Tag: disclosure

A Long Time Coming: Disclosure

Some sunshine, at last

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.

Do No Harm

I’ve written about this relatively new path of stability Handsome and I are on. It’s great, but I feel like I – we, really- walked through fire to get here. It’s important to me that other partners who may be newer to this journey know that progress, if it comes at all, does so in a dance that often seems like two steps forward for every three steps back. Healing isn’t linear. Not individually, and not as a couple. In this post and the next few I’ll address some of the steps backwards, and then forwards, we took to get here.

Handsome’s therapist, Doc #2, basically fired him as a patient in mid- September. It completely blindsided Handsome. And me. (It apparently wasn’t a complete firing. His parting words were “Call me when you have something to talk about.”)

You run through a checklist in your mind about whether insurance was an issue (nope, great coverage), or cancellations (also no, only one in over 50+ visits a year), or anything else that might have prompted the move. Handsome was left wondering why someone else in his life decided he wasn’t worth the time or effort. He felt abandoned. He was hurt.

I’ve had months to ponder that decision and I have to say that I still don’t fully understand it. Perhaps I never will until I get to speak to the Doc again at some point. Our CSAT and Doc#2 are professionally acquainted and have multiple clients in common. I’ve heard through her that the Doc grew frustrated with Handsome’s lack of progress, particularly after the disclosure process imploded last summer.

Fair enough. I can understand that to a degree, but what therapist doesn’t expect any regression in their patients? This is a practitioner who specializes in process additions. Handsome has been sober for over 3 years, but what if he had relapsed? Would Doc#2 have booted him out of therapy? That’s a frightening thought to me as a partner. I’m sure it’s a horrifying fear for Handsome.

Doc#2 is the one who diagnosed Handsome with borderline personality disorder. That all good/ all bad thinking that alternately led Handsome to work crazy hard on the disclosure or totally give up on it is a hallmark trait of BPD. Maybe Handsome was more than he wanted to handle? I don’t know.

Doc#2 added insult to injury in early January. To prepare for his disclosure, and at the urging of our CSAT, Handsome swallowed his pride and reached out to Doc#2 to ask for help and to get back on his schedule. Doc#2 said “great” and scheduled an appointment for about 10 days later. Handsome waited patiently and worked on the disclosure. The morning of the appointment Doc#2 called Handsome and cancelled, telling him that he was overbooked and likely couldn’t fit him in for 2-3 months. All over again, Handsome was hurt, his fear of abandonment was triggered, and he really had to fight to stay centered and focused.

What therapist does that to a patient with mental health issues? And take Handsome out of the equation for a moment… how are you “partner sensitive” if you don’t see how these actions might negatively impact the partner too?

It’s easy for me to write here to vent about all the things Handsome does “wrong” but the fact is that there are many things he has done right. He is lightyears ahead of where he was in December of 2017. Can he still be a self-centered dolt? Absolutely, but it happens far, far less than it used to. His rage is mostly gone. He strives to show empathy. (It still doesn’t come naturally to him, but he tries to be intentional about it… when it occurs to him to do so. It’s still a big improvement and he does work on it.) I’m not a mental health professional but even I can recognize that his reluctance on the disclosure stemmed from his fear of abandonment. (“If I tell her everything she couldn’t possibly love me and she’ll leave.”) I was incredibly frustrated by his reluctance, but I was never surprised by it. Certainly his therapist shouldn’t have been surprised by it either.

Our CSAT advised Handsome to try to schedule at least one final session with Doc#2, basically for the purpose of confronting him about how he felt abandoned. I’m pretty sure that Handsome would have preferred chewing glass during a colonoscopy to making that phone call to Doc#2, but he made it. They actually met twice. Handsome reported that their first session was wildly uncomfortable, but the second session was incredibly helpful on an issue of importance. It likely saved their relationship. Handsome will no longer be seeing Doc#2 weekly but they have mutually agreed to work together intermittently as issues arise.

If you’re keeping score at home, as of early last Fall Handsome had stopped 12-step, refused to do the disclosure, and gotten himself fired from his therapist. There was one more big shoe to drop though before 2020 would come to a close…

Who needs friends like this?

When Handsome returned from Sierra Tucson he initially maintained contact with about 10 people he met in the program. As of today, almost a year later, that number has been pared to 3 or 4 guys and the contact is much less frequent than it was six months ago. I predict that a year from now it will be down to one or two contacts, if he’s lucky.

There were and are some good folks in that mix. I’ve met two in person. There was one man, however, that Handsome seemed to put a lot of stock in. I’ll call him the Dude. He was (by his account) a very successful business person with a string of ex wives and a laundry list of homes and companies. The Dude went to ST to address his alcohol abuse and other process addictions. He seemed, post rehab, to be really good at dishing out questionable advice while – from what I could glean – his own life was spiraling out of control again.

Handsome shared his anxiety about the full disclosure with this guy. I think he was actually looking for support. What the Dude said to him was, “Why don’t you just draw her a map to divorce court? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. You’re an idiot if you go through with it.” With those words, the Dude ended any possibility of Handsome doing a disclosure and triggered what would turn into a months-long stand off in our already strained marriage.

