More relapses

He was 7 1/2 months sober when he fell again.

I was prideful, I admit; I thought we were bulletproof. His perspective had shifted and he made me feel safe. For the first time in our marriage I had grown comfortable in my own skin, confident in the presence of my husband.

The first time was rough. I shook with anger as he confessed.

The second was when I was out of town for the weekend. About 5 days ago.

The third was last night.

F.

The last thing I want to do is go back to square one and I feel as though we’re inches away. I’m afraid of him again. His face is a source of pain and I tear up and look away anytime our eyes meet.

My spiritual director reminded me that my husband never confessed when he fell in our first 7 years of marriage; he never told me the whole truth; he never had good, healthy people to call if he felt tempted or relapsed.

And true, he didn’t have to tell me and I’m glad he did because snooping only fed my need for control, starved my trust in Jesus, and became a means of me to betray my husband.

My spiritual director also reminded me that my husband never sat and listened to me pour out my shattered heart in our first 7 years of marriage. He told me to take it to my counselor, but DH has open ears now.

So I have blessings to count. And the pain of knowing from the source is better than the pain of suspicion, digging around, confirmation, and a PTSD attack.

I want to make sure I keep track of those blessings, confident that as my husband and I are being made new after years and years of individual and shared brokenness, we have to stumble through walking before we run.

Hmmm…yeah. Still pissed.

I’m not deluding myself. His addiction to porn is still here. He still wants to give in to lust. It still hisses seductive lies in his ears. Next to those lies I feel so ugly. Here I am in early pregnancy with our fifth baby – awkward bump, extra weight, super tired, barfing, and useless around the house – and I learn that he’s ogling naked women in such incredible, photoshopped shape that I could never dream of competing with them.

Freaking fantastic.

I feel rejected. I feel like the real lie is the idea that my husband could want me at all or ever consider me attractive or beautiful. How could he?

The only hope I have is Jesus.

Son of David, have mercy on us. Save us.
Maris Stella, ora pro nobis.

Relapse is part of recovery

He had been sober for at least 7 1/2 months. That’s a long time.

And in that time I think his sobriety went to my head. I lost my humility and started to think he was immune to lust forever. I felt myself relax in his sobriety: I started to like my body – my I’ve-had-four-babies  body. I didn’t feel as threatened by other women like I had in the past.

Part of my Safety Action Plan was for him to tell me every day that I could trust him. And he did. And I did.

I didn’t say so, though. Not that his relapse was my fault, but he never really knew that I was starting to trust him or that I felt safe again.

But he came home, pulled me aside, and confessed his relapse. He cried. I cried. I told him I was angry. The past 24 hours have been a blur of emotion – taking deep breaths and thinking we’ll be fine; feeling helpless and wounded, crying so much I get a headache; pulling him close to me and laying my head on his chest because I don’t want to lose him to this or anything else. I can’t pick among compassion, pity, anger, sadness, or hope because I feel them all at the same time.

It’s easy to see his relapse as going back to square one; but Fr. K assured me that we’re still progressing. Before we started our joint and respective recoveries, I would have snooped to find out if he had relapsed instead of hearing it from the source; I would have stuffed my emotions and then had a severe anxiety attack, but instead I’ve cried openly in front of him and felt comfortable doing so. I’ve told him my fears instead of allowing them to build like before.

Prior to our recovery, he would have fallen and kept it secret. But this time it happened and he called Fr. K, his counselor, and a friend. They were all encouraging and real with him. He was honest with himself and with me – which is also a sign of progress.

It hurts because I trusted him and because in my pride, I thought we had overcome a huge battle and we were done with it. But we still have work to do apparently – both of us. The recovery period is supposedly 3-5 years, so we’ve got time.

So I’ll wait. Because I love him and I trust God.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of David, have mercy on me a sinner.
Our Lady Star of the Sea, pray for us.

When the past stared me in the face

He’s been sober since November. We’ve opened up to each other. We’re feeling safer and safer each day, shaking our heads at what used to be and crying tears of regret and pain.

I had a list of things I swore I could never tell him. That was a year ago and since then, I’ve been able to say everything. All that has come to pass makes me believe in miracles. I have confidence that God can save us from the deepest depths and darkest nights. Do you understand? I had no hope at all; only a sense of damnation to being merely tolerant at best of my husband til death did we part.

But that’s another post.

