Full Disclosure is Not Necessary

I learned something at my S-Anon meeting this morning.  I had convinced myself that I was going to have to get all the details of my husband's sexual "acting out" before I could really move on in my own recovery.  But after I put that out today in the meeting, I learned that it's not a necessity.


One of the ladies said she doesn't WANT to know what's going on in her husband's mind.  And if he feels the need to share something that he's thinking or has done, she asks him to check in with his sponsor before he does it, and then she makes sure that he knows that she doesn't want to know all of the gory details of something he saw that triggered him or what went through his head when he saw a particular movie, etc.


What I have concluded is that, in my own situation, I'm just going to say, "Fuck whatever Michael did before his recovery."  Unless there is something that he did that was illegal or that put me in physical danger (i.e. sex outside the marriage that could compromise my physical health), I don't want to know.  I don't need the details of how it all started when he was younger, or how he got to where this all blew up in our faces.  The only good that would come of him telling me any of that is that HE would probably feel immensely better.  And you know what?  That's bullshit.  He can tell his sponsor or the guys in his group and admit all his transgressions.


I, as his wife, have no need to know all the gruesome details, especially when I know myself and I know that I will go over and over it again and again in my head and it will drive me crazier than I already am about all this stuff.


So that's one fear I can take off my list.  The fear of knowing.  Of knowing all the (possibly) disgusting, lurid, details of my husband's sexual acting act.  I'm already scarred enough from what I DO know, and I know enough to know that he's a sex addict.  Isn't that all I need to know at this point?  Why subject myself to any more pain by asking him for any more details?

Obligation

I've lived my entire life with the understanding that it's absolutely imperative to meet your obligations.  Obligations to school, family, friends, your job.  But one thing that was never mentioned to me, never taught to me, was the obligation that we all have to ourselves.


The obligation to self, IF it appears on one's list of obligations, usually takes last place.  We're raised to believe that everyone else's needs and wants come first...to put ourselves on top of the list is to be selfish, arrogant.


I'm trying to learn to let go of obligations...OK, not altogether, but I'm learning to put MYSELF first and reduce and prioritize my obligations that come after that.


It's funny, though.  While I'm trying to let go of obligations, I recognize that my intense sense of obligation is what got me here today.  And I'm GLAD that I am in the situation that I am in.


In this case, the sense of obligation that I felt was not toward my husband...but to marriage itself.  I had my foot out the door-- I researched divorce, I was ready to go.  But you know what?  I said vows; I got into a LEGALLY BINDING contract when I got married.  I felt more obliged to that piece of paper than I did to the actual person I married.


But if not for my sense of obligation to that contract, I wouldn't have even tried to work through this with my husband.  If we were just dating, I would have brushed him off, dusted myself off, and moved onto the next (dysfunctional) relationship.  But god knows it would have been more dysfunctional than this one.  And the next, even more so.  And so on and so forth until I finally just gave up on men altogether (at least that's the future I foresee for myself...!)


So here I am.  Working my ass off, putting myself on the line, trying to improve myself and form a functional half of a hopefully functional whole relationship.  I have to admit that at first I resented the obligation, and I only accepted it begrudgingly.  But I would remiss to not admit that I am grateful for this opportunity.  Regardless of how my marriage ends up, I will be a better person for it.  It's exhausting, and I certainly don't enjoy every minute of it.  It's a huge pain in the ass and I'm tired most of the time.  I go through fits and starts.  But this is only the beginning of a very long journey.  A lifetime journey.


At any rate, I'm going to try to let this obligation to the marriage contract be the LAST obligation that I let dictate my life.  It's not healthy to do, say, or feel things because you think that's how you HAVE to be, talk, or feel.  It leads to guilt and resentment and it leads to poor self-care.  I don't care what anyone else says or tries to make me feel- I come first.  My only obligation is MYSELF.  And I'll be DAMNED if anyone tries to make me feel bad about that.

How I Went From "Happily Married" To "Uncertainly Separated"

I've decided that today I will post the letter that I wrote to my husband that got me to where I am today: living on my own (well, with my cats) after only 2.5 years of marriage.  There's obviously much more back story left to tell, but let me preface it with this:


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

Living Oblivious vs. Facing Your Demons

I went back to work today for the first time since the move.  I could definitely feel that a load of stress had been lifted...work didn't seem quite so tedious, nor did I dread going home.  When I got back to the condo, it was so pleasant to walk in and not have to deal with anyone but my cats.  The place was empty, quiet, mostly clean, and in a way-- inviting.

As I settled in for the night, I couldn't help but think that maybe this life is what I want.  Isn't that what anyone wants?  Independence?  Freedom?  Less stress?

But then I realized something- yes, this would be the life I would have if I didn't work on any of my problems (i.e. if I lived "obliviously").  That's one thing that this marriage has forced me to do-- face my demons and examine all of my own issues, as painful as they may be.

If I were to divorce my husband now, well, I'd enjoy the independence, freedom, and calm, but they would only last so long.  Deep inside, I would still have these emotional scars, coaddictive and addictive behaviors, and control issues to work on.  I know myself, and I know that if I cut ties with him completely, I would go about my life stifling all of the deep-seated issues...I would just put it off, ignore it, hope it goes away.  But the second I found myself in a another relationship, it would be deja vu all over again.

So I guess the options are:

1. Work on issues now and try to reunite with my husband once I have my shit straight;
2. Work on issues now and realize I don't want to be with my husband;
3. Leave my husband and ignore the issues, only to have them creep up in my life at a later point in time; or,
4. Leave my husband and ignore the issues, and avoid future romantic relationships at all costs because I will undoubtedly attract the same kind of man.

For now my focus is behind door number one.  I did not go into this separation as a time to contemplate the merits of the relationship; I went into the separation knowing that I needed to focus on myself (and that he needed to do the same) to see if we could work it out together in the end.

But the ignoring, the oblivion is so tempting.  Hell, I could live here as long as I want.  I can afford it.  It's a decent place.  My cats will (eventually) get used to it.  No headaches caused by "roommate" or "spousal" issues.  No fighting, no hurt feelings, no neediness.  It all sounds too good to be true!

However, I know that if I choose to ignore all of it, I would eventually end up lonely and (even more) depressed.  I'm already isolating myself from friends...I would end up the cat lady who dies in her apartment and whose cats eat her face off cause no one knows she's dead for days after she croaks.

So I guess there's something to be said for being married/in a committed relationship.  At least there's someone who knows when you're dead so they can keep the cats from devouring you.  Are there any other pluses you can think of?