|
Recovery Workshop: Extra
The following were written from partners who have experienced the pain of a loved one's addiction. As you read, keep in mind that what you are reading about is pain. It is not intended to comfort you. BUt neither is it intended to shame you. It just is. It is their reality at that point...and there will likely be similarities between their feelings and your own partner's.
The Pain We Feel
***
“I just feel like I didn't matter at the deepest level....”
***
“Our spouses are an extension of ourselves, aren't they? We share everything with our spouses: homes, beds, meals, showers, money, vehicles, laughter, orgasms, touch, tears, children, family, you know, everything. The pain, the pain is too deep or too broad to pinpoint for me. We can give it names-betrayal, trust, unworthiness, FOOLS. But isn't it all just damage to our souls? Like, defacing property, vandalizing. A part of me was fake. a part of me was a lie. a part of me was destroyed. I feel violated. It is almost like I was a prop. I was used without permission. Does this make sense? My soul, my heart, my future, were instantly altered without my participation, without my consent. Nobody asked me.”
***
It's fathomless shock that someone whom I treasured and who I thought treasured me...really KNEW me and my deepest fears about life...
was someone who so utterly disregarded my fears and lied to my face countless times...
who allowed me to marry him because he "thought he could stop".
***
It's almost as if you've found out you didn't marry the person you thought you did. You fell for the big facade that everyone else has, only now that you have found out, you have to keep it a secret too. Both of our families think he is an amazing husband and father. They have no idea of the issues we are having to work through because of this or the stress I feel. They think I'm lucky. One person in my family even thinks he is too good for me. Sometimes it makes me want to scream when I hear them say these things. My husband may not have had a physical affair with another woman, but he cheated on me with a world of images, degradation, lies and secrets. How do you compete with that? You can't and instead you feel worthless, self-conscious, not good enough. It makes you question how much of your courtship and your marriage is real. Trust was also a real issue for me, but with my husband I was able to jump right in and I got it thrown right back in my face. I don't know how to build that trust back and I believe trust is a major building block for a marriage. You take it away and things just start crumbling.
***
- Pain from infidelity (breaking of trust) - be it physical affairs, emotional affairs, physical, verbal or visual sexual contact with others, even infidelity in the sense of being denied a fulfilling sexual and emotional relationship with a partner because they prefer fantasy and masturbation.
- Pain from deceit. Being lied to, directly and to the face, subtly (half-truths) or by omission.
- Pain from feeling like a fool. Being deceived over and over again. Being manipulated. Knowing that i will probably be let down again but giving yet another chance.
- Pain from self doubt. Not only being deceived, but when you try to verbalize it to your partner, being made to think you are the one with the problem. Doubting your own reality.
- Pain from self perception. Feeling rejected, worthless, unattractive, uninteresting, even unintelligent.
- Pain from feeling unloved, unrespected.
- Pain from feeling solely responsible, having nobody to lean on. I feel like I have never had the backup I need to get me through the other hardships in life. He was disengaged, busy with his fantasies, unavailable for me emotionally, selfish.
- Pain from loss of stability. Feeling like the very foundations of your world have crumbled under your feet, having no solid ground to stand on, uncertainty about the future.
- Pain from doubting our past. What was real, what was true?
One of the others for me, though harder to put into words, is the lack of trust he has in me.
***
You've hurt me to my very soul, and yet I'm still here because I havn't stopped loving you. I still believe that there's a good and loving man buried under all your demons. My final thought every time we go through this is " You talk about trust as it applies to me but just don't get it. If you areen't willing to trust me with the past or the truth of today, how can you ask or expect me to trust you with my future?
***
as I sit here in the dark trying to "feel" what I felt that day....
It's as if the sky opens and swallows me up....I feel this deep well of sadness and and almost dizzying feeling.
I guess all my life I've tried to be open and honest to all I meet...to make people feel "safe" with me....I've prided myself on being able to touch people in so many ways...and I have been wounded in my life...by people who should have protected me...but I have remained optimistic about life and people...continuing to believe in the good in people amid countless disappointments....
and he was who I shared all this with....I believed in us and I thought he was the MOST honest person I had ever met....I treasured him.
the pain...
It's fathomless shock that someone whom I treasured and who I thought treasured me...really KNEW me and my deepest fears about life...
was someone who so utterly disregarded my fears and lied to my face countless times...
who allowed me to marry him because he "thought he could stop".
Knowing full well that this was the WORST thing that could have ever came into my life....
allowed me to bare his children with the total possibility that I could leave him and have to raise the kids as a separate household after I had gone through one divorce and custody hell already....
I just feel like I didn't matter at the deepest level....
I now rationally know that is not the case after learning about sexual addiction but that is where my pain lies....
Also in utter disappointment in myself for "not knowing" "not seeing"
how could I have let this happen to me....
sometimes you think...."do I deserve this?" "Am I the type of person who will never get a break?"
***
This addiction breaks the marriage vows. More than that: Sexual fidelity is a basic understanding in any serious relationship, married or not. This addiction rips trust and love to shreds. It causes feelings of rejection and unworthiness. It causes us to wonder what we did wrong, how we could have done things differently, if we can ever trust anyone or anything again.
***
Lies of omission. This is a huge one for me because my husband never really was a "regular" liar, but he was great at not giving me the whole picture, at leaving out big chunks of information.
Everything his "addict" conveniently left out of the picture. That his "addict" decided that he knew better than I, what was important for our life, as if I had no say in what was to be the truth of our life together. That he was going to make decisions of how our life would be arranged and I was no part of those plans.
Those lies are more infuriating when coupled with the knowledge that he was totally aware of my background, and how important certain things were to me as far as my values, beliefs, sexual background, family issues, morals and history were concerned. I had completely shared with him everything in my history, and I thought he had done the same with me. Little did I know.
By leaving out important information on his end which I later found out through therapy, (childhood depression, lost his virginity at 28 to a prostitute, in therapy for SA before he knew me, FOO issues, etc.) he made a grand assumption that what I didn't know wouldn't hurt me, even though what he was doing flew in the face of everything I had shared with him. There were lots of warning signs I had given him from my side, which should have sent him running for the hills that if I ever found out about his secret life, that I would not allow this to go quietly into the night. And yet, the addict in him ignored my warnings.
For him, out of sight, out of mind.
For me, always present, always in pain.
***
I felt like I wasted the past 12 years of our marriage, 15 years of relationship.
HE knew about the addiction or that there was a severe problem with porn in his life. I had no clue.
As a direct result of this, I was unhappy, unsatisfied, had self doubt, etc. ALl the feelings that come with being in love and wondering why you healthy husband doesn't touch you, yet obviously he's getting off on porn.
It's torture.
When my husband said he loved me after D-Day - I wanted to murder him. Because how can you love me when you fuck with whores and expose me to all of the johns these sperm vessels had in the past?
How can you do this to me?
***
Where does the pain come from?
It comes from the realization that nothing is as it seems. Every thought, sentence, glance, and action is questioned regarding the addict and his or her motives. Everything and everyone is suspect. As a partner, you realize that you have been working with the shell of a person that you thought you knew. You see that it is only the damaged self that has been present in your relationship for however long he or she kept his or her addiction a secret. As you begin to see your partner truly heal, you realize all over just how little your true partner experienced in life, how self-loathing he or she had become, and how shallow and tainted most of your experiences (both sexual and otherwise) actually were. The pain comes from mourning the loss of what you never actually had all of those years and how you can never regain the loss of time together.
**************************************************************************************
If you are a partner and have additional thoughts on the pain that you have endured, please share them so that others may learn. Send a PM to CoachJon or use the Contact Us feature.
| 
