First Response

August, 2014

I didn't talk to J for a week. As his disclosures trickled in and I began to have a clearer idea of just how dire the situation was, I agonized over how to respond. In the end, I wrote with more tenderness than I expected I had in me-- but it felt both honest, direct, and loving. It felt true. This is what I wrote:


J

After several days spent in thought and prayer, I think I've come to some peace. I'd like to share with you how I see our current situation. 

It has been a difficult two years. The struggle to trust, attach, and build a new version of 'us' has been all consuming. It's taken every ounce of energy we've had. And there have been glimpses of what we can be as 'a very effective team'. Those glimpses are incredible. They fill me with warmth and hope as I see our real potential together. 

Having seen our potential makes your betrayal all the more heart wrenching. 

Seriously, I have no words. 

(Except that, yes I do. Because words seem to be my strength at times like these. I bet you wish they weren't. )

I'll be honest, I don't know how this will end. I can't even think that far without turning into a puddle of grief. I know that I don't want a divorce. I keep seeing the last 15 years flash before my eyes like on The Story of Us and I think, how can we throw away all that history? The video that taught me to swing dance and brought us together? You teaching me to drive while we made out at stop lights? Cold showers in our first apartment? Experiencing Europe together. That awful red-yellow combination that I painted the walls (ketchup and mustard!). Riding a Vespa among red sand and arches, then breaking down. Walking through model homes on a Sunday, while C ran ahead of us in her boots-with-flashing-lights and picked out 'her room'. No one else knows what it was like the day our children were born, warm and slippery into your arms, or how thrilling it was when each of them said their first words. No one else shared those moments when we cried-- you when your grandpa died, me when dad had a heart attack, both of us when I found you in the closet, trying to compose a letter of confession. We've lost jobs, gone to concerts, tried new foods, traveled the world, watched our children learn and grow, and looked into each other's eyes and said 'let's not do that' every time we heard of another ugly celebrity divorce. Almost half of my life has been spent with you. I hardly have a memory that you don't share. 

And you are destroying that. For what? Lust? You're selling your birthright for a bowl full of porridge, and don't even seem to grasp the repercussions of it. 

This is like a nightmarish form of Groundhogs Day. Here I sit, in the peace and solitude of my parent's home, as once again you tell me that you've been lying to me. My one and only bottom line-- that I don't expect that you'll never struggle, be triggered, slip or even relapse, just that you respect and love me enough to be transparent-- and you cross it. It feels like a sucker punch. The lowest of low blows. 

I keep seeing us in bed together over Fourth of July weekend, me telling you about watching Hoarders and being so, so afraid that nothing has changed. You reassuring me that all is well. Us running and hiking together, bonding as my fears were attributed to 'self esteem problems'. I want to throw up knowing now that I was right to fear. That once again, you lied to my face, and worse, let me believe that I was somehow to blame for the distance between us. 

And then I see us in the car 2 years ago, after your inventory. I'd cried for 24 hours, and then poured out all my heartbreak to you. I needed you to feel the pain I was feeling, to experience it as I did. And you did-- we cried together, first in agony and then with joy as The Lord literally lifted the pain from us. It was miraculous, and I told you then that we could do ANYTHING from that moment on, if only you would be open with me and allow us to be a team. 

I do not know how to come back from this. 

If separation, therapy, hard work, and years of faith and prayer and outright miracles have now been brushed aside as if it were nothing-- what will it take? What is your rock bottom? And do I even have the capacity to wait for you to reach it? 

I am afraid that even if this were it-- your lowest moment--and you were completely transparent and honest and vulnerable from now on-- I'm afraid that I'd still be too broken and traumatized to ever believe it. 

I love you, but I don't know that I can ever trust you again. And the thought of living in a marriage where I'm too fearful to allow myself to be loved by you is simply unbearable. 

Is this too much talking around the issue? I'm trying to let you see my thought process and feel what I'm feeling-- the sick twist of fear and discouragement and grief-- but maybe I should just be plain:

I don't know if I can come back from this. This feels like the beginning of the end. I am honestly considering divorce, though every fiber of my being cries at the thought. 

I have to type this, because the thought of saying any of it out loud makes me sob. 

Going forward, I see two options for separation. 

1) The kids and I come home as planned, but you move out. Unlike last time, we would not have church and Family Home Evening together, but you could take the kids for the weekend so you have time with them. 

2) The kids and I can stay here with my parents for the foreseeable future. 

Either way, I would be willing to continue therapy and hold off on any decision about our marriage until the end of the year. 

