Hyper-Vigilance and Shedding Light

Self-reflection can be such a painful thing, especially when you don't see what you expected to. I have not been very self-reflective lately, I have been outwardly focused. Shame is an ugly monster that has me held ferociously in it's grip. I have started down the slippery slope of trauma, and I am hoping by bringing my shame into the light I can battle it. 

B. just can't find recovery, he doesn't even have the desire most of the time to recover. He is so focused on the fact that he doesn't have a happy marriage to recover to, that he has no desire to recover. That has been a heavy load for me to carry, and one I shouldn't be carrying. I have not been great about surrendering that load to Heavenly Father. I have carried it on my shoulders and let it mire my own recovery. My husband's recovery is not my job to carry around. It is B.'s job to carry his recovery, more accurately it is his job to turn his heart over to Heavenly Father. It is my job to turn my own heart over to Heavenly Father and listen to His guidance.

I have been so hyper-vigilant about B.'s actions recently. Wanting to always know what he is doing, who he is texting, what they are talking about, why he is on his phone. See where this is going? I am being sucked into my trauma cycle. I am letting his actions control me. I am not focused where I should be. My focus is on my husband and not on God. When I lose God as my center my trauma takes over.

I want my husband to find recovery. I want to be able to trust him. I want our marriage to survive. Right now though, I'm at the end of my rope. I am done fighting for my marriage, at least in the way I have been fighting. Now, I feel like I am in a holding pattern. I need to just turn it over to Heavenly Father and let Him guide me. I need B. to step up and show me he wants our marriage to succeed like he keeps telling me. I need to put my faith where it belongs and know that none of this is truly in my control. God has always guided me the best direction for my family and me, when I allow Him to. I need to allow Him to guide me. 

 

I am fighting hard against my trauma, and just writing this has freed up so much anxiety in me. It has allowed me to shine light on the dark parts and start to root them out. 

I love my husband but I cannot fight for this marriage alone. I can only fight for me right now. I can only work on pulling myself up out of the mud I'm covered in. I can only work to clean up my own recovery and keep walking. I can only do these things by allowing Heavenly Father to reach down and help me up. 

Lighter, 

T.

Not a Feel Good Post

I'm having a hard time writing tonight because I'm angry. I'm angry at a lot of things, but mostly just mad at my life in general. I want to just put it all out there for now, maybe it will help get some of the anger and frustration I am feeling resolved. If you need an uplifting and hopeful post, this is not the one for you. It's not going to sound hopeful and it may even sound a bit selfish and ranty. Consider yourself warned, today is not a day for sunshine and rainbows but rather for thunder, lightning and wind.

It seems like lately I need my rain gear and umbrella. I know I am choosing to focus on the bad, but I'm hoping that by getting it out there I will be able to let it go. It seems like when it rains it pours. Let's just start with the expenses and homeowner problems we've had lately. We have a three year old refrigerator that we have had to sink $400+ dollars into and it still isn't fixed (thank goodness we kept the old one and have it in the garage to act as a stand in). Then, our vehicle has been stalling as we drive it down the road and with B out of work we can't afford to take it in to the shop to be looked at, so we are down to one vehicle with three drivers all going different directions. Then B sent me a picture today on my phone of where a mouse or something has made a hole all the way from the outside of the garage through the door frame into the garage. Oh and did I mention, that this has caused water damage from all our rain we've gotten lately? Are you serious!?! We live in a three year old home for crying out loud!!! So, now we have to call an exterminator to come find the pest and rid us of it, so we don't have to keep fixing the same hole. As a result, I took tomorrow off of work very last minute to get things in the garage straightened out so we can get it organized and make sure that that is the only damage. On a positive note, did I mention how awesome my co-workers are? They didn't even bat an eye at covering for me tomorrow so I could take care of things. 

