Disclosure is Done and I'm Okay

I was prepared. My wonderful and understanding friend picked me up at the therapists office and spent the afternoon with me. I rented a condo for the weekend. My sister-in-law came down to stay with me. I had a bag packed with lots of different options for what I felt up to doing. I had snacks and sandwich makings in case I wanted to hole up in the condo. I took work off after our appointment on Friday. I covered my Sunday School class for tomorrow. I was ready.

I won't kid you and tell you it was pleasant. It was painful. It was hard. It hurt. The one thing it wasn't, for the most part anyway, was surprising. There were a couple big episodes of acting out that I wasn't aware of and one was particularly painful, but the rest of the disclosure wasn't really all that surprising. For the most part I had heard a lot of it over the years. It didn't make it any less painful…especially the lying and deceit. By far, that is still the hardest and most hurtful part of all this, the deceit. That the man I love and have trusted with my heart could be that duplicious is just painful.

The one thing that HAS surprised me from all this is that I'M OKAY. I am still trying to figure out if it is because I'm not acknowledging my emotions or if it's because I am in a good place and am really trying to heal. I really haven't cried much, only at the appointment and when I reread B's accountability statement again today, and even then the tears were short-lived. I have even spent time with B twice since then (once at the school play last night and once at our Ward Christmas Party tonight), and I have held his hand, leaned on him and given him a hug. I did have a very short panic/anxiety attack during the closing prayer at the party tonight and that tells me that it is probably just starting to settle in, but it was very short and I was able to breathe my way out of it. I don't know what that means for the upcoming days, but for the most part tonight I'm feeling okay. I'm exhausted and drained but I expected to be a lot more upset than I am.

All of that being said, forgiveness and trust are going to be a long time coming. We still have a long road ahead of us to healing. B hasn't even reached a point of sobriety yet. There are still a lot of hurdles to leap and a long distance to run yet, but we're off the block and headed into the first turn at least. This journey is a marathon and not a sprint, it might even be an triathlon or a hike to the summit of Mt. Everest, but we have started and that's the beginning of the journey.

Feeling okay,

T.

D-Day Tomorrow

I don't remember our actual D-day (disclosure day), I really honestly don't. B tells me that he came to me and told me and I'm sure he did. I just don't remember it. I've blocked it out I think because I've been looking for that memory and I can't find it. I want to remember what it was like because maybe it will prepare me in some way for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we are sitting down with our therapist and B is giving me a formal disclosure. I am having so many mixed emotions. I am nervous to have it all laid out in front of me. I am relieved to finally be getting it over with. I am anxious that I won't be able to process it all. I honestly don't expect any huge surprises as to behaviors but the context and timeframe will be new. I am really anxious for the answers to my questions. It is so much to process all at once.

I have a good plan in place for myself this weekend. I have support lined up. I have a safe place to stay. I have packed an emotional first aid kit. I have everything I think I will need (I even packed the Ambien and the Xanax just in case). I'm as prepared as I feel I can be when facing this huge unknown.

The thing that I am the most frustrated about right now is the fact that B completely disconnected from me tonight. I really wanted him to be present. Tomorrow our life will shift. It won't be the same regardless of how I react or what he tells me. We will be different. I really wanted to have tonight to be together talking about how we are feeling about tomorrow. Planning for how things will look after this weekend. Talking about Christmas and our kids. None of that happened. He withdrew. Our son had a meltdown. I got tired and frustrated. It was not a great night.

If you are the praying kind, please send one up for us. If you aren't please send whatever goodwill you can our way. We could use all the support we can get as we get through D-day and move towards our healing path.

Anxiously awaiting tomorrow,

T.

Recovery

It has been a while since I have posted. I have been spending a lot of time doing recovery work. I have been working on a full disclosure with my therapist. I will soon have it ready to share with my wife. She is at a point where she needs this to make any further progress.

We started attending LifeStar a few weeks ago. I am learning some amazing things. I wish I could have learned them years ago. I would like to share a few of these things here. In later posts I plan to go more into depth about them. As I get further in recovery I would like to make this blog a place where I can share things that will help other addicts in their recovery.

Sex addiction (porn, masturbation, lust, etc.) is not about sex. It is about the inability to manage emotions. We all have pain and challenges we must face in life. An addict has learned that acting out on his addiction will help to numb the pain. The problem is that you can't selectively numb an emotion. When you numb the pain, you numb the joy, love, thankfulness, hope, and all the other emotions that lead to a happy life. This of course leads to more pain, and the cycle starts all over again.