Also, I think we should tell the kids about your addiction. Their lives are going to be upturned (again) and they deserve to know why. I suspect {daughter} and {son} have an inkling anyway. 

I love you. I'm devastated and have lost all faith in you, but somehow I still love you. 

Please change. Please choose me. Choose us. I just can't believe that you would allow this to be the end of our story together-- that you would trade what we have and 'return like a dog to his vomit'. It makes me think of these lines:

This is the way the world ends. 

This is the way the world ends. 

This is the way the world ends.

Not with a bang but a whimper. 

If we are going to go, do it with a bang. Stand up and fight. You are worth more.

-N

{image}

The Rundown, Part 13

It seems that every pivotal moment in our marriage has happened while laying in bed together, sleeping and talking during the late morning hours of a weekend.

That day in July was no different.

We'd only been home from Alaska for a few weeks, and yet already J was feeling disconnected and dissatisfied. "I don't know how to keep that momentum going," he said, sounding lost and sad. "We were so happy and close, but now I can tell you're withdrawing. It's been forever since we've had sex, and I don't know what to do to stop you from.... I don't know. Getting lost in your head."

It was always a little hurtful to have to explain my fear to J. I wanted him to magically see my pain and hold me, comfort me, tell me that of course I was afraid. It was completely natural given I had always had reason to be afraid. I wanted him to reassure me that while I'd been right to fear in the past, that I'd never have to in the future. That he would be loving and faithful and patient, that no matter how triggered I felt, he knew that I loved him, and he would wait for me to feel safe the way I'd waited all these years for him to be in recovery.

But of course, J couldn't read my mind. So I explained myself. I told him that even after all this time, it felt that nothing had really changed. Things were too silent. I wanted to be told daily where he was at in recovery. I wasn't feeling safe, and I wasn't hearing things that told me I was safe, and I didn't know how much I could believe some of the recovery behaviors I was seeing.

I told him that I'd started watching Hoarders again; that I felt like the spouses who couldn't get excited by one clean room when they knew the rest of the house was still buried in trash. They couldn't believe that things were 'fine' now, that the hoarder was now cured and would continue to make progress. They needed to see the house stay clean. They had to be able to open every closet without fear of it one day being piled full of hidden trash. 

"Things can't just be fine," I said, starting to cry. "I know you must have struggles, but I never hear about them. The silence isn't comforting. Keeping things from me isn't protecting me. Please, if there's something you have to tell me, just do it. I can't take the silence anymore."

J held me, wiped away my tears, and then looked into my eyes. "I have been prompted by the spirit to tell you that there is nothing going on. I'm sober. I'm working the steps. I'm not looking at pornography. I'm not masterbating. I don't want anyone but you. I love you and I want you to feel safe."

He talked about how challenging it must be for me to make heads or tails of things when I had issues with depression. "Those voices in your head tell you that you're not beautiful enough for me. I wish I could replace all those thoughts with what I really see when I look at you."

We talked until I felt I had cried all my tears and I had and exorcized all my demons. Then, for the first time since J and I were dating, he offered to go running with me. "You always feel better after a run, and I could use the training for The Amazing Race," he smiled. 

It was sweet, and touching, and very, very reassuring. I believed him. 

Little did I know that just 12 hours before, he'd jeopardized his job to download porn to his phone. He'd lied to me telling me he was driving out to the desert to go train watching, and he'd spent hours acting out instead. 

When he disclosed his behavior a month later, that terrible day in August while I was staying with my parents, I don't think he even recalled this instance of reassurance. It had been something profoundly promising to me, one of those signs of hope that I clung to as reason to trust. For him, it had been just another moment he'd successfully dodged the truth. 

It was dizzying. Who was this man who could lie to my face so convincingly? Who could manipulate the moment until I was the one apologizing for my trust issues? 

I felt a cold, sick fear take hold in the pit of my stomach. I don't know him at all, I realized. 

{image by Michael Carson} 

Editor's Note

As I've been writing The Rundown series, I've noticed that the more distant the past, the easier it has been to write and process on paper. Now, as I'm nearing current-day in the chronological narrative, I'm having a hard time making sense of recent events. They're still raw and confusing and full of powerful emotions.

Initially, when I wrote The Rundown, Part 10, I skipped a whole year in the account. I tried to think about what had happened, and it all seemed so slippery.

It was a hard year, and part of me felt angry that I'd ignored my reservations and given J the benefit of the doubt, but there was also a large part of me that believed-- and still believes-- that loving someone is giving them that benefit of the doubt.

