Married Hard Mode - 60+ days goal

Starting with a little morning gratitude: I am grateful for the time that I have for self-care in the morning. It gives me the space to identify and acknowledge my emotions, to cry, to engage with my recovery resources that I may not have the time for later in the day. I am grateful for my neighborhood which is easily walkable. I am also grateful for one of the podcasters in the Betrayed, the Addicted, and the Expert. Somewhat ironically, she shares a name with a pornstar that I used to watch and fantasize about. Initially, this was very triggering for me and I considered not listening to the podcast anymore because of it. I am so glad that I kept listening because she has become someone whose bravery I admire tremendously, whose vulnerability and empathy I aspire to. She has become the person that I think of when I hear that name and just the small act of reclaiming that tiny piece of information, of taking it back from my addiction feels powerful.

While I was away on vacation, the person watching our dog and our house either did herself or allowed her husband to smoke cigarettes in one of our bathrooms. I discovered this after a long day of travel with my 3 year old. I was exhausted, emotionally drained, and livid at the same time. Who on Earth smokes inside someone else's house when we literally wrote you a note telling you not to do that? I still have some anger on the inside when I think about that one too intently. Alone in the house and feeling strong emotions, there was the desire to act out and I almost did, but then I went to sleep. Sometimes I don't feel like I should be proud of myself for that moment, but I think I should be because no, it wasn't a perfect response, but it wasn't acting out in my addiction either and that may seem small but it is a victory. Anyway, we've worked to clean the bathroom and remove the smell - it's actually massively improved - but being down there still feels like being violated in a way. I told my wife that I needed to emotionally reclaim the bedroom down there by sleeping on the freshly washed sheets. I needed the most recent memory of that space to be something other than the people who disrespected it. I feel compelled to do the same with the bathroom. After the next round of cleaning, it's my goal to buy a new piece of art for that space. It feels like taking that anger, channeling it into productivity, and then working to find acceptance to move on with my life.

Change is scary sometimes, but I cannot overcome the lure of old patterns by simply doing the things I've always done. But the other side of the coin is that change can be exciting! I can feel my awareness growing in multiple areas of my life. I look at seemingly minute events and see how my behavior is different that it would have been in the past. Where there would have been resentment and fear, there can now be empathy and healthy disconnection. Where there would have been social anxiety and self-isolation there can be courage and acceptance. Where there was doubt and shame there can be positivity and counting my wins. Feeling those good things is a huge motivator.

When I used pornography, when I sought isolation, when I had sex with people other than my partner in secrecy. It is impossible to deny the physical nature of these acts, but what I thought that I needed from those things was entirely emotional. Using people and discarding them like trash, clinging like a vampire to my relationships until I had drunk my fill, gorging myself on images and videos to chase the most profound orgasm possible. All of that was for what? It did not meet my emotional needs because 1. I could not have told you what my emotional needs were, even if asked and 2. At that point nothing external could have met those needs - it had to come from inside of me.

 

I had a difficult day at work yesterday coupled with feeling really rushed getting to my Zoom counseling appointment which caused me to feel like I didn't show up in the way that I wanted to. If anyone else has experience with specialized therapy, you may know that it is often expensive and therefore you want to feel like you're getting the most out of your time. For me, this means that I want to have time to discuss the issues that have been bothering me and to honestly and thoughtfully answer the therapist's questions. Feeling rushed and not present in certain ways was not what I was looking for yesterday. A lesson for myself is preferentially not to put these appointments mid-work day to give myself a little time to show up and some to process afterward and maybe journal about it.

