Relationship specific journal

I have a journal in the ages 30-39 forum, but I decided to start one here as well. I have read through many threads here and I find that much of the struggles and reflections resonate with me. In this journal I wish to share (mostly) conversations (or outlines thereof) with my wife regarding addiction related behaviors. She supports me so much it is almost crazy (haha). I hope that they will resonate with many here, and that it will be helpful for our growth and yours.

 

Excerpt: yesterday evening

I wasted much of my allocated time for work and studying learning to code html. Why was it wasted? Time is very scarce. We are both graduate students and we have a schedule. Also, jumping into various coding schemes over the semester is not conducive to a successful semester. I enjoy many fields of knowledge.

My wife got upset with me because she recognized a pattern (at first I didn't realize why she was upset). I did something behind her back. On the surface this doesn't seem like much, but there are deeper aspects of our behaviors. She confronted me because she thought that I was doing something bad like looking up P and P-subs. The energy wasn't right because I was essentially keeping something from her. I told her what I did, but that wasn't the problem. I thought the problem was learning something (defensiveness). The real problem was the way I went about it, it is not healthy to keep things from your SO. I thought she was overreacting. No, she sees the birthing of the progressions of behaviors that will eventually lead to a relapse. In previous semesters I failed to contribute to my thesis research because I got lost in spur of the moment profects that lead nowhere. It hurts our SO when we do things that seems sketchy, because they have trauma related to us cheating. The goal is wholesome behaviors.

 

Excerpt:

My wife: my chest is hurting, do you have something to tell me?
Me: No, I don't, I told you everything.
Moments later...
Me: I was listening to music video on YouTube as I was driving that featured someone that made me 'unstable'. Knowing before I started watching the video that there was a good chance that the image of that women would get me high (the brain makes it feel like I'm getting high, sexualizing women).
My wife: Why did you continue listening knowing that it was going to happen?
Me: I didn't know that was going to happen..... I wanted to face it.
My wife: Bullshit, you wanted to get high. You clicked on that video knowing that you were going to get high. Knowing that you were going to feel what that women makes you feel. You didn't want to "fight through it", you wanted to enjoy it. You're lying to me and your lying to yourself...

I sit there quietly for moments as she brings up all the BS that I made and shatters it right in front of me. I am thinking she is absolutely right. I don't go through it to "face it", I go through something to "enjoy it". That feeling of getting high, what the addict feels.

I thought I made progress. There was no progress. The only way to get my mind right is through an overhaul without any type of triggers for many weeks in a row. Otherwise, my brain is catching on to the triggers and reinforcing the bad programming. There is a line that must be traversed until there is no more excuses, I feel.

We uncovered many things yet again. Everything seems so clear. But when I go about my days what seemed clear becomes blurry. I get complacent. My awareness diminishes and all that was learned is lost in the automiticity of daily activities. The repetition continues. One day it will stick. I don't feel like hurting people for the rest of my life. I've got to get my brain out of the rut.

 

@Psalm27:1my light I agree that a woman's tuition is amazing, absolutely! We are all bogged down by this materialistic society. To get nightmares because of his gaslighting is just so terrible. It literally interrupts a necessary aspect of healing.

 

Excerpt:

The only thing that is going to break this addiction is reflecting on my actions. And getting to the understanding that lies are in no way beneficial to me or to my wife. Lies are energy sinkholes. My wife makes me sit here and think about every single step that I make that would lead to a relapse.

It is imperative that I remind myself that I am susceptible to trigger out there whatsoever. Just a little glance leads to a snowball effect. It doesn't matter how long it takes, it will eventually build up. This is what my wife is more keen on then I. It truly helps that she knows how to deal with the behavior of people.

One way or another I must learn not to get angry or become defensive when my SO is helping me become a better person. This is in essence what she is doing when she is questioning my every thought and action that would lead to my instabilities.

Women are not here for my entertainment!

