More Crap

I've been talking a lot to my husband.  I was so mad at him for minimizing and lying!  He's following me around like a puppy but I feel like I'm the dog that doesn't learn from being kicked.  I realized that I am not going to be married to a sex/porn addict the rest of my life.  It would be tough.  I'm not used to budgeting anymore and it would be tough dealing with my severely autistic 15 yr-old.  But I could do it.  I realized with my cold anger that I could literally wake up one day and be completely emotionally done.  That is why my former sister-in-law is facebook friends with her ex-husband.  She was completely emotionally done with him.

So, moving forward J better not do this again.  I won't do this for long.

I think he hasn't worked hard enough on his recovery.  He wasn't completely honest.  He minimized.  I feel like he made a conscious, sober choice to look at porn.  He only told me about the porn when he called me the next morning. He didn't tell me about masturbating until I asked him the next day.  He called his sponsor a day after he told me and talked to the bishop 4 days after.

Why don't men receive any consequences?  I feel that porn addiction doesn't affect whether or not they'll get a calling, be allowed to bless or baptize, go to the temple.  I don't think the church really fundamentally takes this seriously.

I have one boundary:

No man that has looked at porn within a year can give me a blessing.

Because I don't think they have priesthood authority because they haven't been honoring their covenants. And I don't get the benefit of the priesthood.  I might as well just pray for myself.

And, yes this is going to make for an awkward conversation with my bishop when I ask him, "have you looked at porn in the last year?"  But I am done with getting less power from priesthood ordinances than I deserve from men who have accepted the responsibility of holding the priesthood!

I hate him a little bit right now

He is a lying, liar.  Who only told me half the story when he called.  Then he gets the brilliant idea to come home early.  I do not want to see him so soon.  I'd rather he come home on Friday rather than tomorrow morning.  He is taking the red-eye home.  I can only use swear words to describe him right now.

He was going to trade in his laptop for a new one.  I said that was convenient so he's bringing it home instead.  He also deleted the app he looked up porn on .... also convenient.

Well, he made it a year and 3 days

...and then he screwed up.  This morning he called and asked if I could talk.  It had been so long that my throat stayed clear and I said, "yes" easily.  I wasn't worried.  He said he was depressed and couldn't sleep.  I had told him things about my mental health that made him feel guilty and I had emotionally betrayed him and he was reeling from that.  I hadn't done anything to hurt anyone but me but I wasn't honest about it at the time.  I actually only term what I did as a betrayal because I read the book I love you but I don't trust you by Mira Kirshenbaum.  It's a great book, really insightful and because of it I realized I had a limited view of betrayal and that actually spending money earmarked for something else (for example) could be a major betrayal to another person.  But I apologized, promised never to do it again and I was pretty sure we had resolved it.  He flew to California on Sunday.  He said he couldn't sleep, couldn't stop thinking about it.  He got up and on the computer and when something came up he didn't turn away.

I have a few thoughts.  Why didn't he already have explicit results filtered out?  I search for things ALL THE TIME on the internet and pictures of naked women don't come up.  He said he rationalized to himself that because he didn't watch videos it wasn't so bad.  He said he looked at pictures for about 30 minutes.  He has promised to never use incognito windows so if his searches are not in his history I won't think he is being honest.  If he has not reached out to his sponsor or the bishop by the day he gets home I think this might be a big problem.

...

It was later that I looked at my email and saw an email from him from an hour before he called mentioning a bakery he wanted us to check out.  It's tone was breezy.  Why?  That doesn't make me feel comfortable.  I start thinking things like he wasn't planning on telling me.

Blah

Wow, my husband hasn't looked at porn since July 24, 2013 but I still occasionally feel like crap.  And my marriage still feels like crap occasionally.  And I'm starting to believe that God doesn't value women as much as men.  Because it seems like everything is about them.

I think this article describes the first 5 years of my marriage

The Betrayed Spouse Cycle 

Maybe I better start working on resilience and trying to shift my world view.

Good Times

I think I've pulled out of the worst of it.  At least as long as my husband continues to recover.  I feel a little guilty about my husband's recovery.  Maybe a little survivor guilt?  Why did my husband choose to mostly tell me the truth within a month of my questioning?  Why was I lucky blessed enough to have a sister going through the same thing who could support me and fold me into her support network?  Why was I blessed to have so many resources?  And my husband blessed to instantly have a brother-in-law for a sponsor?  Why hasn't he slipped up once since July?

The biggest blessing was that I didn't know about my husband's sexual addiction until after he recognized the path he was on, didn't want it and was willing to change!

"Some things you do still bug me," said James

Isn't it suppose to be much better now?  Doesn't recovery equal happiness? No, because we're still two people who have to live together but now we've got all this extra baggage.  And by baggage I mean a history of lies, addiction, selfishness and other crap that has been added to our already difficult twenty-three year history.

My marriage has never been fantastic.  The first two years completely sucked.  We didn't even get through our honeymoon without fighting.  The first two years of our marriage we each were waiting for the other person to leave.  The next three were slightly better.  Then came autism, traveling for work, moving across the country, and job stress and a couple of years when we were both happy when he traveled.

I'm touchy and he's a man.  I guess that can be a recipe for disaster.

But in spite of it all I guess I just figured we were married and we would stay together because well, we were married and autism and a sort of fatalistic "this is my life" mentality.  But addiction was whispering something different in my husband's ear.  It was whispering, "you deserve more."  And "she's not enough."  I love how addiction always tells someone that the problems come from without never from within.  I think I'm probably enough like my dad that I'm difficult to live with.  I'm touchy  and have a temper.  My husband had to learn fidelity and grew up in a family where admitting fault meant that you were a worthless human being.  I never felt that my husband was completely committed to me and he was tired of everything being his fault.  Yet somehow, I want to say stupidly but it's not accurate because I didn't know about his sexual addiction so I'll say, in my self-absorbed state I assumed we would continue to live in our discontented state of matrimony because I only thought about how unhappy I was and not how unhappy James was too.

Our first five years make so much more sense now that I understand addictive behaviors.  My reaction used to be to "fight" rather than "flight."  Addicts justify, minimize, shift-blame and  rationalize.  Add those behaviors to a belief that admitting fault equals worthlessness, stubbornness and a tendency to hold grudges you get the worse qualities of my husband.  Pair him with a person (me) who is incredibly immature, sensitive, has an aversion to being wrong or stupid, and has a really high bar to believe someone is really sorry .... Well, it's kind of amazing we're still married.  But over time my reaction started to become "flight" because the "fighting" wasn't getting me the reaction I wanted.  I think I was giving up.

I think we're both individually good people with a lot of good qualities but I'm not sure that we're such good people together.  Or is that just marriage?  Most other married people seem to be happier.  Is that true?  Or do I just not know about the addictions and other crap in their marriages?  Do I just feel like this because my "honeymoon" period lasted three days?