even by omission).

Step 2- Stop engaging in other behavior that is harmful to the marriage (we can call this the “just quit being a dick” step).

Step 3 – Display appropriate empathy and compassion.

Step 4 – Prove that you can be self-sacrificing for the benefit of others (not to the point of martyrdom, but just recognizing that the world doesn’t revolve around you… a point most other adults already understand). Do this without the expectation of anything in return.

Step 5 – Repeat steps 1-4 daily.

Step 6 – Do what normal people do to express love (this is where the thoughtfulness, consideration, and romance comes in).

Note that there is nothing in this list that is really about his recovery. That’s for him. While it’s helpful to him and that trickles down to be helpful to me, at the end of the day it is for him. His new emphasis on thoughtful gestures, neck kisses, hand holding and saying “I love you” is wonderful, but talk is cheap after what I’ve been through. If I am important to Handsome, he needs to prove it, every day, with meaningful actions (see steps 1-5).

*** I’ll be mostly offline for a week for our holiday trip, but I wish my blogging friends in the States a very happy and safe Thanksgiving!! And a good, safe week to all of my blogging friends outside the US as well!

The Confession – DDay #3

Patience may be a virtue, but I don’t have any to speak of, at least not when it comes to Handsome’s lies and secret keeping. I received a very insightful comment from Joshua Shea to my last post. To paraphrase him, his question was “So your husband is still withholding. What are you gonna do about it?” Fair point.

For the reasons I explained in reply, my hands were a bit tied, but I told Handsome that he needed to make calls to his sponsor and SA contacts every day before our Thanksgiving vacation, and attend three meetings this week and one meeting next week before we hit the road. That is way more than he normally does, and I knew the calls would take him far outside his comfort zone. He agreed.

Nonetheless, the very fact that he was still keeping secrets (even if they would be included in the big therapeutic disclosure planned for early January), burned – and burdened – me deeply. As I asked him: “How am I supposed to tolerate hugging you or being physically or emotionally intimate with you when the knife is still sticking out of my back and you are twisting it every day?” He was frustrated. He thought we had both freely agreed to hold everything until January. Indeed, I had agreed, but (1) I had been blindsided at the CSAT’s office by the development that what remained secret was “big” and (2) I didn’t feel as though I had the agency in that moment to insist that I hear it then. After pondering it endlessly I decided to go back to my long-held position that whatever Handsome has disclosed to someone else he sure as hell had better disclose to me. Why was I agreeing to have that anvil hanging over my head until January… or later? No thanks.

For the record, I don’t believe that our CSAT intended to put this stress upon me. I think that her suggestion of the therapeutic disclosure at this time of year was well intentioned but missed the mark, and that Handsome should have been encouraged to disclose what he had to disclose to me, and it could then be rolled together with his prior disclosures and addressed again in some organized and orderly fashion in January. I also think that she believes that I am stronger than I really am. I put on a good public show, but inside? Some days it’s like a cyclone inside my head.

So, what was all the hoopla about? He was withholding one additional physical affair (if you can call it an affair… he claims to not know her last name and claims he only knew her by “Katie”), and the use of escorts and a local massage parlor. All of this allegedly occurred from 2015 forward -the same period as all the other mayhem.

How do I feel? Some combination of hurt beyond belief and numb. There are so many things about this that I only believe with difficulty. I am dismayed that he so compromised his morals and values that he committed illegal acts. I am dismayed that he is an embarrassment to his job and that he is no better or different from the people he arrests. I am dismayed that he would ever EVER scream at me about money when this is how he saw fit to spend it. I am dismayed that he put my health at risk without a care. (He is in dire need of a very basic 6th grade lesson on how HPV and other diseases are spread and how a condom isn’t a magical shield.)

The flip side, of course, is that as disgusting and repulsive as I find this behavior, the escorts and massage parlors were business transactions. Nothing more. It’s not as if these women liked him. Based on the hooker/ prostitute/ escort blogs I’ve read they were likely (1) high, (2) revolted by him, (3) completely faking it, and (4) terrified. I find it pathetic that he’d be turned on by that, but at least he wasn’t talking with and texting them daily. There were no real relationships. He claims to not even know the physical affair partner’s last name – despite texting with her for the better part of 3 years and screwing her at least twice. It was just cock + scabby cum dumpster = release. The very reasons that made it so difficult for him to admit these things are, ironically, the very things that make them somewhat manageable to my brain.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that if he only had sex with pros that this would all be a cake walk. Far from it. I’m simply saying that in the scheme of what my husband did, this is not the most damaging disclosure to me. His emotional affair with the Flame (and the related lies and secrets) is far more painful to me… less disgusting and vile, for sure, but much more painful.

At the end of the day, my husband has to live with what he did. I have lived through our marriage with honesty and integrity. Handsome is my last first-kiss. I am likely not even in the 5 most recent first-kisses for him. I’m probably not in the 20 most recent first-fucks. That’s on him. I do not need to worry that anything that I have done may harm his health or well-being. He has to wonder what might pop up on his STD tests or mine in the future (since HPV can go latent). At least since 2015 he has not been the person I thought I married, for sure, but I loved him with every fiber of my being and I was present and committed. I did not waste time or opportunities. He has to account for his years in his addict bubble. It has taken months (and months) but I’m good with me. I honored my marriage vows and my husband. I will not bear his shame.

