betrayal trauma recovery – Betrayedwife.net

Showing up

I have spent hours writing here about Handsome’s faults and flaws. I do, however, want to be fair and give credit where it is due. Over the last 6 weeks my husband has shown up for me in a way I haven’t really seen in a long, long time.

When I last wrote we were in the midst of Handsome’s potential dementia/ Alzheimer’s diagnosis. We are still toiling away with that as he has received differing opinions from two cognitive neurologists and also an MRI that purports to rule out both Alzheimer’s and Vascular Dementia. Let’s just say that getting to the bottom of this is a slow work in progress. (I still think there are serious issues. He got in the car two days ago with the TV remote instead of his phone. His ability to keep track of appointments is nil too.)

In the midst of that drama, my 89-year-old mother fell and fractured her hip. She lives with us in an addition we built on our house for her, and I am her only living relative, so coordination of all of her care fell to us. It was a ten-day stay in the hospital followed by a little more than two weeks at a rehabilitation hospital. Then, she was doing great but just wasn’t quite able to come home yet. We moved her to a skilled nursing facility near our home for some additional recovery time and rehab. That seems to be where the wheels fell off the bus.

It’s a highly regarded facility but within a week she tested positive for CDiff (funky bacterial infection that causes seemingly constant diarrhea) and developed a UTI. She is dehydrated and lightheaded and is likely headed back to a hospital to get stabilized.

I try to spend about 2 hours a day with her. And maintain my full time job. And shuttle my kids to their busy Spring schedules. And take care of my mom’s dog. I would tell you that I’m burning the candle at both ends, but there is no candle left. I don’t think that I have been this frazzled, exhausted, and emotionally spent since I brought my eldest home as a newborn.

In the midst of this, Handsome has completely stepped up to the plate. I’ve noted before that he excels at crisis management when the crisis isn’t of his own making, and that’s so true. The man has been a rock star. Our eldest gets on her school bus at 6:20AM (which is both cruel and unusual but that’s a different story). He has gotten her off to school almost every morning just to let me get an extra hour of sleep. He has played shuttle driver and defense coach and grocery shopper all on the same day. He has taken me out to dinner more nights than I can count just so I could get a decent meal and maybe a few moments to relax. He laughs at my bad hospital jokes and walks the dog before bed for me.

When I called him in hysterical tears because I snagged Taylor Swift tickets for our daughter and then had issues checking out, he calmly took over and emerged with the coveted seats. Then he did it again two weeks later when Beyoncé’s tour went on sale and I had a similar issue. (Ticketmaster is literally responsible for the record pace at which my roots are growing out this month. 👵🏻) He’s not a fan of either artist but said it was important that I would have something to look forward to this Summer.

He dishes out random hugs and has watched silly TV shows with me while I try to decompress. He runs interference with our kids so I don’t have to worry about the missing cleat, forgotten homework, or arguments over chores.

Do I wish that he had showed up like this after DDay? Of course. But I’ll take it now. Happily. It’s a much more mature and balanced support than I’ve seen before. There is no hidden resentment, no mumbling under his breath, no sighing loud and useless sighs. He’s just buckling down and helping. I’m incredibly appreciative. This feels like a partnership. As unfortunate as the circumstances are, this still feels good.

Memories (or lack thereof)

I’ve been pretty silent here as of late. It’s been a bit of mayhem but not, thankfully, anything having to do with Handsome’s SA. Nope. Just regular life nuttiness.

Our daughter fractured her spine at a school event in May. It was a terrible injury, but she is wrapping up PT next month and is healed enough to go back to sports. We are very, very lucky.

Despite being fully vaxxed, my mom and I both had bouts of Covid. Mine was quite bad. Paxlovid helped, but I was utterly exhausted for close to half of the summer. (Brother-in-law’s new GF did not appear on my vacation, so that was good.)

Then we had bats in our house. INSIDE the house in the living space. My son and I ended up going through the full protocol of rabies shots. He needed them because a bat was in his room while he was asleep. I got them because I didn’t want him to go through it alone. (I admit that I’m feeling like a shoe-in for mom of the year for that one.)

