Compassion, finally.

Last night, Husband and I were cuddling in bed and he looked at me and said, "I love you," and I looked at him and sighed and said, "it's so sad that I just don't look at you the way I used to. I hate that. I used to look at you so adoringly. But now, it's wrought with so much anger, so much distrust, and so much confusion. You're just not the person I thought you were and I hate that. I used to look at you adoringly, but now, even though I still love you, I just don't have what I used to have for you. Is that hard for you? Did you like the way I used to look at you? Do you miss that?" He nodded and started crying and said, "I broke. I used to be good. And then I broke." And that's really the truth. I married this really good, sweet man. And I felt safe. I trusted that he'd always be faithful. But he somehow broke. Cracked. Couldn't live up to what he was supposed to be. He'd always been a sex addict, that I know. He had a giant porn collection that he was very possessive of when we moved in together. But doing what he did was something that no one in the world would ever have pegged my husband of doing. It's the first time I've felt any compassion for him. I've been waiting for that.

Persisting Anger

I am anxious. And that's all there is to it. No, it's not so much anxious. I can't put my finger on it. I'm unsettled. I don't trust. I am afraid of my marriage going awry. Of my husband deciding to stop trying. I'm afraid that he's going to decide to stray and to stray.
I'm simply traumatized by his years of secrets. And I need reassurance. Like how can I feel safe again? What happens when I start trusting, does that make me complacent? How does this marriage become homey and warm without being enmeshed with the two of us having secrets on the side?
I guess it's just about time and patience. I've not been to COSA meetings in a while nor have I been to my husband's SAA meetings with him.
A weird thing happened. I've been getting a lot of attention from men lately. More than usual for some reason. I don't know why. But we went to my husband's 20 year high school reunion and he kept having guys pull him aside and say things like, "your wife is super hot, how'd you score such a hot wife..." blah blah blah... and it caused him to really be all over me for the next few nights. It's odd though. Why did he need third parties to tell him that? Why did the fact that I was totally objectified turn him on? I hate it when dudes act like dudes. It's fucking ridiculous. Why was husband looking for women so much younger and so much hotter than me rather than appreciating me. It's like he can't even see me unless it's pointed out to him.
But this is all me looking backwards. In the now, things are good. And if they continue along this trajectory they will get better. Yet, my anger persists. I sit with it and I become so sick of it. I think that when I hooked up with some other guys it was to mitigate my anger. And it worked temporarily. But as soon as I feel close to husband again, I feel angry but also sad and confused.

update.

Last night I was telling husband that he's really a good man. He did some pretty fucked up shit, but he's a good, good, good man. I'm grateful for SAA and his recovery and how much better he's feeling.

Myself, I feel better too. But I'm not into COSA. And I'm not into my own therapist anymore and I'm not into couples counseling. I'm continuing to feel pathologized in co-dependency. Yup. I have codie traits. That's for sure. And my mom was a full on codependent. The more I think about it and the more I sit in meetings, the more I realize that I don't belong there and it's not what I need.

It's been 4 1/2 months since I found out what my husband was doing and I mostly feel okay. I've not necessarily forgiven or forgotten, but I've found a great deal of peace. And I'm almost beginning to trust him again. I feel that we're certainly past our crisis stage and the pain has dissipated quite a bit. I understand that people usually return to their baseline level of functioning after a crisis. And that is something that has kept me feeling pretty calm over the years, as my baseline feels mostly calm and happy the majority of the time. I did choose well in terms of husband. He messed up. That's true. But he's making ammends. I don't want someone to be perfect, but I demand integrity. And I think that he has it. I hesitate to be lulled into a sense of false safety. So I continue to hold him a bit separate. However, it finally is beginning to feel right again. And better than it used to.

Cabbage

I somehow just managed to down a pound of cabbage and an apple for lunch. There's something about the Jewish holidays that fills me to the brim with bagels and cookies which does something to my intestines akin to brick and mortar. I went to Whole Foods with the intention of getting something healthy for lunch, like a wrap! But I saw a pound of shredded cabbage wrapped in cellophane and my mouth began to water. I try to take those bodily cues when I get them, so a pound of coleslaw and an apple it was.

Husband spent Saturday morning in services with me for Yom Kippur. I'm not some kind of super jew. In fact, I've not done anything for the Jewish Holidays since I lived at home, so, it's been a while. But, it always leaves me feeling flat, sad, and lonely, disconnected. So, this year I decided that I really needed to pray. I did a lot of going to Ashrams and Buddhist temples, and meditation retreats, because that's where I thought I belonged. But somehow, returning to synagogue is what made me really happy. It's where I felt like I belonged. The spiritual/new agey community here on this coast is where I thought I belonged. But it almost feels like competitive yoga, extreme silent meditation retreats, and a serious lack of joy. This isn't something that's super attractive to me. Although, I'd say that 90% of the people in those communities are Jewish. I need the Jewish community. It's one of the few places in life where I felt like I belonged. The problem is, husband is Catholic. So, without him, it will not feel as community-ish. He didn't go to any other services with me this holiday season, but he spent 4 hours on Saturday morning in Yom Kippur services. And for that I give him huge props. But he was confused. Lots of sitting, standing, and Hebrew. And I thought it would be easy and nice for him because it was a reform/reconstructionist congregation. Nothing like the Conservative, somber, boring all in Hebrew services that I had to go to as a kid.
We of course spoke about religion before we got married. But in practice it's weird. I'd been avoiding my faith for the years since we've been married. My faith was in him. In fact, I even made a Christmas this past year with a Christmas Tree. But my faith wasn't in my husband or in my marriage this year. I needed someplace else to feel welcome, to feel love, to feel community. Husband has his SAA meetings and I fucking hate COSA with a deep passion.
I need something bigger, something outside of myself to feel secure and to feel loved unconditionally. That's normal, that's human. That's what we're supposed to get from our parents. Husband is trying and working his program. But I don't trust his love for me. I trust his need for me. But not his love. I still don't understand how he could have done this to me if he loved me. I know it's not about it. I get that. But I also understand that all of my actions affect husband, so I try to consider him before I do what I do. After I found out about his 2 years of unfaithfulness, I stopped considering him. But that was too painful. But I have to consider myself. I don't know how this is going to play out. I don't know how I'm going to get what I need when what I need is so drastically different than what he needs. I want love, safety, community and security. The sex addict and partner of sex addict recovery world does not resonate for me. The psychospiritual community does not do it for me either. Judaism is what has been pulling me in more and more. How do I do this and still make my marriage strong? I don't want to pull away from Husband to make this happen for me, I want him to be a part of this, I want a family and a bigger family. But it's not his culture or safety zone. I don't know how to negotiate this.

Day of Attonment

I am Jewish and husband is Catholic. Tonight starts Yom Kippur, the Day of Attonment, where we atone for our sins, forgive ourselves for our sins and forgive those around us and ask god for forgiveness. I was at services tonight and the Rabbi was talking about how important forgiveness was. He said that even though the other guy who did whatever he did to you is a total schmuck, forgiveness isn't for him, it's for you. When anger stays in your body and in your heart, it makes you heavy, unhappy, bitter, resentful. When you can let go, it's not for the other guy, it's for you.

Unfortunately, I'm not there yet. I thought about it and I talked to husband about it. But I'm just not there. Husband said that he understood. The Rabbi talked about gratitude and how if you can't let go of your anger, to fill your heart for gratitude and eventually you won't have room for anger. I tried that. Here are some things I'm grateful for tonight.

1.)My cat who is laying next to me and staring at me and purring so loud that I can hear him.
2.)My apartment
3.)My career
4.)My office
5.)How few hours I have to work each week to earn a solid living.
6.)My ability to run 8 miles then still spend the night at Synagogue
7.)My really wonderful husband, even though he did stupid jerky things, he is a great human being.
8.)My parents who totally rock.
9.)My mom surviving ovarian cancer and feeling healthy now.
10.)Netflix


8.

I guess I'm still Angry at the World

Oh Life. Why are you so confusing? I think that the Y&S thing is finally beginning to fade. But with it, my feelings for husband have still not returned. It was like Y&S was some giant vacuum that sucked away my feelings for husband. No lust, no passion, no anger, no love. Just attachment. I want to go out without him and make out with boys. I have no desire to be around him these days. My drinking is so out of control too. No, not out of control in that out of control way. But out of control in that, I'll say I'm not going to drink that day, but still have a glass of wine. I drank 3 days in the last week. One day I drank something like 3 glasses of wine. And today I've decided not to drink. But instead I'm lusting after sugar. I am craving chocolate and peanut butter and Heath bars and sex bars. I had a dream last night that me and husband were in Hawaii and he had gone several months before without me. He said to surf, but he admitted in the dream that it was to have sex with "Hawaiian Honeys." I woke up very aroused from the dream because I got angry again. I tried to have sex with Husband but he was fast asleep. We've not had sex in almost 3 weeks actually. I've been disinterested. I've been still fantasizing about sex with Y&S. But I've not contacted him and he hasn't contacted me. What a silly little thing. I've been talking to husband about it and about how it's all old attachment stuff. He feels confused and sad and cries a lot. I'm still mad at him.

bored...