My wife and I had sex a couple nights ago for the first time in a couple months. It was definitely "solace sex", where both of us were looking for some kind of security or connection in our relationship, even if we weren't able to be there emotionally in the way that we would want to be if our relationship was healthy. I felt conflicted about it and I know she did too. She has told me that she's in that "I love him and I also hate him" place which makes sense to me given our history, the betrayal, and the commitment to recovery - it's a confusing place to be. I think overall sex was a positive experience, but I did feel like there was a lot of pressure on it in a way that felt uncomfortable. Here are a couple examples: She knows that masturbation causes reduced sensitivity for me meaning it takes longer to orgasm. When I stopped masturbating, the sensitivity increased dramatically, honestly too much for me which would lead to premature ejaculation which I felt embarrassed about. So before we even had sex, I was already thinking "Well I better ejaculate prematurely because otherwise she'll think I've been masturbating, but if I do that I'll feel embarrassed." This was a Lose-Lose situation from my perspective. And then last time we had sex, it took me a longer period of time to orgasm (I was relapsing during that time) and she asked me directly afterward if I had been masturbating and I lied about it (UGHHHH), so as expected that really damaged her trust. So when we were having sex this time, I was also thinking "If she asks me if I've been masturbating afterward, I say no (the truth), and it took me a long time to orgasm, she's going to think I'm lying. If I say nothing, she's going to think I'm disconnecting or isolating." This also seemed like a Lose-Lose (although I know now that there is a better way I could have handled that one). Anyway having those thoughts running through my head made it a lot harder to be present while we were being intimate and caused me to feel like there was a lot of pressure on that interaction. Anyway we talked about it afterward and decided the best course of action was not to judge the sex too much (good/bad), and just leave it as "it happened".

Phew glad to have that one out - I did tell my therapist about it as well but committing it to text does help the processing. Alright I'm short on time today so signing off. Good luck to you all in your recovery!

 

I woke up feeling a little better today, more rested at least. Yesterday was not my best day personally: I was really tired which made me feel more mindless than mindful, I felt demotivated before going to work, and I had a close call with MO before leaving the house. In the evening I was doing what I could to be present with my wife because she's going through some emotional turmoil at work and play with my son. I had a second close call with MO in the evening when I was taking a shower. I went to bed feeling guilty and a little out of control which were difficult feelings. Fortunately I slept a lot better last night and was able to get some self-care time in this morning. I often listen to recovery podcasts in the morning while I'm walking, but that wasn't really doing it for me today.

How do you motivate yourself when you're feeling demotivated?

I have a specialized therapy appointment tonight which my wife will be attending. I have mixed feelings about this - I know she primarily wants to ask about resources for herself which is fine. Her personal recovery is critical to this whole thing too. I guess it's another opportunity to hear her tell her side of the story and get a sense of where she's at emotionally. It's often hard to hear just how far we have to go, but that's living in reality. My sense is that we've gotten a bit more connection recently and I'm interested to hear if she feels that way too.

OK I only had a few minutes to write this morning. I hope to get one more journal entry in after the appointment, whether that be on here or in the paper journal. Wishing you all the best in your recoveries!

 

I slipped this morning - MO in the bathroom right after waking up pretty much. I haven't told my wife yet, but I plan to this morning. We had a conversation with my therapist about the best way to disclose this type of thing - not in the bedroom, don't wake her up to do it (sleep is precious), not when she's in the middle of hard stuff. I appreciated that because it's just one more thing in the theme of LIVING IN REALITY. My wife lives in the real world, some times actually are better than others and are less triggering.

Time to live in reality myself: I knew this slip was coming. I knew it probably 5-7 days ago and I DID NOT do all I could to prevent it. I allowed myself to "emotionally relapse" meaning to start feeling down or discouraged, not practicing gratitude, not doing my best job identifying my emotions, and wanting to run away from uncomfortable things. This makes me feel disappointed in myself, but at least I can be honest with myself about what happened and disclose it with vulnerability. Part of being vulnerable is saying "this is truly where I'm at" with no denial attached. To my partner: this happened, I know it makes you feel scared, will you still accept me?

I've used the analogy before of holding the north poles of two small magnets together with your hands. The magnets are like the halves of yourself: your true self - vulnerable, honest, acknowledging and accepting their emotions, and the other magnet is your addict self, however that manifests - for me it's secretive, a liar, numbing/coping/escaping at every opportunity. It's tough to keep those magnets close together! To accept that the addict part is just as much of yourself as the true self. They want to push apart and not feel the influence of the other. To feel recovery working, I've not only got to bring those two magnets close together temporarily, I have to weld them together permanently. Only then can I go on acknowledging and meeting the emotional needs of both through my actions without compartmentalizing.

