Battle

In the trenches.
The polygraph is happening right now states away and time feels like it has stopped.

What if he doesn't pass? What if he does????

There was new information that came out before the polygraph. Lies. And irrefutable lies. I already know my husband has been blatantly deceiving me without question. At this point the polygraph is just to know whether my worst fears have come true.

And my husband is still manipulating his way around EVERYTHING.

I have text evidence of his own words where he contradicts what he is trying to tell me I am "misunderstanding".

He is so very lost. And underneath all the pain, anger, and fear, is pity. For a man that is so far gone he believes his own lies even when they are staring him in the face. It is heartbreaking.

Then in the middle of our conversation, when it is clear he has lied so deeply, I end the conversation and ask him to call me back when he has thought about it and realizes his mistake.

Then I get a voicemail.  A big terrible awful voicemail.

It is my psychologist, but she isn't leaving a message for me. She called the wrong person.

My stomach dropped and my eyes grew wide with disbelief. She is leaving a message for our polygrapher on my phone. And saying things that she shouldn't be saying, she is talking about the client's "wife"...."it sounds like you have already figured out that she is really difficult to deal with"......"she's been told repeatedly by me that the things she are asking are not gonna be good questions for the poly"....

She sounds annoyed. I feel betrayed.

Earlier that day we had a phone session. She talked about how my needs would be met, how they would be doing everything they can to get me the answers I need. She said she was on my side. She knew, having been betrayed herself what my pain was. There was compassion, empathy, understanding. She mentioned some of the questions were tricky, but I should contact the polygrapher and she could help me define them so they will be effective. No suggestion that these questions should be changed. No hint of the emotions she conveys in this voicemail.

I was shaking. My teeth started to chatter uncontrollably. My husband calls back, at first I tell him I can't talk about anything else, I tell him what happened.

A few minutes later he calls again. I am very hesitant to put myself through more pain when I am in crisis. A tiny sliver of hope that he will confess his mistake, apologize for the many lies and show me a determination to change. I warn him not to hurt me any more right now.

As soon as the words "I am so sorry that you FEEL like you are being lied to...." slip out of his mouth I hang up. I am broken completely. Every last shard of my heart disintegrates into nothing. The reality of my situation hits me in the gut.

My husband is a liar. He has played his part well. Over a year sober. Multiple addiction meetings weekly, seeing a therapist, working steps with a sponsor, he has a SPONSEE.
All while choosing to stay stuck, and is unwilling to acknowledge the problem. His dishonesty destroys all of his efforts and he doesn't even see it.
Insanity.

I am surviving. I am working like hell to fight against Satan's attempts to destroy me and my family.
I received a blessing and it confirmed to me that I need to do everything in my power to protect me and my precious children from this disease. I need to build them up and prepare them because what lies ahead is not going to be pretty.

My oldest daughter is amazingly intuitive. She has been crying the last few days because she misses her daddy. She feels everything that is going on even without me telling her. She says "I feel like we are never going to live with him again". (We are living with my parents right now) I don't know what to say to her. I don't know if we will live with him again either. I hold her, I tell her I understand how she feels, and that she will be able to talk to him soon. How am I going to tell her we won't be living with daddy for a long time, and that mommy and daddy may never live together again? How can I break her heart like that? I trust in God and His plan for us. I know he loves this little girl infinitely more than even I do. He will give us exactly what we need. Everything is happening just as it should and I feel His strength carrying me through.

Any minute now I will know if my husband has crossed lines I never thought he would cross.

I am strength.
I am peace.
I am doing hard things.
I will rise above.

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!

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. 

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.