And here we are with the holidays. Time flies. I turned 53 a few weeks ago. I have a very good memory. Handsome used to as well, but not any longer. He turns 60 in a few weeks and is vibrant and healthy.

The kids and I have noticed though that his memory seems to be failing. I’m not talking about misplacing keys or a wallet. Yesterday, he couldn’t remember that I had Covid. Or that we traveled to Washington DC once I was out of quarantine. Readers, those things happened in June.

He has had disassociative periods in the past and I wondered if that was going on, but I don’t think so. This seems… more alarming (scary? serious? real?). It’s so strange. He functions just fine 98% of the time, but then something comes up and he absolutely cannot remember it. Even when prompted he only occasionally manages any recall. More often he tries to laugh off the fact that he can’t remember. I’m not laughing. I’m terrified.

He has an appointment with a cognitive neurologist in early January. Getting that appointment was quite difficult and he made the appointment himself. He doesn’t remember that.

Could this be caused by any one or more of the numerous meds that he takes every day? Yes. Could it be related to his shift work and the related sleep disruptions? Absolutely. Those two things are both fixable, but I am gravely concerned that these are early warning signs for some form of dementia.

I know it’s “fortune telling” -and uncharitable- but I’m also angry. Fear may be the underlying emotion, but I am angry too. Why? I’m angry that so many of what should have been great years were affected by Handsome’s SA and other issues. And we may now lose out on the retirement I had held out in front of me like a carrot for the last few years. I’ve watched loved ones suffer from dementia. Life becomes very small, not to mention exhausting.

We’ve had such a good year together. This just feels unfair. 💔

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.

Unexpected Consequences

On my DDay, almost four and a half years ago, my children were 8 and 11. After assessing who knew of Handsome’s behavior and what the possibilities were of the kids learning anything, I made the decision not to tell them about their dad’s infidelity and sex addiction. There was simply no reason for them to know.

Handsome was drinking often before DDay. While they never saw him drunk, they did see him drink daily. We did have some discussions with the kids when he stopped drinking about why he made that decision. We also talked to them about why he went to Sierra Tucson for 6 weeks for mood disorder treatment and what he hoped to accomplish after his inpatient stay.

Here we are these few years later and, while I still believe that not telling them about his infidelity/SA was what was right for them (given our particular circumstances) I now see some unintended consequences of that decision. Namely, all of Handsome’s prior bad behavior witnessed by the kids has a reason attached to it in their minds. Dad drank too much so of course he was miserable. Dad yelled a lot because he couldn’t regulate his emotions. Dad didn’t have the meds or the skills he needed to control his moods.

Those reasons are true. But…

The cherry-picking of what my kids know vs what they don’t know means that they have some context for his behavior whereas I now see that they have zero context for mine. During an argument, my now 15 year old daughter said “It’s like you woke up one day a few years ago and just decided to be mean.” 💔 I just wanted to hold her close and say “no, darling… one day your father tore my heart apart and irreparably changed me. He took my peace, my patience, my sense of humor, and my sense of self-worth. I’m still working on getting those things back and it’s hard and sometimes I still struggle. Sometimes I fail.”

That lack of context occasionally means that I get blamed for the consequences of my husband’s actions. One child expressed frustration recently that we don’t stay home for Thanksgiving (which would be a trigger for me). I was seen as the one making that decision and thus got the blame. Handsome had to step into that discussion to say “I ruined Thanksgiving at home for mom, so blame me and not her.” They assumed he meant that he ruined it with his drinking, so the explanation was accepted. That doesn’t work so well though for things like “why is mom so quick to anger” or “why does mom startle so easily?” How do we explain my CPTSD when they only know half the story?

Telling them now is unacceptable for the same reasons that were valid 4 years ago. I’m not going that route. They just don’t need to know. It is frustrating though that in my efforts to preserve their relationship with Handsome I seem to have unintentionally harmed my relationship with them in the process. Could we just blame everything on his drinking and call it a day? Sure. It just doesn’t explain everything.

Perhaps the problem is that I’m not the right person to address the issue. Maybe Handsome needs to step up more, like he did when the matter of Thanksgiving came up. That was incredibly helpful. I don’t mind being the “heavy” with my kids when it’s needed and appropriate, but I didn’t anticipate catching flak for things I can’t really control.