There were times that I felt we were making great strides. We were connecting in a way that was more genuine and deep than ever before. I would even venture to say that in the last 18 months, we've  had a better, more authentic relationship than we've ever had.

Part of me doesn't know how much of it was real.

Was I just seeing what I wanted to see? As the depth of J's addiction becomes more and more apparent to me, I begin to think that what we had were just glimpses. They were enough for him to see what he could have if he really wanted it, but the only changes he's sincerely made over the last 15 years have been in learning to appease me and keep his life looking the way he wants it to look.

I don't think he's ever been in true recovery.

So, the story is still convoluted and uncertain, but I've edited The Rundown, Part 10, Part 11 and added Part 12.

It's confusing, but an honest representation of how I feel about it at the moment.

{image}

The Rundown, Part 12

From the very beginning, visiting my family had been a source of contention between J and I. He complained of the time he had to take off work, the expense of flying or driving, the difference in the way I liked to spend my time there {lots and lots of talking}, the inevitable neglect he would experience as my energy and attention shifted to my loved ones; but most especially, he hated how long I wanted to visit for.

I grew up incredibly close to my parents and brothers. For the last 15 years, J had the luxury of having all of his family live here, while mine are out of state. Once it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to raise my children right next door to them, seeing them for 5 days out of every year just wasn't going to cut it.

When my daughter turned 8, I started bringing the kids to spend at least a month of every summer with my mom & dad. After J and I had our first separation, I stopped asking permission to do so.

This year, I planned for 6 weeks. Plenty of time to allow for all the festivals, berry picking, swimming lessons, drive-in movies and county fairs!

I knew it was a long time, and I certainly knew how much J resented me for it, but unapologetically taking these trips had become one of those visceral decisions I'd started to make. I didn't know exactly why it bothered me so much that he objected to my going, and I wasn't entirely sure why it felt so important that I hold my ground; I just knew that anything less felt like unnecessary isolation. I wanted my kids to have relationships with their grandparents, and I needed the peace and acceptance I felt from going home. A few weeks of the summer was such a minimal sacrifice for the benefit. So, I forged ahead.

Once I got there, J called twice a day.

He began expressing that he was having a rough time of it. I tried to be supportive. I thanked him for his honesty. But after a few days, I told him that it was unfair to expect me to help him much. What was I supposed to say? "Yes, you must be so lonely! Of course you're craving porn stars!" Hearing him talk longingly of his addiction was painful and scary for me. I didn't want to comfort him, I wanted him to be healthy enough to comfort me.

So, I told him that this was precisely why he had resources. Use them. Call a sponsor. Go to a meeting. See the therapist. Whatever.

By week three, he confessed that he'd relapsed. Not surprising, but still, there were a few reasons why this time felt disturbingly significant:

1) He got around all kinds of filters on our home computer in order to access what he wanted. It took forethought, and a blatant disregard for my boundary of keeping filth out of our home.

2) While acting out in that way would have entailed experiencing warnings and triggers leading up to the act, he never once used any of his resources to ask for help.

3) He blamed me. Obviously, if I hadn't left him alone, he wouldn't have been put in such an overwhelmingly tempting situation. I was heartless and cruel for not caring about how difficult it would be for him.

I spent a weekend considering these things, refusing to talk to J until I'd had time to process. As I thought about it, I had the sinking feeling that this kind of relapse doesn't just come out of the blue-- not if he'd really been in recovery. As if in direct confirmation of my fears, more disclosures began to trickle in.

He'd been struggling for months.

He'd been lying to his sponsor.

This wasn't his first relapse.

The last disclosure was the one that changed everything.

{image}

The Rundown, Part 11

As the new year began, I felt worn out by the internal struggle I'd been having ever since J had moved back. In an attempt to recapture peace and serenity, I determined that I would start focusing only on my own self image and self care.

I'd been steadily gaining weight, but couldn't seem to get myself to want to lose it, despite how I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. It became the reason I wouldn't let J touch me. In the back of my mind, I wondered if the weight wasn't a form of protection for me-- a cushion between J and I, since I was feeling so raw and exposed-- but instead of examining that thought too much, I latched onto the idea that "I am more than a body." I found it healing and empowering to think of my body as a tool to be used by me, not an ornament to be seen by others.

One afternoon, I was running through a neighboring development when a car drove past. The driver slowed down, and I watched as his head turned to follow me as I made my way down the street. Instantly, I was flooded with sickening rage. The desire to yell, hit his car, and give him the finger was absolute. I was disgusted and offended and ashamed all at once. I wanted to hide and wrap myself in a blanket and never, ever be objectified by a man again.

