Tag: sexual addiction

Moving Beyond the Affairs

Like Olaf of Frozen fame, I love warm hugs. From the front, from behind… wherever. I think a good hug is like a tactile reminder of comfort and security and, in the right circumstances, of love.

I got lots of hugs this past weekend. Some great, some I’m still chuckling about. More on that later.

Handsome and I headed off to the Healing From Affairs intensive weekend put on by Anne and Brian Bercht from Beyond Affairs. I was really tense in the days leading up the intensive, and I wasn’t sleeping well at all. Handsome signed us up for the intensive back in January after DDay #1, and we had a couple of phone sessions with Brian over the last few months. In those sessions I found Brian to be a down to earth, frank, no-nonsense guy to talk to, and I wasn’t put off by his history as the betrayer in his marriage to Anne. They appear, by all public measures, to have healed both individually and as a couple. Given where I’m at right now, I laud them for that. It’s inspiring.

There were 20 couples in attendance and my only shock was that so very many of the couples were in their late 50’s and 60’s and measured their marriages in numerous decades and grandchildren. There appears to be no expiration date on infidelity. Among the betrayed spouses, the collective group faced physical and emotional affairs (some, only one such affair, others a few, and several faced many), porn addiction, use of paid sex workers, and a myriad of other horrors. Two of the betrayed spouses were men. One commonality? People can be freaking resilient. While there were spouses there all along the “stay or go” continuum, and at various points away from discovery, not a single one was operating from a position of helplessness.

This was a full weekend of activity, with each night running past 10:00PM. As with any program like this, there were parts I wasn’t crazy about (for example, sex addiction gets short shrift but is at least acknowledged and discussed). For me, the most impactful part of the weekend was a talk that Brian gave where he literally walked the group through each step of his affair, showing how it started innocently enough and then, over time, how his boundary of what was acceptable versus not acceptable moved to accommodate where he was at the moment (cognitive dissonance), and ultimately how he ended up far on the other side of his own boundary and felt “stuck” there. It was deeply personal, raw, and was a much more articulate way of explaining what Handsome has struggled to explain to me. Most importantly, Brian didn’t try to justify or to normalize how he got from one side of his boundary to the other or to make excuses for it, he just told his story.

We also did a vulnerability assessment (for the 18 months prior to the start of the affairs) and Handsome and I broke the scale apparently. On a scale of about 0-168, with 0-10 being low risk of an affair, I think our score was 125 or so. Ouch. While our current vulnerability level is quite low, based on the assessment there are definitely things we need to be mindful of over time. I think it’s something that we’ll do from time to time just to stay on course as a couple.

I left feeling really glad that we went. It was an expense we didn’t need, but it taught us several new tools we can use and it opened each of our eyes to new things and it certainly increased the level of empathy we have for one another (and I had been thinking that we were doing okay on that front, but we are doing even better now).

Now, those hugs…

I’m not a “let’s hold hands and sing Kumbaya” person. I’m just not. I can do it if I’m compelled to, but that touchy-feely thing with strangers just isn’t me. There are a number of times during the intensive when music is used to communicate a concept. On the last full night of the intensive, just before closing the day out, they played a song (it was some 80’s hair band anthem Handsome and I found terribly corny, but the lyrics were on point for the night) and the couples were encouraged, if they were comfortable doing so, to hug one another deeply. Fine. Handsome and I are enjoying the hug with my hands around his neck/ shoulders and his hands (I count them…one, two…) around my waist, and I’m enjoying the moment and then… hey, wait! One, two… three? I felt a new arm on me. Again, I count Handsome’s hands in my head and I’m thinking WTF!, but before I could start throwing elbows I quickly realize that it’s just Anne joining us in a surprise group hug. Handsome apparently had the same reaction I did, and I think Anne is likely oblivious to how close she came to getting pummeled. 🙂 We’re still chuckling about that one…

Thinking about betrayal (and driving myself nuts)

I try mightily to be fair(ish) to Handsome when I write here. Yes, I often vent, but I aim for rigorous honesty and if it looks bad for him, that’s on him. I don’t need to portray his actions in a negative light because they were horrific enough all on their own. When good things happen, I try to recognize that too. For example, Handsome finally got a sponsor. He’ll have six months of sexual sobriety and three months of sobriety from alcohol this week. This coming weekend we are going to the couples intensive he arranged for us a few months ago and he’s doing the pre-session homework. He’s keeping up with the after-care from his intensive with Dr. M including journaling every day (which I never thought he’d do, but he actually says he likes it).  All good things.

Occasionally though, things come up that I just have no idea how to process. Perhaps they are too overwhelming, or create too much confusion, or are too triggering. Or maybe they just make me ask myself, “What the actual fuck am I dealing with?” One example: during his intensive with Dr. M, Handsome was incredibly raw and overwhelmed. We were talking one night about his cheating in broad terms and I asked him out of the blue whether he had ever cheated on me during the 27 months I lived and worked on the other side of our state, when we were commuting back and forth to see each other. I had never had occasion to ask him that before, because it never occurred to me (before DDay #2) that he would have cheated all the way back then. Keep in mind, we were either married or engaged for 21 of those 27 months.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when someone asks me if I’ve done something awful and I haven’t, I answer immediately, emphatically, and without hesitation. When Handsome’s answer was “Welllllllll… (crickets chirping during long pause)… not exactly.” I knew the answer was just “yes.” His story is that we had a big fight, he didn’t think we could recover, we didn’t talk for “weeks” and he went to a local bar and he met a girl and he later took her out to dinner. During dinner he says he realized it was just absurd and not what he wanted, so he finished dinner, took her home, and that was the end of it.  I didn’t want to sound like Ross and Rachel, but I grilled him on whether he was under the impression we were on a break or that we had broken up. No, he wasn’t. He acknowledged we had never broken up.

What do I make of this revelation now, years of marriage and two kids later? His story simply isn’t plausible for a variety of reasons. First, we have never, ever gone weeks without speaking. In fact, we’ve never gone more than 48 hours without speaking. Memories can be faulty, so I actually went back and reviewed my cell phone records from back then (I swear I’m not a hoarder…I have them only because at the time the phone was a plausible work expense, so they’re in my tax files). There are only a handful of times we didn’t speak each and every day. Next, I simply have zero recollection of this allegedly big fight. I went back through my calendars to see when this might have happened, and over the 6 months I lived there before we got engaged we saw each other regularly every two weeks if not weekly. We talked daily, sometimes several times a day. We took trips and vacations together. It just doesn’t add up. Plus, this was not a hook up. By his own admission, he chatted her up at the bar, got the girl’s number, called her, set up a date, and then took her on that date. That takes a few days, and we’d have been in touch in that time. In short, my conclusion is simply that he cheated. We hadn’t broken up and he took someone else out on a date. That’s cheating.