Do I think I finally know everything? Nah. I’ve been around this block before. There are a few details I could still call bullshit on, but we’ll see how it all parses out in the therapeutic disclosure he’s working on. My gut tells me that he’s nearing the end of what he’s keeping inside, but maybe I’m just sensing that he’s as exhausted with this process as I am.

Learning to Say No

The Way It Was

Breaking a stranglehold has been a lifesaving technique since such training first began in the late 19th century. In fact, turn-of-the century rescuers were taught to break a victim’s “death grip” by knocking the person unconscious.

I can relate. After learning from our CSAT that “there is new information that will be coming forward” from Handsome, I’ve been pondering what that means for me. Conclusion? I feel like a lifeguard that’s about to be drowned by the very person she’s trying to save.

I see very clearly now that Handsome has for years (and continues to) prioritize himself (his comfort, his fears, his needs, etc.) over me. The trauma that staggered disclosures cause for betrayed spouses is well known and, particularly, it is well known to Handsome after two intensives – including one with an expert in the field of betrayal trauma – and a ton of therapy. Yet rather than tell me the whole truth at any point along our journey, he has continued to keep secrets knowing full well the impact of his lies, secret keeping, and staggered disclosures on my health and well being.

I asked yesterday if we were going to do a check-in last night since it has been about two weeks since the last one. I just wanted to get it over with because I was already in “affair mode” from our appointment with the CSAT. He asked if we could do it another night since he was tired. Since I so very often go along to get along, I automatically replied “okay.” It wasn’t okay, however. It was, on a micro scale, just me trying to keep him happy at my own expense.

When I got home I explained that I shouldn’t have said okay because I really wasn’t okay with it, and that we’d have to put it off till next week because I do not want to deal with it on the weekend. I went on to explain that I finally concluded that I’ve got to look out for my own interests since he has demonstrated clearly that he will not do so. I told him how incredibly disappointed (not surprised, but definitely disappointed) I am that after all this time and everything, EVERYTHING I have been through with him, he still chooses his own comfort (keeping secrets that are “too hard” to tell) over my health and mental and physical well being. I feel as though he is the drowning victim that I swim out to save and, when I get there, he pushes me under the water so he can stand on my shoulders and breathe while I drown underneath him.

I asked him to sit and really ponder what it would be like if I, his spouse, constantly and to his detriment prioritized myself over him. I asked him to contemplate what our kids would be like, and what their lives would be like, if he and I both acted that way. Finally I asked him, when push comes to shove, what kind of husband always picks himself over his wife and family? And what does he think that must be like for me and our children, to realize that if it’s us or him it will seemingly always be him?

He admits that he has been (and is) a selfish asshole used to doing things his own way. He says he’s “working on” changing that and being less selfish and self centered. He tells me he’s trying to change that about himself. I told him to screw trying. He simply needs to do it. Immediately.

Therapeutic disclosure (DDay #3??)

Been gone for a bit. We just wrapped up the second of two long family weekends away. We had a decent time in NYC (Handsome was highly agitated all weekend, but the kids and my mom were good fun), and we just got back from the Breeder’s Cup in Louisville. That was an awesome trip. Beautiful horses, great racing, fancy hats, Derby pie, and bourbon. Lots of bourbon. What could be better?

Before we left for NYC, our CSAT said that she thought a formal therapeutic disclosure would be a good idea for us. She has been able to see what Handsome has voluntarily disclosed versus that which I’ve had to investigate on my own. She has observed his responses to various questions about his acting out and, in particular, how certain answers just don’t make sense or seem a bit lacking. She also sees the frustration this causes me.

If you’ve been on this roller coaster with me for a while, you recall that our first DDay was December 9th last year. At that time Handsome disclosed parts of his affair with the Whore. He minimized the heck out of it, but most of the truth trickled out about their involvement once I got a chance to go through her burner phone. On February 26th, we spent hours doing what was supposed to be a full disclosure on our own. Within days it became apparent that 90% of what I had been told was absolute BS. March 3rd became our DDay #2 when I learned about his numerous other affairs and acting out behaviors. It’s also when it became obvious that Handsome has serious issues with compulsive sexual behavior. I knew then, even before he was formally diagnosed, that Handsome is a sex addict. Since that day there have been smaller disclosures, most of which I would consider to be “filler” around the broader stories of his acting out. Many of those little disclosures have been during our weekly check-ins in response to the question in his check-in format from Dr. M regarding a lie or secret he is keeping. I do believe that he has told me the majority of what he did. I also believe, however, that there are certain things that he has decided he should keep secret. Some of those things have become obvious in our therapy. I, on the other hand, believe that the absolute least he can do for me is tell me the full truth. I have always said that I don’t need the color of someone’s lingerie or who was on top, but I do need to know the totality of what I am supposed to be forgiving him for.