The opposite of addiction is not abstinence, it is connection. From birth until death we all have an inherent need to connect with others. Sometimes connecting can be difficult. Shame makes us feel like we are not worthy to be loved. So we feel isolation. In an attempt to fill this void we turn to our addiction. Acting out seems like a safe way to connect. The porn isn't going to tell me that I am worthless. At least not while I am acting out. I can create a false sense of attachment by viewing porn. Sex is the most intimate way to connect. But when it is all over, the pain of knowing this is a false attachment makes me feel worse. This leads to more shame. Shame will eventually cause me to act out and the cycle continues.

This has completely changed my view of what recovery will look like. I used to think that I had to just learn how to abstain from all these acts. There are some addicts that can do this, however they have not fixed the underlying cause of their pain. They are not in recovery. I know see that my recovery will include creating healthy relationships with both men and women. This is what I have wanted all my life. I don't have any real friends. The few friends I have are more like good acquaintances. I am going to have to work hard to change this. I have already felt more at ease around others the past week. I feel like I am able to open up more. I feel like the wall I have built is beginning to crumble.

B.

Waiting-For-the-Other-Shoe-to-Drop-Feeling-of-Impending-Doom

It's after 2 AM and I'm not sleeping. It's not that I can't sleep, I'm pretty sure I could sleep without problem if I let myself. Why don't you let yourself then you ask? Well, the easy answer would be because I don't want to…but that's not true, I DO want to, desperately. I have let myself steep in my anxiety and fear for so long tonight that I have to process it and let it go, therefore I blog.

I think I am anxious and nervous because tomorrow starts the return to my "regular life". I go back to my calling tomorrow. I have to teach a lesson I haven't even looked at and let me tell you that my class will know. It's not that I haven't had the time, it's that I have been so focused on recovery and my family the last two weeks that I haven't even thought about it until tonight. 

I also return to work this week which for the first time in a long time I'm really honestly dreading. Not because I don't like my job, I do like it and I have fabulous coworkers. I have just had such and amazing "vacation" while recovering physically that it will be hard to give that up. I have had time for me. Time to do what I wanted to do and what I needed to do without worrying about fitting it in around life. I know it's crazy to call recovery from surgery a vacation, but to me any time off work is really a vacation. 

I am going to have to reassess my priorities and figure out what I need to sacrifice for my recovery, because my recovery is not optional. It is mandatory. The healing and growth that I have found in the last two weeks has been nothing short of miraculous to me. My heart is finally finding hope and I don't want to lose any of that. I know there will still be days where the hope is just not there, but I want to do everything I can to hold on to as much of it as is possible.

There are also two huge recovery milestones approaching this week and I am far more anxious about them that I realized. Number one is disclosure to our kids. This is happening tomorrow. I know this is the right thing and that it needs to happen now, that has been confirmed to me over and over, that doesn't mean it doesn't terrify me. The second is that we are starting LifeStar on Tuesday. I am excited for this step in our journey and the healing and recovery we are both hoping to achieve there. At the same time I just feel like everything is going to get worse before it gets better. After knowing a couple of weeks of 'better than it's been in years', it's going to be that much farther to fall. It's that waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop-feeling-of-impending-doom that is choking me right now. 

Just writing this all down and putting this out there has already significantly decreased my anxiety level.  I think that after a few min and some deep breathing I will be able to get out of my head and let myself sleep. Good night.

Finding my way out of my head,

T.

Unsettled

I actually hadn't planned on blogging tonight, but I need to and yet here I sit unsure of where to start or what to say. I'm anxious, I'm nauseated, I'm sad, I'm hurt I'm upset angry and yet I'm unable to articulate what I want to say about all those emotions. I guess why I am struggling so much, is because I've been waiting a couple of days to see if B would blog about this last weekend or not. I have blogged so much about how healing this weekend was for me, but is was not so much that for B.

I'm not here to tattle on or rat out my husband, but I need a chance to process what I'm feeling and I can't wait anymore for him to disclose here. He disclosed to me and that is enough. I think I have been holding back some of my feelings about his slip/relapse this weekend in the hopes that he would come forward and I wouldn't have to put it out there first. B had a slip/relapse of epic proportions…well it felt epic in my book. 

