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Destroyedwife80,

That’s exactly how I feel about healing. I’m ok with trying to heal myself but I am not giving in too easily on the marriage healing. It will be a very long time before I would ever admit that I’m feeling good about the marriage. And forget the word forgiveness, ha! I feel that my H is riding my wave of emotions and trying to pacify me with nice gestures. Keeping me happy, therefore thinking everything is hunky dory.

I keep telling him that while I appreciate all his kind efforts to make things right, I’m still not right and will not be for quite some time. It took him 12 plus years to destroy my trust , he can wait a very long time to regain it.

Just because things look better on the outside it doesn’t mean that things are better. THey May appear to be more normal but don’t get too cocky that you’ve repaired this mess just yet.

I feel that he tries to distract me, like you would do with a child who is crying—

Oh look, a balloon, a puppy, a lollipop...and the tears are forgotten . It’s a tactic to deflect. I have restaurant, concert and socializing overload and I know he plans all of these activities to keep me busy and distracted.

Does anyone’s H do this?

My SAWH's therapist told him that he * will * relapse.

He is very bothered by this.

He says he has no urges to go back to any of the behaviors relating to his addiction , but fears that he will someday.

He is trying hard to work through his issues , even though the therapy is taking him to places he doesn't want to go.

He had a sort of relapse back in November, although it was more of a KISA issue than porn related .

Maybe it's because I'm further out, and we've been doing this for a decade, now.

But my husband absolutely knows things aren't fixed because I can smile and laugh with my kids, or because I take pride in finishing a project or doing well in school.

He knows he's dug himself deep and that he's lucky I'm still here.

As for the rest. I too will avoid sleep at all costs. And stress eat everything that I can.

I do try to avoid it, because all it does is hurt me. I'm better at food than sleep. We have considered sleeping separately to see if that might help.

I have to use a ton of self-talk to not be my own worst enemy.

Who-

My husband's CSAT picked up on the fact that my husband didn't really "get it." I'm sure my husband's CSAT probably felt the same way that DH will relapse.

My husband wasn't really willing to embrace the fact that he's an addict. Like, accept in the pit of his stomach..Not until DDay 2.

Now my husband gets that he's an addict, and he has to tend to his addiction, urges or not. I think he also realizes now that he can have urges, but that doesn't mean he has to act out on them. This piece was also missing after working with a CSAT after DDay1.

Statistically speaking, the numbers aren't good for SAs.. I've forgotten what they are...but half of SAs don't make it a year to sobriety. The 5 year numbers are even worse.

My husband is trying hard too. But, like everyone else has said...it's a long, long, long process. This was lost on both my husband and myself the first time around.

Secondtime , so far my H has gone for close to 18 months with no porn viewing.

He hadn't seen his AP since 2016 , but it was distance more than putting an official end to it.

He cut ties with her the day after Dday

I was just thinking of ways to keep him honest and it just occurred to me that he opened a new debit account. He didn't hide it , but now I am thinking that I should have access to it too.

I do not want to police him , but can't completely trust him either.

Shocked different therapists will have different opinions about your H; your H may have different opinions about himself after many sessions of talk over much time. There's no objective test for SA-But many years of repetitive, seemingly compulsive behavior is not something to just forget about.

My H is more than 3.5 years out and, as far as I know, is not dealing with the kind of urges, temptations, thoughts, fantasies that many of the men in his program deal with daily--some almost hourly--it sounds awful. But he betrayed me, his marriage, and himself for nearly 12 years and did so weekly-twice weekly--and he so, as far as Im concerned, his continued involvement in the program, his continued contact with his sponsor, is a basic requirement for our being together and my continued participation in SANON is a requirement for my peace of mind.

I guess it's about my H taking full responsibility for the very sick and deprived choice he made to handle his stress--irrespective of labels.

And as far as urges-what guarantee that they might not return? Seems that that MC you first visited should have been putting more thought and energy into helping your H realize how unhealthy and destructive his choice rather than offering categorical statements meaning little.

In Paula Hall's book, she has a chapter on things to think about in staying or leaving. One of the risks she talks about is:

"Your partner refuses to work at the cause of the addiction - recovering from addiction isn't simply about stopping behaviours, but working on the root causes of the addiction. If your partner is refusing to develop a deeper understanding of what led them into addiction and to work on resolving those issues, then you may decide that the risk of relapse is too great."

ashestophoenix

[This message edited by ashestophoenix at 3:32 PM, March 11th (Monday)]

Shocked and Destroyed -

My healing is to give me the ability to know what I need to do, stand on my own.