Anyway, I've got to get going before I drink too much of my own Kool Aid. Live in reality, brothers! It's scary, but it's the only way out of this.

 

Day 1. Never feels good to break a streak, but it makes sense given how I had been feeling and allowing myself to continue feeling. I disclosed to my wife yesterday afternoon after our daughter was down for her nap. It's strange - you almost want your partner to yell or cry or something overt because then you clearly see what they're feeling. My wife got a little flushed, said thank you for telling me, challenged me on getting caught up in definitions of slip vs relapse, and that was about it. It feels distressing to sense her tension and frustration and then not have her share her emotions. It's like getting to the last chapter of a book and finding it's missing. There's no way for me to force her to tell me what she's experiencing. At the risk of "shoulding" on her recovery, I do wish that she had a support group to talk these things through in the aftermath.

My greatest challenges in this moment are 1. connecting to my own emotions (because this is where the relapse came from), 2. practicing mindfulness to maintain awareness and process triggers (chaser effect, emotional discomfort), 3. giving my partner space and handling the discomfort associated with that uncertainty, and 4. showing up with empathy for her.

Time for some mindfulness meditation. May you find peace today.

 

I'm spending some time getting curious about my relapse this morning. Relapses are opportunities for growth if you're willing to ask enough questions to drill down to what's really going on.

At the beginning of last weekend, I was cleaning the house which is our Saturday morning activity. My wife was feeling nauseous that morning and the kids were running around as usual. Normally we clean as a family before going about the rest of the weekend, but it was mostly just me cleaning that day. I had created a rigid construct of "Saturday morning cleaning" in my mind because it was something I wanted to do, I felt I had my wife's buy in based on conversations we'd had, and it allowed me to feel productive and to relax more on Sunday. Similar to relying on the frequency of counseling, I sometimes have trouble accepting when that routine gets disturbed. So in this instance, when she was not feeling well, I felt compelled to try to maintain that construct by doing almost all of the work myself. This led to feelings of resentment.

Now I had been being lazy about my morning self-care routine even though I was completing my homework for group. For the last couple of months, I have been successful at connecting with my true emotions not necessarily because of therapy but because of practicing mindfulness and genuinely enjoying the feeling of being productive before the rest of my family is awake. In the last week or two, I had not fallen off the morning routine entirely, but the frequency had gone down. This lead to feelings of being disappointed with myself and caused me to worry about what my wife thought of me (codependency). Of those, the second one worried me more in the moment, but the first one was really the kicker because that feeling of inadequacy piled on top of the resentment that I was feeling on Saturday. Resentment and inadequacy - I have a long, long history with these two emotions.

Then came the email. Sunday around midday, my wife checks her work email on a whim and discovers a nastygram from a co-worker which had actually been sent at 5:30 AM Saturday. It talks about how disappointed this person is in my wife, how she's not living up to expectations, and how she's not upholding the values of the company. Although this person has less seniority than my wife does, she is at a higher level. My wife is devastated.

Old me would have run far, far away from this situation. I would have 1. Dropped some advice - "Hey don't take it personally" or "What kind of a person sends angry work emails on the weekend" - something to minimize and dismiss. Then 2. Find an excuse to disconnect - there's laundry to do or the kids want to go outside or ANYTHING to get out of there. Finally, 3. Either leave it entirely unaddressed (abandon her) or come back to it only when my own shame became unbearable and I needed her acknowledgment that the situation was resolved to feel OK with myself, but not because I actually was legitimately concerned with how she was doing.

What I actually did was, in my opinion, a massive improvement. We sat together on the couch, she cried, she was able to get some of the feelings out. I felt uncomfortable, but I stayed close and tried to just listen and validate where I was able. Over the next couple of days when she wanted to process and I could tell she felt compelled to practice the conversations that she'd have or had with her boss and this person out loud, I sat and listened to those as well. This did become more difficult over time, but I tried to stick with it the best I could.