I was talking to husband this morning about how much I dislike everything in life right now. How I have no interests and no intellectual curiosity. It's like, we have people over for dinner and I look forward to pouring wine and drinking it. We go to a wedding and I am looking forward to sipping champagne and mingling. But the idea of mingling without sipping is excruciating. I don't know what I like anymore. I think about how I come home from work in the evening looking forward to my evening glass of wine. I am sick of introspecting. I haven't drank today, but I've been bored and I've been acting out with food. Husband is trying to be supportive. I don't give a shit anymore. I just don't know what I like. I don't know what makes me happy. I am totally sick of what I do for a living. I am sick of holding everyone else's shit and pain and taking care of them and worrying about them. I am sick of coming home and not being able to take care of myself. I am sick of being a perfect mingler. I am sick of me. I don't know what I like. I am so disinterested in conversations with people. I am sick of being far from my family. I am bored. I hate our friends here. I hate being a Psychologist. I am bored. I am disenchanted and I am restless. I hate being a fucking yuppie. Of course I slipped into fantasy with young & strapping. I needed something to distract me from the fact that I'm totally fucking bored. I hate that my husband has no sperm. I hate our stupid yuppie life. I hate how we all sit around and taste wine as a facade for the fact that we're all alcoholics. But we are allowed to drink in the afternoon because it's an expensive bottle. WTF? Is there more to life? I hate how every recovering alcoholic decides that drinking is a better life than not drinking. But what's it all worth? I don't know what I want. I don't know what I need. I am lonely. I am bored. I am sad. And I feel gross for acting out with food all day. I don't know how all my food issues snuck up on me again. And I'm gaining weight now. I've been consuming and consuming and consuming. And I want to stop. Husband gets better and I get sicker. It's so sad.

Sad about me Now

As husband recovers, I feel that I'm falling deeper and deeper into messiness. I have a serious problem with alcohol. I drink almost every night, and last night I drank a ton. I am not in a 12 step program for it, but perhaps I should be. But I really don't want to. I go to my COSA meetings and I absolutely hate them. They make me want to strangle people. My husband goes to SAA meetings several times a week and I am just sick of hearing about people "in their disease."

I just want to take some responsibility for myself and my life. We're having people over for brunch next Saturday. I'm really nervous because that's when I would normally drink a ton of champagne and mimosas and be trashed for the whole day. But I'm sick of that life. I don't know how to say no to it though. I'm tired and depressed and I want this to be over already.

I guess that I've not had time to focus on me for so long when I've been so focused on husband, then on Y&S. Where am I in this? I'm sick of work. I don't know what I want or need anymore.

I need to focus on me

My body specifically. There's been a lot of beer, wine, coffee, sugar, mindless eating, some minor binge eating and junk food the last several weeks as I have been in a Y&S fog, I've been neglecting the body. And it's beginning to show. I'm tired. I'm bloated. I'm putting on some weight, my pants were totally tight on me yesterday, though, it was day 2 of my period. But, if I don't focus on something, I'm going to dwell on the fact that my husband cheated on me for two years over the internet, that I've been trying to get pregnant for longer than anyone I know, and all the people who started after me are on their second kids now, that I hate where we live, that we're in crazy debt. That chemicals in my brain made me fall in love with a soldier whom I have no visual memory of. I don't want to think about any of that. So instead, I'm going to take the month of September and commit to detoxing and healthy body.

So, here are the parameters.

1.)Alcohol is limited to weekends. No more than one glass of wine without food. No more than 2 glasses of wine with food. No more than 3 glasses of wine in one day.

2.)Recommit to PCOS low carb diet. No sugar, no junk food, no processed carbs.

3.)Some kind of vegetable at every meal.

4.)Water, water, water. Lots of water.

5.)Recommit to water.

6.)Try to do yoga 3 times a week.

7.)Meditate in the mornings.

8.)Continue training for the half marathon that I've been training for.

9.)No diet soda, splenda, or other artificial sweeteners.

10.)Try to drink tea in the AM instead of coffee. If it is coffee, go for organic.



That's it and that's enough.

I know that sometimes focusing in rather than out can be helpful for me.

Husband and I are doing okay. I was trying to tell him more about Y&S last night, about all the feelings that got me. He tried to listen, but it was hard for him. He said that he can really understand about getting lost in fantasy since that's what happened to him with the sex addiction for all those years. But mine was although also fantasy, a love fantasy. Where I imagined that this boy would take me away from my world of infidelity and infertility. But really, what would the boy do? Bring me into a world of sitting around drinking without any interesting conversation? Probably.

I don't really know what this post is about.

Last night I sliced my finger while cutting celery. It hurts. It was a deep cut. Me and husband had just come home from camping and I was making him chicken salad to bring to work for lunch today. But he left it home today. Forgot it. We're back to being husband and wife again. My feelings for Y&S are settling down and I'm trying to renegotiate a life with husband. He hugged me for a long time last night and told me that he was scared sometimes that I was going to leave him. Sometimes I feel like leaving him, but I don't know why. I want something different. Yet I don't want anyone else but him. I do, but I don't. I know that we were meant for each other. I know that we're working things out and all of this stuff is a blessing in a certain way. Even his SA and me and Y&S. We had to blow the myth that our relationship was perfect and our lives were perfect out of the water. Because our relationship was boring and our lives were boring. Something has to change now.

Real Love Vs. Fake Love

Real love is deep, lasting, and unpainful. Fake love is a quick flash in the pain that feels like being drunk. Then you have a hangover. Then it's over. The problem with real love vs. fake love is that fake love is so intense and uncomfortable, that next to real love, it becomes confusing. And real love doesn't feel like real love anymore because it doesn't have that edge. My cat is standing next to me purring right now. I can't seem to get out of bed today and it's approaching noon. Crap. It just turned noon. Time to put on my new running shoes and go for a run.

I think that's the thing about love addiction. It's those weird chemicals that are released at the beginning. We can't get those back in a long term deeply felt relationship. Yet, I think I had that with husband right when I found out about his SA. I was angry, rejected, depressed, uncomfortable. And all I wanted to do was have sex with him. I was turned on constantly. Fake love. Then, as he got stronger in his program and in his recovery, it began to fade. Then Y&S came along. And I redirected all that libidinal energy toward him and the fantasy of him. Fake love. And now, I am hungover from it. And waiting to feel better. And my love for husband feels far away. But not because it is, but because I'm comparing fake love to real love. For husband I have real love. For Y&S I had fake love. And, it was all in my screwed up little head beautiful, complex and sensitive mind. Comparing the two is like comparing the high you get from looking at a beautiful sunset on the beach to staying up all night doing lines of coke and drinking tequila. One is beautiful, healthy, and long lasting. The other is dangerous, depressing, and intense. But if you really are craving a high, you're going to opt for the latter. All you can do after that night is recover.

Oh Yeah

After I finished telling husband everything, and he couldn't quite process it all and wouldn't talk about his anger or sadness or anything, and could barely sit and listen to it... I asked him if he had any questions. He looked at me and said, "did you tell the army kid that he should go to AA?" so very sweet. He then asked me if we could go to the sports authority and buy new camping equipment. We did. I pointed out that compulsive shopping probably wasn't the way to process. He said he thought it was a good way. So, $400 and a new tent later, we're going camping next weekend. Barf. I hate camping. But. Oh well. It'll be good.

I have been thinking though, of course I didn't tell Y&S that he should go to AA. And my ex, T*****, who definitely should have been in a 12 step program, I never told him either. And this is why-- men who are alcoholics and drug addicts are easy to control, easy to manipulate and incredibly predictable in their unpredictability. Like I still know that all these years later, (we broke up in early 2003 and haven't seen each other since then) that T***** is still in love with me. Or thinks he is. I always felt invested in my significant other's fuck uped ness because it kept them mine. Weird. I'm happy I married Husband. He might not be perfect, but he's great. And our relationship will survive.

I this dream last night that I was on a gambling trip in Vegas with Madonna, Paul Rudd, Roseanne, and some extras. Paul Rudd was in love with Madonna, and she was totally mean to him. So he took off and left, with only a note that said, "it's too painful with her here rejecting me." And he left. And I was counting my money and missing him deeply. And then I began weeping, thinking about how sad I was that he was gone, thinking about how much I missed him and how poorly I treated him because I was trying to impress Madonna, but how Madonna was just kind of a jerk. Then I woke up (late) this morning, all teary and sad. My cat was pawing at my face. I realized that this was my fear about my husband leaving me. I called him and told him that I loved him and I wanted us to stay together and I didn't want us to cheat on each other anymore. He said he wanted the same thing and he loved me too. And so it goes. I still find myself recovering from the insanity that was August 9 - August 21.
I talked to a psychic in June. I thought she was insane and wrong and a waste of money. But she told me that something significant was going to happen in August that shook things up. I asked her what. She said she didn't know, but I'd know when it happened. Yeah, I guess that this is it. This was significant.

The Way We Were

Me and Husband spent our Saturday night eating pizza, drinking beer, and watching "The Way We Were" in bed with my while I sobbed shamelessly. He also spent his first 4 waking minutes watching the Sex & the City "the Way We Were" Carrie/Hubble/Big redux on YouTube this morning with nary a complaint. Now that's love. Husband wiped my tears and held me. We are all broken. But at least I have him. I wish my love for him would come back. I lost it in the last few weeks. Though I know it's real and it's there. I just can't seem to find it.

So, I went ahead and sent Y&S a text this morning. I know that he's finally gone from this coast. I think he left some time during the last 24 hours. He stopped communicating with me for the most part after his 25 missed calls on Thursday night. I assume he was embarrassed. Or he's just fucking sick of me chasing him. And so I sent him a goodbye text. I feel mostly relieved that he's gone. His presence around here made me fucking insane. Here was my super codependent text:

i hope that you had a good flight back and didn't meet any scary cougars on the plane. I was pretty humbled and surprised by the fact that you didn't change your mind about meeting up with me. But I respect that you wanted to stay away from what you might have thought was a messy situation. Good luck with your life. Be careful out there. I will keep you in my prayers. I know that you won't understand this, but I feel blessed to have met you. You helped me put my life and marriage into perspective and sort through some things that I needed to look at. I owe you one, so call if you ever need to talk. I'm a good listener. I know from experience that people who think too much and feel too much tend to drink too much. So, be gentle with yourself and be good to yourself. I had 25 missed calls from you the other night with no messages- it made me giddy. You are like crack, one small taste of you just caused me to figure out how to get more. With that, I am letting you go. Farewell sweet boy.