Amends: Better Late than Never

If you’re keeping track, my DDay #1 was in December of 2017. After multiple fits and starts Handsome did a full, therapeutic disclosure this past January, a hair over 3 years later. My presentation of my impact statement took place just a few weeks afterwards. (I had written it ages ago but it just sat in a file on my computer till he finally reached the point where he could hear, absorb, and appropriately respond to it.) The next, and last, “step” on the path towards healing that our CSAT uses calls for an emotional restitution letter to be prepared by the betraying partner in response to the impact statement. It’s an attempt at an emotional, empathetic amends.

I have a feeling that for many SAs, the exercise is painful but doable. It probably flows fairly naturally as a response to the impact statement. “I heard clearly how I hurt you and I take full responsibility and I’ll do whatever it takes to help you -and us/ heal.” Handsome isn’t typical though. I knew this would be a challenge for him.

First, my impact statement was long (16 single-spaced pages… I had a lot to say) and doing a deep dive would have him sitting in discomfort for quite a while. Handsome is better with discomfort now than he used to be, by far, but it’s still challenging for him.

Second, it would require him to take responsibility in a way he has struggled with in the past. Yes, ever since he did his intensive with Dr. Minwalla he has been clear that everything he did was about him and not me and he has been out of his addict-y deflection mode for a long time. There is, however, a difference between the type of responsibility one takes in doing a disclosure (“I brought Angel Baby to our house for two nights when you and the kids were out of town.”) and the way that gets addressed in the emotional restitution phase. In the latter, it’s more like: “I know that by having AB in our home I destroyed your sense of safety there and that no amount of paint or redecorating will undo that damage. I see how physically uncomfortable and triggering it is for you to be in our basement and I’m so sorry that I caused that…” etc. It’s the same deed addressed two very different ways.

If I’m really honest, I thought the concept of the letter would die on the vine. I didn’t expect Handsome to go through with it. Months passed. Our CSAT would occasionally bring it up, but I didn’t say peep about it. A few weeks ago I was told it was done and ready to be presented to me. We’ve been doing tele-health sessions since the pandemic started, but we did this one in person. I won’t tell you that it was brilliant, but he put more effort in than I thought he would. More importantly, it was very heartfelt and sincere. I have no doubt that he meant every word. I could not only feel that, but I could see it on his face and hear it in his voice. I haven’t felt that way about anything coming out of his mouth for a long, long time.

So, are we all good? We are still a work in progress, but actual progress has been made. Handsome still has a lot of work to do. I have more healing to do as well. I had an EMDR session last week to help me address a particular memory. I know it doesn’t work for everyone but I’ve found it works well to diminish my trauma response to certain things. (And I have some absolutely wild dreams for about a week afterwards.) As we move into this season which is generally fraught with triggers for me, I’m feeling good. While that feeling has been a long time coming, like the amends, it’s better late than never.

On being small

I recently had an experience with my 89 year old mother that opened my eyes to a lingering side effect of my husband’s infidelity and related nonsense. Namely, I am accustomed to making myself small.

I am not small in stature or in voice. Despite that, I realized that my goal since DDay, has been to blend in with the wallpaper. The seeds were certainly sowed before then, during the period of my marriage where I was slowly manipulated into making my needs nonexistent. I was astonished though to see how it still impacts me, even when I least expect it.

Picture a stereotypical New England clam shack at a beach. Great lobster rolls and seating at picnic tables with paper towels for napkins. It’s me, Handsome, and my mom. We have a terrific meal. As we go to leave, my mom gets her legs kind of caught up on the picnic table bench. At her age, her skin is incredibly thin. She immediately has blood pouring from both shins.

To be clear, I’m not talking about a normal person slow trickle from a scrape. By your standards or mine, these were small contusions. Nonetheless, I’m talking about a blood thinner- induced river of red that was running down her shins, pooling in her shoes, and soaking the ground around her feet. We were totally silent, but yet the mere fact of the situation made every movement seem loud.