By my best guess, this occurred sometime in late January 2004. We had seen each other over the New Year holiday and then again over the long holiday weekend mid-month. Then we didn’t see each other again for three weeks (we spoke daily) until we took a long-planned vacation together to Punta Cana the week of Valentine’s Day. Why do I suspect that window? When we got to Punta Cana, Handsome was an asshole. I mean a miserable jerk face. He snapped at me so badly before we checked in that I thought about turning around and flying home alone. The vacation improved greatly over the week, but those initial few days were incredibly difficult. At the time, I attributed it to a dozen things: his hatred of flying, exhaustion from work, maybe I really was a bitch? Now, post DDay, it’s the same behavior I saw throughout his acting out… picking fights and blaming me to “justify” to himself whatever crap he was up to.

So, then I start to wonder… now that I know, what exactly do I do with the information?  To me, this ties to my post a few weeks ago on betrayal and whether our choices would have been different if we, the betrayed, had the whole truth (click here for that). Would I have kept dating him if I knew he did this? Hard to say. Maybe not. Yes, I was in love with him, but I was also living hours away and had plenty of other non-cheating, educated, employed, single guy options at hand. I’m not entirely sure what I would have done. Would I have agreed to marry him? Even more doubtful, and certainly not so soon afterwards. I most definitely would have wanted him to do some serious work on himself first.

Just like now, he had choices then. He could have actually had the balls to break up with me before dipping his toe (or anything else) back into the dating pool. He could have admitted what he did at the time he did it. Or, better yet, he could have chosen to work through whatever disagreement he claims we had and stay faithful to his devoted girlfriend of three years that he kept talking to about marriage.

Many of my decisions that have flowed forth since then have been based on my ignorance. I used to confidently tell people that I actually thought our long-distance romance was helpful to us early on because we had to learn to communicate really well with each other. Unbeknownst to me, it also seems to have been when Handsome started honing his compartmentalization and deception skills. I had no idea.

So, what am I going to do? Likely nothing, other than ruminate on how long he has actually been betraying me. That’s the sad fact of it. I don’t see a point in driving myself more nuts over something that happened 14 years ago. I can dissociate myself from that. Compare and contrast that though with driving myself nuts over whether he’s been keeping secrets throughout our entire marriage, as opposed to just the last five years. (I say “just” now as if that number of years is de minimus, but it isn’t. It’s a hair  under 40% of our marriage, to be precise.)

Does it matter?  I don’t believe the answer makes his cheating better or worse depending on the answer.  It’s all bad either way. Nonetheless, the more time passes the more I reconsider previous events that I thought I had processed and moved beyond. I’m not suggesting that Handsome is still overtly lying (of course, he very well might be). He is, however, a master at lies of omission. I am left to wonder what secrets he may still be holding on to for dear life… the tightly held mysteries of our marriage and the vestiges of his addiction.

Our weekly check-in follows a format from his intensive program, and one of the  questions is “What is a lie or secret that you are keeping?” No matter how much thought or effort Handsome puts into the rest of the check-in, and it’s usually considerable, he inevitably glosses over this question. He has, on occasion, tried to skip it entirely. When he does address it, either the “secret” will be something hardly secret or the lie will be something along the lines of a white lie. (“Daughter asked if I liked her haircut and I said yes, but I really don’t care for it.”) It’s maddening. I’ve started to call him out on it, to hold him somewhat accountable for half-assing that part of the exercise. You would think that 5+ years of acting out would give him fodder to come up with legitimate, meaningful answers to that question, but he can’t (or won’t) as of yet.

I know he’s an addict. I know that secret keeping is as much a part of his addiction as what those secrets are about. There is probably very little more he could disclose that would shock me. We’ve been through a polygraph that he passed with flying colors. Certainly, what I can imagine in my head is likely worse than anything else that may have happened. (As I commented on another blog, I’ve told Handsome in all seriousness that if someone called me tomorrow and said “Hey, BW, I just saw Handsome fucking a monkey,” I would politely thank them for calling, hang up, and then start Googling intensive treatment programs for monkey fuckers.) That’s the tragic part here. I just want to know the totality of what I’m dealing with, process it, forgive, and move on. He wants to keep his secrets to save his pride and to protect himself from further shame. The two are fairly mutually exclusive, and so I continue to drive myself a little nuts over things that are totally outside my control.

 

Today is our 13th wedding anniversary

Yep… today is lucky #13.  On my work calendar – which I must have filled out late last Fall but before DDay #1 – the date has pink and yellow highlighter all over it and “Our Anniversary!!!” scrawled across it as if it belongs to a love struck teenager rather than an actual, gainfully employed, responsible adult. (If, of course, said teenager still used a paper calendar…) It makes me sad. Then versus now.

How are we celebrating the day? We aren’t. I cannot cheer for under six months of sexual sobriety. I won’t buy a card for honoring your wedding vows recently. I do not yet wear my wedding rings. (He does.  I’ve never seen him without it. Go figure…)

I’m not trying to be an asshole about the day or wallow in self-pity. Hey, I’m still here, trying very hard each day to work through things. That is, I suppose, my way of honoring our marriage. He’s still my person, despite the horror he brought to me and our kids (literally, to our home). I can’t, however, pretend for a day that the world hasn’t shifted off its axis and that we’re all good.

Instead, my son turns 9 in two days. I’m going to focus all of my energy on him and put out of my mind how his dad’s deceit traces all the way back to before he turned 3. I’ll ignore the previous anniversaries where I thought I had something to celebrate, or the kids’ birthdays where I’m smiling in the photos because I’m oblivious to my husband’s acting out. Don’t get me wrong. I’m truly grateful that we are both committed to healing and making our marriage work. I appreciate all the work Handsome has done and is doing in that regard. I’m happy we can celebrate our son’s birthday as a united tribe, together in our home, and I’m sure it will be lovely.

It just doesn’t mean that I’m not sad too.

Reclaiming Mother’s Day

So very true.

I’ve sent Handsome away. Not permanently, mind you, but for a long weekend this weekend. “But it’s Mother’s Day,” you say? Yep. Exactly.

Last year over this weekend, Handsome was at our summer home, ostensibly for the purpose of getting it ready for the season for our family, but rampantly texting three other women the entire time. He was sexting one of those women – the Whore – as well, taking dick pics throughout the house and exchanging them with her for pictures of her dirty vajeen. There were videos too, if I recall correctly. (sigh…)

In the text messages on Mother’s Day specifically, he flattered each of the women, praising them as exemplary parents and shining examples of motherhood. That includes the Whore who, you may recall, was arrested and jailed for punching her young son in the face with a closed fist. Handsome knew that, but he fawned over her the same as the others. Angel Baby doesn’t have custody of her first illegitimate child, but she was praised as well.

What did I get last Mother’s Day? A five-minute phone call from him completely devoid of any praise or affection. And the gifts and cards from my awesome kiddos… that I had bought and paid for myself.

“But he’s so busy getting the house ready! You can’t expect him to chat forever.”

“He’s a little strapped for cash, but if you buy your own gifts at least you’ll get what you want.”

“You’re not his mom.”

Those were the things I told myself. And then I sucked up the hurt and enjoyed myself with my kids.

I have the specifics about last year because I was able to see the text messages. I have to assume that the prior two Mother’s Days during his acting out were more of the same. I have no reason to believe otherwise.

