I'm getting all philosophical over here

A philosophy that was shared with me and a few other WoPAs by a therapist has stuck with me lately, and I can see truth behind the words, at least in my life:

Men and women addicts lose two main things because of the addiction:

Men lose the desire to protect.

Women lose their desire to nurture.

This same therapist also said something that I don't 100% agree with: That our addict husbands never loved us, and that they literally don't know how.

It just shows that sometimes you have to listen to everything you hear with a filter of what speaks truth to you at the time. I honestly believe that my husband loves me- but the addiction robs him of certain critical things that must come with that to ensure a healthy relationship. 

What's that saying? "you can't live on love alone?"

Anyway, I want to process why the first part spoke so deeply to me (because I know that this doesn't necessarily apply to everyone).

I guess I am a little lucky(?) because I have experience in both ends... But even the feminist in me believes that men and women were born with gifts specific to each individual- which includes our gender. I believe that men are given the gift of desire to protect, and women the gift of desire to nurture.

I also believe that like all gifts, there is the chance that the gifts might be temporarily unavailable- whether by our own doing, or the doing of someone else (such as abuse).

I say temporarily unavailable because every once in a while, we can see glimpses of it. I saw glimpses of my husband wanting to protect me before the shame of the addiction shut it down. Recently I've been seeing more of it- and it is incredibly confusing what my emotional response is to it (but that's another blog post). But despite the adversaries best efforts to snuff that gift, I don't believe it is possible to snuff it out entirely because it is a gift that is built into us- like a car stereo.

It's funny, because when you are in the midst of an addiction, you don't even know that it is missing.  I sincerely thought that I was just an oddball because the thought of children just "was never appealing to me."  And it doesn't necessarily mean just the nurturing of children per say,  I cold turkey quit, and after about six months of sobriety, I nurtured the heck out of my husband... problem was that he was consumed in his addiction and pushed me off so many times that I went into survival mode.

I believe that being in trauma robs me of my gift of nurturing. When I first had my son, I think heavenly father blessed me with a surge of nurturing, but after a few months of being a mom with a zoned-out husband who kept looking at porn, I tried to numb the pain- and I think that also numbed my ability to nurture.

Okay here is my point in all of this: 

It's impossible for me to selectively numb. I can't just numb pain and sadness. I can't avoid the trauma. I can't run from it. I not only hurt myself by doing so, I hurt those I love- like my little guy. The greatest gift I can give my son is to actually look at the hard issues. It's ignoring those issues that has numbed my ability to truly feel joy and happiness- and the desire to nurture. 

Reflections

I went to my sister's Bachelorette party tonight.

I mean, need I say more? Every WOPA reading this can probably relate and read into that one sentence and just sort of know what is coming next.

I actually had a pretty good time. The food was great, the conversations were pretty fun. The first part was mostly just like a bridal shower. It wasn't until the second half that any of the "naughty" stuff came out when she opened up presents... I felt like I was watching the whole thing on TV. I would nod knowingly to the other married women and laugh at how the unmarried women just speculated and giggled. 

I feel like I have come a long way. In the past, I know that my instant feeling would be to instantly push the addiction onto other people. You know, kind of a "just you wait until you've been married for 10 years and your husband tells you he has a porn problem." But at this point, I have met so many hurt women by this illness that I sincerely wouldn't wish this upon my worst enemy.

Mostly I left feeling okay- good even. But as I drove home and reflected, I got a strong feeling in my gut that I just couldn't identify.

But then I saw my husband when I got home and I knew what it was that was weighing on me. 

I am sad. I am grieving the loss of something that I don't think I ever really had: A healthy sex life. It's funny, but I couldn't joke about it. I couldn't do much more than nod my head one way or the other. It's funny because even my sister noticed and asked "is this weird for you?" and then to her friends "we don't talk about this stuff in our home." Which is true. We don't- but that wasn't the reason why I was quiet. 

I was quiet because I couldn't comfortably talk about any of my own sex life because mine is so riddled with confessions of acting out- followed by weeks of me not feeling safe enough to even touch in bed due to trauma flashbacks, let alone have sex with him. 