The CSAT sent us a template for the format of the disclosure and, frankly, I find all of the limitations “for the protection of the betrayed spouse” to be utter BS. To me, if it is supposed to be a disclosure it had better be exhaustive and thorough. A therapist or his SA folks should not know things that I do not. If he knows something and fails to disclose it to me, it’s a secret and that’s a problem for me. I really wish that everyone else, including Handsome, would accept the fact that I’m an adult and quit perpetuating secrets under the guise of “protecting” me. I find it insulting, patriarchal, offensive, and unnecessary.

I raised that point with the CSAT and also said that if all Handsome intended to do was to waltz in and tell me only what he has told me thus far, we should just skip it. I’m not going to put myself through torture so he can check off a box to say he accomplished something. If I’m going to go through this, it had better have a point. She informed me today after meeting with him privately that “there is new information that will be coming forward.” Lovely. So much for telling me 300+ times that he has told me everything. It’s a good thing I never bought that completely. (Does anyone wonder why we betrayed spouses develop trust issues that we never had before after all of this??)

Despite this development, I know that I’ve made personal progress over the last 11 months because I’m not in tears or a basket case over whatever might be forthcoming. I have assumed that he slept with everyone he says he didn’t, and then some. I have assumed that he engaged in other acting out behaviors that have yet to be disclosed. In short, I’ve already steeled myself against the worst of the possibilities. That’s not to say that the new disclosures won’t hurt me. They just won’t destroy me. He did that already, but I feel as though I’m doing a commendable job rebuilding myself in this new epoch.

Our CSAT wanted to get the disclosure scheduled and completed in December, but the holidays are upon us and I refuse to destroy another Christmas and New Year’s with new disclosures of Handsome’s acting out. I would love to start 2019 fresh, but I’m not willing to sabotage my 2018 holidays to do so. He can toil away at his part in this disclosure till the new year rolls around. Let it weigh on him for the next few weeks, not me.

Inertia

In the example in the photo, I feel like my happiness is the human and my melancholy days are the elephant. My happiness can (and for the last 10 months has on multiple occasions) shift in an instant, whereas my feelings of sadness are much more difficult to change. They tend to linger. It’s like trying to turn the Titanic. It will happen, but slowly and not in enough time to avoid the iceberg.

Handsome and I have been… fine since we got back from our trip. Not great. Not bad. Just… fine. My problem then? It’s not good enough for me. I feel as though I’m working really, really hard and achieving mediocrity. That’s not my style. I’m not bouncing back to happiness in the wake of our trip.

A few things have happened since I last wrote. First, I made it very clear to Handsome that while I support him and I’m always available to him I do not want to be his accountability partner. I tried to explain why. He said he understood and he walked me through his safety plan. It does not include me. I’m fine with that. Time will tell if he uses it and we’ll see if it works.

Handsome had his vasectomy last week. He was a miserable ass in the morning beforehand, but it went well and he’s off work for about two and a half weeks. Is it wrong that I slept really, really well that night? We won’t know for a few months whether the surgery was entirely successful but, assuming that it is, the reassurance that our kids and I do not have to worry about any unexpected progeny lifted a huge weight off my sagging shoulders. I take no delight in seeing him in discomfort, but with his history and the two kids recently born to his AP’s, I was more overwhelmed by fear than I had expressed. There are plenty of things that I still worry about, but Handsome has taken a big step to ensure that one comes off the list.

We did our check in a few days ago and Handsome is back to dodging the question about lies and secrets he is keeping. He says there are no more. After years of acting out, I’m reasonably sure that’s BS. I understand that he doesn’t want to sit and ponder his bad acts because it makes him feel like a turd. Nonetheless, it’s something Dr. M told him he needs to do. Our CSAT told him he needs to do it. Thus, in my book, he needs to do it.

I think my failure to bounce back is likely due to what happened on our trip (Handsome went back to his vices) and also all of the triggers that surround me this year based on what I now know was going on behind my back last Fall. When I was away at a work conference Handsome was texting and sexting like crazy and trying to have another hotel hook up with the Whore. I leave for that same conference today. The day last year that my in laws were to arrive to celebrate Halloween with us, Handsome spent the morning sexting and recording a masturbation video in our master bathroom and sending it to the Whore. A few weeks later when I went out of town for a work meeting for two days, Handsome was again sexting and texting and trying to hook up with the Whore before I had even pulled out of our driveway. Finally, just before Thanksgiving, Handsome sent the Whore a ton of text messages complaining about cooking for the holiday and devaluing and diminishing me. Their exchange which, frankly, probably pisses me off more than any blow job, went like this (crap grammar/ punctuation is all theirs):

Handsome: I get off at 7:30 in the morning and then I have to cook. 🙁

Whore: No you don’t REALLY?

Handsome: REALLY

Whore: WTF!!!

Handsome: Exactly

Whore: Why????

Handsome: Just the way it is.

Whore: That’s fucked up big time that pisses me off

Handsome: You and me both.

Whore: You work all night you should be able to come home take a hot shower go lay down for a bit and eat

Handsome: Not if I want to eat.

Whore: Is that every holiday

Handsome: Yep

Whore: Does she cook at all?