So, even though Handsome took this weekend off, I’m not inclined to celebrate with him. I don’t even want to see him, frankly. I’ll buy my own flowers, enjoy a great meal somewhere with my mom and kids, and try to demonstrate to myself that he is utterly unnecessary in order for me to enjoy this holiday. The whores will not ruin it for me and neither will he.

He is traveling to visit his father who lives several hundred miles away. (I didn’t want him here, but I did want someone keeping an eye on him.) I’m sure that on Sunday he will miss his own mother who passed away in 2012. Hopefully, when Handsome and his dad go out to eat on Sunday and he sees all the families celebrating together he’ll take a moment to process why he is excluded this year and why his wife can’t bear to look at him on that day. I’m sure it would be a comfort to him to be with me and the kids instead, but this weekend my self-care means having him be far, far away.

Loss of Privacy

In spite of the fact that I blog about my husband’s infidelity and sex addiction, I am actually a reasonably private person. I have maintained some degree of anonymity here, other than for those who have reached out to me privately with questions or those who I have reached out to on my own. I was taught early on in life that you don’t air your dirty laundry in public and that there are things you keep within your family circle. I was taught that this is true for both possibly good things (money, for example) or bad things (illness or scandal). I was taught that generally nobody cares to know your business and that those people who do generally have ulterior motives.

Handsome and I sat down today for our weekly check-in. I understand that there are schools of thought that the spouse shouldn’t ask much during these check-ins, but my personal opinion is that failing to do so defeats the purpose.  My husband should not be talking at me, he should be talking with me about his addiction, its effect on me and on our family, and his recovery. I let him go through his check-in list, and then I ask a few questions.

Lying – more specifically, not lying (overtly or by omission) – is something that Handsome has to work on each day. He has spent the last several years lying to me daily. I have read that sex addicts are “relentless liars” and that was certainly true of Handsome. In the present, however, if Handsome is doing his recovery work properly he needs to (1) not lie, and (2) acknowledge any lies that are told. This means that some of our conversations are now more substantive than they were in the past. The “I don’t know/ remember” spiels are slowly getting replaced by answers.

Today, for example, in response to a question about what precisely he communicated with the Flame about every day for 3+ years, instead of feeding me the usual “nothing big, just day-to-day stuff” response, he said “Everything. Everything in our lives.” It turns out that he did indeed share every blasted detail with her. That includes everything our kids were doing, each of their illnesses, attitudes and academic highs and lows, as well as his health, my health, his job, my job (mostly how it impacted him), our travel planning and intimate details of that travel, and – of course – all about our married life. Mind you, he conveniently forgot to mention the Whore, Angel Baby, the woman he tried to date last summer, the porn, masturbation, Seeking Arrangements, or anything that might make him look bad to her, but everything else was fair game.

In sum, for the last 3+ years, my kids and I have had absolutely ZERO privacy. We didn’t know that we might as well have lived our lives on the front lawn of our house because every single thing we did or felt or experienced was being communicated to at least one person outside our family. I did not consent to giving up my privacy. It was taken from me and it was taken from each of my two children.

Things that should have never left the confines of our house were fodder for conversation with someone who is a stranger to me and a threat to my marriage. Arguments that I had with Handsome – if not prompted by her – were shaped, in part, from feedback he got from her. I wasn’t just dealing with his criticisms, I was unknowingly fending off hers as well. Our vacation plans weren’t just filtered through me for suitability, they were always run by her too, as were the kids’ extracurricular activities and decisions about their upbringing. Mind you, I have never met this woman. She has never met my kids (thank heavens) and she has never seen us together as a family. According to Handsome, he has only seen her in person three times in the last 30 years. In spite of that, she was apparently allowed and encouraged by Handsome to have opinions about us all, and he gave those opinions credence and sought her counsel…  every.single.day. In the betrayal recovery world there is much discussion of walls and windows. The Flame did not only have windows into our life, there simply were no walls.

To be fair, I have a few friends and acquaintances, and I occasionally talk to those people about different aspects of my life, but never about anything that would be construed as a violation of trust if discovered and nothing that would cause embarrassment. The only person who has ever had that level of comprehensive detail about me or Handsome or our family is Handsome himself. Maybe the odd reason my marriage feels somehow more full and rich these days, in spite of the shit storm that has transpired, is that for the first time in forever it’s just the two of us. No interlopers, ghosts in the room, or extra people in the marriage. Together with our kids, we are a tribe, just trying to make it through the storm. We are a small tribe, for sure, but perhaps we can work together to build our family’s walls back up and regain our precious privacy.

Small steps

This coming week, Handsome will have 5 months of sexual sobriety under his belt. He will also pass two months of sobriety from alcohol. (He never relapsed with alcohol.  He just stopped drinking completely a few months after he started his sexual sobriety.)

He has regularly attended SA meetings since the day after DDay #2 (when the addiction became obvious), and he attends weekly counseling without fail. He also flew completely across the country to attend an 8-day intensive program and he’s faithfully doing the after-care work required by that program. He started couples SA trauma therapy with me this past week, and he signed us up for an affair recovery couples weekend next month.

He sold the car that was the site of some of his misdeeds, and got rid of the mattress/ box spring that he slept on in my house with Angel Baby. He is making an effort to learn my triggers and to avoid them. He works daily to stay out of the “Man Box” and be a better husband and father.

He is not perfect. We still fight occasionally over the awful things he has done. He still procrastinates in his reading of recovery literature and in discussing some of his more problematic acting out. I know he wishes this would all just go away. (So do I, so we are aligned on that point.) I have lingering questions. He sometimes, but not always, has answers. He is still challenged to have emotional intimacy with others, including me.

Yet I struggle to think of a single thing that I have asked from him in our collective recovery that he has not done or tried to do. He is making effort. He is putting in the work.

We are not in the clear by any means, but I complain about him so much here that I feel I owe a bit of space to the small steps forward.

Pic collecting and eye stalking – what next?

(Apologies if this has posted twice… somehow it reverted to draft form…)

I’ve been gone from the blog for a bit as Handsome spent a chunk of the last two weeks in an intensive program in LA and I took the opportunity to try to have a few days where his SA was not the focus of my world. He’s back home now and I had my debriefing with the doctor who ran the intensive.

On the bright side, he said that Handsome was fully engaged in the intensive, put a lot of thought and effort into the homework, showed up every day on time and ready to participate, and he feels like Handsome’s prognosis is good if he continues to do his recovery work. Terrific, right? That’s what I had hoped to hear. No complaints there. I’m truly proud of Handsome for that because I know it was incredibly difficult for him and yet he went “all in” with the program.

The doctor ran me through a lot of information that Handsome had shared during the intensive and although there were a few childhood things I wasn’t aware of, the acting out and affair activity was essentially exactly as Handsome had disclosed to me… with two exceptions.  The doctor was running through the list of Handsome’s acting out behaviors and I was almost tuning out because the list is long and hurtful, and then I heard “…pic collecting, blah blah blah, eye stalking, blah blah blah… .” Wait, what? I had to ask him to go back and read those two to me again. And then, because I am apparently the world’s most ill-informed spouse of a sex addict, I had to ask him to explain to me what those two things are.

