Pregnant! Wowza - triggers!

Big new on the homefront. I'm pregnant! We are excited. I am not sick (yet). It is still pretty early, maybe 7 weeks. Last time I didn't get sick until around 8 weeks so we'll see. :) My last pregnancy was generally a good one. I was sick the entire time (except weeks 17-20) but I was so grateful to be pregnant after struggling with infertility that it really was GREAT!

There were some hurts I experienced during pregnancy and soon after baby boy was born that I thought I had worked through, but I am now thinking I had simply buried them. Since I found out a few weeks ago that I am pregnant I have really been on edge emotionally. All the emotions that I buried are flooding back.

See, I didn't start sticking up for myself and setting boundaries and demanding change until around 4 months after baby boy was born. So, the pregnancy was still in the full throws of dishonesty, vague answers, misleading, minimizing, and hiding behaviors by B. I knew he was looking at porn but I was ignoring it, and he was minimizing if I did bring it up, and I was ignoring my intuition. We were sexually active most of the pregnancy. A few times I was told that he didn't want to be physical because of how I looked. Ouch. And you know the six weeks after birth where sex is a no-no? Well, there were lots of favors asked of me to which I generally obliged. At the time I was just happy that he was finding me attractive again "because [my] waist was returning." Now, well, I feel like I was so incredibly used. I feel like I was blind and stupid for ignoring everything. I feel like I was just an object. I feel like I was only valued in accordance with my physical appearance.

When I started standing up for myself our marriage started getting worse. I'd heard that it gets better before it gets worse. Oh boy, does that ring true for us. We spent a year getting more distant, more volatile, and with me pulling more things out into the open. We started therapy a few months ago and stopped moving backwards and a month or so ago we even started moving forward.

I will say that for the last month B has been sober and very aggressively seeking recovery. Meetings, sponsors, contacts, phone calls, reading, studying, watching videos, the whole bit. He is doing pretty well and sticking to it so far and working on continuously being humble in response to my hurt. And maybe the added level of safety from him is allowing more emotions to come to the surface too.

Whatever the reason, the emotions are there and I am hurting and I am in pain and I am so so angry about all of it. It is so much easier to just keep him at arms length, keep my walls up, and not face the hurt. It is so deep. I don't know if I am ready to face it. I let one brick from my wall come down this morning and it was hard. We hugged for the first time all week.

Refreshing Honesty

Today B and I had a very real, honest, and open conversation about our sex life. It was so nice because I think we were both on the same page and chose our words carefully to try to fully express ourselves without going into any of the roles in the drama triangle. I feel that it was a baby step in the right direction. We've decided to have a sex fast for a while to get a break from the frustration and hurt that it has caused recently to both of us and to try and reset.

My favorite part of this experience is that he really opened up about what he has been feeling and what his perspective on recent circumstances have been. That afforded me the opportunity to do the same and we both saw how a lack of communication about the subject had made things worse. It made me cry because there was pent up hurt and emotion that was unlocked by his honesty and willingness to listen to my honesty. It felt good to let a few more things out and surrender a little bit more.

Another silly thing dawned on us - before marriage we stayed chaste by having rules and boundaries like many other couples have. The rules were meant to keep us from a situation where our resolve would be tested. The couple times we have tried to have a sex fast in marriage we didn't set up the same boundaries because we just assumed we could stick to our resolve I guess? Well, those didn't last long.

side note***I feel shame even writing that. I feel like having a sex life at all with a lust addict not in recovery is somehow betraying all of the other WoPAs out there. I feel like it means I shouldn't be allowed to be part of their(your) company because they(you) surely take all this so seriously that they(you) wouldn't do this to themselves(yourself) or partners and they(you) all have more self-respect than I do, or something like that. I feel it makes me seem weak to still have any kind of sex life before B is completely sober and in recovery. I feel it makes me part of the problem; If I just stopped having sex completely then I wouldn't feel used because I wouldn't be letting him use me and he would realize I was serious and get his bum in gear. If I just stopped having sex with him then we would be able to focus on everything else and I wouldn't be medicating him with his addiction and enabling him. These feelings of shame and blaming myself for his addiction are probably partly why a sex fast is a good idea.***

We are going to set up some additional boundaries for ourselves because we really do believe we need a period of abstinence to change up our patterns and reset our emotional connection. We have been, in the past month or two, using sex as a way to create an emotional connection rather than celebrate and deepen a strong emotional connection. Not healthy. I am 100% guilty of this too, not just B. When we started therapy and other boundaries got thrown out the window (another story, that I've shared some of in the past) I just kind of let them all go because I felt helpless and trampled on and unsure. Maybe re-figuring everything out is a good thing though. Now we are on the same page and the boundaries (at least these ones, not all of them) will actually be set together because his heart wants to have an emotional connection with me and is slowly seeing that that means sobriety and recovery needs to be worked on.

Implementing Boundaries and The Principle of Reaping What You Sow

My last post was pretty down. I was pretty down. It was therapeutic to get it all out. I want to feel safe. I realized during the day that partly what I had done was not stick to my boundaries when the most recent lie came out. I immediately started trying to make him feel better at the expense of my own sanity. I held on for a couple days but the trauma magnified and I became lost. I lost my footing, my path, and my sanity.

There was some pretty intense praying yesterday and lots of digging deep. If I had neglected my boundaries I really needed to put some in place now to reestablish my safety zone (emotionally speaking). All the way home on my commute I was contemplating what to say to B. I decided on 2 important things - there needed to be a physical separation of sleeping apart for a time in order for me to heal more fully from my most recent betrayal and there needed to be a halt on all sex until I could trust him again.

