Shame and Comparison

These last few weeks have been rough recovery wise…lots of growing pains. I am so grateful for the growth though, that I am willing to take the pain too.

I STILL have issues with comparison and shame over my story. I still have an overwhelming amount of shame because my husband's acting out behaviors were "just" porn and masturbation. I have felt that I hadn't "earned my seat" so to speak, at the Betrayal Trauma table. This isn't because of the way I was treated or anything that was said to me by the rest of the amazing women at the table, it is all just my own perception. I have felt like B.'s acting out could be so much worse, why should I feel so much betrayal? But here's the thing, I don't HAVE to prove that I have trauma to ANYONE, it's just there. Nobody, including myself, gets to tell me that my trauma isn't justified. My husband is a porn addict, he has been emotionally unavailable to me for the greater part of our twenty years of marriage. Plain and simple. Trauma is trauma and it happens despite our own best efforts to tell ourselves otherwise. What I DO get a say over is how I am going to deal with that trauma and it's effects on me.

I get to say  how hard I work my recovery. I get to say when I'm going to use my tools and reach out. I get to say how long I spend on my knees talking to my Heavenly Father. I get to say I have Trauma (with a capital "T") and own it. As Brené Brown says, there is so much power in owning our story. I am working on owning mine, Trauma and all.

Here's the other part of that equation, whether or not B. ultimately finds and stays in recovery, is NOT up to me. I have no control over his recovery. I hope he finds recovery. I hope he fights for our family. I pray for those things every day. I cannot, however, control them. He has made progress, significant progress in some areas, but regardless of what progress he has made, I still have to work through the trauma.

I think that's going to be a big dragon for us to slay together, the Trauma dragon. You see, I think B. and me both expect that when he finds recovery I should have found it too. I am realizing that isn't the case, that the addicts recovery and the betrayed's recovery are not usually linear and equal. I know this is going to be a struggle to help him (an myself) understand, but for now I'm leaving that worry where it belongs, in the future. We will, as "they" say, cross that bridge when we come to it.

No comparison,

T.