Per Urban Dictionary:

Pic collector – A leery anonymous person who replies to your personal ad for the sole purpose of collecting your pics to inflate his or her poor ego. An encounter with a pic collector is always short and obnoxiously one-sided.

Eye stalking – The act of stalking with one’s eyes. [duh]

The eye stalking was not particularly surprising and, in the scheme of things, kind of low down on Handsome’s acting out totem pole. Troubling (and sad and pathetic) for sure, but I didn’t consider the omission of it from prior disclosures to be a crisis.

The “pic collecting” though is a bit of another story. Whose pics?  Where were they from? Was he talking about the pics from the Whore? Those I knew about for sure, but were there others? I learned that this is one of those situations where Handsome didn’t overtly lie to me, but rather he left out a part of the story that makes him look bad.

Knowing that he had signed up for Seeking Arrangements and failed at that endeavor, I grilled him about his use of Craigslist and Backpage. He admitted to visiting both intermittently but insisted that it was for work (prostitution stings and the like). He and his colleagues would reply to ads from women and try to determine if they were hooking out of houses in town and, if so, they’d try to shut them down. That may be true – or not, time will tell – but what he failed to mention is that he would keep the pictures that he was sent in communicating with those women. I can guess what he did with them.

So, I went there… against my better judgment, I asked why he did this. His reply, which I think was honest, was “Because I wanted to look at real women.” That crushed me. Forced the air from my lungs. He said what he said, but what I hear in my head is “Because I wanted to look at real women other than you.” It’s not as if I was absent, gone away, missing. Nope. I was there in our house virtually every single day of our marriage, including the times when Handsome was indulging his addiction while I was struggling with a full-time job, two kids, an aging parent suffering from complex grief, and a checked out husband. Clothed, naked, whatever… he could have looked at me, but he made repeated decisions to look elsewhere.

Would I have been more real if I posted titty photos online? If I had time to troll for men on sites like Craigslist and Backpage? If anonymous sex was my thing? I don’t think so. I certainly feel pretty real each day when my alarm clock goes off and I get the kids clothed and fed and off to school and I head for my job, to return home ten or eleven hours later to wrap up the day and return the kids to bed, ensure our bills are paid, and check that my mom is okay. To me, that’s the definition of reality.

Therein lies the rub… as I’m discovering more and more, my sex addict husband’s reality is very different from what I consider to be actual reality. I don’t (or didn’t) exist in any real way in his land of pornography, masturbation, physical affairs, emotional affairs, voyeurism, sexting, pic collecting, eye stalking, etc. etc. There, I’m not his Wife who loves him and finds him handsome and sexy and who supports him no matter what and is just waiting for him to get through his midlife crisis, or get his head out of his ass, and be a good husband and father again. No. In that land, I’m simply the “Boss Lady”  or the uncaring wife who denies him sex that he’s entitled to gosh darn it. (Because he’s such a great catch, of course… once you ignore the drinking, screaming, and cheating… whose panties wouldn’t just fall to the floor?) Forget that he was never, ever denied sex… that fact doesn’t fit his story.

I would love a break from reality. It would be glorious to stick my head in the sand or put on my noise cancelling headphones and drown out all the SA chatter around me with white noise. I can’t do that, however, and neither can Handsome if this marriage is going to work. He’s had at least a five-year break from reality. It’s time for him to join me in this delightful mess we call married life, both in the highs and lows of it, the fun and the sad, exciting and boring, but above all things, real. Hopefully he can gain (or re-gain) an interest in collecting pictures from our family’s happy life instead of those of random sad, broken strangers online.

Wednesday musings

A few brief thoughts for the week:

* Farewell Backpage! So long Craigslist personals! Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.

* No sponsor yet for Handsome at SA. (sigh) I don’t think he’s stalling exactly, but maybe the unicorn he is after just doesn’t exist.

* Handsome is going to be off soon to attend a long intensive program in LA with Dr. Omar Minwalla, who may just be my new hero. Google Dr. Minwalla if you aren’t yet familiar with him. Given that I do not identify as either a co-addict or co-dependent, I’m squarely in the trauma survivor (I hate to refer to myself as a victim) category when it comes to Handsome’s affairs and sex addiction. I really hope that this program proves to be incredibly helpful to Handsome in kick-starting his recovery. He’s not exactly excited about it – as he says “no, I’m not looking to have all of the awful and disgusting things I’ve done be the topic of conversation for an entire week” – but he does seem eager to get it underway and to see what he can learn from it. If it helps him to better handle the damage and pain he caused to me, all the better.

* Handsome says his therapy took a turn for the much harder and more challenging this week. Amen. Perhaps my talk with the Doc is bearing fruit.

* Oh, and I just saw that the woman that Handsome “dated” last summer got herself arrested AGAIN recently for harassment. I don’t think he could have scraped the bottom of the barrel for his acting out partners any more if he actively tried. Yuck. How ironic is it that in those moments of chasing the dragon of his addiction when he felt most wanted and desired he was engaging in behavior that is a complete and total turn off to the person who loves him most in the world?

Have a great week everyone!

Four months of sobriety for him – eye opening for me

Handsome and I are almost four months past DDay #1, but since that disclosure only revealed a portion of the story, it is more relevant to say that Handsome has been sexually sober for four months and he has been actively participating in SA for a little over a month. He has struggled to find a sponsor, but is hopeful that he’ll have one after his next meeting. I admit to some frustration at how long Handsome is taking to find a sponsor, but I recognize that – given the extraordinary difficulty he has opening up to people – he wants to find someone he feels comfortable with, who will challenge him when he needs it, who remains married, and who has similar views about his spouse. Those things are important to him and thus they are important to me, because I think Handsome can really do well in recovery with the right people on his team.

It is also true that Handsome has not had a drop of alcohol to drink in a month. He and I agree to disagree for now about the significance of this. He admits that he drank way too much, but insists he was not an alcoholic. To me, there’s a lot of denial in that belief, but I admit that he did quit drinking cold turkey without much of a glance back at it.  At worst, I get some grumbling when he’s having a meal that would have historically been accompanied by a beer (or four).  Yet alcohol played a role in almost every single physical encounter he had with his affair partners, whether it was “pre-gaming” to drown out his conscience ahead of time, or pounding beers afterwards to dull the guilt and shame. Alcohol certainly didn’t help his mood swings or anger issues either, and his health had suffered as well. I also find it to be no coincidence that there have been zero (nada! zilch!) issues with ED since he stopped drinking. (Hallelujah!!) I feel entitled to this version of my husband. We had agreed to reevaluate his abstinence from alcohol in June, but at this point I’m sticking to my guns on the “no drinking” thing for the foreseeable future. The thought of adding alcohol back into the picture seems incredibly premature, and fills me with dread. Could he have a (singular) craft beer with a burger or pizza in 6 months? A year? Maybe.  But he has a lot of damage to repair first before I’d even be willing to consider it.