 

@lardy_renewed

Where I find myself is in a foggy disposition of either making excuses or working to understand my wife's point of view. In this mindset there are only two outcomes, I either hurt my wife or I heal her. There is no in-between. At least thats how I feel. Excuse after excuse I have hurt her. I get into so much turmoil that I can't even see her for the women that I married. Every second that we don't take ourselves out of the stimulus we are taking away from the flowering of a relationship (a relationship is not static, it is flowing). I still need to reflect on these words for myself. For I recognize that these words are not entirely mine. They belong to the ancestors.

 

Excerpt:

We were talking about the "inner" being the "outer". What does this statement entail? What are the implications? What can be deduced from it?

My mind has locked its target on women, no matter where they may be, on a screen or in real life. My wife says that because other women occupy my mind they also occupy my space, internal to external, further, it is as if we are living with these other women everyday. Hers and my energies are tunneled away from our being together because of where my mind was, and this is in part why women feel so much pain, the betrayal.

I have come to a deeper understanding of this. It happened when I was cooking and my wife was talking to other SOs about their partners' addictions. My mind can be occupied by other women, or it can be occupied by my marriage and our family. If it is occupied by other women I am not married no matter how much I plea to my SO, and I am living a single life and my family are just obstacles, or immovable objects sharing no connection with me. If it is occupied by my marriage and my family then it invigorates the energies of my family. We start to feel each other's energies more readily. The external and the internal, rather than conflicting, become a greater whole.

It takes a huge amount of practice and patience to get your brain to a point where it is where you are.

 

Excerpt:

Firstly, consciously I am ever so grateful for my wife's continued support despite my lack of significant growth.

We are talking about my hang up on a certain individual. Why must this be? On some level I am worried about missing out on something. What? Probably the attention from girls in a sexual manner that I didn't get when I was a teenager. All I had was P. (I wonder how my wife can talk about this kind of thing with me.) For some reason I'm still scarred from my childhood. My wife reminds me, "I married you because you are worth it". And, "There is a reason that I'm still here." I am torn when she tells me this because most of our conversations lately have been about how to "fix" me. I am moved by love when she tells me this, but I am also worried that she is lying to me and she just wants to see something in me. She even tells me that women take double glances at me when we are out, but when I am not giving off bad energy. She tells me this to help with my self-esteem, and I still don't believe her. Again, many times I have been rejected sexually, or even belittled (in my mind) as a potential mate. ("Oh, he's a good guy but I don't see that happening".). My wife wants me to feel better about myself. I want my brain to know that I have a wonderful wife worth my time and my life and I don't need any validation outside our marriage. What I want is to be completely faithful to my wife.

She is now seeing a therapist. And I am very relieved that she started her sessions. One thing the therapist told her is that, "she needs time for herself, her own healing time". I have been trying to get her to do something for herself for a long time. She would not budge. There is not a selfish bone in her body. All her energy goes to helping others. But, maybe I didn't try hard enough. Still I hope that her therapy helps her heal faster.

 

@Comedic Irony The way my wife explains it to me is that your brain thinks that you are watching P whenever you click on content that you know has sexualized material, or even just knowing that there are women that are not necessarily sexualized. It continues and reinforces the wiring of P. It sort of infects and sticks onto other things in your life. Allowing yourself access to those things is making it harder for your brain to rewire.

You can listen to music, but not the music videos. I still listen to music, I listen to Metallica every day. The riffs and musical progression of the entire Master of puppets album gives me good vibes, for example. No sexualized content in the lyrics.

Maybe music that doesn't have sexually explicit lyrics. Find the "neutral" music if you will. Basically, if it stimulates you sexually, stop it. There is plenty of music out there that doesn't have explicit ccontent. As I am not familiar with Pink Floyd's music, I personally can't say anything about that in particular.