Afterwards, I sat down with husband and told him everything. EVERYTHING! Except for when Y&S said that he'd impregnate me and we'd be lovers forever, because that's the kind of thing husband doesn't need to know. But I told him the important stuff, all the fucked up feelings I felt. All the weird fake love feelings and desperation and how I kept calling Y&S and tried to get him to see me. I was crying hysterically. Husband could barely hear it. He kept trying to get up and get coffee or walk away. I asked him why he kept walking away. He said that he was having a lot of trouble hearing it. In the end he said that he could understand what happened. And that he understands getting lost in fantasy. And being in a fog. He said he's angry and sad. But he's having trouble processing it all. He says that he knows me and how involved I get in people in pain. And that he loves me. It was good. I think we're gonna make it.

Dear Young & Strapping,

yes, I actually slept with my phone next to my bed, under a book where Husband didn't notice it. The way I have been for the past 13 days, since I get my texts and missed calls from you in the middle of the night when I'm sleeping, when you're drunk. I used to wake up to ex bf's texts and calls too. I know that you are back and I'm happy about that. I wish I'd gotten to see you mostly so I can fucking forget about you. Because in my head, you are larger than life. I see something about soldiers and I begin to think about you. I saw this and I became aroused. I mean, really, it shows how odd the obsession is. And you didn't even go to Iraq. Oh young soldier. You really helped me not be obsessed with my husband's sex addiction. Because now I'm obsessed with you. I think that I'm obsessed with being obsessed. It's either money, or pregnancy, or whatever. I hate it. I wish I weren't so attached to outcome and to my wants. I know that I'll never see you or hear from you again. Which again, is probably the best thing. But I fucked myself up in the head with you. I'm sorry for my long confusing texts that answered your, "we ate awesome food and did karaoke, got so hammered, i don't even know how we got home last night," and I answered you with wordy prose about compulsions, neil diamond and tequila on the rocks (in reference to neil diamond's 'Love on the Rocks') with lots of lime. In my courtship ritual with Husband, we sent long and beautiful emails back and forth to each other. We wrote silly stories that were long, winding, ridiculous and it created a language of our own. You are not Husband. But somehow, I acted as if you were. Holding up my end of the courtship ritual, as well as yours. Oh Sweet boy, you're smart, I can tell that for sure. But you're not what I want or what I need. I have become obsessed with a fantasy. I miss you. I wish you didn't stop texting me after Friday night. But now I need to return to my life. Find some balance with husband. Everything is so weird.

something that i will never send.

Dear Young and Strapping,

You are like crack. After just one brief taste of you, I became obsessed with getting more. Thank God you've left this coast so that I can go back to my life and stop thinking of ways to convince you to come and have sex with me. Not that I actually remember what you look like. Only what you feel like, and the taste of you, and what it felt like to be in your big strong arms. I felt safe. I felt saved. And I wanted to save you. People who think too much and feel too much tend to drink too much. Be good to you sweet boy and be gentle with yourself. I somehow became obsessed with you after one night of making out and all the grandiose plans we made. You said you'd get me pregnant. You promised to be my secret lover for the next 50 years. And then you said no. Which gave me free rein to fantasize about you and make you into something much bigger and better than what you think you actually are. You were smart not to let me meet you sober. It could have been a let down. But sad boys who drink too much are my Achilles' heel. I don't even know if you're a sad boy. But judging from the amount that you drink, I would assume you are. But maybe I'm wrong. I thought I sensed it in your tone. Well Y&S, I have to go back to my life now. You be good. Thanks for distracting me from my husband. Thanks for shaking up my life again. I needed that. I'm sick of being a yuppie. You are too cute. I really wish that I'd gotten a chance to make sweet love to you. But I guess that it's better this way. There's a big part of me that wants to be your friend forever so I can watch over you. I try to be friends with all of my alcoholic ex's. But only one will be tight with me. And he's the one who is in recovery. So, with that sweet boy, I let you go. I send you love and light and prayers and many thanks for touching my life. I don't want to let you go. But I have to.

kisses, Laney

Just. Wow.

So this is how it goes with being a human. It sucks. You know how cats and dogs have these distinct urges and instincts that they follow in order to stay alive and propagate the species? Well, somehow, us humans have those same instincts and urges. When I was in college, a girl living in my dorm smuggled a cat into her room during the summer semester. That poor cat was in heat and just cried hysterically all night long. She reminded me of Catherine floating through the moors pining away eternally for Heathcliff but the two of them, apparitions that keep missing each other and will never again be together. Feeling desperate, lonely, as though that one glimpse or touch will fix everything.

That is a crappy fucking feeling. And it's a feeling that I've had more times than I care to count in my life. With husband, I never had that feeling, because for all intents and purpose, husband and I have a very, very functional relationship. Yes, there's the whole S.A. thing. But I consider it to be minor in the scheme of things. Yet, I get insane with boys. In my head, I had a long and drawn out relationship with young and strapping. Thank god he heads out to the other coast tonight. I can't take waiting for his texts anymore and the possibility that we might see each other again if he gives me the word. But I'm left hanging. Young and strapping is a sweet young very alcoholic boy. And we've been texting back and forth. And where I send him long, witty, thought out, wordy and intelligent texts, he usually sends me back something along the lines of: LOL! hope you're having a good night. Me and my buddies are gettin' hammered! And in my head, it translates into something like, "My sweet girl, each moment without you is an eternity. From the moment I met you, I knew that we'd be together forever. I will sweep you off your feet away from your husband his cybersex addiction and his low sperm count. I will take care of you and we'll be together forever my cherie. We will live in Paris, in Bali, in Tunisia, in Barcelona-- run naked on foreign beaches till your cute little bum is brown as a brown plumb, drink exotic liquors, and learn native tongues. We'll make love nightly and make lots of beautiful babies together." But if I took out my real 27 year old alcoholic boy in the military dictionary, I would realize that the text meant. "I don't really understand exactly what your text means. And I'm not really interested in you, because I need to get back to playing x-box 360 with my boys, but I like the attention from a pretty older lady, so I'm gonna say something back. LOL" And of course i know that if it ever went further and me and young and strapping did decide to have an affair, the two weeks that he was here on this coast, it would be me watching him and his friends drink and watch movies (had that relationship in my 20's) and if we carried on a long distance relationship, it would be me afraid that he was out drinking and driving, which he probably would be. And i'd probably become so obsessed with him that I'd stop paying attention to husband (have been ignoring us for 2 weeks and disinterested in him), stop paying attention to the other interesting things in life I do (haven't done anything of note in 2 weeks), and make my whole world about him. I became obsessed with this boy not because I know him or I love him or anything like that, but because it's an old relationship. I've been in that relationship before. He's my ex. And all those old chemicals were triggered and released. I had 25 missed calls from him on Thursday night between 2am and 4am. That's the kind of compulsive behavior my ex used to do. It's because I was also very drunk that night. And tried to get him to meet up with me via text. And then he didn't respond and I so I got upset and told him I was deleting him from my phone. Jesus. I'm 20 years old again! (only we didn't have cell phones when i was that age, thank god!)
I wound up telling Husband everything. I told him about all the tangible stuff, the plane ride and all that, but then I told him about how fucked I got in the head afterwards. Husband was loving and forgiving and understanding. He said, "i know, I drove you to it." I told him that I wouldn't blame my behavior on him if he didn't blame his behavior on me. We switched roles in the past two weeks. I became the sex addict/alcoholic and he became the codependent. He says we just need to work through this whole mess and it's good that we have each other to do so. Husband is good stuff. I'm going to keep Young and Strapping in my prayers. What a sweetheart. I can't wait until my obsession with him passes. It's really interrupting my life. I'm wife interrupted.

Oh yeah, that's it.

I finally figured out what it is about this boy that's making me so crazy. And it only took me 9 days and an advanced degree in Psychology. First off, I met boy at an airport bar. And he was drinking a lot. And then we ordered drinks on the plane. He finished 2 in the time that I finished half of one. And ladies, I am not a slow drinker. In fact, I can suck down three beers in the time that husband has taken two sips of one. I'm not exaggerating here. So, young boy is sucking down cocktails and looking sexier and sexier to me. Is it just my vodka goggles? No! Of course not! It's my codependency goggles! Oh yeah. Those things. Anyway, young boy told me all about his Dad leaving he and his mom and his brother, told me all about his girlfriend leaving him and moving in with someone else, told me all about how he still thinks about her all the time and how sad he is. And I was in love with young boy. Now, what I know is that when you fall in love with someone like that, it's not that you're falling in love with them. It's that you're triggering something very, very, familiar. Husband is not an alcoholic. But ex-boyfriend is. Ex boyfriend who I was with from age 22-29 who would get so drunk, then cry about horrible things that occurred in his childhood. Oh and I loved exboyfriend. I loved him with a passion. It was the most crazy co-dependent relationship in the world. I took care of him, enabled him, loved him while he treated me like shit. And in the end left him. It's 7 years later and he's still in love with me. He's drunk himself into an isolated hole and won't talk to me, (though I still want to save him) but his friends report back to me that he's not doing well and that he still loves me and isn't over me. Tell the lady what she's won. It's not that I fell in love with young strapping lad. It's that I wanted to save him. Oh. Yeah. That. It took me a while to realize it though. And stalking and sleuthing. He made this comment over text about how he can't get together with me again, and he knows it's stupid, but he has all this guilt built up inside of him, and it always happens and he thinks that's why he feels the need to drink. Oh yeah. And then, I'm ashamed to admit it, but I ran a background check on him this morning and found that he had 2 DUIs before the age of 21. None since. But still. Brother is a full on alcoholic. And I am a full on codie. And it felt familiar and right and wonderful and painful and I wanted him so bad that I couldn't sleep at night. I needed husband to get into my sleeping pill stash for me. It's funny. I was trying to figure out why I was so inexplicably drawn to young and strapping. I kept thinking it was because he was so young and beautiful and sexy. But it's certainly not the first time that I've had the opportunity to have sex with someone sexier than my husband. But it's the first time I felt unable to refuse. I felt powerless. My draw to him was insane. I know that if we'd hooked up, it wouldn't have ended there. It would be a very long, very passionate, very, very, very messy relationship. I don't think it would have ended my marriage. But I think that it would have completely distracted me from my life, which it has completely done over the past week and a half. Seriously. I've only been thinking about him. It's all the classic codependency stuff. It's weird because I'm not like this with Husband. He and I have a more adult, more evolved relationship. It doesn't (and never did) have this level of charge and intensity. This felt crazy intense. I don't want to sleep with him anymore because I know that I'm confusing sex and sexual attraction with my deep need to take care of him. I want to be friends with him and offer myself as a friend to him because I truly do like him. He's great. But I'm not doing anything any time soon until I get some distance from it. And of course I have to tell husband about all this at some point. We have couples counseling today. But I think I need to wait until young and strapping has left this side of the country to tell husband. I'm too strung out right now.