Shortly after that conversation the Dude’s life blew up quite spectacularly. He and Handsome haven’t spoken since then, but the damage was already done. The Dude planted the seeds of paranoia that the CSAT and I were teaming up against Handsome, that Handsome’s Doc #2 didn’t know what he was doing, and that I was using Handsome’s guilt to try to gain a strategic advantage in the marriage for an inevitable divorce.

It was all crap, of course. As of today, 8 months later, Handsome sees that. He also sees that the Dude wasn’t someone who he should have listened to on marital or recovery advice. Lesson learned for him. He has thoughts about why he gave this guy so much credence, but in the moment he went all in on the Dude’s advice.

It’s a lesson learned for me too. Handsome is an adult with free will, but he’s also more vulnerable to the influence of other people than almost anyone else I know. He is not a “pleaser” per se but I do see that he forum shops. If Doc #2 or the CSAT tell him something he doesn’t really like he’ll float it past his somatic experiencing therapist to see if she agrees or disagrees. Fortunately, she’s onto him about that so she can and does nip it in the bud.

This forum shopping occurred all the time during the three+ years where he was acting out with affair partners during our marriage. For example, he and I agreed on getting our daughter a cell phone on her birthday. We were in full agreement and started shopping. Days later, he came back with a laundry list of reasons why we shouldn’t get her a phone and how we’d be awful parents if we did. At the time, it was just mentally exhausting. I couldn’t figure out why he kept flip flopping his positions. I didn’t know about the third person in our marriage. I now see the tremendous influence the Flame had on him and, perhaps, how she used that influence to stir the pot in our marriage.

Handsome does recognize a lot of this. It’s challenging for him though to really acknowledge how much influence others have had on him, let alone how harmful some of that influence has been on our marriage. It’s challenging for him to see that he was often given awful advice and that occasionally the people advising him had ulterior motives. Handsome is well liked but has few close friends. With friends like the Dude and the Flame though, who needs enemies?

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.

An Alternate Perspective on Trickle Truth / Staggered Disclosures

A Happy New Year to you all! I offer a big, hearty “thank you” to everyone who read and commented on my Week of Brutal Honesty posts before the holidays. It was very cathartic to me to write those posts and to participate in the comments, and I hope it was for others as well.

So here we are, rolling into 2019.  Handsome’s primary focus at the moment is eliminating his compulsive lying. To a “normal” brain, it sounds fairly ridiculous, but addicts are relentless liars. Handsome’s compulsive lying likely started in his childhood and escalated in his high school years when he first started living a kind of secret life. (His parents would think he was at school all day when he would actually leave and go hang out at the town library for hours on end. He was dying to learn, but hated school for a variety of reasons.) It certainly set the stage for the decades of addiction-driven secrets and lies that followed.

His assignment is essentially to do two things: (i) not lie, and (ii) journal about every time he thinks about lying, whether big or small, and explore his motivations behind why he was going to or did lie. If he lies he is supposed to fess up and correct the lie immediately. (I am fully aware of the irony in relying on an expert liar to admit to his lies, but it is what it is.)

I was working on some recovery materials this past weekend and one of the topics involved trickle truth and the damage and trauma it causes. As is often the case, this got me thinking very specifically about Handsome’s disclosures. In short, it occurs to me that the use of trickle truth – staggering his disclosures and lying by repeatedly stating that he had told me “everything” – was likely highly effective for him.

To be clear, I am not saying that there were no negative consequences of the trickle truth. I am instead suggesting that – on balance – the negative consequences of the trickle truth for him were likely less severe than the consequences of telling me everything honestly from the beginning. Handsome’s initial disclosure was that he had one physical affair. In those initial, highly charged days after disclosure, I was making a decision to stay or to leave the relationship based on, I thought, his extra-marital involvement with one person. If I had any inkling that there were at least five other long-term emotional and physical affair partners, plus all the pros and online randos, my initial analysis would have been very different. I tend to think that I would have simply thrown him out and filed for divorce.

It’s almost as if to stay in the marriage I had to ease into the concept of being the wife of a sex addict just as he had to ease into the disclosure of his acting out and acknowledgement of his addiction.

With that said, I do believe that we reached a point – probably about 2 months after our 2nd DDay (when his addiction truly came to light) – after which additional disclosures became nothing but destructive. After that point we had both put considerable time, effort, and money into healing separately and together… we were staying together if we both did the work… so further trickle truth just undermined the new foundation we were trying to build.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that trickle truth is a good thing. There are power dynamics and certainly selfishness and self-preservation at play when one is asked to tell the whole truth and they do not do so. It is also unquestionable in my mind that trickle truth exacerbates betrayal trauma. Instead, I think I’ve just come to the conclusion that trickle truth from a cheater is to be expected. It often works, to a degree, for them.

Perhaps I handled it all wrong with Handsome. Perhaps the mantra shouldn’t have been “tell me the truth or I’m throwing you out” but rather “move out until you can prove to my satisfaction that you have told me the truth.” Perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, that would have been the smarter move.