For how long? That depends on how you feel about cutting off so many things. You can do it because some suggests it, or you can change those suggestions by making it your own duty. It can be 90 days it can be longer. I think I went without music or any entertainment for like 3 months before. It was hard. Oh man!

 

Exerpt:

We had lies and half-truths to unfold and ring out again today, after a somewhat sound morning. There was an eerie feeling in the air that pointed to my lack of complete disclosure of my actions. I had lied about whether or not I M'd when I watched P again almost three months ago. I told my wife that I didn't, but that was a lie. In my head I was playing with the boundary of what it means to M. Surely, not every touch of my junk while watching P was considered M-ing. M-ing only refers to the full action (I dare not go into details here). I told my wife what actually happened that time. She was hurt, absolutely hurt. This had been bothering her on a deeper level and she couldn't figure it out because I told her that I told her everything. It has been a custom of mine to "stretch the truth" by wordplay, a careful selection of words that will make as the truth. I mastered lying as a child and teenager. For quite some time I was proud of it. This is no thing to be proud of.

Now, my wife starts to question everything that I told her, all the way back to the beginning of our relationship. At this point I am just emotionally empty. I had taught myself not to immediately go to anger and respond in a negative manner or walk off like I dont deserve to hear the fruits of my lying. But, I stay and I remain silent as she struggles with who it is that she married. I cannot even get emotional. My emotions were usually negative in these types of conversations, and sense I trained myself not to react negatively I wasn't able to bring about anything. But, I know I have to answer her questions right now truthfully and earnestly. She questioned why my brain is hung up (using my language here and I truly believe there is a difference between me being hung up versus my brain being hung up) on some girl. I don't even know why, I didn't pursue this person in any way whatsoever. My brain just seemingly chose a random person I was near for a class. I told her everything. Since I lied to her after telling her that I told her everything, she is finding it almost impossible to believe I would tell the truth in this respect. Then she started to question about a host of other things that I told her, bbut it was stuff that I was truthful about.

How can she know when I tell the truth or not? She can't, unfortunately she's forced to take my word for it. I just cannot image being in her situation, but why does this not drive an overwhelming change in me? Old habits die hard I guess, not excusing my lack of empathy here. I had, in the past, created an arbitrary line between what I consider cheating or not. I didn't even consider to include my wife in this choice. This line made no sense whatsoever. The line was wiggly, discontinuous, jagged, invisible, flexible, and everything else. I operated as "being faithful" by hugging this line, which was just a whole bunch of justification bullshit that kept me out of trouble. My duty wasn't to others, my duty was to making my life easier and less stressful. I believe it is this version of my life that my wife sees in me whenever she's hurt and she has been betrayed by my words. I completely understand her point of view. She has every right to think I am this person, especially given the gigantic lie of P usage. So all the actual truths that I told her are very hard for her to accept with regards to times that I have done some very sketchy things. Sketchy, especially in her mind. Staying after class to talk to the professor for example, and talking to girls about class material without her knowing, for example.

The lies are negative energy. My wife knew something was off before D-day. It was only a matter of time, she would have left me.

 

Excerpt:

"I don't feel safe with you." We had a very emotional conversation this evening. I'm going to engrave these words in my mind. I am hoping that they are able to subvert the narcissistic personality that I have come to occupy. Trying to find the optimum space right now. My wifes hurting hurts me, and I have barely the capability to empathize with her. I will also try to remember that my wife is still with me. All the bad shit that I did are fresh in her mind. My wife is trying really hard to help me. She is so much stronger than I am, and take it for granted...

I reflect on the divorce and split rates among my relatives, they are too high to be comfortable with. I was too naive to see that it was my uncles toxic activities and mindsets that caused the split.

This hyper-sexualized world is toxic. There seems to be no room for the lessons of treating women with respect as I was growing up, because my family didn't walk the walk, they just talked emphatically. Still living dead.....

 

@used19 Thanks so much for your input. When we can, we'll get a copy of that book.