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?
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