Oh, and I should mention, in the midst of all this, I emailed ex-boyfriend and told him that I was thinking about him and I was here if he needed to talk.

Oh me. *le sigh...

It's Still there

I've still not stopped thinking about young and strapping lad. I keep hoping that he'll change his mind and send me a text. I know that I could probably text him and convince him, but I am not going to do that. This feeling that I have is so desperate and feels so awful. Poor husband. I've completely detached from him and he feels that he has to woo me back and doesn't know how to do that. So he's feeling desperate too. Clearly I'm not in love with young and strapping lad. But I feel like I am. Which is silly. When I called him, he had this voicemail message which was very much like the kind of message some young stud would have. "Yo whattup-- it's ***** you know whatta do! PEACE!" And as I said, I don't even remember what he looks like. But the feelings! Oh the feelings! And the desperation! Oh the desperation. I feel like a teenager. I was reminded of being 19 and once making out with this guy that I made out with in a club and then stalking him for months and trying to find him and find out as much information as I could about him. But I never found him again. I did the same thing with young and strapping last night. I didn't even know his last name. But last night, I used the power of the internet and 9.95 to find it out so I could sleuth a little more. Sleuthing was fruitless. I think that me and husband are more alike than I am willing to admit. He would find girls (without pictures!) on adult friend finder and stalk them all over the internet. Stalk them on 43 things! See if he could find them, but not try to talk to them, just see what he could find out. His fantasies were of a sexual nature, mine are of a romantic nature. It is easier when I observe than when I follow the feelings. Following them is devastating. It pulls me into this wretched place. I think he's leaving at the end of the week. I keep having the desire to text him and tell him I'm going to drive him to the airport. Just because I want to see him again. But again, I'm going to do my best to let it all pass. Oh us. Oh, me and husband. We are really such a pair.

So it turns out that I can be an asshole too.

I have never cheated on husband. I've had opportunities. Many. But I've never crossed that line because I love him and we took vows. It was just closed to me. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this because the opportunity hadn't presented itself, but that line somehow unconsciously opened after I found out about his sex addiction.
I went to another coast to visit my folks. The plane was delayed on the way back and I wound up sitting at the airport bar with this very dreamy boy, almost ten years my junior. And we drank. A lot. And then we drank more. Then we figured out a way to sit together on the plane. Where I told him all about my husband's internet adventures and how he was looking for women to sleep with on the internet and the cyber sex and how hurt I was and how I thought we had the perfect marriage, but it turned out to be something different. Then I told him about our issues with infertility and my husband's sperm count and how he Then we drank vodka. Then we were kissing. A lot. Then we were somehow planning the next 50 years together. We decided that we were going to be lovers till we were 80 (till he was 80 and I was 89). We decided that he was going to knock me up. He was here visiting some friends for a few weeks. We decided that when we woke up the next morning we'd have sex. I texted him in the morning telling him that my conscience gave my libido a stern talking to and that it wasn't a good idea. He said that he understood and that was it. So then I went to therapy and sorted through it with my shrink. That only made me decide that I wanted to do it. I don't know why. The whole thing brought so much shit up for me in so many different ways that I need to sort through. But this is what I'll say, it quickly went from sex to being totally emotional for me. I think that's because I'm a woman. So, we texted again and made a plan for a rendezvous. And it was planned. I told him that sex was off the table for me and that he should know that straight off the bat. But that I wanted to see him again. And he said that he wanted to see me again too. So we planned to meet a few days later. And so, the morning I woke up, I didn't chicken out. I really wanted to see him. I was giddy with excitement, but nervous. I was shaking and sweating. But I texted him. And he shot me down. He said that he felt like a scum bag and that he didn't think it was alright to do it. And he felt like he was using me it made him feel horrible. And he begged me not to be mad at him. Mad at him? Jeez. I was relieved. But then, all of a sudden it kicked in. I was rejected. It felt awful and continues to feel awful. I know that this is for the best. But all of a sudden, I'm feeling incredibly retraumatized and depressed. Husband thinks it's him. I told one girlfriend who thinks that it is about husband and that I'm sad about this boy but i'm not, i'm really sad about husband and it's easier and safer to be sad about a stranger. Truth of the matter is, I was so drunk when I was with said boy, that I was in and out of a blackout. I don't even remember what he looks like. Yet, I can't stop thinking about him. And I know that I'm obsessed with a fantasy. Of someone who could sweep me off my feet and take me away from this world of infertility and infidelity and deception and debauchery. But wasn't that what I was doing with this boy? This has nothing to do with him. Since I've been a little girl, I've looked to a man to save me. I've fallen in love more times than I can count. I am a love addict. I become obsessed with the fantasy of people rather than with actual people. And then my emotions spin wildly out of control. I want this boy to leave town so I can recover from this experience. He's leaving at the end of the week. Thank goodness. Yet I find myself hoping that he will change his mind and text me. I know that this is unreal, yet the feeling of heartbreak feels so real. Husband gets high off of the sex chemicals, me, wife, gets safe off of love chemicals. I pine for them. I used to pine away for men/boys all the time. From the time I was in 2nd grade with Ben Farber. Then, when husband became a sex addict, i felt rejected and was traumatized. Now, I am retraumatized again. I want my marriage to work. I hate my emotions. I am just so sad and depressed right now.

Why do you love me?

Husband still can't seem to tell me why he loves me. He can sort of, but he can't seem to mirror the very essence of me. He tells me that I'm smart and funny and he likes being with me and he loves me, and it's just a feeling he has and he knows. Yet, I need him to look at me and say something like, "the way you are with people makes me swoon. When I see you rubbing the cat's belly, I know what a warm and compassionate person you are. When you give money to homeless people, I know that you have a good heart and I love that. When people gravitate toward you for help and advice, I feel proud that your my wife. When you meet people in the street and help them out a bit, I know that you are intuitive and kind and it's heartwarming to me." Or something like that. I want to know that he's watching me and that he sees what I do. I want to know that he likes about me what I like about myself. I want to know that he sees in me things that I don't see in myself. I know that I'm smart and funny and kind. That's not why my husband loves me. That's just normal human being traits. Many people are kind and compassionate and smart and funny. But he's not married to all of them. It hurts me because it makes me feel unspecial, unseen, and replaceable. It makes me feel as though he loves me because it's convenient. I could write a 200,000 word monologue on why I love my husband. Yes, still. Despite the fact that I hate him and I'm dangerously angry at him right now, I still love him. He's a great guy. But I need more. I fucking need more.

From The Poop Deck

So husband went under general anesthesia on Friday to have the varicocele (varicose vein in his left nut) repaired so that he can start making some sperm. He was in surgery only for a few hours and then came home with a goody bag of percocet, codeine and vicodin. Husband isn't in the habit of taking pills. He does 1-2 glasses of pinot most nights, and occasionally gets drunk, but he's never taken drugs (even weed! wtf?) and so they affect him in the most curious way. The way everything affected him after his surgery was a great deal of constipation. Yup, husband was full of shit. Every night he would take a few of the stool softeners that the doctor gave him and every morning-- nothing! So, finally on Sunday, I gave him some smooth move tea to help him go. But the smooth move gave him spasms, but no poop. I told him to go sit on the toilet and relax. So he did, but nothing came out and husband began to panic. The longer he sat, the more he panicked. He began pounding glasses of water. He had like 5 or 6 giant glasses of water, but dude was so panicked that his sphincter muscles started to jam up, locking all the shit up inside of his intestines. Husband starts screaming for me. I walk into the bathroom and find him standing over the toilet completely naked, a look of terror on his face.

"You need to take me to the emergency room!" he screams.
"Um, why are you naked?" I ask him
"Just call 911, we have to go to the emergency room!"
"Wait. Can you at least put some underwear on?"
"No, I can't! I need to poop and I'm gonna poop all over myself but nothing's coming out. I think I'm going to explode, you need to take me to the emergency room."
"Wait. So why are you naked?"
At this point, I can barely keep a straight face. He looks totally pathetic, standing over the toilet naked, his belly all distended, toilet paper in hand and um, leaky ass... I was thinking "really? really this guy wanted to have sex with other women?" I was so annoyed and amused at the same time. thinking about what if the 22 year old bimbos could see him like this.
"I'm not taking you to the emergency room."
"how come?"
"because people don't die from constipation. I think you're having a panic attack, tell me where the emergency xanax is" (he hides the emergency xanax because unlike him, I do like drugs).
He took a xanax and I offered to read to him while he sat on the toilet. So he sat and relaxed and I laid in the bathtub reading him the biggest piece of shit book I've ever read-- Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. Anyway, low and behold, the combination of xanax and Dave Ramsey made his ass explode and for that I'll always be thankful to Dave Ramsey. And by the way.. psssst... stock tip. If you can, buy some shares in Preparation H. i think we might make you rich.