Part of my initial hesitation to go see my family this last weekend was the fear that he would turn to porn while I was gone. I quickly dismissed that thought, because I decided he was going to do what he was going to do and I couldn't let it influence my decision. I still stand by that, and the most miraculous part of my healing is the fact that Heavenly Father just took that worry away from me. It honestly wasn't even on my radar while I was gone. I gave that one to God and it was so freeing. I also felt like if he did turn to porn I had no control over that and was not going to own it at all. I didn't. I don't.

I was sitting in church on Sunday when I inadvertently opened my email on my phone. Immediately an email from B grabbed my attention because he never emails me. As I'm sure you have already guessed it was his disclosure. I cried through pretty much all of Sacrament Meeting. I read his disclosure in it's entirety at the beginning of the meeting…which happened to be the Primary program. To hear the beautiful little spirits sing with all their hearts about their eternal families made my pain that much more acute. It touched me so much but at the same time was so hard to hear. I feel so robbed of so many good years I could have spent with my eternal family, so many years that we could have been so much happier as a family. This is where the hurt hit me hard, Sunday at Sacrament meeting…

Tonight the anger kicked in. It wasn't just about the acting out that happened this weekend it was about the fact that B feels I am not being a support to him in his recovery. I'm not noticing the positive things he is doing. I'll be honest, until I feel safe again, I'm probably not going to be much support to him.

I'm trying to quiet my brain enough to focus on what I want to say and I'm having a very difficult time of it tonight. I feel like this post is going to be disjointed at best, but I'm getting it out there in the best way I can tonight.

I guess the anger really kicked in tonight during our first check-in, not our first check-in tonight, but our first one ever. I have a boundary about needing him to actively work on recovery every single day. It doesn't have to be workbook work or blogging, but something that is actively working recovery every day. I haven't seen him do this for a while and I let him know I wasn't ok with that and distanced myself from him emotionally. He said there were days that he worked recovery before I got up or when I wasn't around. I told him that it doesn't really help me feel safe if I don't know what he is working on or see him working. Thus, we mutually decided to have a check-in every night before bed to talk about that, any slips, lust hits etc. and that I would let him know where I am emotionally. Tonight we were both tired, but tried to give it a go.

He told me that he didn't do too much on recovery but that he did go to the grocery store with me and help put groceries away and folded laundry. When pushed that is the only work he did today that he counted  as recovery work. I wanted to yell "BIG FREAKING DEAL!" but instead I tried to use my words calmly, because I do appreciate the help, admittedly I pretty much failed. I wasn't calm and it came out. He could sense my frustration and pulled away from me closing himself off. We were able to regroup a little bit but I think be both still came away frustrated, at least I know I did. I don't think helping me run our household counts as recovery work. That counts as being an active part of the family. It counts as mandatory in my book. I especially got frustrated that he felt he was doing me a favor when I had surgery a freaking week and a half ago. SURGERY! Remember? I hurt tonight. I overdid today. I shouldn't have the bulk of the responsibility for the household when I am trying to physically recover. I should be being taken care of.

I think the anger really reared it's ugly head when I got frustrated because most of the housework I did today he could have done during his porn binge while I was gone this weekend. I walked in the door at 1 am on Monday morning to the same mess I left (yes I know I share some responsibility for the mess, I'm not trying to excuse that away). I realized right at that very moment that a messy house is a GIGANTIC trigger for me emotionally. The chaos of a messy house is a visible reminder of the chaos in my marriage. It is proof that my life is a mess. 

B feels that no matter what he would've gotten done it wouldn't had been enough, I would've still expected more. I told him that he's right, we both always have more we can give to our marriage. But that doesn't mean that either of us should quit trying. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't work on recovery or healing. I wish I could better explain it. I do appreciate the recovery work he is doing, and maybe it deserves to be acknowledged more that I do…but in all honesty years of dishonesty, pain and acting out aren't going to be erased or fixed by a few weeks of recovery work. I'm sorry, but they just aren't. I don't feel safe enough yet, and when my need for safety isn't met, I just can't reach out to be your cheerleader. I don't have it in me right now. 

I do love you B and I'm am actively fighting for our family.

Feeling a little bit better,

T.