Handsome: Lasagna @ 3 times a year. That’s it.

Whore: I have no words. What do your kids eat if your (sic) not home

Handsome: Babysitter cooks [note from BW – As to dinner during the work week when I get home from work between 7:30 and 8:00PM, he’s correct. All other meals, including holidays? Not hardly.]

Whore: So everyone cooks but not her wtfh

Handsome: Lots of pizza lately because I have been saying F it no wonder I’ve gotten fat 🙁

[note from BW – Riiiight Handsome… it couldn’t possibly be the case of beer you’re downing every 2-3 days, your failure to exercise (because masturbation isn’t exercise), or your disdain for healthy foods… it must be the failure of your lazy bride to play chef for you… .]

Whore: Does she work

Handsome: Yes

Whore: As much as you

Handsome: No

[note from BW – That one word response still makes me want to throat punch him, almost a full year and a shit ton of counseling later, as I contemplate my 50-60 hour+ work weeks and what I bring to the table economically and otherwise for our family. What an absolutely delusional bunch of bullshit.]

Whore: I’m sorry handsome That’s just messed up in a lot of ways Wish I could cook for you so you wouldn’t have to

Handsome: Me too

***

Three days later the Whore’s husband found her burner phone. Had I known of this exchange prior to Thanksgiving last year, I would have kicked Handsome out so he could celebrate with her. She likely got a free turkey from the food pantry and her fraudulently obtained food stamps covered the rest. I’m sure it would have been delightful for him to eat with the drunk, pill-popping, child abuser in her filthy house with 22 cats running around. Yum.

This year? We’re going to Williamsburg for Thanksgiving. If he thinks I didn’t cook before, try me now.

Fighting for One Another

It’s been a long couple of days since we returned from our trip. Handsome and I have been civil. We pulled off a nice date night a few days ago. And yet I still had the feeling that we were both suffering, separately, and in silence lest we rock the proverbial boat.

For my part, I know that to be true. Immediately after the weekend I was simply sad about the happenings of the day and night we spent apart. It just seemed like such a wasted opportunity for us. Then, the more days that passed, I started to get ticked off. No… really pissed off… at how things turned out.

Handsome has a circle plan which, if you aren’t familiar with concept, is supposed to identify inner circle behaviors (those that are de facto relationship damaging), the middle circle behaviors (those that may lead to the inner circle and are serious enough to be addressed but which may or may not damage the relationship), and the outer circle (good behaviors used to cope in healthy ways and to help the addict avoid the inner and middle circle). By way of example, a circle chart for a gambling addict might look like this:

As a sex addict, Handsome’s inner circle includes things like sexual contact with anyone other than me, using or viewing dating/ hook up/ massage sites, voyeurism, possessing a burner phone, etc. His middle circle includes things like drinking alcohol, objectifying women, working excessive overtime, and unavoidable contact with any of his affair partners. His outer circle is filled with great ideas for self-care.

When he responded to our fight by going to the hotel bar and having a few beers (thus tossing 7 months of sobriety from alcohol out the window), I was hurt. Then, I got mad. I was (am?) mad that he ran back to one of his old tricks the minute things got tough. I was mad he didn’t use a single tool at his disposal. I was mad he utterly disregarded his outer circle items. I was mad he didn’t reach out to anyone, including me, to talk him off that ledge. I was mad he felt no need to apologize for it at the time.

He talked with his therapist last week about what happened and the therapist directed him to develop a safety plan to keep in his wallet. It’s supposed to be a list of people he can call and things he can do to avoid his inner and middle circles. Sounds great, but since he threw the circle plan out the window in his time of need I’m not sure what one more piece of paper will accomplish. I know that sounds really cynical, but I can’t articulate how stunned I was that he so readily dove back into his old behavior. The plan is worthless if he refuses to consult it and follow it when needed.

His explanation? He says he thought it was all hopeless and that we were over. Thus, fuck it all, he’d have a beer. Why did he think it was over? Because I left our hotel. Because I told him I wouldn’t put up with the verbal nastiness. (For his part, he said the same thing to me during the fight.) To be clear, I never mentioned the word “divorce” or threatened divorce. In fact, I really don’t think that I’ve ever brought up divorce since telling him after DDay #2 that if he still loved the Flame that he should go and be with her, and explaining around that same time that I would leave and seek a divorce if his sexual acting out did not come to an immediate end. So, his rushed conclusion all these months later that we were over pisses me off. If anyone has justification to get a divorce, I certainly think I fit that category. Four affairs, years of lies, porn, bringing skanks to our home and…, and…, and…? It would surprise no one if I left, but I haven’t. I’m still here. I swore for better or for worse and this has got to be the “for worse” part, right? I’m still fighting for him and for us, and it rocked my world that he just threw in the towel at the drop of a hat.

