Get Real

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Being real, and sharing, openly, with our spouse is a way to build trust and safety, especially in the wake of the awful marriage-wrecker beast of addiction.

I came across a post the other night that shows how a guy can "get real" with his wife. I loved it. I love the book too. (Love you, hate the porn by Mark Chamberlain and Geoff steurer.)

Just wanted to share!

Time Machine

Ingrid Michaelson's "Time Machine"

Feelin' this today. 

Sometimes you just need to be a little (or a lottle) ticked. 

Trigger Happy

I have a confession to make. 

I am trigger happy. 

Now I'm not talking about triggers, such as something that reminds me of the pain of addiction. I'm talking about the kind of gut response that comes from my fight or flight response. Which for me, happens to work very well, perhaps a little too well. 

For example, when first d-day happened long, long ago at the beginning of our marriage, I was so trigger happy I only had to threaten to pull that trigger and it worked so well(or not well, as you will soon see) that I believed our problems with addiction were a thing of the past. 

On that day, trigger happy sounded like this "You can't ever do that again!!! If you do I will leave you! This is not an addiction, this was something you chose over me!!!!!!!". 

So going along with how well that worked, you can read about that under the My Story tab. If you don't want to look that up, I'll fill you in. It didn't work. I may not have known that it was still in fact, an addiction, and that it still definitely would happen again and again, but the only thing my trigger-happiness did was scare my husband enough to hide his addiction from me for years and years. 

To be clear, I didn't make him hide his addiction. That was definitely his choice. But I also didn't get what I wanted by being trigger happy either, since he certainly didn't stop acting out and lying about it. 

So that brings me to today. I now understand that it is an addiction, and I also know that he has to choose recovery, and nothing I do will change that. 

But...

My trigger finger is alive and well. 

Case in point. 

My husband will omit a piece of information. Perhaps intentionally, perhaps not. My first response? "I can't do this anymore!!!!" 

He will check in with me and say he was triggered at church. My reaction? "And you kept it from me until now? I can't stand this. I am so done with this!"

He forgets to take out the trash. (Seriously though, there is a lot of history with this tiny little chore that cannot be brushed aside). "I never mean enough to you, I can't take this anymore!"

On one particularly dreadful night, when he lied to me again, because he was afraid of admitting something, I lost control completely and screamed at him "you need to get on board, or get the hell out!". 

Okay, now give me a second to regroup because that is pretty embarrassing to admit and type out. 

I am still very much trigger happy. When my husband messes up, I almost always fall right back to the doom and gloom attitude of "this will never get better", and I just want to jump ship. The hard thing is that I feel like that isn't the right course, and I feel inspired to stay and continue working on things, but it is really hard when I feel that urgency to run, and run fast when I know it isn't the right thing to do. 

If I know the right thing is to stay and keep working, for my own sanity, I want so desperately to stop revving the engine when the car is in park. 

What's there to think about?

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Life has felt like a roller coaster lately. More specifically, my marriage has felt like a roller coaster lately. Normally I like roller coasters. But not this one. I'm ready to get off this roller coaster. After the 1,245,689 time around the track things get old. Not such a good time anymore. 

One minute the roller coaster is up and there are acts of devotion, warm fuzzies abound, and declarations of a firm resolve to stay committed to spending the rest of his life proving he wants to repair the damage done. 

Then the roller coaster plummets, and we're back to selfishness, entitlement, and indignation. The firm resolve crumbles(or maybe it was never really a firm resolve in the first place?) and he's back to talking about his "rights" and what he thinks my recovery should look like.
When the coaster is up he says "I have hurt you and will do whatever you need to feel safe". 

When the coaster is down I ask him to sleep on the couch and he replies with "I will have to think about it". 

Which leads me to my question, "what's there to think about?"

I have been wounded. I have been hurt. When you betray someone you love, and you are able to offer them safety and peace, there isn't anything to think about. You give it to them. Freely. 

I am able to see what I need more clearly now, and ask for it. I have also learned that my boundaries are so important for my sanity. 

So if I ask him to sleep on the couch and he needs to think about it, or he says no, I might still get upset, but I don't need to beg or plead with him to understand why I need this. I will go and sleep on the couch myself(so far I haven't had to). I don't need him to agree or give me safety.

I'll go find my own dang safety. And spend some time thinking about what my next step will be. Because I won't live like this forever. I am going to take care of Sway. She is patient, kind, forgiving, and loving. But she isn't a pushover. She won't be walked all over and just accept that such is life. 

So pray hard Sway. Pray to know God's will. Pray for God to show you when it is time to endure, and for the strength to do it. But also pray to know when enough is enough, and to have the strength to walk away from that roller coaster if that day ever comes. 

Lady Shame

Lady Shame

There is a woman in my head.  I think she was always there, lurking. Waiting for me to be ready for her. Ready to breathe in her poison. She was patient, she knew a day like this would come.

A day when I would be broken enough to eat up her lies. To cling to them, like the monkey with it's hand caught in a trap. I want to let go, I can't. I want to be rid of her, but she doesn't want to leave.

When I wake up in the morning and look in the mirror, there she is, taunting me. Her silky voice feeding me the words I know will slice me open. The words I tell her not to say.

"Tsk, Tsk, Tsk,... look at you. What a sight you are! What man wouldn't want to wake up to that in the morning?!"

She laughs. She knows what hurts. She knows just where to put the knife. And how to twist it.