I’m somewhat accustomed to this. It happens any time my mom gets cut and the slightest bruise makes her look like she has been battered. But there we sit, in the midst of this outdoor dining area, and I found myself resenting my mom for drawing attention to us. For inconveniencing the other diners. For ensuring we were sticking out like sore thumbs. For taking up too much “space” in that moment. WTF??

Of course, like a diligent and loving daughter I was on my hands and knees in the sand trying to stop the bleeding, fielding offers of assistance, and trying to get my mom situated to get her to our car. And I was so incredibly, terribly uncomfortable. Just to pile on, I recognized the absurdity of the discomfort in the moment and it made me angry at myself. Have I really allowed myself to be shoved into such a tiny box that a minor accident makes me feel bad for inconveniencing (at worst) a bunch of strangers??

Having had some time to sit with this I can look back and note times where, during Handsome’s acting out, my whole being revolved exclusively around him and our kids. Therereally was no me. Yes, I worked, but I never really got to enjoy the fruits of that labor other than on a vacation or two. Forget self-care. I recall enduring incredible inconvenience and sacrifice to accommodate him and his needs. I recall not asking for anything, ever, because I knew my request would be discounted or ignored. I’ve written elsewhere here about the one Christmas where I got absolutely nothing from him, and the birthdays and Mother’s Days where I bought gifts for our kids to give me because he couldn’t be bothered and had probably spent all his money on skanks and sex.

When you grow accustomed to that smallness, of course you start to believe that your very existence is likely a nuisance to those who don’t even know you. Fast forward to a sunny day at a clam shack and I was turned right back into that gaslit, manipulated woman, undeserving of space to exist. And I deflected that right onto my mom. How dare she have needs, in public.

I swear, trauma is a bugger. Every time I start to feel like I’m making some progress, something like this kicks me in the butt.

I often de-escalate myself in these situations by telling myself “that was then, this is now.” I need to deliberately remind myself “this is reasonable” to counter all the residual effects of the gaslighting telling me that my needs or wants are unreasonable.

In this instance, Handsome was there, working with me to help my mom and offering reassurances to us both that it would be fine. He wasn’t focused on himself. He was present, both literally and mentally. He was trying to be helpful.

He knew I was suffering, but not why. I wouldn’t know how to explain it. I’m not sure I could make it sound logical. And yet clearly this compulsion to not take up space, not make waves or rock the boat, is still deep inside me. I want it to be gone.

“You’re doing so great…”

Someone who regularly reads this blog recently commented to me “it’s great to see that you’re doing so well.” Hmmm. I really appreciate the kind words, but perhaps I need to point out some of my ongoing struggles.

I am doing well. Most days. I am often great or nearly so for extended periods of time. That is true and real, but I don’t want to “image manage” away from reality. I don’t want to give the impression everything is peachy. A few fun facts:

– I haven’t spent more than 10 minutes in our basement in the last 3 years… since finding out that’s where Handsome and Angel Baby shacked up. It’s large, finished, and beautiful and yet I avoid it like the plague. It would be the ideal place for my home office, except I can’t bear the sight of it. A paint job and new furniture would just be putting lipstick on the pig. I just act like it doesn’t exist.

– I haven’t visited Handsome at work since before DDay. I used to occasionally swing by with lunch or take the kids to give him hugs if we were nearby. I’m still too embarrassed to see his coworkers, particularly since I now weigh about 30 lbs more than I did the last time I was there. I can imagine the “Look at her, no wonder he cheated…” comments. (They’re mostly un-evolved dicks.)

– I don’t stalk the social media of the other women (I never really did) but I do run their criminal background checks every few months just to be sure wherever they are spending their time now and getting arrested is nowhere near where we live or where Handsome works. Every single one of them that I know of found time during COVID to get themselves arrested. Every. Single. One.

– I still occasionally rely on anxiety meds. I had no anxiety pre DDay. Give a speech in front of a few hundred people? No problem. Ask for a raise? No sweat. Work the room at a cocktail party? Happily! And yet these days I sometimes feel like there’s a truck parked on my chest over truly stupid stuff. A simple trip to IKEA today was nearly my undoing. And that’s BEFORE I try to build what I bought.