A Week of Brutal Honesty – #3 – A Crime of Passion (a.k.a Why I’ll never get picked for a jury)

This is the third post in my week of soul cleansing. You can find the first two posts here and here.

I’ve been pondering this post for a long time, but frankly it just seemed way too awkward – and revealing – to write. I was on a support group call a few days ago and someone had a very similar experience, so I’m thinking that perhaps I’m not as alone in this as I thought. So, if this makes sense to even one betrayed spouse out there, just know that you aren’t the only one.

I am not a physically aggressive person. I don’t think that I have ever actually struck another human in anger… ever, even as a kid. I did throw a bottle of water at Handsome’s head at some point in the last few months, and it seemed to shock the hell out of him – which is probably indicative of how out of character that kind of thing is for me.

Based on that, it might surprise you to know that I’m reasonably certain that I seriously considered killing him the night he first disclosed his infidelity to me. I feel really weird just writing that sentence out, but it happened. After dumping his initial disclosure of lies on me, Handsome headed downstairs to sleep in our basement. I wept initially, and then… well, then I got mad, (like really, really mad), that he had done such a thing, to me, to our family, and that he only came clean because the Whore’s husband was going to out him. I was seething hot with rage.

Rage is probably the most relatable word that I can use, but it was really far beyond that. I felt with absolute clarity the depths to which he had betrayed and harmed me. I did not want revenge. I wanted him to no longer exist. The maelstrom of fury inside of me was truly like nothing I had ever felt before.

We are not gun nuts, but he is in law enforcement and my dad was an accomplished skeet shooter, so we have guns in our home. For the record I’m all in favor of gun control and background checks and closing the gun show purchase loophole and… well, generally anything that the NRA opposes. Nonetheless, I know how to shoot.

And yes, I thought seriously about where the guns are in our house, where the ammo is, whether he might be expecting my rage or if he actually managed to fall asleep now that his guilty conscience was relieved (ha! if I only knew how far from the truth that was at the time)…. and then one thought popped into my mind. I pictured our kids and how that would be the loss of both parents for them, since I knew I wasn’t going to get away with anything. I recall being absolutely fully aware that I’d go to jail. We had just had an absolutely terrific day with the kids and I couldn’t imagine them without either parent, losing their home, moving to their godmother’s, having to give up their friends and their school and their pets because of me or their asshole cheater-father. I wasn’t going to cause that.

This was not, to be honest, as linear an argument in my head as this makes it seem. I sat with these thoughts running through my head for longer than I care to admit. I did not ever touch a weapon that night (nor since then), but I had run through about every scenario I could think of in my mind. In the end, it wasn’t my great love of my husband that saved him that night. In that white-hot fury I truly did not give a shit about him. He was saved by my great love of our kids and my own moral compass.

I used to think that crimes of passion were some BS concept that defense attorneys used to get their clients off. That’s likely true in some cases, but if I could be driven to seriously evaluate the pros and cons of homicide, then I’m reasonably certain that just about anyone can. I’m pretty even keeled (or, more precisely, I was before DDay). I don’t have anger management issues, and I’m very often more pushover than powerhouse at home. I’m also a pretty law and order kind of girl. Today though? If I were on a jury and a betrayed spouse had whacked their mate in an incident worthy of 48 Hours, I get it. I can empathize. I would sign on the “not guilty by reason of temporary insanity” line in a heartbeat. I’m not talking about someone who plots and schemes for weeks, but in that heat of the moment after discovery or disclosure? I know that crazy pain and the crazier thinking that goes along with it. I’ve been there. I’m not saying that it’s right or that it makes sense (and, in fact, that’s precisely why it’s so crazy… because it makes no sense). I’m just saying that I understand.

Tomorrow: A Week of Brutal Honesty – #4 – L is for Loser

Stuck on the path out of sex addiction

Seo, Young-Deok Anguish #25, Stainless chain, 120 x 80 x 40cm, 2015

Our CSAT threw a monkey wrench at me yesterday. Handsome was working, so I saw her alone. We were supposed to be touching base on the therapeutic disclosure.

After our last joint session, Handsome had made two comments to me that I just couldn’t really seem to process well. I didn’t know what to make of them, so I wrote them down to discuss with her. That led the session in an unexpected direction.

The comments? I had told Handsome that I thought I was doing pretty well prior to the most recent disclosure, but that his new revelation (after he had months of opportunity to disclose it and instead continued his denials), really set me back. Yes, I expected it to a degree, but it was nonetheless devastating. I had a guess about the prostitutes and massage parlors, but the additional long-term whatever (anonymous physical affair? relationship? sext buddy?) caught me off guard. Handsome’s reply was “I don’t think you were doing well before this. I think it was a facade.”

The CSAT nailed her dissection of that comment. It’s a sneaky combination of gas lighting and defensiveness all rolled together. He didn’t hurt me anew because I was already miserable. Uh, wrong, ass hat.