This second one was big for me folks. It is SO OBVIOUS and everyone knows that trust must be earned back once it has been broken. We all know this. When someone shows you who they are, believe them right?  B had showed me over the past couple months he was not capable of being completely truthful where his addiction is concerned. So, why, OH WHY did I keep trusting him? After each find I would take a couple days and then just trust him again. I would believe that I finally had the whole truth, and now I must really know everything. Two weeks go by and BAM, something else, on now I must really know EVERYTHING. Trust. Time. BAM - MORE HIDDEN THINGS UNCOVERED.

Well, I've lost count but maybe this time is the charm. I actually gave myself permission on the way home to NOT trust him when it comes to the addiction. I long ago stopped believing he was not going to look at porn again but for some reason I kept believing he was telling me the full extent of his addiction. I don't know why, rose colored glasses? I never gave myself permission to not trust him because I was scared that not trusting meant something dreadful. It might mean the marriage is over, or trust could never be regained, or that it is worse than I can even know. I was scared that not trusting him made me a bad wife. I wasn't giving him the benefit of the doubt or being charitable. I give myself permission to NOT trust him. I give him permission to EARN my trust back rather than have it handed to him. I told him that he must earn my trust back if he wants it. I told him sex was off the table until that point. I told him we are sleeping apart for a week for me to continue to heal from the betrayal of the lies. It didn't go well, but it could have gone worse. He reacted like an addict, who has been caught, and who doesn't want to face his own reality. This is fine, because that is the place he is in and I can't really expect more than that.

Then something wonderful happened - I felt the burden I'd been carrying around for the past while lift off my shoulders and I could almost see it land on him. The burden of trust is on the person with whom it belongs. If he behaves in a trustworthy manner I will give him my trust back, but not before he has shown efforts in behaving that way.

I know this addiction is SO MUCH for the addict. It is also SO MUCH for the spouse. I feel like he is constantly piling crap on me that I have to sort through and dig out of and clean up from (I LOVE Harriet's post about this imagery). Well, yesterday I got out of the pile and shoved ALL THAT SHIT right back on him. It is his mess to deal with, he has to deal with it. I'm doing neither of us any favors by trying to take some of his crap on myself and get buried by it. It just seemed like I was finally getting out of the way of the principle of reaping what you sow. It felt good.

The other miracle? When I got out of the way and put all that crap back on him it freed me from the chains of despair, bitterness, blame, anger, confusion, and frustration that were tying me down with much more force than I realized. (*mote and beam people*) I was so consumed I couldn't see which way was up and I didn't even know it. I was finally able to see B, and know that I had just piled a bunch of crap on him, and love him and want him to find his way out, but NOT want to rescue him from it. I was able to love him more fully and clearly because I wasn't trying to sort through stuff that wasn't mine. My negative feelings toward him dissipated completely because I finally had done what I had been directed to do for myself by the Savior and was filled with His peace and love.

I'm not saying I'm perfect and I know I won't be able to stay here forever, but I just wanted to write about it. In this moment I an content. My marriage is on the brink of disaster, my husband is in full fledged addict mode and I'm not sure if he can dig himself out any time soon, I still have that daggum rash, but I have peace. I have the companionship of the spirit of the Lord and it is sweet, and kind, and I am not alone.

Sexual Intimacy

I started this post more than once. I deleted it all more than once. Instead of a lot of background I'm just going to say what is on my mind at this moment because I think it will be cathartic for me even if it doesn't offer much to anyone else.

I want a healthy sexual relationship with my husband. I don't know if that is possible right now. He is working toward recovery and making progress but not what I would deem sober. Sometimes when we are together it is great physically, emotionally, and spiritually for me. Sometimes I can tell something is missing but so far I haven't had the guts to stop mid-way through and say, "Nope, this isn't what it is supposed to feel like, we're done for the evening." I know sometimes he has fantasized about other women when he's with me, that is par for the course with this addiction. I know sometimes he finds my body wholly inadequate. I don't know if he is capable of lust-free sex. What I am struggling with is what to do with all of this knowledge and my desire to have sex with him and have it be gratifying not only physically but emotionally and spiritually as well.

Partly my problem stems from frequently being rejected when I was desirous of sex during the course of our marriage. It got to the point where he would initiate maybe once every six months and every other time I got the ball rolling. So, I pretty much said yes please any time he actually initiated. But I don't know how to undo that in me. I worked hard on my self-esteem and body image and having my worth come from things other than whether or not B finds me desirable. I was doing well on this front. Then we started being hyper honest and really diving into recovery efforts and disclosures and learning. I have taken a step backwards and I fear my body image is on the verge of getting tied into B's view of me again and it scares me.

On paper the easy answer is no sexual intimacy until he is fully sober, or recovered, or whatever. I have seen that as a boundary on many blogs. I have a hard time with that one. See, I believe in the five languages of love and my most prominent one is physical touch, by far. I knew this before I even met B. I enjoy hugs, kisses, hand holding, affection, and yes, sex. I want to be intimate, it is one way I show love, and one of the ways I hear "I love you." Plus, taking our physical relationship off the table makes me angry because it is just another thing that this stupid addiction has stolen from me. But really the addiction has already stolen this because I'm having this dilemma.

I don't know what is healthy for us and for me emotionally and spiritually. My gut is saying at some point we'll need to have a fast from sex so he doesn't just use me for his lust hits when he is done with pornography consumption. Is that point now? How long does it need to last? Mostly, I hate that this addiction has stolen one of the most sacred parts of a marriage relationship from me. Pornography use by my husband has rewired his brain and because of that I have been used as a lust hit, I have been used as nothing more than a toy. Not always, but it has happened. I'm worth more than that. So, now I'm just angry about the situation and I don't know what to do about it.