I didn't want to think about that while I was there. It was nice to just hear happy wives talking about their healthy sex lives and know that there is such thing in the world. Honestly, it was refreshing in a way.

Then I got home and it was just weighed so heavily on my chest- and I got pretty damn angry/sad. And realized that this is another thing that this addiction stole from me. My sister being the spiritual gem that she is also shared a quote from Elder Holland about how intimacy between a man and a woman literally bonds a man and a woman physically and spiritually. She talked about how that is the part of it that she really wants,.  It was so sweet, and I could tell that the spirit was there when she said it.

I mean, isn't that what we all want? Isn't that what we crave for when we are intimate? I know I do. I guess that is the part the hurts-- that is why this is so traumatic for the wives.  It takes a piece of our soul that we bonded to this man we are married to and makes us question it.

But for me, there is good news. Because I have an older brother who has my back. And he has yours too, if you'll let him.

 4 ¶Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed

First check the label

Shower time is my thinking time. My mind races a mile a minute, and I come up with some of my best plans. My very wise mother-in-law says it is because there is no technology to distract our brains, and it is the only time we have our thoughts all to ourselves. Today in the shower while I was thinking about one of the triggers I had the night before, I half-mindedly pumped the bottle of shampoo and tried lathering it into my hair, but it just wouldn't sud up. So I added more water to it thinking that was all it needed. When that didn't work, I inserted a thought into my already very distracted brain "Man my hair is greasy today!", and I pumped another handful of soap into my hair, when that didn't work, it had my full attention. I mean I have a pixie cut, really, I don't need that much soap to suds up the little amount of hair that I have! I started thinking about just how greasy my hair was, thinking about how gross I was for having grown over-active grease pores in my scalp overnight. When the third pump didn't work, I added a fourth thinking surely this last pump would do the trick... and it didn't! I scrubbed really fast hoping the speed would activate the suds. Doing a combination of both sort of worked, but not really- it still felt like it needed more soap to get the suds going. I felt like a greasy goblin!

I was out of options- I mean there really isn't much to washing your hair- so I decided to just look at the soap- maybe my son had dumped out the bottle and filled it with water- wouldn't be the first time that's happened. But then I remembered the consistency- it wasn't super watery, it was rather thick actually. Frustrated at this point- I looked at the label. And there it was as clear as day: Conditioner.

I angrily laughed. I had just spent a good five minutes trying to suds up conditioner! My conditioner bottle and my shampoo bottle are exactly the same- the are the same color and they have the same smell. 

I was immediately hit with a lesson to learn from that experience: Before looking at the logical reasons why my hair wasn't sudsing up, I had gone to the immediate conclusion that something was wrong with me rather than something being wrong with the situation itself. It's a lesson that I have to learn over and over again- and it applied to the trigger that I had been thinking about while this all was happening.

After the intensive, J and I have been working on our independent recoveries. It is HARD WORK. Surrendering EVERY trigger is exhausting- but I felt everynight that I was going to bed with a clean plate and without any resentment buildup for me to deal with the next day.

I trusted him to be doing the same exhausting work- and to be coming up with plans on how he was going to deal with the triggers if they happened in the future, and not sharing his lapses with me unless he surrendered them first and then had a plan to show me the work he was doing to avoid it happening again.

Here's the lesson: I had walked down at midnight because I had been watching Downton Abby later than I really should have, and decided at the end of it all to at least try to find some sort of healthy physical outlet that I could use to feel connected to my body physically. I found a flyer online for a  co-ed softball league! I was so excited I jumped out of bed and went down to the couch where my husband is sleeping right now, to so him the flyer. When I got down there I saw that he was watching a show on his iPad. I was instantly triggered but do you know what my mind automatically told myself? "Oh, it probably isn't that show that he told you earlier that day that he wouldn't watch anymore- he told you he wouldn't- what's wrong with you? Just trust that he is doing his work." So I ignored the fact that I was triggered and showed him the flyer, and went up to bed.