I dined and dashed

Yeah. I did. It was a bit more than a month ago. I was on my way to therapy and I decided to get breakfast at a diner next door. My bill (for a couple of eggs and a cup of coffee) came to 11.25. I was so angry and resentful. When I gave the waitress my debit card, she told me that their credit card machine wasn't working and could I go get cash from the ATM. I told her that I had no time right now, but would be back later. Well, I didn't go back. I was angry at the waitress, angry at my therapist, angry at my husband, angry at everyone. It's been haunting me with joyous delight for more than a month. I knew that I should send them money, but I didn't want to. Anyway, yesterday, reluctantly and annoyedly, I put a $20 bill in the mail with an anonymous note telling them that I dined and dashed, and telling them the date and the time and a description of the waitress, asking that she please get her tip. So, she was getting a 77.777% tip instead of the 20% tip I would have left her if I stayed. I'm not justifying my action. In fact, I did that because I didn't have small change, just a $20 on me. I didn't send the money in because I felt a deep sense of moral obligation. I did it in the end because it was the right thing to do. I didn't believe that if I did it, things in my life that were going wrong would right themselves.

See, I came from a belief system that when you did good things, you were protected from bad things. If I was good, kind, took care of people, was loving, overtipped, etc. etc. that I wouldn't get sick, that I'd make money, that life would be good. When I found out that husband was out buying condoms and looking for 22 year olds to have sex with, and having violent, masochistic, cybersex with women on the internet, well then that theory was shot to hell. How could this happen to me? I'm a good person. I don't think that being a good person can protect you from the pain and suffering of life. So, why do we choose to be good? I don't know. My husband certainly didn't. He came from a similar belief system too, yet he still actively decided to stray and to cheat on me. He chose to be bad. And still, he doesn't have consequences. Sure, I'm angry at him, but he got away with it for 2 years and in the end, I didn't leave him. What good is being good? Why do good things happen to people who do bad things and vice-versa?

I have to figure out what the point in being good is. It didn't feel good to send the diner the money. It felt better to think that I'd gotten away with something. That felt good. Is that the same with husband? Was being with me better when he was getting away with something? Was cheating on me awesome because there's no real benefit to being good?

If I were following the blog formula, I'd have formulated an answer for the question, why be good? But I don't have an answer. I was a good a great wife and I got cheated on for 2 years. My goodness didn't come back to me. What's the point?

Sitting in My Shit

Action. Action is one of the things that helps me become me again. Being an active participant in my life and reintegrating who I am is how I'm beginning to heal on my end. When I was a young teenager, 15 I think, I had a boyfriend who broke my heart. Literally broke. my. heart. The first heartbreak might be the worst. And to think that no one loved me through it or helped me to heal through that. To think that my mother or my father or stepmother didn't hold me and rock me and tell me how much breakups hurt. To think that they didn't acknowledge my broken heart or even my tenuous punk rock al a Sid&Nancy type relationship, they just berated me for walking around mopey and gloomy. To think that they didn't tell me that I was perfect, whole and complete just the way I was and that his breaking up with me had nothing to do with me, that I was fine the way I was and that they loved me for me. No. I didn't get that. I was told that I had to change. That my feelings were not acceptable. I gloomed around for a year. Seriously, it was a year. A whole year too. When I think back to it, it feels like much more than a year, but a year for a 15 year old is like, forever. But things got better eventually and I got on with my life and started wearing colors, and let my hair grow and put on (non black) lipstick and things got better. After that happened, I made a rule for myself. When I am unhappy about something, I am allowed to "sit in my shit," for a specified amount of time. After that, I stand up, dust myself off, and persevere. Perseverance is something that I've always had. The crisis level of the situation is decreasing, the trauma is beginning to wear down, and I'm ready to pick myself up and go forward again. And I'm willing to try it out with husband. Don't get me wrong, I'm still totally angry at husband and I will be for a very long time, but I'm not stewing in my juices anymore. I'm coming back to me again.
Husband told me last night that one of the things that kept him in the acting out behaviors was the addiction to the validation. Like if he could get someone to talk to him, it gave him a sense of being validated or being okay. He feels so intensely not okay in so many different ways. Like me, he grew up in a pretty crappy family that gave him no validation. I can totally relate to needing to know that I'm okay. And hearing it from just me was not enough for him. That has nothing to do with me. That's all about his crappy self esteem and his sense of worthlessness. That's about his mother neglecting him and his father not protecting him from his mother's insanity. I can understand that. I have often felt not good enough and needed lots of external validation. I've done lots of shit for it. Not just having sex with people or trying to make people think I'm hot, but running a marathon, writing a novel, starting a business... things that will make my parents think I'm good enough. Getting skinny and having sex with men was to make men think that I'm good enough. But you know what? Good enough is good enough. I don't need people to tell me I'm good enough. I am fine. I am fine just the way I am. And I don't need to change because husband doesn't think he's good enough. Nothing I do to myself will make him change the way he feels about himself.
So, for now, it's all about being an advocate for me. Getting out into the world, enjoying my life, meditating in the morning, working on my 2nd book, learning to play an instrument, thinking about other things that make me happy. Husband has his own work to do that has nothing to do with me.

How do I become Me again?

I've been thinking for the past few days about who I want to be. It's all confusing because I feel that since I have been with my husband, I've been less myself. It's something that I haven't wanted to admit, but it's true somewhat. I've gotten lazy in a sense because I felt so secure with him. To be fair, I've also started a business that's taken up all of my time and my work is tiring, so when I'm not working, I'm zoning out in front of the computer. For the past two years, while husband was doing his acting out behaviors, I began to just zone out myself. I'd pour myself a glass of wine and sit in front of the TV in the evening, laptop on lap, semi watching TV, semi surfing the net (for what? I don't know) and semi getting drunk. All of it was shutting me down. We discussed this, husband and I, when all of his SA stuff came to light. I'd be waiting for him in bed, and he wouldn't come in, so I'd take a sleeping pill and pass out with the TV on. If I called for him to come to bed, he got annoyed. So I stopped. It was hard for me to have him so distant and disconnected from me. I was depressed, so I did the only thing that I could think to do, I distanced myself from him. I took wine and sleeping pills and passed out. A few hours later, at 2 or 3am, he'd come into our bedroom, change his underwear and come to bed. When I asked him why he was changing his underwear, he said he had sweaty balls. Yeah right.
Anyway, after all his acting out behaviors came to light, we began to try to do things different. I stopped turning the TV off and realized that I escape too much into the internet. And honestly, I barely look at anything on the internet. I peruse the NY Times, I look at a few gossip blogs, I read about the newest weight loss fad, I look at facebook (which mostly annoys the hell out of me) and I answer work email . I barely answer friend emails because there is this big secret between us. I have been so depressed and isolating from my friends. It's just too much to talk about. Which is so sad because part of me losing me, is me losing my friends. I've been feeling disconnected for quite a while now. Drinking wine at night and watching TV makes me disconnected. The other thing is that I project a perfect life and people think my life is perfect. I thought it was too and now it's all falling apart. I thought it would be awful to let people know that it's not perfect, but it's actually kind of a relief, for those who know. I'm depressed a lot. Not only just because husband is a sex addict, but also because our money situation is bad. We have almost $45,000.00 in debt (this doesn't include a house), we can't seem to get pregnant, and my husband spent two years having cyber sex relationships with woman (or 14 year old boys and old men- who knows) who weren't me, and putting up ads to try and meet up with women who weren't me. THIS IS NOT MY FUCKING FAULT. I am a hot lady. I am sexy, smart and fabulous. I am quite brilliant actually. And, if I might say so myself, I'm pretty fucking hot. In fact, I should go out and make out with a boy the way I used to. But I've not done that in six years. But boy, was it fun when I used to. But husband and I are trying to work through this, and so I can't do those things. As much as I want to.
But I digress.
If I am so fucking fabulous, than why am I sitting around being depressed and surfing the net? I know I said that I used to do that, but I still do that. I'm kind of addicted to the internet. I don't think that blogging counts as internet addiction, because this is me trying to work through my shit. This is positive. Outer circle behavior they'd call it in COSA. If I am so fabulous, why am I stuck in this rut of being depressed that I'm not pregnant, being depressed that my husband did the fucked up shit that he did, being depressed and thinking that I'm fat, ugly, and old (at 36, which I think is not old), and spacing out in front of the internet pretty much all day long. WTF?
Because for some reason, I need to spend hours looking for the perfect tight, bellbottom jeans to squeeze my lovely, curvy ass into. I need to spend an hour a day on the treadmill, I need to look for the best low carb diet to go on so that I can be sexy and skinny for my dipshit husband. I can't even tell you how many times in just the course of writing this post I've gotten up and gone into the refrigerator or looked at Shopstyle
I mean, for real. It's so odd. Husband always told me that he wasn't attracted to other women and didn't even look at attractiveness levels in people and didn't understand it. I sort of thought that he might be on the autistic spectrum. The truth was, he was lying. He was afraid to find people attractive, so he had to take it out on the internet and try to act like a douchy guy on the internet, while I just wanted so badly for him to tell me that I was pretty. He never did. He's trying now. I really began to not like myself. Think I wasn't good enough before I found out about the SA, because he was so neglectful. I kept asking him, "are you not attracted to me?" "I am," he would tell me. He might well have been, but he was getting his needs met somewhere else and I was not getting any needs met, so I met them with wine and ambien. Or unisom.
But now, I have to remember who I am. What do I need? What do I want? Who did I think I was before husband? Who did I think I was before we started trying to have a baby?
I thought I was a writer. But now I no longer write. I thought I had a serious spiritual and meditation practice. Now I don't meditate or do yoga ever. I thought I had a lot of friends. Now, I don't talk to people. WHERE THE FUCK DID I GO? AND HOW DO I FIND MYSELF AND GET MYSELF BACK?

I am not a fucking object full of eggs. I'm an awesome lady with a great ass, exquisite tits, and a sharp as knives wit and a brilliant mind. But I'm wasting all that shit just sitting around doing nothing.

So what do I want?

1.) I want to finish book #2
2.) I want to finish super-secret project that I've been working on for years.
3.) I want to read more.
4.) I want to do projects, like sew clothes and learn to play some musical instruments like guitar and saxaphone and piano.
5.) I want to learn to play tennis for fun
6.) I want to meditate more and pray more and channel more and reestablish my relationship with God as I know her to be.
7.) I want relationship with husband to be kick ass, where we are connected. I know that husband is willing. I am too. But we're so used to being so disconnected that it's tough.
8.) I want to reconnect to friends.
9.) I want to get back into writing short stories and begin to submit them to journals.

