How My Thinking Has Changed in the Last Year

Wow, how my thinking has changed in the last year.

Yesterday, I was digging through some old documents that are saved on my laptop and I found the daily journal I started writing the day after discovering my husband's sex addiction. The journal describes our situation and how I was feeling every day for about 2 months following discovery.

I have never been much of a diary or journal kind of girl because I always hated the idea that someone could find my deepest, darkest thoughts written down somewhere, but after discovery I had the feeling that I should document everything as it unfolded. For what? I really don't know, yet. 

Anyway, I read through some of the excerpts from the journal and I was reminded of how sick my thinking really was back then. 

" Today I started scouring the internet, looking for tips on finding jobs in massage parlors. Maybe if I actually work in one and see how things are run, it will help me deal with the fact that David spent so much time in them. I figure I can see how impersonal the exchange really is between the masseuse and  the customer." 

What 'the hell was that? I completely forgot that I was actually thinking about finding a job in a massage parlor. If there was ever any doubt that the discoveries I made about my husband's sex addiction traumatized me, I think that direct quote from my journal will prove otherwise. Reading this now makes me feel sad for that desperate woman who just really wanted to make peace with her horrible situation. 

"I'm scared that David is going to relapse. I can't control it, I know. I just don't know what I'll do if I discover he has had sex with someone else again. I need a man who thinks it's easy to be devoted to me because in his mind, no other woman can compare to me."

I now see that my self-worth after discovery really hinged on whether or not there was a devoted man in my life. I had no idea that my self-worth needed to come from within myself. Such an easy concept, but I just didn't get it. 

"Biologically, if men have a natural instinct to procreate with as many women as possible, just like wild animals, maybe they are all fighting their natural instincts when they remain monogamous and loyal to their wives. Maybe no man can really be trusted...This makes me wonder if lesbians have the most fulfilling relationships because they are not fighting nature in order to remain loyal to their partners." 

I can see now that I was desperately trying to find some sort of explanation for my husband to betray me so many times and act the way he did. At the time, this was the only reason that I could come up with that even remotely made sense to me. It appears that I was trying to justify his actions because I had lost faith in all men. 

I remember feeling like my life would never feel safe again. I kept waiting for the "other shoe" to drop. Well, with every new confession and discovery that followed my initial discovery, that other shoe did drop many times over. But I can happily report that I no longer fear that it will drop again because I have somehow made it through those darkest days of my life without forgetting how to smile or laugh. 

Life with a sex addict is far from ideal. A day rarely goes by when one or both of us isn't trying to cope with something that relates to his addiction. I have no idea what the future holds for us, but I feel good in knowing that:

1. I never actually applied for a job in a massage parlor.

2. I no longer feel like I need a man in my life in order to feel complete.

3. I am slowly regaining my faith in mankind again.

Nothing's perfect, but at least I can now say that my thinking is far less-sick than it used to be.

Triggered

Is it just me, or does anyone else ever get triggered by the recollections of other spouses and partners of sex addicts?

There is an online group that I started visiting shortly after discovering my husband's sex addiction that has been hugely responsible for getting me on the path to healing, for which I am truly grateful. I still visit the page once or twice a week to catch up on the comings and goings of everyone because I am inspired by these other members and there are often little kernels of wisdom tucked into their posts. However, once in awhile I read a few back-to-back posts from other wives or partners of sex addicts that are so heart-wrenching that I am reminded of my husband's betrayals and the amount of pain I had after discovery. When this happens, I can usually snap out of it before I start pain mining too much. (Pain mining is the act of digging for more reasons to feel pain about my husband's sex addiction. For more info, check out my book.) BUT...sometimes I am truly triggered by these heart-breaking posts.