Fast forward to 2:00  in the morning: I wake up to my little guy crying so I got up to go help him. J is in the hall looking like he has been  up for a long time. I get triggered because linking the two of those triggers together is alarming. But my brain refuses to acknowledge the fact that I'm triggered because it instantly thinks "Man, you are so flipping tired from going to bed so late, you shouldn't trust what your eyes are telling you right now- just because you look a certain way when you wake up at two in the morning doesn't mean that J has to look that way too."

Did you see what I did in both of those triggers:

I ignored my needs because I told myself that I was the problem.

But if I would have just looked at the facts just like I looked at the label on the conditioner bottle I would have seen this:

1. No matter what show he is or isn't watching, seeing J alone in the dark on a device is triggering. Period. End of story.

2.  After seeing that first trigger, it is also triggering to see him looking wide awake at 2:00 in the morning.

3. I have a right to raise a red flag when he says he is going to do something and then he doesn't. Like he said he was going to go running and then watched shows all day instead.

That is what it says on the dang label. There is nothing wrong with me for not trusting him yet. Just like I will be in the shower for the next few days: I will definitely be looking at the label before I pump any soap into my hand because I don't 100% believe that is going to be in the same spot every time like it was before.

I trusted after this weekend that he would do the work and that would be the end of it. But he didn't. And I don't trust him. And that's okay- because trusting him makes me feel crazy right now. I'm learning. I gave him a little bit of trust, and it made me feel like there was something wrong with me because I didn't allow myself to look at the facts because I wanted to trust that he was working his full recovery.

Truth is, that I was right in my triggers. He did act out. It hurts so much this time because I finally felt like we were on the same page about recovery. We had moved from almost divorce in my eyes to turning things around. This time confused me, but not really. I am going to keep doing the exhausting work- because divorce or not divorce this is my new life, and I am learning to love and embrace it. If he chooses to do his work instead of cutting corners then we are working towards the same end goal and in the end it will work out between us. If not, we are moving farther apart and that leads away from each other.

For the next little bit, it is just a wait and see situation.

The long and short of it

The good: I went to a weekend intensive at Addo Recovery with my husband and gained so many valuable tools that I need to process on here how I can apply them into my daily life.

The bad: After I asked for the five days, he didn't leave. He did invite me to go to the intensive with him and to a bishops interview with him and I feel like those both went well. He asked me on a date and that went pretty well. 

The hard truth: red flags have been thrown- bottomlines have been broken, and I don't know if I even want this to go any further. However. The intensive made me think about the reason behind what I was doing before and I want to really drink deeply in my own recovery again. No matter what happens, I am done numbing. I am done taking the easy road- I am ready to take the road that leads to the lasting happiness- I am ready for that change of heart. I'm in your hands, Lord.

Clarity when I want to see it.

Wow- writing my last post was just nerve-racking but so healing for me. It's so weird to feel so vulnerable and scared at the same time- My old therapist calls it vulnerability hangover. I totally had it. I was too scared to look at the comments so I just didn't! haha! But thank you for your kind words. Because I feel like my addiction is something that I have overcome, and that it's not the main cause of my trauma right now, it isn't going to be the main theme of my blog. I just wanted to have my whole story out there and the whole picture. It was hard to feel like I was being completely open and honest on here when I felt like I was hiding something. So thank you again for your words of support and love, tears were shed over here.

Part of what forced me to get back on the blog is that I have to admit something: I have been just plain awful at my bottom-lines and boundaries. AWFUL.

I was surprised to get a phone call from one of my old group friends that I hadn't heard from in a while who's husband was 8 months sober... and really missed talking about bottom-lines and boundaries and sticking to them in the way that we used to talk about it in group. Her hubby had acted out and she stuck to her bottom-line of kicking him out of the house.  She had moved out of state and away from family, and it was just so inspiring to see her automatically stick to her bottom-lines after 8 months of not having to.

And then here I am with a husband who acts out about once a week now, moved to a place that is closer to my family, and all of my bottom-lines are gone to pot. Seriously, they have slowly been inching back from "sleep on the couch" to "just don't touch me when we are in bed." Slowly but surely. 