How the fuck do I do all this? I certainly have the luxury of time. I don't work a ton, especially now that work is going down hill. I work less than 25-30 hours a week.

I guess that the first part is giving up the disconnecting so that I can connect. Probably that means letting go of wine. Ugh. I can't tell you how many times I've said that. I am so addicted. I am probably an alcoholic. A typical, yuppie, housewife, hyper-functional alcoholic. I use wine to numb me. I don't want to give it up. It's like my best friend. But maybe instead of saying I'm going to give up alcohol, I have to welcome in reconnecting.

Reconnecting means not spending more than one full hour (combined) a day fucking around on the internet. It means not getting sucked into fantasies of winning the lottery or spending a ridiculous amount of time filling out sweepstakes- another one of my addictions. As much as husband would escape into reality, so would I.

So, how do I do this? I guess it starts with my relationship with myself. I think that I start by waking up and meditating in the morning. First things first. Then, perhaps do a little channelling, then make a list of things that I want to accomplish that day, and make time for friends, journal, blog posts, work and play and create some time for other fun things.

I would say that I need to get more into my COSA program, but I'm not really into my COSA program. I am very interested in figuring out my codependent traits, but COSA is triggering all my shit. I feel inferior to a lot of the women in there, like they don't like me and I'm not good enough for them, and superior to others. It's all shit that I need to work through in therapy. I don't know that I want to do 12 steps. If I do, I'll do them with my blog, right here. Not with a sponsor. I can't deal with anyone telling me what to do. I can't deal with character defects. I don't believe in them. I think we're all just works in progress. So, if I can believe that, I can sometimes even feel that way for my husband before I get angry at him for betraying me. But it's all so hard.

Step One. I admit that I am powerless against my need to check out.

Tomorrow morning, meditate, make list. That's it for now.

Choosing My own Reactions

I choose my own reactions. My husband was the one who went out and put profiles of himself and pictures of his penis all over the internet. However, I'm the one who began hating myself and feeling like he did it because I was fat and ugly and old. I am not old. I'm 36 years old. And I'm cute. And at 130 pounds, I'm definitely not fat. And I'm smart. My husband did this because his self esteem is in the gutter. I can be angry at him, I am angry at him, but my reaction can't be to hurt and hate on myself. It has to be to love myself more. To be more confident. To do the things I want to do with my life. I don't have to be down in the dumps all the time. I don't have to hate him.

However... hating him makes me less vulnerable. If I hate him, then he can't hurt me again. It feels better somehow.

Still Depressed

I am back home with Husband. He picked me up from the airport last night with a chicken Caesar salad. As soon as I saw him, I was instantly depressed. To think that this man was the person whose arms I would jump into when he got home from work. This is the man who I talked to several times a day. I feel so low, so defeated.

My FSH increased 3 points over the past one year. So I'm nervous and afraid. It seems we just might not be able to have kids between my husband's sperm count and my FSH. I'm feeling depressed and defeated. I know that I should try and do things for myself. But I'm so depressed I don't want to get out of bed. I want to lay in bed and just be absorbed into the atmosphere.

One of the Noble Truths

Life is difficult.

This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths*. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. - M. Scott Peck "The Road Less Traveled"

This is an important passage and I read it whenever I am feeling sad or desperate. We all suffer. Yet, I often believe that I shouldn't suffer, and that my suffering is so much worse than anyone else's. But, it's not true. We're all suffering together. And that's not all the time, but we go in and out of it, and we'll all suffer differently at different times.

I've been away from Husband for 48 hours, and I'm feeling nervous that he's not going to need me or love me anymore. It's weird. He's getting better and I'm feeling insecure. It makes me feel angry at him. I don't know how to navigate through all this. I feel a little more comfortable when I'm angry at him, despite the fact that anger is horribly uncomfortable for me. But when I'm angry at him, I feel safer. It gives me more control. When I'm angry at him, I don't need him. When I'm angry at him, I can ignore him and I can bask in the safety of him feeling terrified that I'm going to leave him, which will keep him with me.

I know that I need to find safety and security in me so that I don't need him to feel safe. But that's hard, you know? How do I do that? How do I completely be me without worrying about him, while still being interdependent as a couple?

not good.

I'm in the place of hating my husband right now. My anger is taking over my body. I can barely take it. How could he do this to us? How could he push me aside to try for years to fuck other women. After what we had. What a fucking ass. I'm so sick of him.

Not doing any better

Today I sent Husband this email at work:

i made the mistake of looking at facebook this morning. which put the question in my head, "how did my life get so bad?"
I had a great job, a great boyfriend, no debt, I was going to have four children.

and now. no kids or possibility of it, crazy debt, a husband who tried obsessively to cheat on me for 2 years. how did this happen to me? I just want to die.

And he replied with this:

I know - I did all this and you are suffering for it. You had no idea what you were getting into.

But we do still have a chance to have children and a great life together.

Nobody has a perfect life - everybody gets some bad stuff. And I've done a bad job of dealing with a bunch of my bad stuff up to this point in my life which led to this. Like a closet stuffed full of dirty emotions, it bust open all over the floor.

I love you and I'm not going to flee when you are depressed.

I may give a call in a few - but I'm off to a busy start. I have alot to get done today.


I am about to fly across the country to see my folks for a few days. They don't know. But, it's going to be hard. I've not worn my wedding ring for 2 months since I found out and I can't bring myself to put it on. I think I'll just tell them I was bloated from my period so I took it off. Anyway, I'm really being triggered by this visit. See, my husband admitted the other day that he was happy when I went away to visit my parents because that's when we would try super hard to find someone to meet up with and have sex with. He was happy to get me out of his hair so he could spend all of his time having cyber sex. I'm so angry and I hate him.

How Did My Life Get So Bad?

I feel that I almost can't deal anymore. I had a promising life. I had a good job, married a great guy. Was going to have kids, security... But my husband is a sex addict and he can't get me pregnant.

Depressed

I'm premenstrual and depressed today. I still can't believe that my husband did what he did. I spoke to someone who wanted to help me through my step work yesterday. It mostly annoyed me. COSA is really hard for me. Sometimes, I don't want to empower myself. Sometimes, I want to sit in front of the television, drinking red wine, surfing the internet and zoning out. Sometimes I just can't fucking take it. The thing is, sitting around and trying to do things to make myself feel strong and powerful, journaling, blogging, exercising, and reading Patrick Carnes books, and whatever else I'm supposed to do to care of myself is hard. It takes a lot of work to figure out how to feel better. It takes virtually no work to sit around and do nothing but drink and read gossip blogs and watch lame ass TV. It makes me forget how much my husband hurt me, and how angry I am at him, and how much I sort of hate him, and how he betrayed me.

Husband is at a meeting now. He came home the other day with a 30 day chip. Wow, 30 days. That's nothing compared to how long he was communicating with other women.

Maybe tomorrow I'll work on myself. Tonight I have wine.

Self Worth Part II

My self worth and self esteem is in jeopardy. I think that's why a lot of people become codependent. They don't feel good about themselves, so they save others in order to give themselves worth. I did that with a very broken ex bf of mine. He felt so badly about himself that he thought I must be insane to love him so much and care for him like that. He treated me like shit, abused me emotionally, and cheated on me.
My self worth issues began young. My father moved out when I was 10 months old. My mother worked a lot and left me at school or with sitters and was always late to come pick me up. It made me feel unimportant. As I got older, she was critical. Critical about my weight and about my looks. When I asked her if I was pretty, she told me that I was interesting. She was overly concerned about my weight and my weight gain. At age 13, she brought me to Wannamakers for new clothes. She found that my size was a (brace yourself) *GASP-- 7. Oh no! A size 7. She told all the neighbors (in front of me) that I was a size 7 now and that she was taking me to Weight Watchers, so if anyone saw me eating or buying junk food around town, they had to tell her. And so began weight watchers. I went from 112 pounds to 105 pounds. But that wasn't actually the start of weight watchers. It actually started two years earlier, at age 11, when I was 106 pounds. Back then, I went down to 98 pounds. But weight watchers taught me all about calories. And I learned that if I ate nothing all day, I could eat a candy bar (or five) for dinner and that's it. So, you probably don't have to guess too much about what happened after that... yup. Eating Disorder. I remember my first Thanksgiving with laxatives. I found them in my Grandmother's boyfriend's daughter's medicine cabinet. Three chocolate ex-lax let me eat as much turkey, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, bread & butter, pecan pie, and ice cream as I wanted. Then I came home, stepped on the scale, and with every trip to the bathroom, weighed myself again until the magic number (98) was there. Then I could go to sleep. I experimented with purging, but was never a good bulimic (thank god). I never really got super into laxatives. But what I struggled with for years was bingeing and restricting. As a young teenager I would pop dexatrim and smoke cigarettes and guzzle diet coke to avoid eating. I'd binge on bagels and chips and ice cream late at night when everyone was sleeping. Mommy called me "sloppy fat." I wasn't very overweight. Don't get me wrong, I was a bit over weight, but perhaps more like 10 pounds overweight, yet my mom made it seem like I was morbidly obese. She was really appalled by me. She's say things like, "Charlie thinks your pretty, but he says you need to lose weight," or "Grandma thinks you've gotten fat." And of course she would say things like, "Laney, no man will want to be with you if you're bingeing." Little did I know that Mommy was a binge eater too. I found out years later. But she was like me, binge/restrict and her balance threshold kept her skinny. Anyway, I began having sex with any man who wanted to have sex with me. I didn't understand that any many would have sex with me because, well, I was a woman. I was desperate, and kind of pathetic, and had no self esteem, so if someone wanted to fuck me, I'd do it with them because I thought it meant that they were attracted to me and that I was pretty. I stopped binge eating (and only restricted), lost 30 pounds and had men falling over themselves to have sex with me. I had sex with many of them. I wanted love, but just got sex. It was empty and terrible. I did this for years. More to be continued.