His second comment? Remember that this was made one day after DDay #3… “Because of my integrity disorder you are always going to believe there are things I am lying about.” Well, for the time being at least, yes, yes I am because to date I have been absolutely correct to doubt his veracity. As the CSAT pointed out, it begs the question of what he’s willing to do to address that issue. Pointing out the problem (a fully justified problem that he created) does nothing. It’s a pointless comment that frames him as a victim of my supposedly unjustified disbelief.  What’s he going to do about it?

Then, the bombshell: given Handsome’s two intensives and his nearly one year of sobriety and his individual therapy and 9 months in SA, she would expect him to be further along than where he is now. She feels like he’s “stuck” and still too defensive to move forward. She equated him to a dry drunk which, when I think about it, is likely not too far off the mark. He’s sober from his acting out, but I’m seeing a lot of the pre-DDay bad behaviors that accompanied his acting out (like being unkind and picking random, pointless fights with me) because he hasn’t yet developed the coping skills to prevent those things from occurring. His brain doesn’t even usually register that he’s doing them.

She’s planning to meet with him individually next week to talk through this with him, and tell him flat-out what she thinks of his progress, and then we meet with her together the following day. She told me to be prepared to answer the question of what I intend to do if he won’t/ can’t move ahead? What if he is sober, but not really recovering? What if he hasn’t actually hit rock bottom yet? What then?

Yeah, what then? And why on Earth is this the second holiday season in a row that I have to make weighty, significant decisions to deal with his addiction and the related fall out?

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.

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. ❤️

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.

Nothingness

Handsome and I are going through a good phase at the moment. Life is hopeful. We are getting along well and he continues to work hard on his recovery. I refer to this as a phase though because I know that the winds of change can come swiftly in this stage of our collective addiction/ betrayal recovery.

I try very hard to stay on an even keel. I avoid obsessing. I’m not really actively checking up on Handsome. I’m done looking into his APs other than to check their criminal records to see if they’ve been arrested recently where he works or where we live and to Google certain pertinent info just to make sure that the supposedly parallel lines aren’t crossing. I know I can’t undo the horrors already done. That said, my spider senses are on high alert. Always. I’m hyper-vigilant, but I prefer to say that I’m just more attuned to my surroundings, to be diplomatic.

So, when Handsome and I have an incredible evening together and all of a sudden he becomes quiet and sullen and wipes a tear from his normally dry eyes, I naturally feel a question coming on.

“What’s up?” (I try to keep it light…)

“Nothing.”

With that one word, I feel like I’m set back a dozen steps. I go from rational to nut job in a nanosecond. Outwardly, you might notice no change save, perhaps, for the tick I’ve developed in my left hand since DDay. Inside my head, however, I’m thinking (cue the crazy sirens):

“What is it he feels too guilty to tell me?”

“What lie is he keeping?”

“Is he acting out again?”

“Did one of the ho bags reach out to him?”

“Is he miserable that he’s with me?”

“Here we go… he doesn’t want to tell me that I’m too fat for him.”

“Wait, what happened to sharing our feelings?”

“What happened to building emotional intimacy?”

“He’s throwing in the towel on that already???”

“Asshole.”

All of those thoughts go through my head in WAY less than the time it took you to read them.

It’s exhausting, and I never thought that way prior to DDay #1. Just one more gift from the Infidelity Fairy that keeps on giving.

Beep beep’m beep beep… Nah…

I’m back from my month away from home. Sadly, it wasn’t all vacation as I worked remotely for three of the weeks, but a good time nonetheless. Handsome made it for almost three of the weeks and was brilliant for about the first 12-14 days. Then the wheels started to get wobbly on his bus. I started to see the anger, venting, and frustration that were all too commonplace with the old Handsome. I’ve generally only had glimpses of that at home since April, but this was like a trip back in time. My response? No more cajoling him, trying to de-escalate him or placate him. I’m done with that. I simply told him that I wasn’t having it. No way am I going back to where that’s what I have to deal with every day. I think he got the picture because he made noticeable effort after that.

We arrived home to find that he had been scheduled for 56 hours of overtime this week. You read that correctly. That’s 56 hours of work in addition to his regular 40 hour week. To put it simply, I have issues with him and overtime. It’s a trigger for me. During the prior three years he would take every overtime he possibly could because it gave him an extra 8 hours a day to act out, and he’d get angry to the point of hostility with me if there was a family related reason why he couldn’t take an offered shift.  Post DDays, he threw himself into work as an alternative to his sex addition, leading to his workaholism and the triggers it caused me becoming a source of contention. At present, our deal is that he can take overtime as long as it works for us (with our kids, activities, etc.) and it isn’t on his long weekends off or days off. He tried mightily to chuck that deal out the window this week, but I held my ground and he’s working “only” the 32 OT hours (plus his regular 40) that worked for us. He’s grumbling about it, but we’re sticking with our deal.

I was chugging along just fine till he called to tell me that he finally had a run-in with one of his skanks. I say “finally” because three of the skanks live where he works, and he hadn’t seen or run into any of them since early December. It was simply bound to happen sooner or later.