– I have always been sentimental, but I find myself clinging to “stuff” – particularly my kids’ things – from before the betrayal. For example, since they could walk both kids have had really cute rain boots (Wellies) with whales or sharks or frogs or rocket ships or pirates on them with new ones picked out as they changed sizes. Over time, these boots took up residence in a bin in our laundry room. With both kids long grown out of them, Handsome wanted to toss the entire bin. I can’t. I just can’t. Even if the thought of doing so wasn’t causing me to break out into a sweat, it brings on a deep and profound sadness. It’s as if I feel that in tossing the boots I’m tossing my kids’ lives pre-addiction. That probably sounds stupid, but that’s just one example. I know the boots and other items are symbols of the life -and the innocence- I lost. Somewhere in my mind I don’t want to experience that loss again.

So, yes, I am doing great. It just doesn’t mean that I’m back to normal. That still seems a long way off.

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.

Impact.

After Handsome’s disclosure, it was my turn to present my impact statement a few weeks later. Fun fact: I started drafting it over two years ago so it was 98% done by the time of the disclosure. I tweaked a few things afterwards, but not much.

Due to COVID, while our disclosure was done in-person in our CSAT’s office, my impact statement was presented to Handsome (read out loud by me) in the front seat of a Ford F-250 Super Duty parked in a local park while our CSAT participated by Zoom. It was far from ideal, but we made it work.

Handsome had been pretty agitated the day or two beforehand. I’m sure it was hard to know he was going to be gutted for an hour. I was reasonably calm, except that I was worried that Handsome might spiral emotionally afterwards. I was concerned that he’d fall into hopelessness. At some point I had a choice to either soften my words to be more palatable, or be honest. I chose honesty. I chose to give my feelings and emotions all the space they needed, especially my anger. I so rarely let my rage out, but I did so in my impact statement. I didn’t do it with yelling or cursing or name calling. I let the YEARS I had to draft it work in my favor.

Our CSAT is usually pretty chill, but she was in tears through much of it. Handsome was in tears multiple times as well. I hit a lot of nerves. Hard. I covered the impacts to me emotionally, physically, socially, financially, and the impacts to my job and to our children.

For a good bit of the last three years, my pain has taken a back seat in therapy. We spent a ton of time focused on Handsome, as we needed to, but that left little time for me. All my feelings that went unsaid, all the things I stuffed down just to be able to function, all the words that had bubbled up only to find they had nowhere to go… they all had a voice in my statement. It was 14 single-spaced pages of gut-wrenching truth. My truth, at least.

I wrote about things we have talked about, like how violated I felt that he brought Angel Baby to our home. I wrote about things that were seemingly off-limits before, such as his blatant disregard for my health and the physical safety of our family. I asked rhetorically how gaslit and abused I had to be to not buy myself a single article of clothing for almost three YEARS because of his raging rants about money. I addressed how foolish I feel now that I know where all of his money was going. I described the hurt of the birthdays and Christmases where I bought my own gifts for the kids to give me because he couldn’t be bothered. I told him I had no intention of dragging him kicking and screaming towards a better marriage.

Perhaps the title of this post should have been “The Unburdening” because that is exactly how I felt. If his disclosure was freeing then presenting my impact statement was like taking flight. I took off my heavy cloak of shame and anger so that I could soar.

In the end, it honestly didn’t matter to me how he took it. It didn’t matter whether he heard all the words or whether he agreed or disagreed. I couldn’t control any of that and didn’t care to do so. I felt better. It helped heal me, and a healthier me is a better mom and daughter and friend, and probably a better wife. That matters to me, and by those measures it was a success.

Onward!

A Long Time Coming: Disclosure

Long-time readers know that there have been a few false starts on the way to my husband doing a full therapeutic disclosure. The closest we came was last May or June when it was essentially fully drafted but his buddy from rehab convinced him it was a bad idea.

Prior to that I mostly had 2+ years of staggered disclosures. My husband did A LOT of things during his acting out. I knew just about everything, but it was still more of a Rubik’s cube than a simple puzzle. I didn’t have a good sense as to how various pieces fit together. It was like having almost all of the pages of a book, but none of the pages are numbered, or in order, and you don’t know what you’re missing.