I know that I’m still a newbie in this process – both as a betrayed spouse and as the wife of a sex addict.  Nonetheless, most days I feel like I’m making progress addressing both of these new, painful, and unwanted aspects of my life. There are days when I absolutely resent and abhor what Handsome has wrought upon me and our kids. Strike that – I  resent and abhor what Handsome has wrought upon me and our kids EVERY day, but some days I’m much better at dealing with it than others.  And there are issues that plague me. Those are fodder for other posts, but I can now function throughout an entire day at work, actually be productive, and not collapse at home afterwards.  I still cry often, but it’s less than it used to be. I’m gaining my sense of peace back at home. (Physically disposing of the bed that Handsome slept on with Angel Baby did wonders for that.) My appetite is returning as is my sense of humor. These are small things, and they aren’t exactly all consistent yet, but it’s a big improvement after where I was following DDay #1.

I’m learning… both things I never thought I’d need to know, and things I never wanted to know. I can articulate the difference between the co-addict model and the trauma model in a few sentences. I’ve explored with Handsome what it means to lust and what exactly he lusts after. I’ve familiarized myself with the 12 steps and have read more betrayal recovery and SA literature than I would have thought imaginable. My detective skills are honed to near Sherlock Holmes-like perfection and my spider senses are on high alert. As my young son would say, my game is tight.

Most importantly, my eyes are open. I do not think that Handsome and I have an easy road ahead of us. To the contrary, I know it’s going to be a bumpy ride. I want him to be honest with me, but honesty can hurt. I want him to change, but even change for the better can be difficult, especially if I am changing too. That said, four months in I can see some hope and sunlight in our future and that alone seemed too much to hope for immediately after DDay #1.  I booked a Thanksgiving trip today for our family. I’m planning ahead – months out. My eyes are open, but I have hope.

The mini-vacation that was anything but a vacation

This week is Spring Break for our two kiddos. While work is a bit nutty at the moment, we are lucky enough to live within about an hour’s drive from some fun, small ski resorts. I don’t ski, but Handsome and the kids took lessons in January and I thought it would be great for them to get a last shot at the slopes for the season and spend two nights away as a family.  My plan was to do work while they were off skiing and then we could swim or do other activities together.

The kids were jazzed about skiing and snowboarding and I was excited to be away with them as well. On both of our last trips I was less than a month out from DDay #1 (in one case, only two days away), and I was definitely not functioning well. I did everything imaginable to ensure both that they wouldn’t see me weep and that I didn’t take my anger and sadness out on them, but I’m sure there was bleed-over.  I wanted to make that up to them somehow and I really enjoy these short get-aways. Handsome, however, seemed “off” from the very start. I was wary about how the trip would go, but I was hopeful he would prove my fears to be unfounded.

We have been arguing off and on about Angel Baby and the Flame for the better part of two weeks. He sees no deeper meaning in his relationships with them, whereas I see nothing but red flags. If I’m waiting for him to fall to the floor at my feet and weep over the impropriety of those relationships, it just isn’t happening.  Not yet, at least. (To be clear, he has apologized for his recent involvement with them, but sees no issue with the fact that both relationships took root when the women were older adolescents.) I was hopeful that after my conversation with the Doc, they would spend some time discussing both women in their next therapy session which occurred just before we left on our trip. That didn’t happen, so those open sores appeared to be festering as we got on the road. They did, however, apparently cover some ground initiated by the Doc about Handsome’s upbringing and the impact of having two alcoholic parents, so that was at least a step in the right direction.

Handsome was on edge throughout the entire trip. He seemed alternately angry, resentful, frustrated, and just plain miserable.  My kids and I tried really hard to just ignore it – like we have always done with “Daddy’s moods” – but that only goes so far, and my kids mirror a lot of his conduct. If he’s petulant or combative, so are they.  If he’s happy and joyful and appreciating a moment, so are they. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough of the latter on this trip.

In the wake of both DDays, I surmised that – especially in the last year – a lot of Handsome’s asshole-ish behavior on trips was because he was away from his drug. No sexting, no voyeurism, no calls, etc. No hits. Those cold- turkey breaks had to be tough and he just couldn’t get enough of a rush or that same high from spending time with his wife and kids. Fine, I guess, but what’s the big problem now? Why is this crappy behavior back so suddenly? He’s been sober for almost four months. For the most part he has been a consistently kinder, gentler, more thoughtful version of himself since DDay #1. Is the rubber finally hitting the road with his recovery? Is the reality that all of his acting out behaviors must be gone forever finally hitting home?

I made it through the trip and my kids had a blast in spite of their moody dad and uncooperative weather. I just wish that I could say the same. I’m tired – literally exhausted – of trying to work double time to ensure that Handsome doesn’t spoil things for our kids. I’d love a vacation, or just a day or two away, where I could actually freely relax and enjoy myself too. I haven’t had that in a very, very long time. (I had hoped that would be our long-planned trip to Europe in December, but DDay #1 absolutely destroyed that vacation.) Perhaps that’s a bit aspirational for moms in general, but it seems positively unrealistic for me at the moment unless I leave Handsome at home. Unfortunately, I don’t see how I can do that given where he is/ is not in his recovery and given that a good bit of his acting out occurred when I was traveling. We are drawing closer to summer vacation which is when I would usually take the kids to our summer home for a few weeks.  The very thought of that fills me with dread this year. I used to look forward to the trip with great anticipation.  I know now that Handsome did too, because he acted out the entire time I was away and started plotting his misdeeds months in advance. I don’t want him there if it’s just going to be more of his crappy, moody behavior, but I also can’t stomach worrying about what he is or is not doing by himself. Perhaps this is a year we just stay home. But how much of everyone else’s lives does he get to ruin because he can’t control himself? How many good things does he get to take away because of his addiction?

When the shrink gets trickle truth too

Handsome has been in therapy – for the first time ever – since early January… so, for three months. I know that he lied to the therapist to some degree for the majority of the first two of those months as they had their own DDay #2 shortly after Handsome’s second DDay with me. Over the last two weeks I started to feel that perhaps I was being fed more “addict-ese” than sincerity. I cannot put my finger on what triggered this feeling, but perhaps it tied to Handsome’s self-assured stance after the polygraph. Whatever it is, my spider senses are now always on alert. I trust my gut.

I told Handsome that I wanted an update from his therapist. After some initial confusion over what I actually wanted, Handsome agreed and I was able to speak to his shrink yesterday. I’m really glad that we had that call. It is true that Handsome has made some great strides in terms of his anger management and in trying to be more open and communicative. It is also true, however, that he skipped over major issues with the Doc.  Like, oh, for example, how he spent tons and tons of time at work plotting voyeuristic drive-bys of the Whore’s house so that he could see her flash her boobs at him. Every. Fucking. Day. For. Years. And sometimes more than once a day.  Or how he didn’t just share a bed in my house with Angel Baby last July, but how he spooned with her and got an erection with this supposed “mentee” that he’s known since she was a kid. And, and, and….

You get the idea. He has told the Doc some, but by no means all, of his dirty laundry. Just like he cherry picks what he tells me, he’s cherry picking what he tells the Doc. I’m not necessarily surprised by the picking and choosing, but I am surprised that he’s leaving out some awful stuff that he has disclosed to me already. Why fess up to me and hide things from the Doc? Perhaps he wants to unburden his conscience but not actually deal with the issues. That seems cruel to me. Telling me awful secrets that I cannot ever un-hear, and then doing nothing to address them.

