Judged.

My husband has noticed my slump over the past week.

So today, he pushed himself under the bus in order to keep the house clean and take me to my favorite restaurant, and just have a "relaxing" day.

Today has been anything but relaxing.

Sheesh, I can finally see what my co-dependent self looked like from the other side.

When my husband was in a slump, I would go out of my way to plan his life, cook gourmet meals, keep the house spotless, and make his life as easy as possible. And then I would demand to know what work he was doing for his recovery. I just wanted to see that he was WORKING.

That's kind of what happened today. My hubby kept the house clean, let me take a loong shower, took me out to lunch, kept the babe entertained, ect. I was finally feeling motivated again, and ready to jump into life a new woman. However, tonight as I sat down to go over my schedule, my husband comes in and tells me that my behavior over the past week has driven him crazy, and that he just wanted to see that I was WORKING on getting out of my slump. 

Talk about a joykill.

I finally saw why I couldn't do my husband's work for him; it was a lesson learned. It was an annoying lesson to learn. I am so frustrated. I think I mentioned before that the major numbing part of my slump was watching a t.v. marathon, you know the netflix marathons that are so common in our culture. I'm not proud of it, and I have set up some pretty firm new bottom lines around them now.

It was just hard to have my husband come in and talk to me like he would his teenage girl. He talked about how hard it was for him to get rid of his laptop, and how much his life had been blessed because of it. He said that he wasn't trying to tell me to get rid of my laptop. Guys, he was treating me like I was one of the guys in his porn group, and I wanted to punch him in the face. Granted, I did get carried away with the T.V. dramas this week in order to numb from life. But I am a mother taking online classes, and having a laptop at home makes it possible for me to get homework done while my child is sleeping and my husband is at school. I am not exaggerating when I say that 90% of the work I do on my laptop is productive work. I am so frustrated at him for comparing all of my reasons for keeping it with the excuses he would give for holding on to his laptop. I am sorry, but I do not have a destructive addiction that I am trying to fend off. In fact, one of the most healing parts of my recovery has been this blog... something that would be nearly impossible to put time into if I didn't have my computer here at home. 

well, now I'm ranting.

It's just been a frustrating day, and I can't tell you how terrible it is to feel judged by the person that has hurt you so much, when he suddenly decides that it's time to beat the addiction, and you're having a hard time coping with it. Obviously coming from an emotional place as I write this... maybe it would be good to get some sleep and start up anew tomorrow.

Whew.

So... after I wrote my last post, I felt like I should encourage my hubby to call the elder's quorum president, just make sure it was okay. He did, and the elders quorum president called the bishop, and the bishop said no. I felt such a huge wave of relief. I didn't know why! I have been so anxious for the world to know about our journey, but when the time came, I just didn't feel good about it- so incredibly anxious. I don't know if I will ever be ready for the WHOLE world to know. I definitely want to help the recovery movement as much as I can, but I just don't think that I am ready to disclose... and I don't think I will ever be ready. It feels so relieving to say that. If it does end up happening, I will cope and hopefully spin it to my own good, but for now, I am completely content with only a handful of the people around me knowing.

After talking to my husband, i'm pretty sure I understand why it is such a hard thing for people to disclose. Pornography addiction today is tied in public opinion to child pornography. For people who don't understand the problem, they can be (rightfully) worried and doubtful, and want to keep their children away from the porn addict. My husband has never struggled with child pornography, but I can see how others could draw the wrong conclusion... I don't ever want my child to have to suffer because of his father's addiction. He will have struggles of his own, and I don't want this weighty subject to be one of them.

So for now, silence it is, and silence I am comfortable with. It is good to have our amazing family members and one close friend know about it. I think for now, that's all I need or want.

Prayers Wanted

My husband is teaching the lesson in Elders Quorum, and had another lesson prepared, but felt like he should share his story and the resources that helped him... I am nervous for the looks I might get for the next few weeks, but I feel like this is a good thing that needs to happen. Pray for me. 

They say you'll know

They say you'll know when your husband enters true recovery....

Well, for the first time, I know.

And knowing has made me bitter.

And admitting this has made me realize why my OWN recovery is so important.

Because we rely so much on our husbands recovery.

I was doing so great at my own recovery that I was completely blindsided to listen to my husband one day, and realize that all he really talked about was recovery.

It has become his life,

and even on his bad days, it has become his lifeline.
He's even starting up his own SA group...
It's awesome!

It's also weird.

I thought that I had come to this point where I was okay with my life the way it was, I had accepted it.

FACT- My husband was a recovering porn addict. 

FACT- I have tools that can keep me safe, and I know how to use them

FACT- I don't know how to transition into thinking that I may one day actually be expected to start trusting him again.

FACT- I have gotten so good at protecting myself from the hurt in healthy ways, that I don't know what to do when he isn't being ruled by the addiction completely.

So I stopped doing recovery work for the last week.

I haven't wanted to face it.