It was the first inkling that I might still be experiencing some major trauma.

A few months later, J and I began watching endless episodes of The Amazing Race. While we'd always been voracious consumers of movies, it had been nearly impossible to find entertainment that wasn't triggering for us. This left quite a void in both our time together and identity as a couple.

As we watched season after season in quick succession, we began to dream of what it'd be like to compete on the show. We made packing lists. We talked about strengths and weaknesses. We agreed that I would learn French, and he would learn Spanish. I would have to get over my fear of roller coasters and skydiving while he would have to become more detail-oriented and work on reading comprehension. We began making plans to travel more, to run and hike and get in shape.

What started as a joke {"Ask for directions, it's good practice for The Amazing Race!"} became a new form of couple-identity. We were bonding over something completely non-sexual, and it was helping us to start talking as though we had a future together-- one we looked forward to. Prepping for The Amazing Race became something tender and precious to me-- a daily reminder that we actually liked each other and could be a good team.

Happily, the year ahead proved to be full of opportunities to travel. We went to Alaska shortly after our 15 year anniversary, and I felt closer to J than I ever had before. I felt vigorous and alive as we immersed ourselves in the natural beauty all around us. I used my body every single day as a tool to get up a mountain, paddle down a river, or run around a lake, and it had an instantaneous result in changing how I felt about myself.

It was glorious-- we came home brimming with ideas for how we could incorporate these new-found passions into the life we were building for ourselves. We were seeing something new: a version of us that had transformed and grown from where we once were.

It was on this high note that I left to spend the summer with my parents...... but it didn't take long for it all to go to hell.

{image}

The Complete Realist

"A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness-- they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptations, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means-- the only complete realist." --CS Lewis

{image}

The Rundown, Part 10

*Edit-- originally, I skipped a whole year in this narrative. It was still too recent and confusing to me, and I wasn't sure how to sum it up. I've since decided that it should be included despite how unsettled I feel-- that it's still significant and authentic. This is the edited post.*

Despite the healing I had experienced, having J move back in was absolutely terrifying for me.

My most valuable tool in achieving serenity had been listening to my gut-- if I felt unsafe, I would act on it. I'd speak up, detach, and seek safety. This worked perfectly when having an actual relationship with J wasn't part of the equation! But once he was back, our therapist began encouraging me to be vulnerable. Let him in. Give him an opportunity to nurture and earn trust. Expect that he will fail. Keep trying.

All of those things, while they made sense for building intimacy, pushed me into that zone where my gut screamed DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! Moving past that instinct in order to give J a 'chance' meant I was living in an anxious, triggered state almost constantly. I had no idea how to regain serenity without detaching.

A typical {daily} example:

J would do something simple- like walk through the door after work.

Immediately, I would be tense. I didn't want him to come kiss me. I didn't know if he was still sober that day. I didn't know what to expect at all, and yet I had no idea how to explain the fact that his walking through the door every evening was traumatizing.

J saw this as rejection. He wanted to be greeted with adoration, and my fear felt like a personal insult. Of course, when he reacted by taking offense, I couldn't help but feel that his lack of humility and understanding was further evidence that I was not safe. 

We could very quickly spiral from there.

The more I expressed my fear, the more J felt unwanted, and the more he only focused on his own wants, the more I felt that my fear was justified. We called it the cycle, and we went through it hundreds of thousands of times as we tried to reconcile.

Of course, in hindsight, I think my vulnerability should only have been equal to what he could prove he was capable of handling with empathy and love, {which was very little} but at the time, I truly believed that the cycle was what healing looked like*.

It wasn't long before our biggest source of conflict returned to sex. J felt it was his love language, the only way he ever felt completely accepted and one with me.

We would come home from a week long vacation, where by the end, I'd finally relaxed and established a connection enough to be intimate. "This is what it should always feel like!" he'd proclaim, "This is real intimacy! How do we keep this going?" and I would despair, because how does anyone make a marriage feel like a honeymoon 24/7? He was asking the impossible.

Once again, I felt like he was expecting me to fill all these emotional holes he had with sex-- only now he was calling it attachment.

I became very depressed, started gaining weight, and refused to work on 'desensitizing myself to the fears I have surrounding healthy intimacy'. I didn't know what was wrong with me. No matter what J or the therapist said, no matter how logical or healthy any of it sounded, I simply could not make myself do anything more than what I was already doing.