Fortunately, the Doc now gets that he’s only being told a partial story and he and I are in agreement about a few key issues. Like Handsome getting his act together with SA and getting a sponsor. He didn’t tell me that I’m a nut job and the cause of all of my husband’s problems (yep, I worried about that). I think Handsome’s next appointment may be a bit different than what he’s accustomed to. I believe he’s used to walking in there and blathering for 50 minutes. He might find himself challenged to dig a little deeper next time.

Polygraph details – you asked for them

A few people reached out offline to ask some polygraph-specific questions. Since the questions were mostly the same, and since they were questions that I had initially too, I thought I’d write a brief post to address them. I do this though with a caveat that some US states restrict the kids of questions that can be asked during a polygraph (Maine, I’m lookin’ at you), and in many states polygraph testing is inadmissible in court. What I spell out here is based on my experience, so do your homework in your state/ country before you pay for a test that might not satisfy you or meet your needs.

How many questions can you ask?  This is a big issue. Handsome was juggling 4 women in addition to me.  I could ask questions for days, but that’s a problem. A polygraph should focus on no more than four (yep, only 4) tested questions, and the questions must be answerable by yes/ no and should be on related topics. If you are using an accredited/ licensed examiner, they will not pose pages of questions. The accuracy of the test drops precipitously when more than 4 test questions are asked.

It is my belief that the exam will do you little good unless you are essentially trying to confirm that you have been told all of the major elements of the story, or if you are trying to confirm or refute a small number of very specific issues. In my case, Handsome insisted after DDay #2 that he had told me about all of the women he was involved with and broadly what transpired with each of them. Thus, I could confirm that with a test question. (“Have you disclosed all of your physical and emotional affair partners to your wife and disclosed to her all of your material affair activity with each of them?”)  We spent time before the test defining “material” so he wasn’t confused and so the question was answered in a way that addressed what I actually wanted to know. To clarify, using one example, I care whether he truly only kissed the woman he took out on a date last July, but I care not whether they spoke by phone once or 40 times. I wanted to focus on the former (the scope of their sexual contact is material to me), not the latter (the frequency of their communication is immaterial to me). With that clarification, Handsome could readily answer the question.

We also covered much more specific questions like whether or not he still has his burner phone or whether he acquired a new burner phone, and we pinned down a bit more of the timeline. Those were all essential questions that I needed to have definitive answers to.

How long did it take? Start to finish for us was about two hours. I had given the examiner a list of questions which – after interviewing us together – he helped to pare down to the questions that were ultimately covered. If you use a licensed/ accredited examiner, the questions will be known to the person being tested. There are no surprises during the test, and Handsome was asked multiple times if he was okay to proceed with the test (in other words, he was given plenty of opportunity to bail if he didn’t believe he could answer the test questions truthfully).

You said something in your blog post about a written statement. What’s that about? Even after the examiner helped to combine and winnow down my questions, I had five. (I know, I know… I don’t follow instructions or I’m contrary, or whatever… .) Five questions, none of which I was willing to give up. Unfortunately, we hit a wall in terms of combining them too. To address this, the examiner had Handsome write a statement that included answers to all five questions. For example: “I do not have my burner phone any longer nor am I maintaining any other phone that my wife doesn’t know about.” Then, the examiner tested him on the veracity of the entire statement, collectively. It worked for us, but if Handsome had failed the test I wouldn’t have known which question/ statement caused him to fail without additional testing on each of the components of the statement. So the strategy had some risk involved, but the examiner assured us that he’d do the additional testing for free if it was necessary. I didn’t see a down side to handling it this way – especially because all five of my key questions were addressed.

What does this all cost? Depending on where you live, and whether you have the exam at the examiner’s office or if you want them to travel to you, likely between $400 and $700. We are in a small Mid-Atlantic city and there is some competition between examiners, so Handsome’s test was $450 at the examiner’s office. In my research I saw a number of examiners well over $600, and also a large number of unlicensed or unaccredited examiners. You really have to do your homework.

Was it worth it? For me, yes, but I can also see how it might not turn out so well. I am relieved that the information that I was told appears to be truthful. I have confirmation of the scope of Handsome’s wrongdoing. That is helpful to me. If Handsome’s test had indicated deception, however, what would I have done? Would it have just deepened the wounds? Was I ready to walk away if he had lied or what was I prepared to do? I’m not sure of the answers, but I think those questions should be considered before testing takes place.

I hope this is helpful. I will add this: in the days following the test Handsome told several people (his therapist, Dr. M, his best friend, and likely his 12 step buddies) that he took and passed the test. He seemed proud of that fact. I am truly grateful that he took the test and greatly relieved that he passed, but at the end of the day it confirmed that my husband had indeed had physical or emotional affairs with four other women during our marriage and that I have been actively lied to and deceived since March of 2015, with his first physical affair starting roughly two months later. I am glad I know the truth, but the truth.still.hurts.

To tell the truth – the polygraph

In light of all of the new revelations from DDay #2, and my uncertainty over the veracity of his insistence that he had told me everything (because, let’s be honest, I’d heard that no less than a dozen times before), I scheduled Handsome for a polygraph test.  I wrote out about 25 yes/ no questions that I wanted answers to, and, together with the polygraph examiner, we winnowed those down to 5 comprehensive questions that I considered to be fundamental to moving forward with the marriage. Handsome wrote out a statement based on those questions and answered each of them head on. Then he was tested based on the truthfulness of the statement.  The test was this morning.

I expected – if Handsome was telling me the truth – that the whole process would make me feel better. Initially, I do feel relieved, but in the moment of the test I found myself questioning what I had done.  I probably shouldn’t feel that way, but I did. For all his manly bluster, Handsome is a newly diagnosed SA. His shame and guilt and torment are, at the moment, overwhelming and profound. And yet there he sat, patiently waiting for someone to truss him up to the polygraph machine. Shaming and humiliating him further was never the goal.

Handsome answered all of the questions multiple times. After the test the examiner (who was very professional and non-judgmental and kind) advised me that the responses appeared to be truthful, both according to his own observation of the results and based on a separate algorithm that he runs on the results. In fact, according to the algorithm there was a less than 1% chance of falsehood. Thank heaven. I do feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders or a shadow has passed over me. Both are good things and I got the answers I desperately needed; however, if I am honest, I’m likely to be a bit haunted by the fact that my comfort came at the expense of more of Handsome’s dignity. (Mind you, I completely understand and agree that my dignity was never a consideration for him throughout two and a half of the last three years, but the whole point of this is to move beyond that.)

Would I do it again if I had to do it all over?  Yes, but I might have waited till Handsome had a few more SA meetings under his belt.  Or maybe that wouldn’t make a difference. I just keep thinking of how very sad it is when the facts of a marriage are so in doubt that a polygraph is needed to affirm or to refute the story. In my case, the story was affirmed, but I’m sure in many others it is not.