And then yesterday happened: I got a disclosure that he had looked at porn twice while in the same room as our son. Granted it was while my little guy was sleeping- but I have a STRICT boundary and associated bottom-line with that. My Boundary: I do not ever want to have my son exposed to porn by his father. My bottom-line is this: Three strikes and your out. When I introduced that bottom-line (before I even knew what a bottom-line was) to my husband it was the first time I had found out that during one of the newborn night-shifts that he had looked at porn with the newborn in his arms. I told him in no uncertain terms that it was not okay with me- and that that was where I was drawing a line. He agreed with me, and I created the 3-strike rule. In my mind even THAT was generous. I didn't want there to be a second or a third time. EVER. As much as it hurts to get a "normal" disclosure, this kind of disclosure just rips up my insides. 

So yesterday morning, I got that disclosure which was strike three. I took a moment and took a shower and sobbed and sobbed. As a wife it hurt, but as a mother I feel like I have a job to do- to protect my child from this addiction. It is so heartbreaking when you bring a child into the mix. I knew what I needed to do: I needed to take some time for myself and reset my bottom-lines and boundaries. I also needed a bit of separation from my hubby to see if distance and space is what I needed. In my gut I knew what I needed to do- I needed to ask him to leave- and after some contemplation, 5 days seemed to be about what I needed from him. I prayed for peace and clarity, and thank heavens I did because I didn't expect what came next. 

So I went back in after my shower and I told him what I needed him to do. And he sat in shame and then he verbally attacked me. He hit every single part of me that he knew would hurt me- but I was able to see the reason why he was doing it.  I was blind-sited and hurt- but unwavering. He tried manipulating me- but I was able to see through it and held my ground.

It started to get worse and worse so I left with my son to drop him off at my parent's house, and I was able to hold it together until I saw my sister and I just broke down. I had a good cry- and luckily my sister was super supportive and told me that she would keep it on the DL- and started towards home again to get ready for a dentist appointment I had with my sister in law, but saw that the car was still at the house- he still hadn't left! I wasn't ready to see him again, so I went and used my tanning punch pass. That always relaxes me, and I was able to get my wits about me again.

As I drove back, I got a few texts from him apologizing for the words he had said. I was detached. Honestly I didn't care whether he apologized or not, I knew that he had been in addict mode that whole time and that he always regrets what he says when he is in addict mode. He does anything he can do to get what he wants.

The point is, that this is a hot topic of conversation- we really can't talk about it for more than maybe ten minutes before it gets infused with drama. He doesn't understand why my need for this time overrides him doing his own recovery work. I don't understand why- if he really wants this marriage to work- he won't give me the time and space that I need so that I can get myself into a healthy place and then work my boundaries and bottom-lines in a healthy way. THAT will help our marriage more than anything else could. I don't understand why he all of a sudden stopped supporting my bottom-lines. He can work recovery outside of the house- it is possible- it is plausible. I know that when setting a bottom-line, you have to be willing to do the thing that you are asking him to do if he says no. So this time when he said no, I started looking for places to stay, and he said fine he would leave. But then he didn't and it was late at night and he slept on the couch. For the last two nights.

So here is what I am clinging to right now:

1. We have an intensive therapy session tomorrow night and all day on saturday. I really hope that we can both get some clarity

2. The peace and relief that I felt when I just knew that I needed him to live somewhere else

3. The fact that while he is still in the house almost all day everyday that he is trying to give me a lot of space. At least there is that.

Here is what we are doing while we are in survival mode until therapy on friday night: We are doing an "in-house separation" He sleeps on the couch and we avoid each other. It works for now- sort of. He keeps saying that he is going to do one thing, but then he changes his mind and tries to cling on and hold on to us even tighter like he is going to lose us. 

I don't know. It's weird. I hate it. But I have clarity when I want to see it, and I have peace that I will come to the right conclusion as hard as it may be. Right now I am trying to still do the things that I was going to do when I asked him to leave the house for the 5 days.