Also, we have established he will be in therapy, groups, etc, for life. If he’s not I’m out. If there isn’t progress, I’m out.

Also - my gut has been right each time, it’s just for 32 years I was gaslit.

Not any more. I am learning to trust my gut.

I have my own bank acct, it’s small, but it’s bring added to monthly. It’s agreed it’s not part of any divorce agreement. I have a plan on what I will do if I need to go.

I will not allow myself to live a painful life

Wow Ashes, --that is really scary stuff not really knowing the cause of the addiction.

I can't say my H wasn't willing to explore but neither he nor any of the three or four therapists he visited after D-day had any notion of a "cause" as such--just a sense of the effect. The activity was escapist and much like Shocked's first MC said, he could afford it (both the time and the money) and he enjoyed it.

He assumed no-one including me, his employer, his neighbors, would ever find out nor would he get arrested. Hours and hours spent on delving; thousands more dollars spent on analyzing, talking, probing, but no underlying "cause" --just a description of a mind that knew no shame, no guilt, no sense of self; no sense of discomfort and until discovery, feeling no negative consequence, no life "out of control" and no problem, no impediment to indulging the habit; quite the contrary-- just an experience of each visit as "nice" --just "an escape from stress" and, Im sure, a serious sense of entitlement and no morals--no ethical qualms, no problem looking at himself in the mirror each day.

He rejected the term "fun"--but at some point, what may have started as a lewd temptation in the local newspaper--"body rub" turned into a way of life. A habit that would finally cost over $300,000 and his marriage.

So will his apparent inability to dig deep, really explore his inner life, his seeming inability to self-examine--or even have a notion of what that means--mean a resurgence of his creepy ways in the future? Maybe though now there's hardly the same budget and he no longer controls the $$$. It's all sad and creepy and pathetic whichever way it goes.

Shocked- mine 100% suffers from the delusion that he is pacifying me with shallow gestures & thinking everything is A-ok. It's not.

I feel like their entitled, unsympathetic, out-of-touch-with-reality mindsets bring them to this place after D-Day. Like, thinking 'it wasn't so bad'...I'll just plan extra date nights or do nice things for her...order presents from Amazon and do more dishes. Surely THAT will patch this misunderstanding up. For me that's like a band-aid on someone who's limbs have been blow off by a bomb. That is exactly what I feel the extent of the damage to our marriage has been.

EVEN if my SAWH would spring into action and become the perfect shining example of a healing SA, did everything needed for R...there are like 2-3 things I don't think I can EVER forgive. And if he admitted them to me outright, I would have to be done. Instead he drags on with the lies and denial and I just never really feel like I know for sure he did those specific things.

I'm sure everyone has seen this but just thought I would share, just in case. It's a "Ted Talks" about Sex Addiction. Very interesting!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qf2e3XZ8Tw

Very hurt,

Tried copying the link but can’t seem to be able to.

Does this TedTalk have a more specific title?

I’d like to listen to it.

Thank you

The mods frown on posting links that have not been pre-approved by then. I suggest that you give a coat description including titles and people can Google it.

I think it's a way to avoid spam, trolls and viruses.

Thanks for all your posts. Every bit of information you share about your situation helps me analyze my H's behaviour. This forum makes me stronger to continue to search for the truth; both regarding his habit and our marriage.

Interestingly, My H's CSAT told himt that he is months from going back to his old habits. He was defensive and insulted by her comment. Says that because she's an addiction therapist she will determine that everyone is addicted to something.

Told him that then his job is to prove her wrong; both by his continuted positive actions and by getting involed in group work to see how different he is from "those people" as he calls them.

Because he claims he has no interest in porn, that he's different from most. True that many books do concentrate on the porn habit but my H chose paying for sex on a table as his drug of choice. . How is that different or any better?

Marji, creepy and pathetic sums it up for many of us here.

ick, ugh, gross, barf are also sounds/words that come to mind.

The mods frown on posting links that have not been pre-approved by then. I suggest that you give a coat description including titles and people can Google it.

I think it's a way to avoid spam, trolls and viruses.

Sorry, let me explain a little. This is a "Ted Talks" entitled: We Need To Talk About Sex Addiction, and moderated by Paula Hall. It's 17 minutes long and very interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qf2e3XZ8Tw

If you can't pull up the link, you can google "We Need To Talk About Sex Addiction" and you will see it.