She’s like gum on my shoe

The Flame. Recently my world seems to revolve around the Flame. (read about her here: https://betrayedwife.net/2018/02/05/dday-deceit-as-a-lifestyle-choice/ ) I thought that I was done with her in 2012, only to find out that after Handsome bought his burner phone – allegedly in the Spring of 2015 – he immediately looked her up and reconnected with her. Again. They talked “often,” texted, met in person for lunch and, based on 2012, likely commiserated with one another about their spouses. Handsome admitted this during DDay #2. Like gum on my shoe, she just keeps sticking around. A problematic annoyance and disrupter in our marriage.

Handsome acted out with (at least) three other women since 2015, but each of those individuals was/ is deeply broken and unsavory. They are the dregs of society. They are not women he normally would give the time of day to, and he cast them off without a second thought once his actions and deceit were brought to light.

The Flame, however, is a different story. Knowing what I know now, I believe that Handsome was about a decade into his addiction at the time he met her in roughly 1988. He was a 27 year old divorcee, she was a 17 year old high school student. Evidently neither of them had any guidance from a responsible adult, and there was no one to put a foot down and say “no” to such an inappropriate relationship. I am sure that she was the very embodiment of an addictive hit for him. Young, tall, not entirely unattractive, and – most importantly – willing and available. He loved her. She may have loved him as well, but ultimately she dumped him.

Fast forward to 2012. Handsome reaches out to her and rekindles their contact. It starts platonically enough, until it turned flirty and I called them out on it. Contact ceases, but not before Handsome calls her to apologize for my behavior (for “over-reacting” to the emotional affair); a fact that eats at me for years.

When he disclosed that she was back, yet again and this time in touch with him for years in total secrecy, the pain was searing. Unlike the other three acting out partners, this one is different. She matters to him. I’m well aware that affair recovery cannot occur if the affair continues (even if it is just emotional). I cannot move on with the marriage, and Handsome cannot address his addiction, if this woman is waiting in the wings to reappear in a later act. No way. I told him very plainly that one of the things I need him to do to advance our recovery is to decisively and unequivocally end things with the Flame.  Seeing her in person or speaking to her by phone are not viable options. I asked that he write her a letter, which I will mail, ending it once and for all. He agreed.

Today is his regular therapy day which is always fraught with anxiety for me. Having lied to his therapist for months, and disclosing things to the therapist long before he told me, I’m gun shy. I want therapy to work, but I’m not convinced that Handsome isn’t aping what an obedient addict would tell his doctor. He occasionally asks me what I think they should talk about in the session. Today I asked him how the letter was coming and suggested that perhaps the therapist could offer some guidance with that.  Handsome proceeded to tell me that he hadn’t worked through the “amends” portion of the letter yet. Wait, what???? My reaction -after an initial in-person blow up – was captured in a text message later in the morning:

 

 

The lame apology to me, and my angry but honest response.

Let me add, if the intent of the apology was to say something like “I am sorry that I misused my authority as an adult all those years ago to take advantage of you when you were just 17,” or some such thing, that would be understandable.  But no, that wasn’t it. He was going to apologize to her for their mutual, multiple year affair.  What is it about this woman? He didn’t say anything about apologizing to her husband or to her kids, the innocent bystanders and collateral damage to the affairs. Why is she somehow blameless and deserving of an apology for carrying on a lengthy emotional affair with him?

Perhaps I am wrong to think this way, but I do believe that she is different than the other three women. The others were sold a story of an unhappy marriage and an unloving wife and, as wrong as they were to do so, I’m sure they justified their actions on the basis of the lies they were told. This woman, however, knew differently. She knew he had a loving wife and a great family and a full and rich life, and she knew – because I told her so myself – that she jeopardized all of that for him before. She didn’t care. What about that is worthy of an apology?

And how did the task – to write her a letter breaking it off and ending all contact – shift to an apology in the first place? How are the two remotely related? He just started SA two weeks ago.  He isn’t on Step 9… he hasn’t even found a sponsor yet. He’s barely on Step 1!

Trying to explain my anger and frustration to Handsome was akin to explaining it to a toddler. He wasn’t getting it. I drew upon an imperfect analogy: I asked him if she shot me with a gun to get me out of the picture, would he still apologize to her for the affair? His response was an immediate and adamant “No, of course not.” But, I explained, she knowingly and actively participated in the reduction of my marriage to ruins and emotionally destroyed me. She harmed me knowing full well what she was doing and what the result would be. A small, night-light-sized light bulb went off in Handsome’s selfish head. “Oh.  I didn’t think of it that way. I didn’t think of your side of it.”

Therein lies the problem. All too often he still doesn’t think of me at all.

What comes next?

The harbor near our Summer home (aka. my Happy Place)

DDay #2 was one week ago today. I cannot begin to articulate the feeling of finding out that my husband was juggling as many as four other women at once. In addition to me, of course… the ever present, always faithful, committed and supportive wife. Where else would I be, right? I honored my vows even as they were being torn apart.

There were a few severe comments to my last post that I did not – just could not – approve. More than one suggested that I “must have known.” I did not. I had absolutely no idea prior to DDay#1 that Handsome was in the midst of a three-year affair, let alone that there were multiple other women. He carried on the vast majority of his deceit away from me, our house, and our kids (thank heavens for the latter). His other life and my life intersected in only two ways that I know of over the last few years: he brought Angel Baby to our home last Summer when I was away, and he used his work weekends at our Summer home in Massachusetts to call, text, and sext these other women, defiling it in the process. Of course, I recognize all too well that time and money spent on the skanks means less for me and the kids. But I only know of those things now. We got the leftovers after he satisfied himself. I did not know that at the time.

Addicts are world class liars, and Handsome is no different. For the most part, I was on the receiving end of lies of omission. He didn’t tell me that he had a second phone or that Angel Baby was in our house or that he was in touch with the Flame, among other things. Those are material omissions, to be sure. But he also convinced himself that I wasn’t really in love with him and that he was isolated from the kids and from me. Even when he was with us, he has said he felt terribly alone and without worth.  My previous three years were lived in relative bliss, whereas he lived in torment, even when he was surrounded by people who really loved him. Every day was a crisis that was soothed and released through this inappropriate contact with these worthless women. He shut us out, and told himself Oscar-worthy lies to justify his wrongdoing.

Handsome’s self-professed sobriety date for SA is December 7, 2017. He passed three months of sobriety a few days ago.  I am glad for him and relieved that he is taking affirmative steps to fix his brokenness. He is attending 12 step meetings and going to therapy. Dr. Minwalla’s 8 day intensive for men is next on the horizon if we can get it scheduled. Handsome agreed to a polygraph which will take place in about a week. He is supposed to write a letter to the Flame and officially, formally end that contact. All steps forward, all on the horizon.

And yet as I stand in the background cheering on Team Handsome, being the ever dutiful wife, I’m wondering when it’s my turn to heal. I’m wondering when attention will be paid to the harm caused to me. Handsome texted me earlier and said “I have no idea how to apologize sufficiently.” That’s for sure, but it’s because words cannot undo actions.  They just can’t. I’m tired of hearing “I’m sorry” because the words mean little to nothing in comparison to the gravity of Handsome’s conduct and the devastation wrought. I appreciate that he’s sorry and that he is willing to try to say so. It just seems rather pointless at the moment, just one week after DDay #2.

