Peeking Out From Behind The Mask

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who's husband is also a porn addict. She said to me "It seems like you are dealing with this better than I am." My first thought was, no freaking way am I dealing with this better than anyone else. But, even if that is the case, I have learned that I can't compare my reactions to anyone else's. They don't have my trials or my circumstances and I don't have theirs. All I can do is reach out and give what support I have to give. I want to let you see how I feel, how I've reacted and see into my eyes behind the mask I wear every.single.day.

The mask I wear makes me smile and laugh with acquaintances and coworkers. The mask forces me to be polite to others I encounter. The mask makes it look like I'm whole, like part of me isn't broken. Today I'm going to peel back a corner of the mask and peek out for you. I'm not ready to take it all the way off, I'm not ready to be that vulnerable. I'm not ready to go back to the beginning yet. Part of me doesn't remember it all that well and the other part of me is afraid that some of the numbness will wear off if I go back that far. I'll let you see the most recent part of me, the part I am trying to work through right now. 

It's not pretty and I'm not proud. I'm angry. Not like a little bit angry and I'll get over it right away, but boiling, raging, throw things at the wall MAD! The other day I got so angry about something so completely unrelated and was stomping around and slamming things down, it was so bad I scared my son. I scared my own child because I was mad about something completely unrelated to him. I didn't touch him, I didn't threaten him, I was just making so much noise to vent my anger that it scared him. That's not fair, nor is is the way I want my kiddos to see me. I don't want them to remember me as the angry mom that was scary to be around. I'm a work in progress and slowly but surely I am gaining control of that anger by sheer faith and prayer.

Here's another corner I'll peek out of, it's the corner that's gray and dented and it's called hopelessness. I have almost completely given up hope of recovery. I have had faith so many times, I have hoped so many times, I have believed so many times that he was truly trying to change…only to be disappointed and that much more devastated than the last time. It is so much easier for me not to hope. I want to hope. I want to heal. I want to trust again. I want to love my husband wholly and freely again without constantly feeling like the rug is going to be pulled out from under me at any moment, but right now I am too scared. I'm too afraid, of being completely crushed, to hope. 

That's enough of the ugliness that is behind the mask for now. I know the only way I am going to peel off the mask and leave it off is to begin to heal, begin to hope and let go of my fears. I'm not there yet. I hope that I will be someday soon.

T.

P.S. I read B's post today and it made me cry. It touched me. Nothing he has done or said in a really long time has touched me, because I haven't let it. Maybe the hope is finding a pin prick to squeeze through my mask after all.

Telling Secrets

I copied the name of this post from Glennon over at Momastry. I stumbled on her blog today and I have been eating it up. She is a real person. She has flaws and she willingly shares them. She is amazingly frank and I find it uplifting. She came to the realization that her outsides needed to match her insides, she needed people to know that she isn't perfect or put together most of the time. Her post called Telling Secrets inspired me today.

I want other women to hear me say, you don't have to be perfect, you don't have to look a certain way, behave a certain way or do anything that you are uncomfortable with. None of these things matter in the scheme of helping your loved one heal from their sexual addiction. You didn't cause the addiction. You don't make it worse. It's their disease to heal from. You can support them. You can love them. But their actions are not caused by anything you do or anything that you don't do. It took me at least ten years to learn that. Frankly it is something that I have to relearn at times. 

Now is as good a time as any to tell you my secret, my truth as it is. My name is T and I am not only married to an addict but I am an addict. I'm not addicted to visual pornography like B is but rather to both food and written pornography. 

My addiction to food started when I was an early teen. I was able to keep it "hidden" more or less until I got to college and it got out of control. I have never conquered that monster. I have taken baby steps in that direction and I want to take more. In a sense my husband's addiction has triggered me to turn to my own addiction to food to help me cope. It isn't his fault, I don't blame him. I did, oh believe me I did, but I have come to realize that just like his addiction isn't my fault, my addiction isn't his. 

My addiction to written pornography, well that was a much more tortuous road. I remember reading a book about seven or eight years ago that had some swearing in it and some mild sex scenes. I threw it away. I had paid good money for it but I was so disgusted with it that I threw it away. Over the last two to three years I have gradually let more and more sex creep into the books I read, or rather I have become more liberal in what I will allow myself to read. You might think that it would disgust me, and it did at first. However, just like with visual pornography, each time I encountered it I was desensitized to it that much more. It got to the point where all I wanted to read was "trashy" romance novels. I have e-reader accounts, and just like with visual pornography, the worst stuff is usually the free or cheap stuff. A lot of the books that have real value and don't contain the garbage are expensive. That's how I started justifying it. I even admit to not only reading all three books in the Fifty Shades of Gray series, but several books that were just as bad if not worse.

When B and I hit rock bottom I decided that I needed to take away as much temptation as possible for myself. For a week or so I deleted my e-reader apps so I didn't have any access to them. When I reinstalled them I went through and deleted all the books I knew had sex in them and all the books I couldn't remember for sure if they did. I didn't just delete them from my devices, but completely from my library so I have no access to them. This is my first step. I guess if I am working the program, I have taken step number one by admitting that I have a problem. I am working on step number two…hope. I want to believe in the power of God to restore me to spiritual health, but I'm not quite there yet. 