For example, recently I visited the site and read about a spouse who felt triggered by something and irrationally confronted one of the sex addict's acting out partners. Most of the time, I can simply read these recollections written by other spouses and partners of sex addicts and leave it at that, but once in awhile these posts trigger me to do something stupid. After reading this post, without really thinking about it, I found one of my husband's old acting out partners on Facebook and typed up a private message to her that was completely off-the-rails. Thank God, I came to my senses before I hit the "send" button. It scared me, though. If I had sent that message, I would have opened up a whole new can of worms and would have felt like I had a major slip-up. As it stands, I do feel like I slipped, but luckily, no one was affected by it (except me).

I haven't been tempted to do something stupid like this in a long time, which made me realize that maybe I have been neglecting my recovery. I've been super busy, lately, so I have not been doing much reading and I haven't attended a phone or online meeting in well over a month. It's scary how quickly my healthy behaviors and thought patterns can wane when I don't make time for these things on a regular basis. The fact that just reading about another spouse's slip caused me to slip doesn't sit well with me.

Wanting to Give Up

Thankfully, I am learning to control my anger impulses. I can't say I was always able to do this, but I take comfort in knowing I'm slowly getting better at it. I'm not an angry-violent person. Rather, I'm an angry-make-rash-decisions kind of person. Since discovery last year, I have figured out that I need to "sit with it" whenever I'm upset about something because I usually regret the decisions I make in the heat of the moment.

Here's the deal. My husband and I embarked on 90 days of abstinence 116 days ago. The decision to do the 90 days was mutual. His CSAT neither encouraged nor discouraged it, but since we had both read so much about the benefits of 90 days of abstinence, we figured it was probably a good idea. Throughout the 90 days, I've had my ups and downs, which I'll write about in a future blog post. I'm still trying to formulate the words in my head to accurately describe my feelings throughout the process.

Anyway, once the 90 days were up, I didn't plan on jumping in the sack with my husband right away because I knew we'd need time to ease back into things. However, I was hoping that he would be eager to resume a healthy sex life with his wife again at some point in the near future. Well, as it turns out, my husband is not. Actually, he told me that he might not be ready for a week, a month or even a year because he has no idea when (if ever) he'll be ready to resume our sex life again. Do I patiently wait for him to be ready like the "good little wife" that I am, or do I move forward on my own? That is one of the questions I'm asking myself this morning because I spent almost the last decade living with his sexual anorexia and I don't know if I'm willing to continue living in a sexless marriage. Before we embarked on the 90 days of abstinence, we had resumed our sex life and it felt like we were making great strides.

I understand that my husband has fears about falling back into an addiction-mode mindset if he starts allowing his mind to go there again. Believe me, the last thing I want in this world is for my husband to relapse. And I am not pressuring him to take any steps that he is not ready and willing to make on his own. However, I can't help but feel like I'm being punished for his addiction. Last night, I gingerly brought up the topic of his readiness to resume our sex life and he was very uncomfortable talking about it. I don't believe that he is currently acting out, but the conversation ( or lack of conversation) we had last night really brought back memories of the past. I felt like I did so many times before when he was in addiction-mode and never wanted to talk to me about his lack of interest in sex. Back then, silly me thought he needed testosterone supplements because I did not yet know about his sex addiction.

At the same time, we are not experiencing intimacy anorexia like we did for all those years. I feel very close to him these days and we both feel that the 90 days of abstinence did help deepen our relationship. He is attentive and loving like never before. BUT, this pesky question about resuming our sex life has started to create new semi-hidden resentments on my part. Plus, I must admit that I'm starting to feel rejected (again). Is he hiding something? I really don't think so, but then again, I have a history of not seeing things that are staring me in the face.

So, nothing has been resolved and today is "business as usual." I'm thankful that I knew enough to sit with the feelings without acting on them last night. I was pretty angry and desperately wanted to give up. I just wanted a "normal" relationship once and for all, so I figured the best course of action for myself would be to finally cut the cord and just move on without him. I wanted to get out of bed, shut down this blog and close all of my accounts related to being the wife of a sex addict. I considered getting up and doing that for about 15 minutes. But, instead I rolled over, closed my eyes and went to sleep.