I know that some people can move forward and heal absent a full disclosure. I couldn’t. At some point it became less about what my husband was going to say and more about the fact that he refused to say it. The pain was less centered around what he did, and acutely focused on the fact that he knew it would help me (and us) heal and yet he couldn’t bring himself to show up for me the way that I needed. It felt disrespectful, dismissive, and selfish. When he finally (FINALLY!) moved forward with the disclosure in January it was literally like a ton of weight was lifted off my chest.

The disclosure took place three years and one month after DDay #1.

Yes, it hurt to hear specifics of how my life was undermined and blown apart without my knowledge, but it was also freeing. The pages of the book that told the story of our marriage were finally being put in order. A few of the pages I was missing were added. Questions that arose were addressed. It was hard to hear, and yet so necessary for me.

I know some disclosures take an hour or two. We were at our CSAT’s office for over 5 hours. He had a lot to read through. I had a lot of questions. There was no Earth shattering new information for the most part, except for one thing.

Our CSAT believed that it would be helpful to me for Handsome to walk through the history of how his addiction developed and how it appeared in his prior relationships. (In other words, she wanted him to clearly show that his addiction had nothing to do with me because it had been going on in various forms throughout his life.) During that part of the disclosure I learned that Handsome blew up his first marriage with the Flame. I didn’t know that. I thought she came into the picture after that marriage ended.

As mortifyingly embarrassing as it is to point out, she was a 17 year old high school student at the time. Handsome was 27. 😳 WTF?!?!? Knowing that my husband was once “that guy”… the awkward and creepily out of place adult date at a prom … was always cringe inducing and wildly uncomfortable for me. Finding out that relationship started as an affair?? There are no words. I was flabbergasted.

Our CSAT pointed out that at that time – thirty years ago, and closer in proximity to his trauma-filled childhood – Handsome probably only had the emotional maturity of a teen. True… very true until recently… but still… yuck.

As distressing as it was, it was still “good information” as they say. I didn’t really see the cycles in Handsome’s acting out or understand how early in his life he started his destructive behavior. I also had no idea of the extent of the Flame’s home wrecking resume or that she was Handsome’s go-to side ho for decades. It explains a lot.

Our disclosure was a long, long time coming, but as I walked out of the CSAT’s office that evening I felt … free. I had just heard hours of really terrible stuff, things no one should ever have to hear from their spouse, and yet my relief was palpable. I was really looking forward to the future for the first time in a long time.

Rock Bottom…?

After Handsome’s break from Doc#2, I found myself back at our Summer home for a few weeks in late September and early October. Even though I had the kids and work and other usual busy things, it was peaceful. Blissful, in fact. Zero drama. Handsome, who was back at home, would call daily and he sounded… fine.

I wanted him to be motivated to action by the break from Doc#2. I wanted him to have a game plan to move forward. I was looking for some self awareness that maybe he wasn’t doing as well as he thought. What I heard from him was not those things. I heard some indifference. I also heard some relief that he had one less appointment each week. That made me angry.

His game plan, if you could call it that, was to simply continue working with his somatic experiencing (SE) therapist and attend marriage counseling with me. The issue with that is that the SE therapy was never intended to be his sole individual therapy. It was intended to help him work on his family of origin trauma. Nothing more. The therapist has no background in sex addiction. She doesn’t hold herself out as specializing in mood or personality disorders. The areas where Handsome needs the most work would simply go untouched.

That didn’t work for me and I knew it wouldn’t bode well for our kids, so I extended my stay in Massachusetts through Thanksgiving. The kids were doing school online, and my office was fully virtual, so I didn’t need to be home. Handsome did join us for the holiday, but he still had no intent to do anything any differently than he had been doing. Nonetheless, I think he realized on some level that I could stay there forever if I wanted to. I didn’t have to come home.

Our CSAT is very careful to maintain neutrality with us, so when she called me out of the blue one day after Thanksgiving I was surprised. In a nutshell, she told me that Handsome was never going to budge or make any changes if the status quo didn’t get shaken up. She had reached the point where she didn’t feel like she could be helpful to us if Handsome couldn’t find his way to doing the disclosure, securing more suitable treatment, and generally committing to actually work on the marriage recovery (as opposed to just participating with her for an hour each week). I read between the lines and said “If you need to fire us too, I understand, but I’d ask you to take us back if it prompts him to get his head out of his ass.” She agreed.

