Post-slip

I think the hardest part about having a confession happen is knowing that the addict has a little more control over my husbands actions, which means less of the husband I love (or that I once loved, and hope to love again) and more of the addict's selfish behavior. In j's case, that means a loss in self-confidence and ambition. He feels lost and hates that I am not suddenly in that place with him. In the past, I would stop talking about my hopes and dreams and what I'm doing to get there, and focus on getting him back in his good place so that I could go back to my hopes and dreams too. This time, I skipped that detour, and it came back and bit me in the bum. I wouldn't save him, and he hated it. 

I have wanted to be a doctor since I was little. When I met J, I was pre-med but hadn't done any of the pre-reqs yet. Then as I got more and more co-dependent I forgot all about my dreams and focused all of my energy on him since he didn't have any direction- and I pushed him to be a doctor- which was my dream! Haha. He ended up choosing law instead. As I am getting out of my co-dependency I am being drawn back to my original interests and I'm wanting a serious career to fall back on too- just in case. Because I have no idea where I will be in five years- I know where I want to be, but I know better than to only eat a diet of hopes and leave out the logic.

Yesterday he attacked me for it. Hard core. Him slipping did have some impact on my good ole self esteem, but I managed to feel peace despite it through some good work on my part. (If I do say so myself ;)) However, when I refused to rescue him, he attacked me (verbally) on all sides, I think he was trying to find a weak spot. He found it. I am already pretty sensitive about the whole med-school thing because I have been so involved in trying to fix him, that I completely forgot who I was. I am still pretty shaky and nervous about it and haven't told anybody but him, my school counselor, and my sister about my schooling plan. To everyone else, I just say 'grad school' without being specific... And no one has second guessed it. 

...whoa tangent. Back to the story. He attacked my schooling plans (the addict hates them, But J is usually way supportive of them), and I calmly told him that the day after a slip doesn't seem like a good time to talk about the future to me. He kept going, so I told him that the fact that he had looked at porn the day before made it so that I wasn't in the best mindset to discuss the future with him. He then went on to go into some detail of the type of porn that he looked at, and I left the room. Cried. A lot. I mean, really?

My little guy (18 months!) has been developing a lot lately- he now cries whenever he sees someone else crying. What a tender-hearted little guy. But I don't know what to do about it... I don't want to hide so he thinks it's not okay to cry, but man! I swear I'm a crying wreck once a month (about how far apart the slips are getting).  Is it healthy for him to see me cry? I hope so. 

The further away from the slip and the harder he works towards recovery, the better things are getting. But I can't help but wonder... Is this my new life?  Am I okay with it? My honest answer: I am okay and happy with the work he is doing. I am not okay with the porn. I am not okay with getting knocked over every month. So here's what I am needing to be safe: to keep J at arms length until I can start to trust him again. But this whole one month and then slip act is getting old. I take one step towards him and then he knocks me down and pushes me ten steps back.

I was going to end there, but I thought of 

One last thing.

Would I do it all over again? The hell that I have lived since getting married to a Porn Addict? I don't know. It may sound co-dependent, but he never actually tried this hard before marriage, so The co-dependent side of me totally would. But this I know: as we work towards our own recoveries, my husband and I are slowly but surely working our way back towards each other. As we trust in the same source- a loving father in heaven who, if we give him the reigns rather than trying to control eachother's or our own lives, will guide us back into eachother's arms.