My husband is a sex addict. He broke the trust in our relationship many, many times. Luckily (as far as I know, anyway), the acting out was never with another person-- it was with the internet, with pornography. Almost exactly a year ago, the shit hit the fan when I discovered that he was still engaging in behaviors that he had promised me he would stop. We separated briefly and began attending marriage counseling. I agreed to stay with him (despite all the research I had done on annulments and divorce), and in addition to couple's therapy we each had our own therapist. My husband began attending Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) meetings and prior to this current separation had recently received his nine month sobriety chip.
Despite all the work we were both putting in and despite incremental improvements, our relationship was incredibly rocky. His codependency was getting worse, and I was withdrawing and avoiding him. Our sex life was non-existent. I was compulsively reading books on how to improve my sex drive and doing anything I could think of to save the physical relationship.
Then one day, I was feeling overwhelmed-- about our cluttered house, of all things! I was so upset; I think frustration about our relationship combined with feeling like a "bad wife" for not keeping the house clean (and not having sex with my husband) were dragging me down. I was nearly hysterical as I tried to explain to my husband how our physical surroundings were negatively affecting my mental health and that I was so overwhelmed that I didn't know where to start.
Tears streaming down my face, my husband decided that it would be a perfect time to remind me how sexually frustrated he was (like I wasn't constantly aware of this). He said, "I feel like I can't even touch you." I sat listening to the verbal onslaught, his words stung like slaps across my face and my tears started to burn my cheeks. I could not believe that he thought that this was the appropriate time to bring this up. I couldn't believe, for that matter, that he would EVER bring this up considering that this topic weighed over our household on a daily basis.
I just couldn't do it anymore. I needed to get out, to breathe. I wrote him a letter that I ended up giving to him after we discussed the separation, mostly because I wanted him to know how hurt I was. Here is that letter:
Michael,
We need a break. I no longer feel that I can give you the level of attention you need. I feel like I am trying to fill a bottomless pit and that is an impossible task. Despite (what I believe to be) my best efforts at physical intimacy, I am time and time again faced with the realization that it isn't enough. This further reinforces the feelings that overwhelmed me during the first 1.5 years of our marriage-- that I was not enough and would never be enough to satisfy your physical and emotional needs/demands. I feel as though every effort I make to enhance this part of the relationship is countered by reminders that it just isn't enough.
I am done feeling inadequate and I am done doing things that make me feel uncomfortable in hopes that it will be enough to keep you sufficiently satisfied and "off my back about it" so that I can have time to deal with my own issues. I am sick of having a constant (nearly daily) reminder that I am the cause of your frustration, loneliness, and feeling unloved. You will never feel truly romantically loved by a partner if you continue to tie your entire self-worth to that person's physical and verbal interactions with you. You will also never feel truly loved by anyone until you truly love yourself. This is something that, as you know, I am also struggling with. But I know that I will never be able to truly love myself if I continue to acquiesce in situations in which I am uncomfortable only to be reminded a day or two later that it wasn't enough. I do not want to be responsible for making you whole, especially when I feel that spending time with you makes me less whole.
I realize that I am not blameless in this. But I think that in a much different way than you might imagine. Rather than feel guilty for not being more physical with you, I instead take the blame for allowing myself to ever feel guilty about it. I regret allowing myself to fall into the thinking that sex is "the most important thing" and the barometer against which I measure the success of our recovery, both as individuals and as a couple. Rather than accepting and really believing that sex is just the "cherry on top," I repeatedly berated myself and suffered self-imposed guilt and blame for being the one who was slowing killing the relationship (guilt and blame that were constantly reinforced via physical and verbal pressure from you, including more subtle forms of pressure like pouting and withdrawal).
I have decided that I will never be successful in improving my self-worth if I am in a situation where my inward-focus is interpreted as "not loving my husband" or "not trying hard enough to fix this marriage." Perhaps you will say that you don't think these things, but I do and the thoughts are reinforced through our everyday interactions. There is no way I will learn to value myself surrounded by constant reminders that my only intrinsic value is my ability to make another person feel whole/complete/loved. That is not all I am good for and it is not my job.
Yet again, I let myself believe the lie that if I truly forgave you for the pain that your addiction caused, I would be willing to engage in a more physical relationship with you. But this could not be further from the truth. I am learning that the key to getting past this is not to throw myself into a sexual relationship that I do not want with the person that hurt me. Instead, I need to build up my own self esteem and value myself to the point where I realize that I have more to offer than my physical body. I regret being so disillusioned that I thought that if I could just fix the "sex thing," everything would be fine. How did I ever expect myself to want to engage in sexual relations with someone whose words and actions constantly reminded me that that and that alone was necessary to show him that I loved him? It's no wonder none of it was working-- I was trying to persuade myself into having sex with you to prove to myself that sex wasn't the only thing you wanted from me! How foolish I have been.
I honestly don’t know what the future of this marriage is, nor do I even know what I want it to be. On second thought, I do know a bit of what I want it to be. I want my marriage to energize me, not drain me and leave me emotionally exhausted. I want to look forward to being with my husband, not dread it. I want to feel valued for something other than my sexuality, not reminded that the only way for my husband to feel loved is for me to "give in" to situations that make me uncomfortable. But mostly, I want to be a whole person who is married to another whole person. I don’t want to be anyone's mother, therapist, provider, or motivation. I want to be a supporter, yes. An advocate, yes. A respected friend, most of all.
And somewhere along the line I think we lost our friendship (which probably isn’t a bad thing considering how unhealthy and codependent our friendship has been from the very beginning). I don’t feel like we have ever had a healthy friendship, which is not to say that forming one is impossible. But it is certainly impossible if one of the conditions of the friendship is that one person is expected to validate the other's self-worth by "putting out" on a regular basis. That's not what friendship is about. And I really do want a marriage that, at its core, is a friendship.
Anyway, I am sure all of this is a bitter pill to swallow. I apologize if it seems that I am blaming you for all the issues we have at the moment. I am determined to take a moral inventory and accept and own all of the things that I have done to contribute to the current state of our relationship. But this (along with the other work I need to do) cannot occur in our current environment. I feel that my objectives can only be achieved alone. And for that I need time.
I realize that I am basically giving you no real option in this proposal. I hope that we can agree that a trial separation will help both of us decide how/if this relationship should move forward. If you are not willing to accept this proposal, I must tell you that I do plan on separating anyway. But I feel it would be much more productive if we did so on mutually agreed upon terms and conditions. My hope is for us to discuss these conditions sooner rather than later so that we can initiate this separation period ASAP so I (and you, if you so choose) can address the personal issues that are making it so difficult for me to see the value in continuing this relationship. The sooner I (we) have time to thoroughly (separately) assess ourselves and our roles in this relationship, the better.
Love,
Olivia
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