I’d like to preface this story with the fact that I wasn’t snooping. Though that temptation occasionally pops up, I resist for my sake and for his.

But this information I simply stumbled upon. In short, I learned that he fell quite deliberately the night I was in the hospital when our most recent child was born.

That bastard. 

I was calm when I saw the horrific evidence.

I’ve been exposed to porn before, but aside from a few seconds of it YEARS ago, I’ve never actually watched it. So I think it’s been easy for me to forgive based on the fact that I don’t know the full extent of what he’s been up to. But last night, seeing the movie he rented all that time ago and knowing exactly how bad the sexual content is (based on kids-in-mind.com), I hated him. He did it on purpose. He found a coupon code and used it so the movie would be free.

He watched porn.
On purpose.
While I was merely a few hours postpartum with our sweet baby – new, innocent, and pure.
On her birthday.

It began to sink in…

The phone rang not a minute later and it was him calling in from out of town to see how I was. “Fine,” I said flatly. It’s not going on anymore. That’s who he was. We’re healing now. He’s healing now. Knowing he’s in the middle of a huge project, I didn’t bring it up. If the incident had occurred yesterday, I would have given him an earful and let him sleep in the bed he’s made; but because our relationship has healed so much, I decided to save it.

But I’m obviously anxious for him to get home. And though I was calm last night, promptly going to bed after our brief call so I wouldn’t think about it anymore, I woke to a fresh episode of PTSD. My hands shook pouring my coffee and my stomach was in wretched knots. My mind was spinning and I struggled to breathe. I reeled from “catching” him so far after the fact.

Trying to gain control, I drew a long breath and blew it slowly from pursed lips. It’s over. It’s over. 

I’m having fantasies of just tearing into him with our littlest one on our hip. How could you? 

The tough part to swallow is knowing that awful movie isn’t the worst he’s ever seen. And only God knows what else he got into that night. It got an 8/10 on sexual content on Kids in Mind. I know he’s seen worse. I can’t imagine.

I feel used. Like trash. Disregarded after giving all of myself to him, bearing new life within me, and bringing her into the world. His wife lay recovering from labor and surgery, nursing a new baby, while he sat at home and filled his mind with sex.

He had the audacity to come to the hospital the next day and hold her and kiss me. If I had known, I would have snatched her away.

He lied. He lied. HE LIED.

That bastard. 

Jesus Christ, Son of David, have pity on me a sinner! Our Lady Queen of Purity, pray for us!

 

The hardest part wasn’t his addiction

Every Sunday, Bloom sends out a journal question.

Write about the hardest thing you have ever done or been through in your life. How did this “hard thing” influence your life?

Hands down, the hardest thing in my life has been coping with my husband’s addiction. Or not coping, rather. It wasn’t until last year that I began to address my own behaviors, realizing that the snooping was wrong, how prevalent the PTSD was, how I hated him. It’s like I stood back and saw the wreckage of my life brought on by his pathology as well as my own response, and tiny piece by piece tried to set my heart aright.

Before this I just made it harder for myself. Yes, it’s always been hard knowing about the pornography and the fact that he was poisoning his own mind and being so terribly and repeatedly unfaithful to me; and though detaching and stepping out of the way of porn’s wrecking ball isn’t something I couldn’t wrap my mind around or even begin to practice for a while, it’s the way to healing.

And I wonder if I postponed our shared recovery because of my own behavior. Would we have gotten better sooner if I had let myself get mad (because neither he nor I had allowed it) or blatantly told him that I wasn’t going to live with his addiction anymore? If I had been brave sooner?

Of course I can’t course I can’t sit here and torture myself over the What Ifs, but I suspect if the Addict’s Spouse were to push through fears and hesitations, then he/she would be set on the road to healing.

In our case, God’s timing was perfect. Is perfect.

I totally lost it about a year ago and shaken from a horrible PTSD episode, I reached out to my spiritual director. I started taking Bloom classes. I let myself feel royally ticked. off. after years of digital infidelity on my husband’s part. I got brave enough to be my own advocate and stand up for myself and ultimately for our marriage and him, too in a way. He went on a retreat and had a miraculous conversion. We are healing. We’re honest. He knows me fully now and everything I swore I could never, would never tell him, I’ve told him. AND he received it all with grace.

Could we have healed sooner? Maybe. But we’re healing now. And I’m so grateful. I love him and we know and see each other more deeply in our vulnerability.