Boundaries

Today at my COSA meeting and we talked about boundaries. Now, here's the thing, everyone discussed how they were having trouble creating clear boundaries with parents, husbands, friends.

Husband and I definitely have trouble with boundaries, but rather than diffuse boundaries (that very codie sticky i don't know where I end and you begin), we have very, very, rigid boundaries. I think it's the same issue, but played out in a different way. See, husband and I both grew up in households with very diffuse boundaries. My mother beat me and tried to control me. She was a codie herself -- (Grandpa was an alcoholic as was her very married boyfriend of 25 years). My mom was so in love with me that she just couldn't let go of me, so she tried to control me with name calling, insults, physical abuse, criticism, and massively unhealthy overprotection. Husband's Mom is just a crazy mess, she tries to control everyone in orbit in the most insidious way. I hate her, in case I've not mentioned it before. Anyway, growing up with these very diffuse boundaries has caused husband and I to have very rigid boundaries. We don't tell anyone anything. Very few friends and no family members know that he's an SA or about what we're going through. We've told very few people about our fertility issues. And, for crying out loud, we didn't even tell anyone that we bought a house until after it closed. We are both so self protective. And, in our own relationship, I think that we can tend to be sneaky and self protective with each other. Obviously husband was with his SA acting out behaviors. But I can be sneaky with money, and also with food. Not so much about overeating, I always tell him when I overeat, but I also do a lot of telling him that I've eaten when I haven't. I also don't tell him if I've drank a glass or two of wine. I mostly don't tell him if I buy a new dress or new pants. Though, I don't know why, it's not like he gets mad. But I think that it's because we both grew up with these overprotective, overcritical mothers who judged everything we did. So in order to do what we want to do, we have to be sneaky. It seems that in order for me and husband to have a better relationship, we should have a no-secrets policy and recognize when we have the urge to hide something from the other. We're good to each other. We don't have to worry about being hurt by the other if one doesn't like something the other does.

Self Worth

When husband and I were in couples counseling this week, I told our therapist that I felt extremely depressed about my aging process and that this was a new thing. I told him that I have always felt that growing older was a blessing. But all of a sudden, I felt old, insignificant, ugly, used up. I told him that I felt that being 36 makes me worthless because husband was on all those dating sites looking for women ages 18-24 to have sex with. I said that my process of growing older has become not something to cherish and feel blessed about, but a reason to hate myself. Husband began to cry. Dr. T. asked him what was up. He said he didn't know, but that he was really sad. Dr. T. asked him what he was sad about and husband said he didn't know. Later that night, I asked him if he was sad that my perception of myself was so skewed by his actions. I was hoping that would feel so guilty, and tell me that he loved me and he didn't know why he was looking at young girls and that it killed him to know that I was doubting myself and berating my age because of his actions. But he said he didn't know why he was sad. Dr. T. pointed out that this was something that I should be working on in individual therapy. My own sense of self was probably tenuous to begin with and his acting out triggered all my old stuff.
I went into individual therapy with a plan to terminate my sessions because really, we have no money. I've been working much less since disclosure, it's hard to do my job when you're totally fucking depressed, couples counseling is $180 a week for a 50 minute session. Which is crazy money for us. (Addict husband is bad with money-- making it and spending it-- surprise, surprise). But my therapist wound up cutting my fee from $130 a week down to $60 a week. I can't tell you how grateful I am for that. I know it's not easy to cut your income like that. I'm super grateful. Husband was grateful too. And now I can see her weekly, which I wasn't able to do before. It's still crazy money for us. However, I know it is money well spent.
So, on the note of my self worth--

Well, here we go. I have self worth issues. I've always felt that my worth was tied up in the way I looked. I've always skated by pretty easily on my brains and abilities, and though nurturing those gifts a fraction of the amount that I've worked on my looks would have yielded me really amazing results, I've not done it because in my mind, my looks are the most important thing. How fucked up is that? When I got together with husband, he never looked at other women and let me know that he didn't really think about how people looked. He didn't think of women in terms of attractiveness and he didn't see it. That was partly a relief, but partly sad for me because he never validated me in that way by telling me I was pretty or hot. He never went nuts when I was changing into my pajamas or coming out of the shower unlike previous boyfriends who went crazy for my body, my hair, my eyes, my looks... but not husband. He said he just wasn't the type of guy to quantify women in terms of their physical attractiveness and it wasn't something he even noticed. So, I felt very safe with him. I *knew* that he would never cheat on me, that the thought would never even cross his mind. Ick. So, of course I was shocked to see on his many hundreds of online dating site profiles that the most important thing to him was level of physical attractiveness. Huh? Who the fuck is that?
It fucked up everything inside of me that I'd taken so long to heal.

I read in Patrick Carnes book that eating disorders go hand in hand with Sex Addiction. He said that most of the SA's came in and their wives had been engaged in overeating and that many were morbidly obese. Well I've definitely been in and out of eating disorders and right now, though I'm trying not to engage in my behaviors, I find myself restricting food and exercising a lot. I've dropped 8 pounds in the last 7 weeks. Which is significant for my size. I will continue this post later.

Senseless Snacking

I have spent the day eating. Overeating. Or eating too much. Or maybe not overeating, but eating when I'm not hungry and eating things that I shouldn't be eating. Like a brownie at 4pm. Or a brownie then another one at 4:01pm. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti brownies. But under doctor's orders, I'm not supposed to be eating sugar for insulin resistance purposes (PCOS). But I didn't talk to husband all day and it made me sad and nervous. I won't call him. Because I want him to know how much I hate him. But when he goes too long without checking in with me, I feel bad. He called at 3:54 and I didn't answer. I called him back 6 minutes later and ate the brownie while I was on the phone with him. I decided not to yell at him or be mean to him or tell him how much his behavior hurt me or how broken I feel. It was the first time since I caught him that I didn't tell him how much pain he's caused me. But instead of telling him all this for the 10 millionth time, I chose to binge on brownies while I spoke to him. It made me feel worse.

Today, I Bring You-- The Ugliest Pants I've Ever Seen

These Pants Are UGLY!!!!!!!!

Anyway, I woke up today and saw a wrinkle in my forehead. I think it's my first wrinkle. It's not the first time I noticed it. But it's the first time I cared. It upset me horribly. I immediately began thinking about Botox. I've never really been a woman who cared about aging. I've always felt that 1.)Getting older makes you smarter. 2.)Getting older is a blessing because it means you're not dead and there is always a chance for new and exciting adventures in life.
So, given my peace with aging, you'd think that my wrinkle wouldn't bother me. But it bothered me a lot.

It led me to send husband this email:

I found a wrinkle this morning. I think it's my first. Anyway, I'm feeling sickened and scared by it. Like you only want young, nubile teenagers and I'm too old and disgusting for you and soon you will be out looking again. I'm nauseous about it and depressed and having the urge to run away-- leave the relationship-- because i'm scared.

Husband responded with this:

I love you. Be aware that you are getting caught up in my fantasies. They're sticky and yucky. I'm wild about you - I love going through crazy weeks liek (sic) this with you. They're an adventure and they're fun with you.

It was a nice note and what I needed.

I sent husband this article that someone posted on JWC (and I'm so sorry for not giving that person credit, I just saw it and sent it to husband in a blind and wild rage-- I have now become vastly intimate those states). He read it a few times, and reads it whenever I'm really upset and tries to incorporate what it says I need into how he treats me.

It's a great article, because it tells him exactly what I need. I thought it was so strange that an article could tell my husband exactly what I need. But it does somehow. Those things are constant reassurance, constant apologies, and something else, which is an indication that he knows he caused me all this horrible pain and it pains him to see me in pain and to know that he caused it. Very odd. I always felt so different from everyone. In fact, it was shocking for me, when I first began to practice, that so many different personalities followed so few structures, and how that in some ways made the job easy. I guess that Jung was not wrong with his archetypes.

I found a great cure for overwhelming anger

It's called Xanax. Husband had some lying around the house for his panic attacks. Oh, my sex addict husband has panic attacks? SHOCKING. Anyway, I flew into a blind rage with my anger yesterday. I found a sore on my lady parts. A painful sore that all of a sudden appeared. I have no history of herpes or anything. I have HPV, but that's been there since before husband. Anyway, husband came home from his meeting and I almost beat the crap out of him. But he has a pretty good block. Every time I tried to hit him, he blocked it. Very annoying. And eventually my hand got hurt. He assured me over and over that he never had sex with anyone. I had made him get complete STD testing despite his assurances. So, we're still waiting for the results. I was freaking out in the morning about the day a few years ago when I found a craigslist casual encounter ad on his computer. It was actually saved/downloaded. I wasn't looking for anything, but I was just using his computer to print something out and it came up when I launched MS word. Anyway, I called him and was like, "what the fuck? why do you have an ad downloaded on your computer?"
"I know that you must be mad," he said, "sometimes I like to look at the ads because they're erotic and they turn me on..."
"you're not responding to them? " I asked him.
"no, of course not."
"because you know that if you ever cheated on me I'd leave you."
"yes, of course. I'd never cheat on you."
LIES!!!! FUCKING LIES AGAIN! And I fucking believed him. I fucking believed him. And I was so angry at him for lying to me and making me doubt my own instincts and I was made to believe that I was fucking crazy. I totally trusted him, so I doubted myself and my instincts instead of him. FUCK! How the fuck can I believe anything? How the fuck can I believe a fucking word he says.
Anyway, I was so enraged and had so much work to do. So I took half a xanax. And it totally calmed me down. Then I took the other half before bed and had one the of the best nights of sleep that I've had in a month and a half since I found out about his crap.
But, as I know, it's very easy for a solution to become a problem.
So, sweet xanax, I appreciate the time we spent together yesterday. It was quite lovely. But I'm unable to get to know you as well as I'd like to because I don't think we'd have a very healthy relationship. And, I don't want to be a pill popping Stepford wife who
is totally shut down and calm in order to deal with husband's shortcomings. But, unfortunately, it does sound somewhat appealing.