He was approaching an intersection with a 4-way stop, and saw Angel Baby in her car at one of the stop signs. He says he turned onto a side street and she took off through the intersection after him honking her horn repeatedly and flashing her lights and tailgating him, trying to get him to stop or to pull over. She continued this for a couple of blocks. He ignored her and just turned off the street calmly and deliberately at the next possible intersection. Then he called me.

I knew that call would come eventually – and I’m really grateful both that he followed through with what we previously discussed he should do in such circumstances, and that he called me right away. Nonetheless, I got cold chills up my spine and my stomach turned in knots. She still wants to have contact with my husband, even though he told her it would never happen again and was unwelcome and even though I expressed the same thing to her. Frankly, that scares the crap out of me. I’m sure she has by now convinced her crazy-ass self that he just didn’t see her car or hear her repeated honking. She has likely told herself that he certainly would have stopped if he  knew it was her… because he absolutely would have done that before (and likely taken her out for an expensive meal and given her a wad of cash). I warned him that I believe he’ll hear from her again in the not too distant future. He is convinced that she gets the picture, but if she did she wouldn’t have tried to chase him down like she was auditioning for Angel Baby Driver. I’m well served to not underestimate the level of her devious intent… or her plain old stupidity.

The Tale of the Tampon

I wanted to write here about an incident that happened some time ago, but that I’ve been forced to revisit in the wake of DDay #1 and DDay #2.  I have said that if you had told me before December 9, 2017 that my husband had a long-term physical affair, I would have thought you were crazy. That is true, but that’s not to say that I never had a period of doubt.

In the Fall of 2015, I had a work trip to LA for five days. It was a longer trip than usual by about two days, but it was across the country and I had two speaking engagements and a series of meetings and a few work events to attend. Handsome and the kids were at home. During those days, when Handsome was working, our kids were either in school or with our nanny at home. Our youngest was in kindergarten and our oldest was in 3rd grade. Handsome was home alone for several hours a day by himself while the kids were at school and the nanny was off at another job.

I got home late on a Sunday night and everyone was in asleep, so I just abandoned my luggage in our foyer and snuck into bed. The next morning was a jet-lagged blur of getting the kids dressed and off to school before I finally found myself with a few moments of peace in our bedroom. I was making the bed and I turned around and noticed… a packaged tampon resting on the window sill beside the bed. On my side of the bed. Aside from the fact that I haven’t needed a tampon in years (shout out to the Mirena inventor!! woot! woot!) it was neither my size nor my brand. It was unopened and appeared carefully placed there, at the edge of the window, closest to the head of the bed. It was, in fact, where you might put something if you wanted it close at hand but you didn’t want to put it on my very crowded nightstand.

This was post “Porngate” that I’ve written about here, and also post the first email incident with the Flame. I immediately assumed that Handsome had another woman in the house while I was gone. I took the tampon, found him in the basement watching ESPN, and flung it at his head while doing my best impersonation of a screaming banshee. I hurled accusations and he denied, denied, and denied. He seemed astounded, shocked. I wasn’t buying it. I did not believe him. I wanted to believe that he knew nothing about it, but he seemed to almost be trying too hard to convince me or, alternately, dismissive of the entire incident.

I later inquired of the nanny if the tampon might be hers (yep, that was an embarrassing conversation) since she was to have been the only other woman in the house in my absence. She was a lovely girl (completely and utterly unimpressed by Handsome so I wasn’t concerned that was an issue), but a bit of an airhead, and her response was along the lines of “I don’t think it’s mine, but I don’t know.” Now, the ladies out there likely understand that once you have a tampon you trust and rely on, that’s the one you are willing to go to three stores to find in your preferred brand/ size. It’s not something you switch up. I think she was trying to not get Handsome in trouble (even though I was the one paying her), but I was unconvinced.

Ultimately Handsome settled on the story that our cat, who likes to play with crinkly things, swiped it from the nanny’s bag and deposited the contraband neatly on my window sill. (Again, that pins ownership of said tampon on the nanny, and that is far from certain.) I never bought that story, although the cat was indeed in the midst of a streak of doing just those kinds of weird things. I would find the plastic wrap from a tissue box under our kitchen table, or a piece of foil on the stairs. The perfection of the placement though was always the nagging issue in my mind. It was tucked away on the sill, on a window the cat was rarely, if ever, on. Also, there were no teeth marks on it. None.

Handsome told me that he relayed the story to his buddies at work and lamented getting blamed for something he “didn’t do.” He laughed about it and acted as if I was crazy. The thing is, at that very moment I now know that he was in the midst of two emotional affairs and his physical affair with the Whore was in full swing. He may have been wrongly accused about the tampon (although I doubt it) but he was nonetheless guilty as sin at that moment. In retrospect I believe this was likely his best effort at gaslighting me.

Before my DDays I really wanted to believe that Handsome was truthful. I wanted to believe that my kleptomaniac cat just grabbed the wrong thing to play with and that it was all a big, bad coincidence. I never fully believed that – my logical brain wasn’t buying it – but I really wanted it to be true with all my heart.

