Things That I Love About My Husband and Things that I Hate About My Husband

Barring the sex addiction, I married one of the greatest men in the world. And I'm absolutely fruity about him. Really. It's true. Finding out about his sex addiction has been one of the hardest things I've ever had to deal with. Mostly because I was so fucking in love with him and thought that he was the kind of guy who could never, ever, ever do something like this.  So it's painful. And it has turned me into a very jealous and very suspicious person. It's also turned me into a woman who feels very unattractive and fears getting older.  I never feared getting older until I found out that Husband was trying to have sex with 18-22 year olds. Gross!  Now I understand that it's just fantasy, and something about pornography has told men that 30 year-old-women are actually 18 year old women so they have an unrealistic idea of what teenage girls look like. But still, ick!

I watched my very beautiful mother die young (she was 54) and for that reason, I've always believed that getting older was a blessing. Now that my Mommy is dead, and my husband is a sex addict, I have these awful fears about growing into an undesirable older woman as my husband continues to become more and more handsome. He really is. Whereas I used to get a lot of attention from men, he is now getting a lot of attention from women. I don't get as much attention from men these days. It could be the 9 months pregnant belly. I've had a lot of anxiety about my looks during this pregnancy. The worst part about it is that I'm a Psychologist who has written a book on body image. I know. It's paradoxical. It's an internal conflict that I've been dealing with for a long time. I've probably been dealing with it my whole life, but it was triggered heavily a year and a half ago. 
Believe me, I know everything I need to know intellectually about looks. Jesus Christ I counsel women on this issue every day. Yet I am riddled with self-disdain. It's so, so very painful. I try not to get angry at myself for it. I understand this psychologically, but it's like a doctor who gets angry at himself for getting sick. We're just not immune. To fucking anything.

But I digress. This isn't even where I meant to go with this post. I meant to discuss our money situation.  I love my husband because he's kind, compassionate, insightful, nurturing, loving, sexy, sweet, a genius, and he is doing so much self work. He still goes to two 12 step meetings each week, plus he goes to therapy twice a month, plus he goes to a feedback group which he shows up for each and every week no matter what. His recovery, our relationship, me and our growing family are very important to him. So that's fantastic. But... Husband does not make very much money. And we are struggling. I didn't think that at 37 years old (he 39) and with two graduate degrees between us, that we'd be having to eat pasta at night and figure out how to afford groceries, and now diapers, and all sorts of other things. It depresses me. It makes me mad. And it spills over into other parts of our lives.
This non-aggressive quiet, gentle man, who hid behind the safety of a computer, being all sorts of violent and abusive to people via cyber sex.
I don't want to complain. But we're struggling. And that's just hard.

We Bought iPhones

Like I said in the title, we bought iphones. This might not be such a big deal for the average couple, but for a couple that is 1/2 sex addict, well then iphones are a huge deal. Especially considering  Husband's acting out all happened on his computer.  He never had sex with a real live woman, but he had loads of cyber-sex and was on loads of dating sites and would meet people and talk back and forth with them and try to get women to meet him out. It never happened, but I wonder if it would have had I never caught him. He was also hugely into online porn. In fact, if I'd go away for a weekend to my parents or whatever, he'd stay home citing that he needed to study and instead he'd be in front of his computer for 20 hours straight (he later told me). He wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, would just put a curtain up and stand at his computer looking for "women" or whoever was on the other end to talk to. He would every once in a while swap photos with them. He'd get naked pictures, or close ups of their privates and store them somewhere.  Husband has never been super smooth with the ladies, but he was a goddamned Lothario on the computer.   Which is why the idea of iphones freaked me out so much.

But we have a baby coming. And he should be here in 1-3 weeks. And we have these crappy old phones that don't work so well.  And my parents, who live 3000 miles from us, would like to see the baby as much as possible. They pleaded with us to get iphones. And to be fair, husband wanted one too. It was kind of awful because we plunked down so much money to buy them. I was up till 4am almost having a panic attack because of not just the initial investment but the crazy monthly fee. And now that I'm a lady of leisure, we only have one income until baby is 4 months old and I go back to work part time. And his income is crap. I'm kind of the breadwinner.  But like Kenny Loggins says:
Even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with ya honey, and everything will bring a chain of love. And in the morning when I rise, you bring a tear of joy to my eyes, And tell me everything is gonna be alright. Which I heard on the radio this morning on my way to my OBGYN and it made me cry hysterically for like 2 hours.

So, because of Husband's problems with the Internet, we have an open phone policy. We're allowed to stalk each others' phones.  I miss the days when I didn't doubt him and trusted him 100%.

I wonder if we'll ever be back there.

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.

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.

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.

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?