Because he claims he has no interest in porn, that he's different from most. True that many books do concentrate on the porn habit but my H chose paying for sex on a table as his drug of choice.

My SAWH was the same way but he chose prostitutes instead of massage parlors. I believe him because I know he knows that I would definitely prefer porn over prostitutes, but he told me prostitutes. Ugh!!

SAHW has finally found a sponsor for his SAA group,and I'm so happy for that. For my SAWH, it was very important that he find another executive, so that he can relate to him on an intellectual level. He found someone that is still happily married (very important to me), and an attorney. He is a very strict sponsor, so my SAWH has to call him every morning as well as attend 3 meetings per week. He was already doing 2 meetings per week so we figured out how he could add one more into his weekly schedule. He's also required to tell me if he has a relapse, but I'm not sure if he would admit that to me or his sponsor. I'm hoping if that ever happens, that he will know that both of us love him and he could admit that.

I'm really trying to work on me and healing myself, as I have been beating myself up since last May (2018) when it all came out. I know it's not my fault that this happened but my head will not let go. I've beaten myself up so much and tried to better myself because I feel like it's partly my fault. My heart knows that it's not true but I'm so screwed up in the head from all this that I feel like I need more therapy than my SAWH. Does anyone else feel that way??

Very hurt,

Just so you know, massage parlour workers are prostitutes.

They sell all kinds of sex under the massage experience label.

I am not experienced in excessive porn use issues with my H (yet-who knows), but I’ve read enough here to know that it just as hurtful and damaging to a marriage.

As for feeling like you need more IC than your husband?. Remember that we have been victimized. Our world was turned upside down on DDay.

Our H’s knew full well what they were doing while we lived life naively and innocently not knowing that their bodies, hearts and souls were not with us.

Putting aside the physical betrayal, every single special moment, every challenge, every milestone, every plan for the future is now but an illusion. A pretend relationship, parenting and marriage.

Your loving and trusting nature have been raped.

He did that to you and your family. You did not.

As for this being partly your fault. Let me ask you a few questions which I bet you will answer no to:

Did you know he was doing this?

Did he warn you he would unless you changed this or did that?

Did you drive him there?

Did you give him money to go?

Did you ask him how his day was at the brothel?

All ridiculous questions to illustrate that his actions were planned, deliberate and intentional. They never imvilvedbuour permission or approval. Regardless of your marital issues at the time you never said

“Hun, were not getting along, why don’t you spend countless hours looking for a prostitute to your liking”. That will help our marriage.

Addiction or no addiction, he enjoyed what he did and thought he had a good thing going. I’m not sure how you found out but my H admits that he’d still be at it had I not found out.

For 12 years I put up with very little sex, his moodiness, irritability, impatience and unhappiness. Had no clue what he was up to. I’m sure you didn’t either.

If I want to go to IC till the cows come home, I will.

And that, my dear is my answer to your question about feeling that you need more IC. I know I do.

I’ll let you decide.

I feel like I need more therapy than my SAWH. Does anyone else feel that way??

I actually feel like my SAWH needs more therapy than I do because of his addiction and discovering what is behind it. He has a lot to unpack.

As for my therapy , I do it to help me cope with the trauma that I have suffered and also to take care of me. I look forward to it because I have grown a lot as a person since finding the right IC.

I will continue with her for as long as I can or want to

Veryhurt, I agree with what shocked123 said.

My whole life was suddenly ripped away from me, everything was based on a lie. He knew what he was doing, knew the risk even if he chose to ignore it. I didn't. It hit me like a wall of bricks.

So, yes, it makes total sense to me that you feel you need a lot of IC. Get it, make yourself and your healing a priority. Go easy on yourself. Be kind to yourself - this is not your fault.

Veryhurt As Shocked explains, the women and girls who work in the happy ending massage parlors are prostitutes. And she's also right on point in explaining your H's unhealthy choice is no way your fault.

Men who violate their marriage, their spouse and partners, men who violate themselves as well as the women they are using, are very flawed human beings. Their ability to lead a sick and deceptive double life is their sickness not ours though their choice is extremely destructive and causes great trauma that yes, requires us to get help.

I don't know that I need more therapy than my H but I know I do still need help in continuing to deal with the new reality my H's LTA has created.

It's good that your H is attending group; good that he has found a sponsor that he respects and good that you are comfortable with his sponsor as well. If you have not already you might also try working with a SANON type support group; a good IRL group along with a good IC can help you better realize you are in no way responsible for what your H did.