I see Handsome’s recovery work as his way of fighting for himself. I also believe it is valuable to our entire family for him to be healthy and sober and for him to have self-esteem and confidence. When the shit hits the fan though, if he just gives up… ? After a bad but not exactly exceptional argument? I agree that the fact that we were away from home likely contributed to his excessive reaction, as did the fact that I did something different by standing up for myself and distancing myself from the situation, but c’mon… after all we’ve been through? Is his skin really so thin? I didn’t tap out after finding out that he was juggling all those other women and his other forms of acting out. It admittedly sounds righteously indignant, but is this the thanks I get for hanging in there? I’m angry that he didn’t care enough in that moment to fight back against his own demons for me. For us. Even for himself, for that matter.

Will we get through this? Sure. It’s just going to take time. It’s a set back, but not an insurmountable one. We need to get back on the same page where we both feel supported and where we are fighting for each other instead of with each other.

Girl Code vs. Awkward Work Event

I saw this in the New York Times yesterday and, frankly, I’m just not sure what to make of it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/style/baby-shower-do-i-have-to-go.html?action=click&module=Features&pgtype=Homepage

How would I handle the situation? I’d get a nice gift for the baby and find any reasonable excuse to be out of/ away from the office that day.

I absolutely understand why the woman who wrote the letter is uncomfortable participating in the shower. You don’t have to be a betrayed spouse to feel awkward about celebrating someone who apparently had no qualms about ripping apart a family (or at least felt no need to hide it).

Thoughts?

In Search of Empathy (in all the wrong places)

I write here often of how well my husband is progressing with his recovery and how helpful he has been to our joint recovery. When he “gets it” things are good, bordering on great. Sadly, the opposite is also true. When I give him a chance to be there for me and he completely and utterly blows it, I’m devastated. Again.

Some back story: Handsome and I, like many couples, seem to have different internal thermostats. I like to be warm while he wears shorts to shovel snow. About 6 or 7 years ago Handsome started sleeping in our lower level guest room when he was working overnights (so, about 5 days a month) because it was isolated and quiet for him as he tried to sleep during the day. Starting about 5 years ago he started spending more time sleeping there and telling me it was because he was too hot upstairs in our bedroom which was generally about 70 -71 degrees. It was a slow progression, but by last Fall he was sleeping downstairs almost every night.

Did I think this was all okay? Hell no! Once it started to shift from a few days a month to more often than not, I regularly tried to talk to him about it. We seemed to be roommates (with benefits) and not spouses, but whenever I would bring it up he would kiss my forehead and assure me that it was just that he was too hot upstairs. He made me feel silly for even raising the issue, but it still bothered me. I mostly wrote it off to what I perceived to be his mid-life crisis.

Last year at this time we went away without our kids. It was a weekend filled with fun and romance and I was very sad when we flew home because I wanted that closeness to continue. Handsome was in our room at bedtime and he was setting out his clothes for work the next day. I sensed he was going to leave so I asked him, “Aren’t you going to stay in here?” He stood at the foot of the bed, laughed heartily at me and said, “Not a chance. I’ll see you again in a couple of months.” (I believe that he was referring to our big trip to Europe a little over two months later.) I was absolutely crushed. Heartbroken. At the time, it was the most devastating pain my husband had inflicted on me. I cried the entire night and for a few nights thereafter.

Post DDays, his virtual move to the guest room makes all the more sense. He could watch porn and/ or masturbate without interruption. He could use his burner phone in our house while the rest of us were asleep upstairs. He could sext and text with impunity. He could drink excessively and come and go from our basement door to get rid of the empties without me seeing them. His intimacy disorder could flourish because he separated himself physically, and eventually emotionally, from his family.

Coming into late September this year, I thought I was in an okay place mentally. Handsome and I are going on a trip this week to the same place as last year. I was caught off guard by the waves of deep, unsettling emotions as I thought back on last September. I was feeling very overwhelmed for several days with vivid, painful memories of his treatment of me when we returned from the trip, not to mention the texts I now know he sent the Whore within hours of our return home (basically belittling the vacation and telling her he wished she was there with him). Over the weekend, I tried to explain to Handsome why what happened last year hurt me so deeply and how that was bringing up all kinds of feelings now.

At first, I thought it was going to be okay. He held me and held my face and apologized for the decisions he made that hurt me. He was sympathetic. He kissed me and held me some more… and then he opened his mouth again and said, “… but you know, sleeping in the basement was really mostly about the temperature.”

Um, no. No it wasn’t. There was no sleeping elsewhere for 6+ years before we had a guest room. There was no sleeping elsewhere after we moved to the house with the guest room but before his compulsive behavior started to consume him. There was no sleeping elsewhere when we amicably negotiated the thermostat setting for years. The temperature became – and apparently still is – a convenient excuse for an act that hurt his family and which fed and facilitated his addiction and compulsive behavior. To suggest otherwise is to blame me for everything. “Gee, my wife likes the thermostat at 70 degrees, so I guess I have to move to the basement and masturbate.” “Oh, she’s got it set at 71 today? Guess I’ll go watch porn.” WTAF? It’s shorthand for, “Because of you, BW, [and your silly need to stay warm enough to keep your nose from running 24/7] I was compelled to physically distance myself from you, and I just happened to engage in all of this awful behavior as a result.” What was the excuse last summer when he and Angel Baby had the sleepovers at our house? I wasn’t home and was hundreds of miles away. He could have set the thermostat at whatever temperature made him happy. Nope. They still slept in the other room. Why? BECAUSE THAT IS WHERE HE ENGAGED IN THE VAST MAJORITY OF HIS ACTING OUT IN OUR HOME. It had nothing to do with the thermostat.