The Plot Twist – he’s not just a cheater

With this blog post I fully recognize that I may drive some folks away, anger others, and generally disappoint a few folks. I’m sorry/ not sorry. For the second time (at least) in three months, my reality was completely upended AGAIN just days ago. I knew full well that during our big talk last week Handsome had only told me the truth that he was capable of telling me at that moment. I felt that he tried, but did not overly stretch himself. I figured that there was more to come, but based on the prior trickle truth I guessed that additional disclosures would be about the number of times various sexual acts occurred or the duration of the affair with the Whore or things along those lines. I was wrong. Boy was I wrong.

It just so happens that on the day of the big talk I had pulled together all of Handsome’s credit card and bank statements going back to January 2015. I had not had time to go through them prior to our talk. Once I did, I found three things:

  1. several charges of not insignificant amounts at a very nice restaurant I have never been to;
  2. several charges at a nearby casual chain that the kids and I have been to exactly once with Handsome (at which time he plainly stated he had never visited before);
  3. a charge to a website in the Netherlands for a small but suspicious amount of money.

So, four days after the big talk we are again at our kitchen table.  First up: the restaurants. Deny, deny, deny. Fine, but his anxiety level was clearly increasing. He got up and started pacing, finding little tasks to do, stretching, sighing loudly, etc. I knew something was up.

Contrary to what you see on TV, under questioning by a lawyer (think cross examination of a witness or defendant) people rarely fess up. So rarely, in fact, that in the real world most lawyers rarely try to get that broken down confession on the stand. There are too many things that can go wrong, and it almost never turns out the way you’d hope. But Handsome was going to make me work for every sliver of concession (or confession as the case may be), so I put on my lawyer hat and we started talking about the credit card charge – to an entity called 2buysafe dot com. Their website looks ridiculous, but when you use Google reasonably well it’s easy to find out that they serve as a third party billing service for Seeking Arrangements and sites of similar ilk. I had done my homework. I knew this.  I had proof printed out, in hand.

When confronted, originally Handsome denied knowing what the charge was, said it must have been a mistake, all the usual.  Then he took a deep breath, stretched, and blurted out “okay, yes, I signed up… I signed up on that site.” Amen. That was the beginning of hours of discussion and additional disclosures. As to the site itself, he says he signed up, created a profile, and received emails from women all over the world but that it was just “too freaky” for him (plus he doesn’t have enough money of his own to function as a sugar daddy) so he let the account expire. I believe that could be true, but I also believe that taking that step, and failing, is what led to the next step for him – starting the affair with the Whore.

But, because nothing is ever that simple in Crazytown, there was more. Much more. In short:

  • He admitted that he occasionally took a young girl from the town he works in to dinner and to lunches. He had mentioned this girl to me often in the past, back to when she was a young teenager. At the time, I warned him to keep his distance because I feared she had an unhealthy crush on him and could make accusations against him. (Note: I was not afraid of what he would do – as I had no reason to fear that at the time- but rather I feared her.) I think he did keep his distance then, but years have passed and she has since gotten older (I believe she is now 24) and needier. We will call her Angel Baby.
  • He said Angel Baby came to our house and drove him to the airport once when he was flying to meet up with me and the kids “because she needed the money” and he wanted to give her the money rather than a taxi. He never mentioned this to me.
  • He admitted that this past July, before he flew up to meet the kids and me on vacation, he brought Angel Baby to our home. He says he found her crying on the street in the rain and that she had nowhere to stay. (Boo fucking hoo, right??) She spent two nights there. On both nights, they shared a bed. In my house. There are five other beds in my house, all of which were free, but for some reason he just had to sleep with her. Go figure. Handsome insists “nothing happened” and that there was no sexual contact at all. (I call complete bullshit on this, by the way. I assume he fucked her. In fact, I’m pretty much going to assume he fucked everyone from here on out.)
  • He also admitted that he has been in contact with the old girlfriend again for several years, ever since he bought his burner phone. (I mention her briefly here https://betrayedwife.net/2018/02/05/dday-deceit-as-a-lifestyle-choice/ .)  We will call her the Flame. According to him, he took her to lunch once since he resumed contact with her. They called and texted “often” until, he still claims, he tossed the burner phone in the river back in November. (I have never fully believed that he doesn’t have the phone. I believe he may not be actively using it, but Handsome is a keeper of things. I doubt very strongly that he tossed it.) This burns me. I thought seriously about separating from him over her back in 2012, but didn’t. He assured me it was nothing and it was over. And here she is again, years down the pike.

If you are keeping score, that means that in July 2017, Handsome was involved outside our marriage (emotionally, physically, or both) with the Whore, Angel Baby, and the Flame. But, of course, there is still more.

  • On July 26th, he took a woman from the town he works in to dinner. Handsome had A FUCKING DATE. He drove 7 miles to pick her up, drove about 10 miles back to the lovely restaurant, paid for dinner, and then drove her home. He says he kissed her but nothing more. (Again, I assume he fucked her too.) Contact with her started a few weeks before the date  – probably around the same time Angel Baby was shacking up in my home and right before our summer vacation – and allegedly ended about 4-6 weeks after the date.

Final tally for July 2017: four other women, plus me.

When it was simply the Whore, I thought I was just dealing with a cheater. Even if you added in the Flame and what I knew from 2012.  A common, garden variety philanderer, but nothing special.  That was brutal and devastating and awful and horrendous.  However, when you add all of this insane escalating behavior together, the result is clear to me. My husband, my dear darling, still beloved Handsome is a sex addict. He is a broken, deeply troubled man. It is real. It is unquestionable. And now we have to deal with it. He found and attended his first SA meeting the following morning, of his own volition. Two days later he met with his therapist and admitted that he has been lying to him all along. I am grateful he finally admitted all of this to me and that he took those steps, and I have told him so, but still…

This is not what I signed up for. Looking ahead, it doesn’t even vaguely resemble the future that I had hoped and worked for every day since we got married. My life – even if we manage to stay together through this which is far from certain – will never, ever be what I thought it was before. And I liked most of my life before. I didn’t step forward and volunteer for a new life, but now I’m damned if I do (a future of 12 step meetings and therapy and triggers and the fear of relapses), and damned if I don’t (breaking up my family, moving my kids, closing the door on a future with the man I adore and had planned to spend the rest of my life with).

How did I feel as I looked at him these last few days? I pity him. That’s a terrible feeling when you are looking at your life partner and someone you love and had respected. I am angry, furious even. How dare he? How dare he do this to our family? When did he get so phenomenally fucked up, and why?  And, of course, I am hurt. I have been hurt by the person I love most in this world to the point that it is difficult to feel pain. I am not certain whether Handsome has hit rock bottom. I thought he had been there before. (Wrong again!) I know for certain that I’m there now. I feel like I am at the absolute bottom of a deep, dark pit, staring up, not into light, but infinite darkness.