Today, even after all of the disclosures and all of the therapy and the intensives, Handsome still insists that he has no idea how that tampon got there other than by way of the nanny or the cat. He says yes, he engaged in complete and utter shithead-fuckery, but that there was no other woman in our house while I was away on that trip. I want very much to believe that, but having been through what I’ve been through, I just don’t.  I don’t think I will ever believe it.

I believe in my head and my heart, based on Handsome’s other behavior, that there was another woman in my house while I was away. I don’t know who it was, and I guess it doesn’t matter. In my mind, he slept with the Whore or some random anonymous skank in my house, in my bed, while I was off working. It’s basically the same thing he did last summer with Angel Baby (except they supposedly didn’t have intercourse, although I don’t believe that either). I’ve dealt with that to some degree, and I’m dealing with this by lumping it into the same pot. Do I wish that I could just believe him?  Of course!!! He has 8 months of sexual sobriety under his belt. And for all I know he may very well be blameless as to this one instance and telling the truth about the tampon. But like the little boy who cried wolf he no longer gets the benefit of my blind faith and trust.

It’s his loss, but it sure seems like mine too.

Dispelling a Myth or Two About Sex Addiction (hint: it’s not always about intercourse)

I am not a mental health professional. Nonetheless, having lived with a man who has been diagnosed as a sex addict by not one but two medical professionals on opposite ends of our country (including one who is far from being fully on the sex addiction bandwagon – but that’s a whole other post), and having read as much sex addiction literature (scholarly and otherwise) as the internet and Amazon can provide, I feel like I may have something small to offer here.  Maybe.

The World Health Organization’s recent decision to include compulsive sexual behavior as a mental health condition  on its International Classification of Diseases list (the ICD-11) has brought the sex addiction deniers out of the woodwork. To be clear, whether you call it “sex addiction” or you call it “compulsive sexual behavior” is mere semantics. The nature of the conduct at issue is indistinguishable.

On DDay #2, I learned that at this time last Summer Handsome was juggling me PLUS four other women, PLUS he was involved in pic collecting, voyeurism, pornography, and a laundry list of other sexual behaviors. It was instantly clear to me that something was very, very wrong. This was more than just casual pleasure-seeking and random self-indulgence. Why? Because Handsome was clearly miserable, distraught, and depressed. He wasn’t just sad he got caught (although there was likely a bunch of that going on). He did these things compulsively and rather than bringing him pleasure, they were literally destroying him. His drinking had escalated. His anger management was abysmal. He was alienating our family. He jeopardized his job to the point that I am still amazed he managed to keep that job. He looked unwell. It was like he was being poisoned from the inside out. I see this in hindsight. At the time, the day-to-day destruction was almost imperceptible – kind of like how you might not notice a parent aging and declining if you see them every day.

Imagine that you are throwing a birthday party for a friend. All the guests arrive and you head to the kitchen to put candles on the cake and you find that your spouse has cut a piece of the cake and eaten it. You might think “Wow, what a jerk.” Maybe you could write it off as a misunderstanding or a bout of selfishness or poor judgment. You would be mad and perhaps hurt, but not alarmed. Now imagine that instead you walk into the kitchen to find that your spouse has eaten the entire cake, all of the appetizers, the entirety of the main course, and that he/ she had started eating their way through the refrigerator and freezer. You would instantly realize that something was terribly, terribly wrong and that help was needed. That’s exactly what I felt like on DDay #2.

In those early days I would read voraciously and clip out text that spoke to me or that I found really helpful to my understanding of what was going on… what I was dealing with. I wanted to understand what Handsome was feeling and experiencing during the time he did these things. I was also skeptical about the legitimacy of sex addiction and yet I intuitively knew that Handsome wasn’t exactly enjoying himself… that he seemed caught up in something he couldn’t break free of. He wasn’t living like a happy man. He was using others and being used by them and, on some deep, dark level, he knew that sad fact. It just took a few months of therapy to surface.

I wanted answers to my questions. How could he risk everything? Why did it continue even though it made him miserable? I found the following text on a now defunct blog written by the wife of a sex addict [note: I just had these lines copied into my notebook without citation, but thanks to Maggie for her comment below with the correct reference to the now inactive blog “Living with a Sex Addict.” http://livingwithasexaddict.com/ and the post  “Sex Addiction as a Fantasy Addiction.”] The following paragraphs are about intercourse, but they could just as easily describe the pursuit of a voyeuristic encounter or sexting or pic collecting or the use of pornography. Handsome says that this is remarkably what it was like for him:

“…[s]ex addiction may not be exactly what it sounds like. He isn’t addicted to good sex or sex with beautiful women. This isn’t a case of him wanting “better” sex. I know this only because he wasn’t getting better sex when he acted out. He was getting terrible sex with whomever he could find or pay. The important thing for the addict is the fantasy that accompanies the act, rather than the act itself, which is often disappointing. Fantasy transports him from his real life. Sex blots out what is really happening inside him. And what is happening inside him is terrible, debilitating shame.