I am mindful that seeking solace from my SA husband is akin to an assault victim looking for empathy from her attacker. Nonetheless, he’s all I’ve got. I had hoped that with 9 months of therapy and a couple of intensives under his belt that he might be in a position to display just enough empathy to help me work through this momentary struggle. No such luck. I’ll spare myself the disappointment and keep my mouth shut next time. I’ve had about all the deflection I can handle. Thanks for nothing, Handsome.

Never Have I Ever…

Over time, I’ve come to realize that a good number of my conversations with my husband regarding his years of acting out have seemed an awful lot like a sadistic round of the “Never have I ever…” game.

Absent a betrayer who vomits forth disclosures, we partners are left to ask question after question, trying to get answers. We have a million questions, and we also ask the same questions multiple times. Nonetheless, we only know to ask certain questions based on the limited sphere of information we have at hand. I, for one, cannot ask what I cannot even fathom I should ask. I’m left with seemingly random guesses or barely educated stabs in the dark. “Have you ever…?” or “Did you ever…?”

As an example, Handsome did not volunteer that he was pic collecting from the “massage services” section of Craigslist (which should really more appropriately be called the “prostitution services” section) from places clear across the country. In talking about Craigslist he happened to mention the word “massage” by accident, I think, and that led to me asking if he pic collected from massage services postings. Until that point he had always insisted that he only perused the Woman Seeking Men section of our local Craigslist ads because he was “looking for criminal activity” where he worked. (He had admitted that he would save some of the pictures). When I asked, he admitted utilizing the massage services ads as well. Then I remarked “Really? It seems unusual to me that you would limit yourself to those postings in _________ [where we live], because there aren’t that many of them and I understand that many pic collectors search postings from all over the country.” He then answered casually, “Oh well, yes, I did that too… from basically everywhere Craigslist has a presence.” This statement was an admission that his pic collecting was a much more pervasive part of his acting out than I had previously imagined in that it included both the massage services and the dating/ hook -up sections of Craigslist (and probably Backpage), and he was in touch with women all over the country. It totally undermined his whole “I was mostly on Craigslist for work” BS – not that I ever bought that for a second.

Does he get a thumbs up for finally being honest? Sure. He could have lied and claimed he never did any of that. I’m mindful though that had I not done any reading or research on pic collecting, I never would have known to ask the question that I did. It might squeeze its way into the definition of an admission, but it sure doesn’t seem like rigorous honesty to me. I shouldn’t have to guess at what he’s done. Otherwise, maybe I’ve got the wrong game in mind. Perhaps this disclosure process is more like Battleship, where I just randomly toss out the most hideous things I can think of that he might have done and see if any hit their mark.

Updates & Tying Up Loose Ends 1.0

I enjoy shows like 20/20 or Dateline that cover true crime cases, but I’m always a bit sad if there is no conclusion or a “since this story was filmed” postscript. Thus, please accept these updates (in no particular order) to some issues raised in my previous posts:

Fire Dude & the Whore: Having the Whore’s burner phone in my possession was like keeping a flaming coal in my pocket. It’s mere existence hurt me, and as long as I had it, I had an unsettling link to Fire Dude. He would text me at all hours of the day and night and send me pictures of people he thought looked like Handsome driving by their house. I finally managed to have the burner phone copied and I returned it to him in June. I haven’t heard from him since. He and the Whore welcomed a baby girl to the world on August 4th. That child would have been conceived during the Whore’s affair with Handsome, although he swears that he hasn’t had sex with her since 2015.

Vasectomy: Handsome had his initial consultation with the urologist and scheduled the surgery for mid-October. Given the amount of time he will need to be off – about 2 weeks since he doesn’t have a desk job – it may be delayed due to his work schedule, but he did follow through and make the appointment.

Post-nuptial agreement: This is a work in progress. Handsome tells me that he’s open to it and willing to discuss it, and then it never happens. He avoids it like the plague. When we do manage to talk about it he says that he feels as if I’m discounting his contributions to our family and that he fears that I’m asking for the agreement only to hurt him. Those are fairly big accusations. I can understand why he might perceive those things to be true. Neither is true. This is solely about sharing the risk of staying in the marriage and protecting me and our kids in the event he is unfaithful again and the marriage ends in divorce. This is a major item on my “I need this to stay” list, so I’m not giving up and I’ll raise it in front of our CSAT if he continues to dodge the issue.