But there were glimpses-- little flashes of what healing and unity could be like-- that gave me hope. They were often interspersed with events that seemed to point to the contrary as well, but I wanted to choose the hope.

There was the weekend we went out of town with his family, which was incredibly difficult for me when I was feeling so self-conscious and uncomfortable in my skin. J was protective and understanding, even when I'd bow out of something and take time to be alone.

There were all the times he would push aside his desire to be physical with me, and try to serve me and meet me where I was currently at emotionally instead. He knew I liked projects, so that was the year we built a massive chicken coop, painted the kitchen cabinets, redecorated our daughter's room and spent date nights shopping for power tools.

He would get frustrated by how slow our progress was and lash out at me, but then sit humbly in therapy and take notes as our counselor told him that he had to double down on empathy and find a way to be honest about his feelings without jumping into victim/persecutor mode.

There was an afternoon where he ran up the stairs with panic in his eyes and asked me to come delete a file off of the computer that he'd forgotten he had.

And there was the way he endured months upon months of periodic rejection as I slid out of his embrace, turned away from a kiss, and stayed on my side of the bed.

"Why am I the one doing all the changing?" He would ask, "Don't you feel that I speak your love language? Don't you see all the ways I'm trying to make you feel safe? Is it really so terrible to go out of your comfort zone a little in order to make me feel loved? Can't we work on this together, even slowly? Anything would be better than this!"

That summer, I went home to spend a month with my parents again. They were in the middle of working out their own relationship issues, and as my mom tearfully voiced some of her hurts and concerns, she sounded eerily similar to J. She talked of felling unloved; she said that the form of attention she was asking for was so small in the grand scheme of things, and she'd gone so far out on a limb in order to love and serve my dad, that why couldn't he have compassion and do the same for her? Wasn't she worth it to him?

Her pain was so sincere, and yet so alarming to me {because I completely identified with my dad!} that it caused me to re-evaluate the way I was rigidly maintaining my boundaries and detachment from J. Maybe my fear really was just residual trauma. Maybe I needed to decide "in for a penny, in for a pound" and commit full force to doing whatever it took to establish a truly intimate marriage. Maybe I needed to do more to meet him partway.

It was hard. So incredibly hard.

When I returned home, my emotions were even more erratic. I'd grit my teeth and be vulnerable, then second-guess myself and be so consumed with anxiety that it gave me whiplash. And it was all so confusing-- was I ignoring gut feelings the way I swore I never would again? Was I purely hormonal because of a new birth control we decided to try? Was my depression medication off? Was this the natural growing pains of re-establishing a relationship after experiencing betrayal? There were just too many variables to take into consideration, and by giving up the 'listen to your gut' strategy, I'd completely lost my moorings.

As the holidays approached, J relapsed. It had been after another sleepy morning where he'd made an advance and I'd turned him down. He came down the stairs an hour later and informed me of his break in sobriety with an almost-vengeful tone in his voice.

He was angry. He felt that I'd pushed him into it by not working on 'my' half of our recovery enough. I'd sabotaged him, and he was bitter.

I was shocked and disoriented by his attitude. What happened to taking responsibility? What happened to coming to me with compassion and regret as he built safety? Simultaneously, I knew he was hurting. He'd been sober for a year, and this setback was a blow to his ego. I didn't want to increase his shame, so I thanked him for his honesty, then did my best to remain calm and supportive over the next few days.

We had planned to be filming our Christmas Video that weekend, but he was too angry and depressed, so we put it off. However, as the next weekend approached, he was still wallowing. The way he could concurrently pity himself and blame me for how terribly he felt enraged me. Throwing up my hands, I emailed his brother and asked him to talk to him, since I couldn't put up with it anymore; then packed up the kids, the camera, and all our props and filmed the video myself.

It took a week, but J slowly came out of his foul mood. He talked with his brother and our therapist, then signed up for an intense 90 day version of the 12 Step Program.

I wanted to acknowledge the small victories. At least he'd been honest. At least he'd gotten back on track. I wanted this to be a bump in the road, so I let it go. I forgave and we moved on.

{image}

*To clarify, the cycle can be a healthy part of healing-- if J had been reacting with patience and compassion, it would have been incredibly comforting to me. I think it would have established a great deal of trust and safety between us, and I think I would have begun to feel confident in his recovery. But that isn't how he reacted-- because he wasn't in recovery-- and I just kept putting myself out there, long after he'd stopped giving me valid reason to do so.