A Girl and Her Will to Survive - Maybe.

It does stink. 100%.

From a PA perspective, it can stink on our end too. I was "happy" being closed off and having my little outlet to escape. Now I'm in a big scary world of emotions and listening and trying to "feel" feelings and be present and face consequences and changing my behavior I've done for decades.

From your side it's a bomb thrown into what you thought you knew. It sucks all around.

 

Progress not perfection.

 

Totally relate to feeling so angry about how I feel like I cannot look at anything and not worry about triggers. I was freaking looking for crochet supplies on amazon the other day for our daughter's birthday, and it was all these women in crocheted outfits with nothing on underneath and I was like &%$! great. Can't even look for this now. Then today I was trying to look for fit dancing video game for kids and all the stupid zumba in my bra women came up. He was sitting with me and I wanted to stab his eyes out. He didn't even act out to anything other than porn, on his phone, at night and I still now want to put the entire world in a burka.

 

The fear of being attached to someone who can cause pain is part of the PTSD betrayal trauma. It causes so much anxiety about situations. Our bodies are programmed for self preservation and so that will override, sometimes massively, anything that could be a potential threat to self.

This was something I noticed about myself as well. That constant loop. No matter what good he did, my mind would automatically go to the bad.

Part of healing is learning to let go of that and telling yourself it is okay to enjoy the moment. This is hard because we know our worlds can come crashing down all over again and every moment of joy will be under investigation to look for patterns for future protection.
Do you think he will relapse? Has he done it often in the past? How long has he been clean? How long has he avoided behaviors that cause triggers are could be part of the compulsion? These are questions to ask yourself and if he has been doing well, it would be to your benefit and healing to look at how well he is doing, if that makes sense? Stress takes such a toll on us. Seeing them go in the right direction could help alleviate some of that stress and help us heal from the betrayal.

 

What took me from one frame of mind to the other was looking again at that car analogy you told me about. We've not crashed in awhile and he appears to be driving correctly. So, I can either worry about crashing or I can calm down and enjoy the scenery. I chose the latter. I didn't like living in that state of anxiety all the time, especially since the main person being hurt by it was me. I felt like at times I was pushing the steering wheel from my side of the vehicle trying to get him to crash us. I didn't like that.
He knows if we crash again, we are done. I do make it a point to remind him of this every so often.
At the same time, I understand your fears and they are valid. It is very hard to get to that point where you feel it is okay to sit and enjoy the ride. I wish you healing for that <3

 

I'm so sorry. Unfortunately every time he discloses something new, you do reset to the beginning. He doesn't. But in trauma, you do. We were just discussing this the other day because he was having moment of exasperation that I am still having trauma episodes. He was like it's been 18 months since you found out. And I said, yeah the first time. Then we did another disclosure that we are not even a year from yet. Healing for me at best could come 18 months to 3 years after the last disclosure. He was a little shocked even though I swear I'd said it before and that it was in our books too.

Sigh, I don't understand how they can just forget really horrible things.

Did you guys do a more formal disclosure? I can't remember if you did or not. We aren't in therapy but I insisted on a more formal one even though it was self-led. I made a long batch of questions and he took time to fill it out and then we went through it. I reserved the right to ask more questions based on what he answered. I think I got it all out but my husband was pretty scared to act out in the first place so he was tame.

 

Is he disclosing these things because you asked him to, because his therapist/AP told him to, or because he feels like he needs to just in case you find something and he doesn't want to get caught with you being able to say "why did you hide this?".

It must be super hard to have to relive everything every time he does this. So the question is, is this something you want, or something he just thinks you want. At some point my wife just said that she didn't want it anymore, if she asked something I should answer honestly, but that randomly telling her something I did 12-18 months ago or 4 years ago isn't going to help. He might be thinking this is what you want a need long term?

Just keep breahting and trying to remember that other options - him lying either intentionally or my omission.