Why does the distinction between being addicted to sex and being addicted to sex fantasy matter? Perhaps it doesn’t. But it helps to understand the fantasy component because then it makes sense that he’d engage in sex even when his physical sex drive is low, even if he can’t get an erection while doing so, or even when he’s getting plenty of sex at home.

…The rituals that come before an episode of sexual “acting out” have been observed to be very similar to those used by narcotics addicts before taking a drug. A state of hyper-arrousal (not sexual arousal, as such, but a kind of awakened excitement of the addict’s entire being) precedes the event, and sex addicts enter a state they often refer to as “the bubble” in which they are completely consumed by the planning and execution of their next sexual encounter.

The addict then does everything he can to elongate the time that sex occupies in his mind, to stay in the fantasy. His experience of addiction begins with these first moments of anticipation. He may or may not have any specific partner in mind or any specific act, but this preamble to sex pulls him away from negative feelings about himself and his life at least for a while.

Once the act is completed (the fantasy being dashed ultimately by the awful reality) the addict despairs. First, because the act was so fruitless—he’s back where he started, the same as last time. The sex [if any] almost certainly wasn’t what he’d hoped for, and didn’t accomplish whatever he’d imagined it might (yet again). And now he’s opened the possibility that you will find out and the only real love in his life will be taken away. He regrets what he’s done. He’s deeply sorry; he has almost unbearable shame.

Even worse, he knows he is likely to do it all again.”

I would only add to this description to emphasize again that for many who engage in compulsive sexual behavior, if not perhaps most, actual intercourse is neither the goal nor the point, and not even necessarily desired. Handsome was addicted to sexual attention and fantasy. He got his hits from showering the OW with attention (texts, sexts) and to receiving attention in return. If that attention was sexual, all the better. Bonus points if it was explicit. The intercourse he did have with the Whore was short and unsatisfying, and even all the unprotected oral ultimately wasn’t worth continuing (for her at least). Would he have slept with the others if he could have?  Maybe, but he also seems to have passed up multiple opportunities to do just that. Regardless, the end result would have been the same… unsatisfying, impersonal rutting followed by deep shame. On some level, I think Handsome knew that  and so his developing addiction focused on attention, fantasy, and self-pleasure instead.

There are, without a doubt, serial philanderers and folks who simply love as much strange as they can possibly get. That doesn’t make them addicts. I don’t believe that they experience what is described above. For them, it is a pleasurable process and there is no shame because, well, they just don’t feel bad about what they’re doing. They enjoy themselves and find pleasure beyond the encounter in their actions. They aren’t embarrassed and, while they might not want to get caught, that’s due more to their concern about consequences than to any deep internal shame. That certainly doesn’t describe Handsome or the other men he has encountered in his recovery.

Did Handsome enjoy driving by the Whore’s house to see her flash her boobs at him? In that singular moment, yes. And then sometimes minutes later he would be screaming at himself in frustration because the hit had passed, the momentary high had gone, and the shame train came barreling into the station. He’d resume texting her and sexting to try to stave off that bad feeling for as long as he could. In those fleeting moments he felt wanted, or at least special enough for a trashy married mother of three to stand topless in the dirty window of her dilapidated house and play with her nipples for him and the neighborhood to see. Now, in hindsight and after months of therapy, he sees it for what it was: desperate, pathetic, and just like a heroin addict chasing the proverbial dragon no matter the costs.

While there was a part of Handsome that hated having to come (partially) clean on DDay #1, there is another part of him that felt abject relief. He was exhausted, literally, trying to keep all of the pins he was juggling up in the air. (With my dark sense of humor I occasionally joke that most guys can’t deal well with one woman, let alone FIVE, on a daily basis, so what guy in his right mind would even try.) A part of him wanted desperately to just stop doing what he was doing, but he lacked the fortitude to make the break on his own. As with other addictions, he would make a mental decision to stop, only to slide back down the slope into the compulsive behavior. Having Fire Dude “out” his affair with the Whore to me was the shove he needed to end everything. It was his NARCAN revival moment – a second chance at life. It still took him several more months to come clean with his disclosures and he made a half-hearted effort to cling to a few last vestiges (saying goodbye to Angel Baby, dragging his feet on the letter to the Flame, etc.), but he says that he has had zero contact – other than sending the no contact letter to the Flame – in almost 9 months and maintained sexual sobriety throughout that entire time, and I believe that to be true.

Sex addiction deniers spend a lot of time on the issue of withdrawal, but I think, again, that this misunderstands the nature of the addiction. Does Handsome miss the skanks? He says not and I don’t think he does. I believe he does, however, miss being fawned over throughout the day, each and every day. He misses that attention factory. He misses the constant “hits” throughout his day. How can I tell? He is more obviously emotionally needy. (Something I never, ever detected previously over our 15+ years together.) Early on we also had to focus a bit on gratuitous touching versus that which is timely, appropriate, and mutually pleasurable. There are clearly some gaps where the addictive, compulsive behavior used to reside, and we are working on filling those gaps with healthy, positive thoughts and behaviors. It is a work in progress.