She's there when we venture out for a fun day with the kids. A fitness group just happens to make their rounds and stop to stretch right in front of us. My stomach drops. We were having fun. I had forgotten...if only for a brief moment. But now the momentary freedom from this nightmare is over. Back to reality, and with it, here she comes.

"Oh look! Women who are actually taking care of themselves! Oooooh... I bet your husband is wishing he could be so lucky...They definitely don't have stretch marks. Or that mommy tummy pooch.  Too bad that part of your life is over, you'll never get that back! I guess it makes sense that you don't even try....Hey, remember how you used to think he didn't even bat an eye if something like this would happen? Remember(she is laughing almost uncontrollably now) how you honestly believed him when he said you were the only one? He was immune to everyone else, because he only had eyes for you? How could you really have been that naive? If that isn't pathetic, I don't know what is."

If I wasn't in public, and if I wasn't afraid of scaring my children, I'd probably be holding my head screaming at her to stop. I don't want to hear it. I can't. I can't hear anymore.

But she doesn't care. She just likes to remind me all the time of how I should fear everything. And how little security I have.

I don't know what she calls herself. I don't care enough to ask.

But I know what I call her.

I call her Lady Shame.

To be honest

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Oh honesty, honesty.

The question of all questions for me right now.

What......is.........honesty?

I have spent an embarrassingly extensive amount of time and energy trying to find the answer to this question.
Not because I still don't understand it. But because I have been trying to beat it into my husband out of a misunderstood need to have his approval. To make him "see" so that it will validate that I am not crazy and it is okay for me to expect complete honesty and transparency.

I believe honesty is one thing, he believes it is another. I can't just say "oh well" and move on can I? He has to agree with me or else I'm doing something wrong, right? RIGHT?

Sigh.

So many things I had have to learn.

My husband has lied. A lot. He has done a lot of "omission" lying. And a lot of "looked me right in the eyes" lying. My husband had to be caught to confess, and even when I asked repeatedly if he still struggled after dday 1, and if he ever looked at porn again, and begged him to tell me he still had problems because I knew something wasn't right and I felt crazy....he....still....lied.... for the next 6-7 years.

So, no, I am not okay with partial honesty.

Let me give some more information.

Since dday 2, I have asked that my husband tell me everything. Everything meaning when he is triggered, how he has objectified me(which he said he hadn't until he figured that out too, by much prompting on my part), when he lusts, when he feels tempted, etc.

I have not asked for all the "gory" details of his acting out. Through a little trial and error in the beginning, I learned what I did not need to know, and do not ask for that kind of information.

Well, thanks to counselors(who have encouraged him to set a boundary that he will not tell me what I don't need to know because it isn't "healthy" for our relationship) and sponsors and SA fellows who say "your wife doesn't need to know your junk", my husband believes that it isn't good for me to be hearing all of that. He thinks it is unhealthy in our marriage (both our counselors say it is unhealthy to have the parent-child relationship) and has even pulled the "it might cause me to relapse from the shame" card. (When I asked him if he has ever felt close to that he said no, but it *might happen.) So he has laid down that boundary. Twice. The second time writing me a letter saying he would not tell me anything he didn't feel he needed to, other than slips, relapses, or inappropriate thoughts during sex. He wouldn't share step work, triggers, thoughts, dreams, lusting, etc. unless he felt he should.

Well, after I explained that his boundary violated my boundary of the kind of honesty I needed to feel safe, I asked him to stay somewhere else for awhile.

He later decided that although he still wanted to discuss it with a counselor and he doesn't agree with it, he would be honest with me however I wanted.

Which brings us to where we are now. I still mostly get check-ins that include, "had a pretty good day, no problems, other than wanting to fantasize about sex with you"(which we agrees he should avoid because it seems to be giving him that lust hit the addiction is trying to use for a way in), and I don't trust him. I want to soooo much. But he has always withheld information, said he honestly didn't know I'd want to know it, or have some other excuse for not telling me, then I felt unsafe, unsafe, unsafe.

And it doesn't help that he has never said he's felt tempted to watch porn or masturbate since dday 2 which was 10 months ago. He also never admits to lusting after anyone(anyone "in the flesh" and not on a computer screen or catalog, except that he did in a letter, but then backpedaled and said he didn't depending on my definition of lust), he only "notices" that they are attractive, or realizes he is staring at their boobs but only because he zoned out, or double takes but just out of habit, not lust. Because it isn't lust if you didn't make a conscious decision to do it, right? He didn't mean to so it can't be lust, lust is a conscious decision to do something wrong, right? 

I don't even know where to go from here. This just shows that I don't feel right. I don't trust him. I am upset that either he is lying,  or he is honestly not seeing it(which I am leaning toward thinking is the case). And I hate that. I keep trying to get closer; he is sober, trying to be empathetic, trying to work recovery, being a better husband and father. But I keep running into a "do not cross" line that I cannot pass until I start seeing this understanding of honesty take place.

My trauma from all the lying is very high. I am so fearful, and distrusting. I can't trust his words, and right now, his actions aren't enough to reassure.

I hate when I can't go where I want to go. I hate being held back.

I need honesty and transparency in my marriage. I need to know that my husband is doing everything he can to repair the damage he has done. To me, that means a willingness to share what I need for safety. This is what I need, regardless of whether our therapists, his sponsor, SA group members, or his spiritual promptings(he felt inspired to set those boundaries) agree. I will settle for nothing less.

The Lonely

My story, today, starts here.

I am here.

                                                           The Lonely-Christina Perri