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.