Will Handsome’s world end if sex addiction/ sexually compulsive behavior doesn’t gain further traction as being “real” in the sphere beyond the WHO? No. Handsome is more than his diagnosis. He is making strides in his recovery. It is, however, an added challenge to conquer a problem when you start behind the 8-ball because others deny that your problem even exists.

 

 

 

 

 

He’s doing everything he should be… and it’s still hard for me

A few days ago, I was feeling overwhelmed. During our last check-in Handsome disclosed both something that he had been holding back and one thing he says he just remembered last week. I appreciate and respect the effort (late though it may be) for transparency, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still painful.

He had, apparently for months, been holding back that the relationship he had with the woman he took out on a date last summer was more involved than he had led me to believe. I haven’t even given her a nickname here because I was initially led to believe it was of such short duration and insignificant that it didn’t merit further discussion as compared to his other APs. He minimized it. (Minimization is a part of Handsome’s Compulsive – Abusive Sexual – Relational Disorder (CASRD) according to Dr. M.) While they did only have one restaurant date, he was at her house once, briefly (no sexual contact), and she was in his car one night (touched her breasts), and he apparently made out with her multiple times outside her house, in the town where he works… while he was in uniform and working. (Because, apparently, risking your job and getting disease at the same time is… sexy???) This just squeaked through his polygraph because his answer to a single question about her was accurate. The question simply wasn’t comprehensive enough.

The new thing he says he just remembered is that last June when Angel Baby stayed at our house for two nights while I was away, on one of the days they got up and went for lunch at a trendy restaurant near my office, then to a museum, then to a nice restaurant for a drink before he drove her home. To exacerbate this issue, he had originally told me a sob story about picking Angel Baby up in the rain because she was standing on the street crying with nowhere to go. Allegedly it was her temporary homelessness that led him to bring her to our house. (A pathetic excuse and by no means justification, but that had been his story.) After learning of their “field trip” I checked his financial records and pinned down the precise day. It was three days after I left to take our kids to summer camp. Moreover, there was no rain where we live that week. None. (Thank heavens for the internet.) I was/ am less upset about the detail he was revealing (the field trip) than I was/ am about the dismantling of the already bullshit excuse for how she could have possibly ended up in our home in the first place. He insists that what he told me originally is what he actually remembers. Maybe. Who knows? In my mind though he has lost the benefit of the doubt. Plus, it is objectively impossible and untrue. Given the timing – his first two days off after I departed with the kids – my belief is that he premeditated to get her to our house. He denies this. He may even believe it to be true. I do not.

The following days have been tense, to say the least. I struggle with being appreciative of the transparency yet not hiding the fact that I’m crushed, yet again. Over the weekend we talked one day while the kids were off at activities and he made the mistake of telling me that it’s “hard” for him to admit to bad things when life seems to be going well between us. I proceeded to then explain to him that if he thought telling the truth was “hard” he should walk a mile in my shoes, and then I lit into him with a diatribe about all the things that are hard that I deal with every moment of every day because of what he did.

I then sent him this message a day later:

“I know that over the last weekend you were, I think, surprised to hear me express some of the very specific reasons why I am so sad and continue to find this all so very overwhelming and hard. It occurs to me that you are surprised because I don’t ever actually share these thoughts with you. You get bits and pieces of my anger, confusion, and hurt, but I seem to have adopted your method of stuffing things down inside and trying to keep my chin up.  Long term, that doesn’t do us any good. So, in no particular order and without any suggestion that this list is complete, here is a list of ten things that I am finding excruciatingly hard and challenging at the moment. Perhaps we could talk through each of them together?

  1. It is hard to know that there were so many (yes, 3 or 4 is “many” in this circumstance) other women that you wanted to sleep with when you chose not to sleep with me.
  2. It is hard to know that you communicated so much with these women when your kids and I could often barely get a few kind words from you.
  3. It is hard to know that you maintained a wholly separate life that your family was neither welcome in nor acknowledged in, except with complaints.
  4. It is hard to pay witness to your over-familiarity with these women, when you lack anywhere near that level of familiarity with your own family and things related to your family.
  5. It is hard to hear you talk about not wanting to hurt their feelings when my feelings were utterly irrelevant.
  6. It is hard to kiss you without wondering who taught you to kiss the way you do now when it was not the way you kissed me for years.
  7. It is hard to have sex with you without wondering where you learned all of the completely new things that you started doing last year and which were never part of your previous repertoire.
  8. It is hard not to feel that you gave the best of yourself to these women in desperate attempts to woo and impress them, and you didn’t care when you had nothing left for your family (emotionally, physically, financially).
  9. It is hard to know that you were spontaneous and kind and took initiative with certain of the other women when I have longed throughout most of our relationship for you to do that with me.
  10. It is hard to know that these women all believed that you picked them over me.”

Those ten struggles are probably the best status report that I could give for myself at the moment. It’s not a pretty picture. I would love to be “better than” or “above” this, but today I am not. Maybe tomorrow will be better.