Now, I'll just touch on the emotional baggage I'm trying to clean out right now. My mom called to talk last night (we talk almost every day) and decided that she needed to give me her opinion on what we need to improve on in order for B to find a job. It ended up being a nasty discussion that we both ended up in tears from. It really threw me for a loop and upset B because of some of the things she said. I've tried to let it go today, knowing that she is my mom and she only wants what she thinks is the best for me and that even when she is mad at me she still loves me. Sometimes that's easier said than done. I've also had such conflicting emotions about my "worthiness" to seek recovery as the wife of a porn addict. I keep thinking, "What right do I have to feel hurt and betrayed by my husband's actions when I have my own addictions to deal with?" I am still really trying to come to grips with the fact that just because I have my own faults doesn't excuse B from the pain he has caused me. It's pretty tempting to just say I don't deserve to feel this way and so I'm not going to look for support. The logical part of me knows that this is my own shame and guilt eating away at me and that I am as much in need of recovery and healing from the pain caused to me as I am from the addictions that have a hold of me. 

None of this even begins to address my feelings about B's recovery and how it is progressing and how I am working through all that. I will save that for another day as I'm having a hard time keeping my eyelids open right now. 

I am sorry for the ranting jag and that I didn't have something uplifting or hopeful to post today. It is what it is today. You get the unadulterated ugly truth here, it's the only way we are going to heal. I needed to let that all go tonight so that I can face my day tomorrow with optimism as to what can be accomplished. We only need to turn it over to Him. 

Worn out and frustrated,

T.

Kissing and a Prayer Request

I want to share a bit of my point of view from our conversation last night. I knew it was going to hurt "B" when I told him that I was struggling to want to kiss him. I've been putting off that conversation since he told me that. I don't want to hurt him, not intentionally (I will admit there have been times I HAVE wanted to hurt him, to get back at him, but I hope I've grown past that for the most part). I know he is trying to recover, I know he is working at it, but I didn't lose complete trust and faith in him overnight and it's not going to return that quickly either. I have been hurt by him so many times, that I'm afraid to hope. Don't get me wrong, as much as I tell myself that I don't have any hope right now, I do. I just try and tamp it down because it's so painful when he betrays me again. I want to hope and have faith that he is truly in recovery, but it is just too scary. It's too scary to open myself up to that kind of pain.

To me passionate kissing is a very intimate act. It is opening yourself up to being vulnerable, to trusting the person you are kissing, in my case "B". He revealed in his last post that we have an active sex life, we do, but for a really long time it has been about meeting a physical need, scratching an itch per se. We haven't "made love" in a really long time. For "B" it's because of the pornography addiction, for me it's because I haven't been willing to be that vulnerable. For me passionate kissing is part of making love, not having sex and I'm just not ready to be that vulnerable yet.  I don't trust him enough to not break my heart again. I asked him to be patient with me, because I'm just not there yet. I want to be, but it's going to take a while I'm afraid.

I have told "B" often lately that we will work through the addiction, but that I can't tolerate when he lies to me. He used to be honest with me when I would ask him if he'd slipped, but he has lied to me repeatedly over the last few years. It's to the point that I don't trust myself and my "gut feelings" anymore because for so long I trusted that he was telling the truth and therefore my gut must be wrong. Most of the time it wasn't. I know he started lying to me because of my reaction to his relapses, and that doesn't give him an "out" or an excuse, but I am accepting my responsibility to mediate my reaction. If I tell him that we will work through the addiction then I have to be willing to work without raging at him.

I want to work through this addiction, I really do. I don't want to give up, but some days I'm just so tired of fighting. I know this is going to be a long, hard, lifetime battle, and I need to plan on fighting the rest of our lives. I want to be able to let down my guard and trust again.

Please if you are on your knees today, put in a good word for us. I am really discouraged right now and could use a measure of faith if you have some to spare.

Asking for prayers,

T.

p.s. "B" asked me when I got up this morning if I smelled the cookies…I think he must've been eating the sugar cookie scented soap in the bathroom or something…there was no cookies smell that I could tell.

Discouraged Today

I am very discouraged today. I am currently unemployed, and yesterday I found out that I didn't get a job I was 99% sure I was going to get. Life doesn't always go the way we want it to. The challenge is to not let the bad things in our life control us. Instead they can be character builders. In the past I have allowed my challenges to harm me. This time I am really going to try hard to rise above. I have a lot to say about my struggles with pornography, but today I am trying to focus on my current challenge, so I will end here.

B