I started numbing myself with stupid t.v. marathons...

and I have been watching what I have been working for go down the drain:

No more self care

Scripture study is gone-zo

My house, which I had finally gotten to a manageable state is in absolute shambles

I have been skipping classes (Isolation)

It's been a rough go.

But I'm doing the hard thing right now, and I'm owning it, facing it head on, and finally, I am going to do something about it. My recovery doesn't stop as soon as his starts... My recovery will have to be with me for the rest of my life. It will have to stay with me to stay sane. I am realizing that healthy people tend to have these same life skills that I am just learning.

So here I am, committing to you, my dear internet friends, that I am back in the game. No more feeling sorry for myself. I don't want to go backwards, I am ready to go forwards. So, I am going to re-commit:

My number one priority is my dailies:

Self Care

Scripture Study,

Self Affirmations,

Boundaries,

and Scheduling.

These things keep me sane.

And these things will keep me healthy and strong, and keep me from going backwards.

Dear Future Sister-In-Law

Dear Future Sister-In-Law.

Hey. I'm sure we've already met, and if you're reading this, I'm sure you're struggling with the same struggles I am struggling with as I have been writing on this blog. I wanted to write and share where I am coming from, because I have a large role in my brother's porn story, and I don't want any hard feelings between us because of it. 

Being the oldest, and having only sisters closest to my age, we were all pretty naive about pornography. It was a scary word that I didn't quite get, but heard it was a problem among boys... but I thought that meant that it was only a problem among the rebels at school, not among the nice Mormon boys that I associated with. But as you now know, I married a nice Mormon boy, and I am learning that it is almost impossible to find one who has never ever had a problem with it. I count myself as lucky to have a husband who is as honest with me about it as he is. I am just setting the stage to where I come in on my brother's porn story.

You may already know, I am the person who first discovered the problem.We were up visiting my parents, and I needed something out of his room. Right before going in, I felt a rather odd and strong prompting to not knock before going in. I didn't see any images. I just saw saw my brother (I'm going to call him B for brother from here on out) on his phone with the same expression on his face that I had seen on my husband's face a million times- and my heart fell, it stopped. Honestly, before this happened, I had had some suspicions. You will learn, however, that when you have a significant other who struggles with a porn addiction, everybody suddenly seems a candidate for the same thing. Every man you see walking in the hall you think probably is addicted to porn, and every man who owns a smart phone, laptop, or tablet most definitely is. Great, right? So instead of acting on the suspicions I had revolving around my brother, I threw them away after having my mom ask him if he had a pornography problem, and hearing that he told her he didn't. 

Then, that day happened. It was right before church, and B was sick for the second week in a row and staying home from church, that it happened. I saw it, and I knew that I had three options: (1) deny that I saw it, it was so fast and fleeting, and I was so in shock that I hurried in and out and I could have told myself that it was my dang paranoid brain making things up... but that would be lying. (2) I could confront him much like I confronted my husband at the time, which was with hurt and anger, but I didn't really get anywhere with that strategy, so I opted for option number (3): Go tell mom. So I did. Right there, after church in the cultural hall, I pulled her into a quiet corner and told her because I couldn't wait anymore, it was killing me inside that my brother would have to go through this trial. We both cried, and I gave her advice as to therapy, and that this isn't something that just goes away, and she said that she would talk to dad and they would address it.

The next day, after my little family had gone home, I got a call from Mom, telling me that they had confronted my Brother, and that he had confessed that it was a problem, and that he wanted to take care of it. Before this had happened, we had seen a bit of a downhill in his behavior, you know, the typical addict: Lazy, Selfish, Irritable... the only problem is that those are also stereotypical behaviors for teenagers... so we didn't think any different about it. Mom and Dad put him into therapy, and we saw an intense transformation- He was helpful, thoughtful, and sweet, a whole new B. Therapy ended about 6 weeks later, and my family thought he was cured. My husband and I thought otherwise. I don't know if you know this or not by now, but this isn't something that just goes away and is "fixed." It just doesn't work like that, funny enough. It's a longitudinal addiction, and it takes longitudinal repairs and work. 

I'm sure you know the rest of the story, our stories should line up pretty nicely. But I wanted you to know that I am here for you, and I am thinking about you even now before I know even who you are. I love you already. I walked into his porn story when I myself was in a very high place of trauma from where my own husband was at, and I will admit that I panicked. I wish so many times that I had perhaps had the guts to talk to him after, to calmly come up with a different way to introduce it to my parents... but the past is gone, and honestly, I don't know what kind of a difference that would have made. I just want you to know that I did the absolute best I could when I was in that state of mind, and I want to be there for you if you ever get to that bad place. I love you already, girl!

Love,

Ashley

The most awkward person alive.