There is no less shame for me to admit to my addiction than there is to admit my husband is an addict. There is no less shame for me to admit to my addiction than there is for him to admit to his. It's hard for me to grasp the twisting nature of my emotions sometimes. Shame, hurt, disgust, betrayal, hope, pain, hopelessness, fear, defeat, and the list goes on…sometimes in relation to my own addictions and sometimes in relation to B's. I will leave all that for another post as it's more than I can write tonight.

Hoping for hope and putting my secrets out there,

T.

You Are Not Alone

For years after I discovered that my husband had an sexual addition I felt so isolated, so alone. I didn't want to talk to anyone because I was too embarrassed, too ashamed. It felt taboo to bring it up to anyone, so for years I suffered silently and alone. The one thing I want you to understand if you are the  addict or the spouse of the addict, or maybe even both, you are NOT alone. There is a whole community out there waiting to support you and help you walk this road to recovery.

I'm not going to try and tell you it will be easy to pour your heart out and expose the dark underbelly of your relationship, because if it was we wouldn't be writing this anonymously. The shame is still there, the difference is that we are learning to work through it. Well, we are trying to learn how to work through it anyway.

Addiction is a disease, it's not something you can just "quit" on your own, you need support, you need understanding, you need love. Please don't be afraid to reach out. I will never forget the first time I shared this with anyone. We had been married probably 15 years by then. I had spent the entire weekend with a friend and kept feeling like I needed to tell her. It took me clear until Sunday afternoon to share with her. I told her that I didn't know why I felt I needed to share with her but she thought it was so that I had someone I could talk to. I'll never forget the text I got the following Wednesday that she had found pornography in the history of their computer. We had several conversations that day. Her stomach was in knots and her heart hurt with the anxiety she was feeling. That night after confronting her husband, he confessed that he had looked that one time out of curiosity but that it hadn't happened again and to my knowledge it hasn't. That was about four years ago or maybe a little longer, and that experience has still stuck with me. I knew on that Wednesday why I had shared our story with her, it was so she wasn't alone and so she had someone to talk to.  It has made it a little less frightening since then, to share our story at other times when I have felt inspired to do so.

If I could tell you anything, it would be find someone you trust that you can talk to. You'd be surprised how many times it turns out that you have this in common. I have only met one person in recent memory, who didn't have a story to share with me about how pornography has had an effect on their family in some way or another. I am willing to bet that she just doesn't know how it has impacted those close to her.

I believe that pornography is a plague that is corrupting our society so insidious and so covert that it is infecting our society faster than we can comprehend. There is not one sector of our society that is immune regardless of race, religion, socioeconomic status, marital status or age. It does not discriminate. Please just open up to someone that you trust. Let them listen, let them care and let your healing begin.

With a more hopeful heart,

T.

Introduction

I am married to an addict. Not a drug addict, well not in the literal sense anyway, but a pornography addict. I know many people don't think this is an addiction, that it is just some harmless entertainment. They could not be more wrong. The trauma this "harmless" addiction has caused me and my marriage is undeniable. It has left nothing but destruction in it's wake and we have hit rock bottom with nowhere to go but up.

Ok now that I've gotten the drama out of the way, well for now anyway, I'll tell you a little about myself. I married my husband nearly twenty years ago. We were young, as many in our culture are, but we were in love and looking through those rose colored glasses that the young tend to see life through. We quickly learned that life had a way of turning our plans upside down. As "B" said he finally told me after we had been married for a few years that he had a problem, what he didn't share with you was how I unknowingly contributed to his addiction. We had been married less than a year when I talked him into renting a pornographic movie from the local video store. Mind you, this was nineteen years ago, and pornography that was easily accessible then was much less aggressive and abusive than it is now, not a justification on my part, just an observation. This happened a few more times before I said "Enough!" Little did I know that this was just the tip of the iceberg of what we were to go through over the next nineteen years. 

I may not sound like the beacon of hope right now, and there is a simple reason for that, I'm not. I finally hit the bottom of utter hopelessness and I have nowhere to go but up or out. I am hoping by reading and writing this blog that I will regain that hope and the faith that my marriage can not only survive but thrive. I love my husband and I want to keep my Eternal Family intact. I want to feel something other than hopelessness and anger. 

Please pray with us. Not only our family but every other family out there that is suffering from this plague. Please pray that no other innocent families fall prey to this via addiction or, heaven forbid, losing a family member to the darkness that is the adult entertainment world. 

If you would like more information on the effects of pornography on the brain and body and how it is devastating our society then visit Fight The New Drug.  They are trying to get the message out one fighter at a time. 

I will share more about my journey and the roller coaster ride that we have been on and I will try and shed some hope on the situation, but right now I'm leaning on you guys to lend me support. I am leaning on the recovery community for strength and hope. Please know that I am here to talk to or listen to anyone who needs an ear, and I can listen to you and you can know I've been there, I AM there. I gain a little more hope every day, and whatever morsel I have I am willing to share because by sharing, my hope is not diminished but rather strengthened. 

Please feel free to email either one of us at nothingunsaid@outlook<dot>com. Ask us questions, send us links to any information you have found helpful. If you feel the need to argue with us, don't bother, the harm of pornography and the vice of addiction to it is NOT up for debate with us, we have seen it eat away at our lives for almost twenty years now. We will present our lives to you and any information that has been helpful to us along the way. 

May our Father in Heaven bless you with any measure of peace you are in need of today.

T.