 

From a man's point of view, here: Men are built this way--not to "forget," necessarily, but to compartmentalize everything. This is why men handle stress at work so well: when they come home from work, they leave the stress at work and enjoy their reprieve at home. Women, on the other hand, are mentally programmed differently. Their brains have many more connections between the two hemispheres and they tend to be more "whole-brained" in their thinking. Compartmentalizing is not something they can easily do, just as multitasking is not something that a man can easily do. I once observed a woman who was about to give directions when the phone rang. The caller spoke another language. She deftly picked up a pad of paper and a pen, wrote the directions in English, all the while conversing in the other language on the phone--then handed over the perfect directions before even her call had finished. Wow. Now that's a woman! I could never do that. There are advantages and disadvantages to our genetic, built-in differences. In this case, women's inability to compartmentalize puts you at a disadvantage when it comes to being able to put the hurts behind you and move on. Men tend to do that sort of thing naturally. A man can sort of switch gears, mentally, running in different modes of operation--though he will tend to focus on one track at a time, being much less able to multitask.

But, though maybe I'm biased by my masculine way of thinking, it seems to me that anyone can later remember something that he or she had originally forgotten. I've had the experience happen to me many times in real life where I have said something to someone, thinking it to be absolutely true and correct at that moment, only to recall an additional circumstance or detail an hour later while driving down the road and reflecting further which would have countered my earlier statement somewhat. For example, I might tell the doctor that I've never had asthma--and then remember on my way home that I did have some asthma symptoms that once when I'd gotten an anaphylactic reaction to the bee sting. I just wasn't thinking about that time or about bee stings while in the doctor's office. I was thinking about my general experience. Did I "forget" this? No, not really--it just had not come to mind at that moment. My statement to the doctor had not been dishonest--I had answered without any dissimulation or intent to deceive. It just had not included all of the "mental research" to ensure a 100% correct response. Nor was it particularly (in my case, at least) a "repressed" memory--something I had intentionally tried to put out of my mind. Humans, being what they are, I'm not sure there is ever such a thing as a 100% correct response. Can you guarantee that you never forgot or overlooked any detail in your experience before answering?

Well, I hope this little vignette on a man's mind can help bring you some understanding.

 

If my wife asked me to list everything i've done there is zero change i'd get it done in one shot. Not off the top of my head. Which is why I think the offical disclosure, after work with a therapist or sponsor, is the smarter move. Seems like your question and his blurting put both of you in a horrible position.

 

There is a danger here. Not knowing enough sets you up for the situation you experienced this week. Knowing too much, depending on your personality, can haunt you. I pushed on knowing some of his fantasies. I'm pretty sure he did not tell me everything in detail, but he did disclose, at my pushing, that he had a regular fantasy of laying a dark haired woman, light skin, nice breasts down on a bed and then doing her. Guess what? I have dark, long hair. I'm thin. My skin is olive and beautiful. My breasts are pretty damn great (I've seen some porn, theirs are fake crap, mine are spectacular compared to them and not a touch of surgery). It hurts. It hurts so damn badly knowing that he would conjure up a false woman who is basically me, but NOT me when he could have come down the hall. I don't know what do to with it. It's tame. Barely a blip. But it cuts me to the core. I'm still not sure what to do with it, but I'm at least relieved I know.

It may help to move towards a more specific disclosure for your sake. One where you, either alone or with a therapist, thing about what you need to know, and in what detail, to move forward, be it within this relationship or moving on. I personally am stuck in a place where even though my husband appears to be a vanilla baby compared to most on here, I am torn between wanting to move on, leave it all behind, and realizing that men in general are crap. At my age, and in this day and age, I'm not going to find a man without a porn problem. I'm not going to find another man who hasn't been with anyone else physically. So I find myself torn between a disclosure that is at odds with our vows and my heart, and the reality that is if I want to really be with someone so deeply, that I have the opportunity, still despite all this shit, to maybe get a lot of what I wanted all along. I just still can't figure out where I land. Tonight was a bad night in our home. Some days it's really hard.