Dear world:

I am the most awkward person alive right now. Seriously,  the most awkward person ever. I don't like it. I don't know how to change it. I feel like the very social person that I used to be existed in another life. As egotistical as it sounds, I prided myself on my witty comments I could make on the turn of a dime. I could turn a conversation any which way I wanted. While conversation topics were pretty superficial, I enjoyed talking to people. A lot. And I miss that. I miss being able to effortlessly begin and end a conversation, and I miss knowing that I am entertaining whomever I am talking to rather than putting them to sleep. I can't seem to have conversations without having seriously the MOST AWKWARD silences these days. And it's like Old Ashley is looking out at the awkwardness and cringing. I recognize it, but I don't know what to do about it. I feel like a statue. It's weird because in the moment, I am searching for something to say- any old weather comment, SOMETHING. But nothing comes to mind. Gone is the quick thinking brain of before, and I don't know where it went. Part of me wants to blame it on the addiction, but I don't know if anybody else out there has had anything like this happen to them. 

My husband thinks that it is just that we aren't serving people enough, that we need to go talk to more people and it will go away. I think he may be partly right, but I don't think that's all of it. The hard part is that I don't want to talk about the addiction anymore. I want to move on with my life. Geez, I want to feel safe in my own home and invite people over and laugh over an apple cider. Doesn't that sound fantastic? I want to play a board game without getting a look of sympathy or a "how are you really doing?" before it starts. I want to have inside jokes again. I crave normality. When I hear the neighbors around me laughing and joking around, I wonder if I'll ever get that back again? We really are trying, we are doing our best to get out of the house and talk to people. We are just getting more awkward, though. We had dinner next door to our apartment with two other couples the other week, and the whole time, it was polite and interesting conversation with some occasional awkward pauses. We had to leave early to get our son to bed and after we left, I started hearing laughing and joking coming from over there, and when that happens, it's hard to feel like you're not the ones holding the party back.

While it is truly rewarding, and I definitely wouldn't consider switching a social life for the beautiful and excruciating work that we are doing, going through recovery is seriously the worst thing that I could have done to my social life. Our friends that know don't really associate with us anymore (not that we make any more of an effort to socialize back) and friends that don't know about the addiction seem to be keeping their distance. I think that I am getting so good at communicating on a deeper level to group members, that my brain isn't wired to automatically do the whole small-talk thing automatically. I literally have to sit there and think for about 2 minutes to come up with some witty remark that I can insert to the conversation- and by that time the conversation has moved on. I am hoping this is just a phase. PLEASE please pray that this just be a phase.... Amen. What do you think? Is this just a part of recovery work? I sure hope I'm not crazy. :) 

Thanks for hearing me out, internet friends, good to know you are there.

Ashley Out.

Thanksgiving Triggers

I decorated my christmas tree today- we went up into the mountains and cut down our own this year, it was... interesting. We went down to my parent's home, and I enjoyed the time that I had with my husband and son, but the rest of my family was out of sorts. My dad lost his job three months ago, and things are starting to get tight, I think in order to save money, my sweet mom may have started cutting her depression pills in half, and on top of it, my little sister and her two children are living with them, my little brother is dealing with his own pornography addiction and working towards a mission that he already has a call for... needless to say, tension is high.

While there I discovered another trigger, and I don't know how I can fix it- maybe talking it out on here I will be able to figure it out, or get some advice from other people who have gone through something similar? 

While we were at my parent's house, I was triggered multiple times, and I took it out on my hubby, thinking that it was just that he wasn't talking to me about recovery enough... (which was sort of valid, he didn't talk about it as much, but it is pretty hard to find time to reassure me when we are surrounded by family.) and I did have an experience with him there, I caught him watching T.V. alone while I was putting our son down for a nap, and a little bit after a scandy lady came on, and I was pretty triggered by that... but I talked to group members, and I took care of that.

But what the real issue that is bothering me is that I am triggered when I see my brother. I am the one who caught him when his porn addiction came to light. Since then, he has gone to therapy. But that is it, and there is no more support besides his bishop and my parents. Over Thanksgiving Break, he was in total addict behavior- rude, selfish, lazy, and it was like watching my husband two years ago (his low) all over again. My brother would sit on the couch and numb himself all day- saying he was watching mormon comedy, but he had the screen hidden so that no one could really see what he was doing- Just like my husband did. He was sitting in the exact place on the couch where my husband had slipped time and time again. If he wasn't on his phone, he was numbing himself watching T.V. He was defensive, annoyed and angry if anyone interrupted him. He avoided family activities so he could stay home alone- like my husband did. My grandma mentioned how proud she was of his mission call, and he couldn't look at her- much like how my husband would look if I mentioned how grateful I was that I could ask him to give me a blessing at anytime. I was triggered, and I was annoyed with my husband the whole time I was there.

It wasn't until I got home that I realized exactly what I was triggered by, but now I don't know how to handle taking care of it. With my husband, I can tell him what behavior is triggering me, but I don't feel like I have the right to say that to my brother. My parent's are still not very educated about it, and very much in denial- I am afraid if I were to say something that our whole family dynamic would be thrown off. The only thing I can think of doing to keep myself safe is (1) lots of self-care while I am visiting there, which is virtually impossible or (2) avoid going home- which makes me sad to think about having to do.

Any ideas? Advice is welcome.