And so, a couple of weeks later, after trying and failing to cajole some movement out of Handsome, she fired us too. I think it was a week before Christmas. I knew it was coming but it was still unsettling. It felt like a lifeline was cut.

Handsome was stunned. I think he sincerely believed he could just keep treading water forever. He knew it meant that I would leave with the kids again, but permanently this time. After a few days of some deflection, he seemed to have an epiphany. He came home from work and found me and told me that he did not want to loose his family and that he would do the disclosure and everything expected of him. And then he actually started to do the work.

Similar cycles have happened before, but this felt different. There was humility in his voice and earnestness in his actions. To put it bluntly, he finally realized that he was the problem and he decided to do something about it.

How was that different from any other time he seemed to recommit? In retrospect, he never fully bought in to seeing himself as the source of the problem. (The issue wasn’t with his refusal to do the hard work. The therapists and I were just unreasonable.) Getting canned by two therapists he relied on shifted that perspective. He was finally able to take a real look at himself and say “Okay, it’s not everyone else. It’s me. I’m the problem.”

The CSAT firing us turned out to be the best Christmas gift we could have been given. It made it clear that our marriage was really at rock bottom. Not because we were fighting. We weren’t. Not because we didn’t love one another. We did and we do. Our marriage was in trouble because Handsome decided not to meet our needs to heal. He wasn’t prevented from meeting them or unable to meet them. He had simply chosen not to put the effort in that was needed. His cherry-picking of being willing to do some things and not others had failed. Once he realized that and actually owned it, he could choose to course-correct and fix it. And he did.

Flooding: Triggered About Consent

I was scrolling through the New York Times on Friday and I came across this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/opinion/sexual-consent.html

On the surface the article might seem to have little to do with my life. What I learned, however, after reading it and finding myself triggered and flooded with feelings for the better part of 24 hours, is that I have nagging, unresolved issues related to consent and my husband’s betrayals.

The premise of the article is just a few sentences: “Frank and Ellen meet at a night course and end up getting drinks together after class several times. The drinks start to feel like dates, so Ellen asks Frank if he is married, making it clear that adultery is a deal-breaker for her. Frank is married, but he lies and says he is single. The two go to bed. Is Frank guilty of rape? To most people, even those who consider Frank a dishonorable creep, the answer is clearly no. … But why?” The author goes on to compare and contrast procuring a loan through lies – which is fraud, punishable in criminal court – with Frank who duped Ellen into a sexual encounter.

I have to wonder what the author would think of my situation? I married a man who had been a sex addict for nearly two decades before we walked down the aisle. His addiction was completely hidden from me. We had sex because I thought he was only having sex with me. That wasn’t true for 3+ years of our marriage. I didn’t know.

That’s the rub for me. I have yet to resolve my feelings about things happening to me – very directly- that I did not consent to in any way. My then fiancé never said “Hey, before you commit to me for life you should know that I have issues with compulsive masturbation and other forms of sexually acting out.” I was never enlightened that it might be a good idea to use protection during sex because my husband decided to have affairs, visit massage parlors, and hook up with internet randos ten years into our marriage. I did not consent to STDs. I did not consent for pictures of my children to be sent to affair partners or for details of my life to be discussed with them. And yet those things all happened, all without my consent.

I was flooded with sadness that choices I thought I made well and deliberately weren’t based in reality. It eats at me that my husband’s lifestyle of deceit robbed me of an opportunity to consent and make informed choices. I know that my choices now are informed choices. I can and do take comfort in that. Great comfort, in fact. Nonetheless, it doesn’t mitigate my feelings of being duped by my husband for years. Those feelings are going to take some time to process.

My trauma therapist has her work cut out for her this week…

*** A side note- if you have commented and not seen your comment published or acknowledged, bear with me. (Thank you for commenting!) Some glitch is causing my WordPress to not play well in the sandbox. Hope to have it resolved soon.

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.

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.

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.

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.