Beyond Affairs: We just wrapped up the last of the post-intensive calls following our participation in their Healing From Affairs weekend. In retrospect, altogether it was a very worthwhile experience for us. We are (generally) communicating much better than we did before and I think we have a better understanding of how we have each viewed certain things that occurred in our marriage. We have identified our vulnerabilities in tremendous detail and talked through them in a way that most couples never do. While Handsome’s SA puts a slightly different spin on certain things, he still cheated and I’m still a betrayed spouse. There was enough relevant material in the weekend and in the after-care that we both agree it was worth the time and expense. I note for anyone considering their intensive that there are six big follow-up group calls after the intensive. Those are spaced out and are just for the participants of the particular recently concluded intensive. They also have calls every other Wednesday night throughout the year that are essentially open in perpetuity to the people who participate in any of their programs (there is a call for women and a separate call for men). The men’s calls seem to always be pretty secular (as was the intensive itself), but the women’s calls shift through both secular phases and bible-study related phases.

The Flame: Perhaps the gum is wearing off my shoe. Handsome realizes (now, finally, duh!) that The Flame isn’t all sunshine and light. He recognizes that just as he was having an emotional affair with her, she was also equally cheating on her husband. He seems to have gained some insight into why she was such a willing participant with him and what that says about her. The Flame has gone underground on social media. I had heard that her husband was filing for divorce, but I’m not checking. She seems to have lost one of her two jobs in the last few months. One way or the other she will get what she has coming. (Karma!)

The Unicorn: Believe it or not, but things appear to be working out for Handsome with his unicorn of an SA sponsor. I’d even go so far as to say that perhaps The Unicorn is an ideal match for Handsome. They resolved their initial communication issues and now talk fairly regularly. He has given Handsome space and time to do recovery work outside of SA, like our affair recovery work from the intensive, and because his schedule is crazy he is forgiving of Handsome’s crazy schedule as well. In short, things seem to be just fine with the two of them.

Today Handsome hits 9 months of sexual sobriety. On Sunday we will be 9 months out from our first DDay. I would say that it seems like a lifetime ago, except the pain is still so very fresh and close to the surface. We are hanging in there together though. I am trying to stay strong, one breath at a time and one hour at a time and one day at a time. Some days I do a better job than others, but writing here helps me through good and bad patches. I didn’t start blogging because I thought anyone would ever see it. I just needed to shout on paper (or a screen, to be more precise). The fact that I have received so much terrific advice, commentary, and support here from men and women that I’ve never met – even when we agree to disagree – has been both a wonderful surprise and a tremendous blessing. I don’t really have the words to express how much you have all helped me in my healing, but I want to say that I appreciate each of you. Thank you all. ❤️

Financial Infidelity – Show Me the Money

This is a tough post for me to write, and I apologize in advance for the length. My reasonably blue-collared upbringing impressed upon me the decidedly blue-blooded notion that you don’t discuss money with people outside your household. Ever. Nonetheless, it plays a big role in my story with Handsome and I’m guessing that I’m not the only betrayed spouse who feels this way.

Before the Spring of 2012 (when Handsome’s acting out really commenced) Handsome and I would bicker, but rarely fight over anything other than politics. Maybe we’d feud over a scheduling/ child care issue, but these were fleeting matters, and quickly smoothed over. Starting in 2012, however, Handsome suddenly started to pick fights about our finances.

A touch of background: Handsome and I work full time (plus) and our jobs permit us a comfortable, culturally rich life. We have a lovely home and a summer home and retirement savings and we take nice vacations. We carefully pick and choose what we spend our money on and we are generally in agreement. We aren’t buying the $14 organic peanut butter at the grocery store, but we have taken our kids to Europe and South America. Our kids are a big source of spending (activities, camps, babysitter, etc.). Collectively, I don’t think that we live beyond our means, but we don’t live below them either. There is no great big pot of money left at month end, and a major unexpected expense (like a big home or car repair, for example) can still sting.

I’ve written here before about how Handsome and I divide our finances. I bear the vast majority of our expenses, but my income is significantly higher. The idea has always been that we each bear our proportionate share of expenses and neither of us should be penniless throughout the month. Imagine my surprise when I would be having a discussion with Handsome about paying for something relatively minor and he would suddenly start SCREAMING at me about how he has “no money” and “can’t live like this anymore.” When these outbursts started in 2012, I just started bearing a greater portion of the financial obligations, both to try to help him out (was the division unfair or overly burdensome to him? I didn’t know…) and to avoid the conflict. The outbursts continued, and they got more frequent.

By our first DDay, I had been subjected to these screaming tirades about money every few months for the better part of five years. Tirades from a man who, when he needed to replace a Ford Escape that was aging into a money pit in 2015, called me one day out of the blue because he found a new Land Rover he wanted to buy that very day. He wanted to get me to agree – sight unseen – to the purchase of a car that didn’t meet our needs (we had discussed getting something with a third row) and which I sincerely doubted he could afford to maintain. That proved to be true. He couldn’t afford the dealer maintenance. (I now know he bought the car when his physical affair with the Whore was at its pinnacle, in an apparent pathetic attempt to impress a woman who has neither a car nor a driver’s license and spends the vast majority of every single day on her cat pee- stained couch.)

In the back of my mind I always kind of wondered – why is he always broke? If anything his monthly expenses decreased while his income increased, so what’s the issue? He was so very highly agitated about it though, that I figured it wasn’t worth the battle to get into it with him. For the past few years I mostly bought my own Mother’s Day and birthday gifts for our kids to give me so that they could feel like they were actually participating in the celebration. I almost solely and exclusively bought our kids’ birthday and Christmas gifts because he plead poverty.

