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?

What I said

We did another semenalysis for my husband's sperm count and it's dropped significantly since the last time we did one. It's like half of what it was. When my husband does semenalysis', I have to go with him and have sex with him using a sterile condom on the floor of the bathroom of the doctor's office because he can't cum into a cup. He can cum all over the place while he's having cybersex standing up in the spare room, but somehow I have to be there for him to give a sample. Anyway, his sperm count was down, disappointingly enough. And then I called him and told him (in the nicest possible way) that I feel like I married the wrong man. That my life is stuck with him. That we're not getting pregnant, he's not making money or getting promoted, we're just stuck. And I know that it must of hurt him terribly, but he took it. Thing is, I really love husband. He's been actually a great husband. But the sex addict shit just sucks. And I know that he's not been acting out in his behaviors, but I'm so fucking angry. I sort of hate him. I can't believe he did this. He isn't the man I thought I married, and for that I'm miserable. I'm 36. We've been having unprotected sex for the past 6 years, and the last two years have been intense trying to get pregnant including two unsuccessful IUI's. It's all depressing.

Anger

Husband has been oddly good at taking my anger and not being defensive. But it's interesting, when he sometimes has enough, he tends to do something like self victimize. A behavior I recognize in myself as well. See both husband and I grew up with abusive parents, surprise surprise. My mother physically abused me and his mother, though not outright abusive was emotionally neglectful and fucking insane-- borderline, bipolar, and OCD/- hoarding type. She was way too into her hoarding, shopping, and being generally out of her fucking mind to pay much attention to husband. My father-in-law didn't stand up to her, just allowed a crazy person to lead the household. For that reason, husband learned to dissociate while she was raging and going nuts. Which was often. She also had no boundaries. In fact, when husband and I got together, we were at their house once (they live about a 7 hour drive away, we rarely see them) and husband was in the bathroom and his mother just walked in and started talking to him-- while he was taking a shit. He was 35 at the time. He just talked to her like there was nothing wrong with it. I once showered there and locked the door and she started pounding at the door and trying to get while I was showering. She's out of her fucking mind. So, we don't stay there anymore. If we're going to go visit them, we stay at a hotel. I should have compassion for her, being a shrink and all, but I fucking hate her. I hate husband's father too, for not taking care of husband and his sister. He just let shit happened. He should have left her and taken care of his kids. Or at least sent her away. She's out of her mind. You can't expose your children to that.
Anyway, I think my anger must be hard for husband. Sometimes he randomly starts to cry or say that his back hurts or he has a headache or he's grumpy about something totally unrelated to my anger. This is so I'll take care of him rather than be mad at him. I'm not sure quite what to do here. Usually I tell him that I'm still angry at him, but I'm open to chatting with him about what he's feeling or rubbing his back or getting him water and advil. He's aware that my process is challenging and probably more so than his own, me being the betrayed, he being the betrayer. But yet, it's hard for all of us. I found myself binge eating while reading some entries on the Junkies' Wives Club. That's a very old behavior for me, bingeing and restricting. I stopped myself and called husband and told him that I was eating handfuls of cashews and I needed to give him my grievances. He was amenable.
Husband isn't a bad guy. He's actually a good guy. But he's also a big fucking asshole for lying to me and doing this to me for two fucking years. He's an asshole for trying obsessively to have sex with other women, he's an asshole for choosing cybersex over me, he's an asshole for masturbating compulsively when he was supposed to be storing his sperm for baby making reasons. He's an asshole for having a sex addiction when he should have had more control. He's an asshole for avoiding his exams to run after women (18 year olds) on the internet, he's an asshole for limiting us financially because he was too busy stuck in his world.
He's trying now. He's on a path with his recovery. He has a sponsor and he goes to meetings every single day. He cooks dinner with me each night. He goes out and buys the ingredients, comes and picks me up at work and then we cook together at night. It's what I always wanted from him. I always asked him to come meet me at work because I work until 9 most nights and I don't like to walk home in the dark. He always acted like it was such a big deal and he was too busy. And if he did do it, he acted pissy and annoyed about it. It's because he was resentful that I was disturbing his acting out behaviors. And for that, he's an asshole too. I don't forgive him yet, and even though he's working a program, I'm not proud of him. I'm disgusted by him. I think he's vile and pathetic. But I love him and I think that at some point I'll be less angry and maybe in a place of forgiveness, if he can prove to me that he's trustworthy. He's been doing recovery for 6 weeks. He's been a sex addict for many many years, so he will have to do this for a long time before I can trust him again. Maybe decades.

