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.