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!

"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?

"I can choose to be sadder if you want."

When I told my husband that I didn't feel that he felt bad enough about his porn addiction, acting out and about how I felt; he said that for the first time in ten years he didn't feel like he had to repent before giving a priesthood blessing, that he could ask for inspiration while preparing for a lesson and that he felt really happy.  He was trying not to live in shame.  He said, I'm sorry you're behind me and in the anger phase.  I can chose to be sadder if you want."

How do you answer that?  Obviously, since I've only known he lied to my face for 22 years and is a porn addict for less than 4 months I might be a little behind him in processing.  I think if he was capable of more empathy he might be a little sadder.  It's hard being married to an emotionally stunted man.  Because he's changed a lot in the last 4 months I forget that he still has addict thought patterns and lacks empathy.