Reaching Out

For a really long time now, I've wanted to share our story with others. I want others to know that they are not alone. This is something that a lot of families have to deal with, I would venture to guess that every family at one point or another has to face, be it in their immediate family or in their in-laws, best friends, anything or anyone. Nobody is immune. I have been so blessed that other's have reached out to me recently. 

As you can tell from my post a couple of days ago, disclosure is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. When is the right time? Who are the right people? How much do we share? Do we talk about it, or just let them read the blog? It's sometimes not clear to me, but every time it seems muddy, I feel prompted to either share or not share. It is amazing to me how much support and guidance that our Heavenly Father gives us, especially because I've been trying this my own way for so long.

I was very touched this morning when B had me read a post on FB in a support group he is in (completely unrelated to pornography recovery)/  It was from a young woman struggling with her husband's lack of openness. He wanted me to read it and asked me what I thought. I said, "I think her husband has a problem with pornography," and B agreed. I was surprised at the recognition on his part, and even more surprised that he felt he should reach out to her. A few weeks ago I probably would've panicked that he was reaching out to another woman on FB, but not today, today I was at peace. I felt like he needed to share and she needed to hear what he had to say. He let me read what he was sending before he sent it and has let me read what was said back and forth between them. It was a level of transparency that we haven't had in a really long time. He has been so secretive about so much for so long, that I am just used to getting a blah response when I ask him questions, to have him openly share this experience with me meant a lot. 

I also reached out to this beautiful Daughter of God to let her know that she is not alone. I want her, and all the other wives out there, to know that this fight is our battle against the war Satan is waging against our families. We are all warriors on the front line protecting our families from the enemy, and the enemy has some sneaky tactics. He is invading our homes no matter what defenses we have put in place. I want every single one of you to know WE ARE NOT FIGHTING ALONE. Not one of us is alone. Even if we don't feel like we can reach out to anyone around us, The Lord is there to listen, guide and comfort us.

Thank you to all that have reached out to me, including today, my Bishop. It means more than you could imagine to know that I have so much support, that we have so much support as a couple to fight this battle and win this war. I hope I will always be on the sidelines, offering whatever aide I can, but that someday I will be able to say I did my frontline fighting and now I am here to help with yours. Today is a good day, today is a new day, today is not a broken day, today is MY day to say we will get through this…I hope tomorrow is another day just like this one.

Disclosure

I had my surgery yesterday and everything went well. I am tired and sore but I really feel much better than I expected to. My whole goal for the first few days after surgery was to rest, catch up on my DVR, read the book I treated myself to and enjoy some down time. Funny how sometimes HE has other plans for us, because all I've been able to think about today is working on recovery. I don't have much stamina, but while I've been reading and vegging out in front of the TV, I've been restless and itchy to work on recovery. This morning I was reading an Instagram post from @thelightkeepers about how when she was in crisis after finding out that her husband wasn't truly in recovery her dad flew out and took care of her and loved her and cried with her. All I could think was that some days I wish my daddy would be able to do that so unconditionally. I don't think I will ever be able to disclose this to my parents, they love me very much, but they already feel the need to meddle in our marriage, they wouldn't understand this. It breaks my heart, but my already strained marriage doesn't need any additional judgement heaped on it. 

It is very interesting to me that this is coming up this week. B and I have talked a bit lately about who and when we will disclose this to, and who we never plan to disclose it to. I also talked with my counselor this week a little about disclosure. This is obviously something that is important to me right now. B has said that he trusts me in who and when I disclose things to, and I'm glad because I have needed the love and support of those close to me and have been able to get that by sharing this with them. I am so constantly amazed by the love and support shown to us. In most cases the judgement I thought would inevitably come, hasn't. I have had so many of my friends reach out and say, we love you we are here for you, your forthrightness and honesty is amazing. I don't feel amazing, I feel amazed. I am constantly amazed at the people that my Heavenly Father has chosen to place around me. I'm having a hard time writing through my tears right now as I think of all the amazing and wonderful people in my life. It has been so uplifting to me to feel the love and support of those around me.

As we continue to work through our recovery, both individually and together, I know we will give more disclosures and that we will share them with more people. I hope that by sharing our story, others will feel more free to share theirs. I also hope that I can be the support to others that I have felt myself surrounded by. There may be numerous posts from me for the next couple of weeks as I will be off work and spending a lot of time on my recovery. I am so thankful for the outlet I have in writing this blog and for the respect we have been shown in the cyber community. 

Recovering emotionally while I recover physically,

T.