I'm not Codependent! Oh, wait...

I had two days of recovery activities today. The first was Friday night where I met with a bunch of people from my COSA meeting to learn how to do our first step. It's interesting, I have a huge aversion to labeling myself as codependent, but I realized that I have some pretty real codie behaviors. For instance, everyone at my COSA meetings talk about how they have all these urges to track what their partners are doing online, check their emails, have them followed, look at their bank statements, go through pockets, ask them where they're going, try to tell them to go to meetings, make program calls, etc. So, I was thinking, "well, I don't do anything like that, I don't try to control my husband's sexual behavior..." Nope, not me. I'm a pillar of non-codependency and everyone else has issues. Okay. So, here's what I realized, I have all the bank accounts, I'm in charge of all the money, the credit cards, I have all the passwords in fact. When husband wants to spend money he always asks me if it's okay. I do the laundry, cook his food, take care of him when he's sick, buy his clothes, tell him when to get a haircut, make sure he wakes up in the morning. Now, granted, most of this has changed since I found out about his addiction, it's mostly because I care about him so much less than I used to that I don't want to do things for him, but also because he realizes that he was not only taking me for granted, but not engaged in his life. But then I think, "did I manipulate the relationship this way?" The answer is no. I didn't, but I found someone who was otherwise helpless, and made him totally dependent on me. I found someone who couldn't leave me if he wanted to because he would have nothing if he did. When I met husband, he was unemployed, he had this kind of disheveled look, he dressed in an unattractive way, had out of control hair, and eyebrows. I metrosexualized him with hair, clothes (that I bought him) and occasional eyebrow waxings. Then, I wrote his resume and sat with him and wouldn't let him go to sleep until he had sent it out to ten firms. I did this every night. And he would complain and want to go to sleep, but I wouldn't let him until his ten resumes and cover letters were out. Of course I wrote the cover letters. At this point we'd been dating for 4 months. But he was going to move in with me and I told him that he couldn't move in until he got a job. Oh see, look at me, I had boundaries. I'm not codependent. But, of course I probably knew on some level that even given that caveat he wouldn't do it on his own. Because he didn't know how to. So it had to be me who did it. Husband moved in with me and let me do everything. He has just handed over his paycheck to me for the past 5 years and I put it in our joint checking and deal with the money. He let me take all his credit cards, destroy them, and put the debt in my name, because of course I have excellent credit and his was bunk. I totally fixed his credit. Put his student loans in my name, all his credit card debt, all of it. Pattern here? Yup. I'm a typical codependent. It's just under a different guise.

Yesterday, I went to a daylong Vipassana meditation retreat. Man, Vipassana meditation is torturous while angry. FUCKING TORTURE!!!!!! It felt impossible to sit with my anger. I was jumping out of my fucking skin. One thing I did notice there that's important is that I started praying again. I prayed to God to take away my anger. And then I heard this,
"do you want to take away your anger?" the answer was,
"well, no. not really."
"What does it do for you? What purpose does it serve?"
"Well it keeps me safe."
"How?"
"As long as I stay angry at husband, he stays afraid that I'm going to leave him, that's terrifying to him, so he stays with his program."

So, I'm not saying that my anger is not valid or real, but there's a secondary gain to it. It's a way that I can control the addict's behavior. Ah, see! It's interesting because it hurts me to hold it just as much (or more because it's in my body) as him, yet I have no desire to let go of it.

When?

When oh when will my anger run its course? Why did my husband put us both at risk. Why do women all over our city have pictures of his face and his penis? Why did he send a girl who claimed to be 18 years old a picture of his penis, even after she sent him her picture and she clearly looked 14 or 15 years old? Why is he suck a fucking perv? WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!???????????????? He's like a total perpetrator. I fucking hate him today. Seriously.

That's Not the Way I Roll

Husband is in the other room (the den of sin as I now call it) on the phone doing a phone SAA meeting. Today I am angry at the women involved. The women who participated in acting out behaviors knowing that he was married. WTF? Ladies! WTF? Why?
I admit, I have a very, very, very close female friend who is an SA, though she still very much acts out. But even she would never be with a married man. Husband (I know this for sure) was very up front with the fact that he was married. I saw all his online profiles. He said he was married. Don't get me wrong, husband sucks for this too. But ladies! Come on! We're all sisters here, how can you do this to one of your sisters!?
I have never been the type of girl to be competitive or jealous of other women. It's just not the way I roll. I just don't. And I'm certainly not jealous of the 18-24 year olds that husband wanted to be with. Ugh... who would want to be that age and getting off on fucking 38 year old married men who you have no shot for a commitment with. Not I. But I'm mad at those girls. I always had a code of ethics. No men with wives or girlfriends. Again, it's just not how I roll. Which is also annoying, right? Because husband sees and loves me for me and my ethics, principles, etc. then, he wants to fuck skanks who wanna fuck married men? What the fuck people? WHAT THE FUCK? Fuck you husband. Fuck you craigslist. Fuck you adult friend finder. Fuck you alt.net, Fuck you lavalife, Fuck you ashelymadison.com, Fuck you okcupid! Fuck you all.

Wanna know something lame? I know Craig Newmark of craigslist.com. Yeah, I know him. Not very well abeit. But I have spent time with him. And I know where he lives. And I want to go to his house and cry to him and tell him that my husband's infidelity started on his lame casual encounters section. Oh Craig. Why? Why? You're such a nice guy! I've seen you on blind dates at the the sushi place all the time with perfectly respectable age appropriate women. Why did you do this to me?

Clearly I know it's not personal. But I'm angry at everyone and everything.

Attachment Disorder

Our psychologist said something interesting today in couples counseling. I was talking about how I used to perpetuate this myth of husband, that he was just so evolved, which was why he never looked at other women or thought of people on their levels of attractiveness or judged people like that. And that now I have to accept that he's human, he does fucked up things and that he's got issues, and that he can be just as big of a douche-bag as any other dude. Anyway, our shrink said that I needed to believe that he was that way. I think he's right. In order to feel safe, I needed to believe that husband had no interest in other women and husband let me believe it.
See, I've got one hell of an attachment disorder. I'm very insecurely attached. Each night, as I fall asleep, i pray that husband won't get a horrible disease and die. I am very scared of husband dying, or of me dying, or of our kitty cat dying. It's really hard for me. Nights feel especially hard. I feel so raw and so afraid. Like God has something horrible in store. And I pray and pray and pray for God to protect me, husband and kitty cat. Last night I gave up praying for us to get pregnant, and began to pray that we would just be happy for once and live long happy lives. I'm afraid of everything. But mostly I'm afraid of being alone. Since I found out what husband has been doing, I've felt so alone. So depressed.
And I have to admit, I have an addiction to sleeping pills. Anything that can put me out at night, I want close to me. Be it Benadryl, or melatonin, or unisom, or Ambien... anything that can knock me out at night so I don't have to be in that scary place is what I crave. I wish I didn't. I wish I could sleep on my own. But nothing is worse than being awake and afraid. Even if I wake in the middle of the night to pee, I'm terrified. Terrified of horrible things happening, of husband dying, of getting lost at sea, of someone breaking in, of husband getting hit by a car, of me getting into a car accident. I think it's all connected. Husband pretended that he was totally solid for me. Then came in all the fucking lies.

I am very, very far from forgiving him, and I'm still full of rage. But I'm willing to look at it a little bit more closely now.

The fairy tale myth has been shattered

Which is disappointing and I guess it can also be liberating. When husband and I became husband and wife, I had a plan. Age 32- kid #1. Age 34- kid #2. Age 36-kid#3. House. Car. Fancy Peg Perego Stroller. Well, here I am, age 36. No kids, no house, one Toyota Corolla, and obviously no stroller. Things didn't turn out the way I expected them to. As we've been going through our fertility issues, the one thing that has kept me going is, "at least I have awesome husband. No one is as lucky as me to have such an amazing man..."

I was living in a fairy tale-- perpetuated by me.

But maybe now I can learn to live without plans. But truthfully, I ache. I ache not for what I lost, but for what I never had. For what I expected. For what I believed in. My marriage, my future. But nothing is guaranteed. So, what do I do now? I guess I live with it. Isn't that step one? Admitted we were powerless against fucking everything....

Bitter

God, I'm so bitter. It upsets me. I feel like my mother. A bitter unhappy woman. She hated my father, and now I hate my husband. I never thought I'd end up like this. I was never like this. I've never been bitter. I've always been, well, sort of a Pollyanna. But I wonder how Pollyanna would have played the Glad Game had she found out that her old man was trying to fuck 18 year olds in the ass. Anyway, this Pollyanna doesn't like it at all. I never, ever, ever expected this from my husband. In fact, just two weeks before I found out what he was doing, a friend of mine came to visit. I was telling her that my marriage was the easiest and my consistent and secure thing in my life. I told her that I never worried about my husband cheating because he's "just not built that way." That's exactly what I said. I was really, really, really blindsided. I do love husband and I love being with him. He's very sweet and loving. He's very regretful and says he's crazy about me and wants to save our marriage, wants to save us. I don't know what to believe. Does he say this because he was caught? I am unsure. I feel fat. Of course I do. I always feel fat when I'm insecure. Fat's not a feeling. And I know I'm not. But I feel too short, fat, old, and ugly for him. When did I get old? I'm 36. I used to be 18, but I don't think that he'd want to fuck me then. I was a hot mess. I smoked, I drank, I smoked a lot of pot, I was needy and desperate. Ugh. Why 18 year olds? Why? Why? Why? Why? How could he do this to me? We have the relationship that people covet. People say they wish that could have a relationship like mine. I wish I could have a relationship like the way I thought my relationship was. I don't know what to do anymore. When the fuck will I feel better?