Recovery Nation

Welcome back.
Nellie

Exercise 11

I wrote my letter. Afterwards, I couldn't tell if I am at peace or just numb to what is happening to me. I have strong feelings that pass by me regarding what my partner is doing, how it is affecting our lives, our marriage, our children. But I don't really want to get lost in
them. This is stuff that I learned from my Buhddist practices and could be the reason that I've lasted this long with a sense of well-being.
Feelings arise, I acknowledge them and I have practices to release the internal energy that builds with them.

I think the most important realization that I walked away with after writing the letter was that I have not had that bubbly, just rises
up kind of joy in my heart for several months. He's been withdrawing again and I've been pickin' up the slack without noticing.

Part B

You know, I started this letter, but we are in the midst of the after-time of a relapse and I just don't have the juice in me to write
this one right now. I'll come back to it.

Exercise Twelve

A. Describe where you are now in terms of your response to the discovery of your partner's addiction. Not where you were last month, or where you hope to be next month. Where are you right now?

After experiencing his recent relapse, I am much more aware of the physical impact it had on me---adrenalizing me in and edgy way, such that I was very tired but could not sleep. This has slowly dissipated since I found out about the relapse in mid-June, but it took much longer than I would ever have expected. I realized that the physical state felt familiar, though not fearful in the same way as when I was dealing w/abuse as a child. Now I find myself wondering if my SA will lose another job and leave us in a position to lose our home. This makes me wonder if I need to make some job/career choices that pull me back out of the home and away from our kids. I still have good earning potential right now----I had left my regular profession in Aug 2010 and have been self-employed. The money is not as good, but the flexibility to take care of the kids has been great. I'm in my mid-40's, however, and if I need to re-enter the FT office workforce, then I'm better off to do it now, not a few years from now.

This is what's tearing me up right now. It is a struggle between what I would prefer & love to do versus what I would need to do to guarantee stability for myself & my children. I'm also hearing evidence of communication & organizational problems that my SA is having at work. With my encouragement, he has sought some assistance from an executive coach regarding work challenges, but
these communication issues concern me.

The career piece is pressing on me the most, because our family has two special needs kids, one more needy than the other.

The second major thing that I am feeling is uncertainty about the relationship and if I could weather additional relapses, given that he was unable to tell me about the "slips" until 3 months into them. Again, this is not so much a matter of "I can't stand to be with this guy anymore." It's much more about valuing a calm, stable environment for me and the kids. When he's acting out, he gets angrier and angrier with a shorter fuse. When he's acting out, all bets on family & financial stability are off. I'm not 100% certain that being a full-time working, single mother of two special needs kids would be more calm and stable than what I have. I'd just know that the $$ wouldn't suddenly stop because I was married to someone who surfed porn at work.

Here are the other things that have popped up recently, though not as acutely as the concerns above. They are more fleeting:

Aggravation with his compulsion to view porn at work, when he already lost a really great job because of it
Sad that his addiction places our family at great financial risk
Disheartened that I am now taking steps to investigate the possibility of not staying in the relationship and understanding that I may not be able to stay
Disbelief that he can be angry with me or the kids, but if I get annoyed about something that I've asked for multiple times, I'm immediately the bad guy and it spurs
a 1-3 day depression for him
Not sure about intimacy
Tired of all of it!



Here are the things that I don't feel:
Intense rage is not really something that has come through after this relapse
Sustained hope that he will get back on track with recovery and start working with someone weekly to help him grow and develop through this difficult time
Depression. Though I'm sad for a day here and there as I contemplate my life, I don't feel depressed.

B. Because you have experienced a traumatic event in your life--and the discovery that the foundation of your life has been jeopardized is severely traumatic--there are common patterns that you should expect and even prepare for in the months and years to come. Discuss what these patterns might be and how you will deal with them. There are no right or wrong answers here. The goal is to begin looking ahead with a realistic and constructive eye. To realize that with even the best healing process in place, the trauma that you have experienced will have a lasting--albeit not permanently destructive--effect on your life.

1) Adrenalized feelings, exhaustion with inability to sleep: Get some bodywork to relax and take Magnesium supplement, meditate
2) Anger that this has happened to me: Meditation, talk with a friend, seek counseling, practice present awareness
3) If I find that I cannot stay in the relationship, worry that I will pick another SA
4) Grief---I have been grieving on and off since first finding out about his stash and the job loss of Oct 2010. I imagine this will continue. I will make efforts to listen to music that lifts me, exercise
or go hiking in the woods.
5) Resentment: I haven't felt this in a long time, but I could see myself being resentful that we spent alot of money on recovery and my spouse doesn't dig in and do the work for himself. There's a little movement piece that I do to bring my attention to resentment and physical shift so that I have the sense that it drains from me.
6) Being overwhelmed: Talk with a good friend, take some action to honor my values, listen to music, take a break
7) Wondering if my partner is sizing up women on the street and fantasizing about them--this one I just try to let go of---I can't stop him and I don't have the energy or the interest to be hyper-vigiliant about this kind of stuff
8) Mistrusting my partner---well, in a sane family system, I'd like to be able to say that I would approach my partner openly about my concerns, have a discussion and assess how I felt. Bringing things up when I here the internal "Warning Will Robinson!" bells and whistles go off.