PTSD

I think I have PTSD. I've not been sleeping, I'm having nightmares most nights, and I'm having flashbacks to the night I caught husband and that girls face is etched in my brain. I'm having flashbacks to the cybersex that he had. I'm having fantasies of catching him in the act, at a hotel or someones house of a girl he met on Craigslist Casual Encounters, or Adult friend Finder. It makes my heart beat uncontrollably and makes me sweat. It happened this evening while I was working with a patient. Oh yeah, I'm a shrink. My countertransference needs to be kept in check especially for those who are having an affair. Tonight will be an ambien night. Husband is the holder of the ambien. I don't trust myself around it right now. I'd take it every night if it were accessible. But for now, it's just for the nights that I'm really amped up. I keep picturing him telling the woman he was having cybersex with to do certain vile acts on herself. it makes me sick. So it goes.

Sex, more sex, no sex.

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Caught

On May 11th, 2010, I came home from work late. It was 9:38pm on a Tuesday night. I got into our apartment, and walked into the office room to give my husband a kiss. When I walked behind the computer desk to give him a kiss I saw that he was engaged in some sort of chat on yahoo with a woman, or, from her picture, a girl (maybe she was 20 or 21). "What are you doing?" I asked him. He looked at me sheepishly. I walked out of the room and headed into the kitchen. I was mostly confused. I didn't know what he'd been doing, and I wasn't even necessarily feeling angry. But something told me that I should pretend to be, because something was not right here. When I think about it now, 40 days later, I feel sickened, depressed, angry, enraged. That's why it's taken me this long to write it down. The first three weeks I was a raw, hot mess. I still feel that way. But, I digress. Husband followed me into the kitchen and began to apologize. I had no idea what he was apologizing for. But it seemed pretty bad, and he seemed pretty upset, so I kept my angry face on. "How long have you been doing this?" I asked him, "two months," he told me. "So, what you just like, get on yahoo chat and chat with people?"
"Yes," he told me, "that's what I do. But I'm going to stop, I'm going to erase my profiles."

You have a personals profile on yahoo?

"yes, but just so i can chat with people"

"You said profiles, you have more than one?"

"I have two."

"Where's the other one?"

"I'm not telling you."

"Why not? Is it on adult friend finder."

He nodded.

"Show me the profile."

"No, you're going to be mad."

"Show me the profile,"

"No, you're gonna be really, really mad."

"Why am I gonna be mad?"

"You're gonna be really really mad if I show it to you."

"Am I going to be mad because you say that you're looking to have sex with someone on purpose?"

"Yes," he told me.

I asked him for the password to the email address he set up to go with these profiles. Turns out it wasn't two months, it was two years that he'd been doing this. Two years. And there were four email addresses and hundreds of online profiles on adult dating sites and affair finder sites, and sex sites. Not to mention craigslist casual encounters. He both responded to ads and put up his own ads on that site.

I was pretty sure that I was dreaming and having a really bad nightmare and would wake up soon enough. "I wish this was a nightmare," husband told me, "but it's not. I really did this..."

I can't go into more detail right now because I'm feeling so raw and ripped apart just thinking about that night 5 1/2 weeks ago that I'm unable to tell more. But for now, this is a start.