In the wake of both of my DDays I’ve come to learn where his money was going. Several hundred dollars a month went to buy beer. Then there was the porn he purchased, the expense of his burner phone, the fancy meals he squired the skanks to, the hotel room for the Whore, and all of the cash he showered on them. Hundreds of dollars out the door each month. By my general estimation, he blew at least $16,000 on his acting out from 2012 through 2017. All the while he would stand in our house and scream at me till he was red in the face about not having money.

For Christmas in 2016, Handsome told me that he was “short on cash” so he couldn’t buy any of our kids’ gifts. He seemed sincerely remorseful about it and I just did what I always do and handled everything. Our kids had an awesome holiday. He has since admitted that he found Angel Baby “outside on the street at work, crying in the rain” (note: that bitch needs to get an umbrella because in his tales of woe she’s always outside in a downpour) and that he gave her “a couple hundred dollars” to buy Christmas gifts for her kids. There are no words that I can think of to adequately articulate my white-hot rage at that scenario… her brood and her opening gifts purchased through my husband’s largesse when he didn’t spend a dime on his own kids.

I know that Handsome’s screaming fits are what Dr. M considers “intimate partner abuse.” They were uncalled for, offensive, and yes, abusive. I am still terribly scarred by them. Handsome complaining about money is an extreme trigger for me. To put it into perspective, as of today I have as great a physiological response to his financial infidelity as I do to his physical infidelity. Any hint of a complaint from him about money is enough to send me spiraling into nausea and misery.

This past weekend – over the holiday – our hot water tank decided to die a quick and untimely death. You say “no big deal BW, they’re cheap.” Well, not ours. We apparently have the Ferrari of hot water heaters and replacing it is a several thousand dollar expense. We replaced the condenser for our AC just a few weeks ago for another few grand. This, of course, led to a dreaded discussion about where all of this cash was to come from and Handsome said “well, I’ve been saying for years that we really need a slush fund for these kinds of things.” Yes, Handsome, you asshole, you have been saying that and we certainly do. All or any fraction of the $16,000 you spent on your acting out would have made a lovely pot of cash to rely on for these things. Or the tens of thousands of dollars we’ve spent just this year on your SA recovery or our betrayal recovery. Yes indeed. That would be quite helpful now, wouldn’t it?

I went there. The place I normally bite my tongue and avoid like the plague. I pointed these facts out to him. His initial response? Deflect with anger. Blame me for bringing it up. Act as though the problem isn’t that these things occurred, but that I dare mention them. Shortly thereafter, the shame appeared, but I fear that this too is an addict’s manipulative tool. Pout and sulk enough that I feel badly for raising the issue. Make me never want to raise it again. Here’s the new thing though… it doesn’t work on me any more. If he apologizes to me sincerely for creating this predicament and stops acting like he had nothing to do with the situation, I’ll show empathy. We’ll figure it out together. Otherwise? I love a hot shower as much as the next girl, but I’ll freeze my tushie off on principle. The burden to fix what he broke cannot fall on me alone. I didn’t put us in this position and I’m tired of coming to the rescue.

The CSAT Returns

I’m not certain that I have ever looked so forward to seeing another woman as I did to seeing our Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) yesterday upon her return from maternity leave. We were able to meet with her only once prior to her leave, and I was confident I could get by till she returned, but it was tougher than I thought.

It has been three and a half months since we last met with her. In normal people years that isn’t a very long time, but when you’re well within your first year post DDay, it seems like a lifetime. There were new disclosures to face, accountability and boundary issues to navigate, and although progress was definitely made there remains a lot of individual and couples work to be done. In short, we need her. I need her.

As torture goes, it was a good session.

She asked me how Handsome’s sexual acting out and the partners he chose made me feel, and asked me to tell Handsome. My main answer? Diminished. I feel like everything about me and my life is “less than” because of what he did. I am looked at with pity by those who know what he did whereas I used to be viewed as a person of strength. Dealing with the betrayal trauma has negatively impacted me as a mother and as a daughter. It has impacted my work. I have withdrawn socially. At least for the last 5 years I did not have the marriage I thought I had. I could go on.

I’m accustomed now to thinking through these thoughts and to writing about them here, but this was the first time that I actually got to express them to Handsome where he was a captive audience.

We talked briefly about Angel Baby and the CSAT asked Handsome about his relationship with her and whether it was sexual. He said it wasn’t. Since I’m sitting RIGHT THERE though, I was able to turn to him and say “… but you’ve admitted you wanted to have sex with her. You actually slept with her in a bed in our house and supposedly had an erection…?” He then fessed up and acknowledged that yes, in the end, it got sexual even if (he maintains) they never had sex.

This is going to be a different therapy experience for him. He doesn’t just get to tell his version of events without challenge. He can still minimize and deflect the way sex addicts love to do on things I don’t know about, but on anything else he cannot hide. I think I’m going to find this to be very refreshing.