OK I really want to finish this thought because I feel it's important in learning from my relapse, but I've gotta get my kids ready for school... Back later I hope!

 

Ah the beauty of the Internet - interacting with people hundreds or thousands of miles away. For everyone's information, I am on Alaska time.

I wanted to go back and finish my thoughts about my prior relapse since I felt I was almost where I needed to be on that situation but had to step away.

As the week went on, my wife and I spent a lot of emotional and mental energy on working through this work email and the ensuing conversations that happened at her job. She had some tough discussions with this person and her boss about the email, boundaries, respecting one another, workload, and so on. We talked through some of those beforehand in the evening or morning prior. As the week went on, I did become emotionally and mentally tired of talking about that issue, I'll freely admit that. My ability to stick with uncomfortable situations like that, although better than it used to be, is still not very good. I realized this at the time and this actually created more feelings of inadequacy because I thought I could have been showing up more for her (perfectionism, inadequacy).

One other thought I have to add about the weekend prior when we weren't able to clean much was something I heard when we became parents. I can't even recall who told us this now, but here's a heavily paraphrased version: When you're mad, think about whether you're actually mad at your partner or if you're mad at the situation. Often, if I can take a few minutes to have some perspective, I realize that we both want the baby to sleep or that we had more time together or that one person's job wasn't so stressful. Getting upset with your partner is attempting to control something that you can't control. Frustration is a natural response here, but aiming it at the other person is 1. not effective in resolving your frustration, and 2. damages your relationship.

So that brings us to the end of the week. This stew of inadequacy and resentment has been sloshing around in me for days, I'm emotionally tired, and my morning self-care, rather than being a source of strength, has become a source of frustration and negative feelings. This lead to feeling like I could not connect with myself emotionally or tell someone else what I was feeling. Although I knew each of these things individually in the moment, I didn't put them together until afterward. Looking at it like that, it makes sense that I relapsed. Of course, I alone am responsible for my actions.

I'll have to spend some time pondering and talking to my therapist about how to interrupt cycles like this in the future. It's clear that unprocessed emotions were the engine driving this process forward. Honestly, the sexual part of it didn't even come in until right near the end to cope with those emotions. At other times in my life, it could have been alcohol that filled that void.

Once again, I'm out of time to write more. May you all find the peace you're looking for.

 

There are a couple of phrases that I've heard from recovery resources in the last few weeks and both have to do with being authentic and showing up as yourself. I lived a double life for as long as I can remember up until the full disclosure last year. I literally did not know what it meant to be myself. These phrases have helped me to understand and internalize authenticity and integrity. The first one is "This is where I'm at". This means no denial, no lies, laying down all your cards face up for all the world to see. This is living in reality regardless of the consequences. I didn't know that phrase prior to full disclosure, but that was certainly what it felt like. When I was writing out my sexual history to share with my wife, I was fully aware that it could end our marriage right there, but the emotional pain from dragging those secrets around day after day for years had become unbearable. For her, it was saying "I'm not sure if I'm going to stay". This sentence terrified me in a way that I had never experienced before and triggered a lot of codependency. Today, I am more confident in acknowledging the challenges that still face us: our relationship may not survive, she may not be able to trust me again, I may not be able to overcome my addiction and the attachment wounds that lead me to it. Mindfulness has helped me to live in the present, albeit not perfectly, and move forward with my life and my recovery despite the possibility of future adversity.

The second phrase is about recovery being for you and needing to be an internally-motivated process. I still struggle with this one sometimes, really digging down to understand my intentions in a particular action or moment. I've definitely seen glimmers of that internal motivation because I've felt it. Self-compassion is one of those things. It feels transformative because my entire life has been filled with telling myself I'm not good enough or smart enough or attractive enough or committed enough. And that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Self-compassion is going right toward that inadequacy and challenging it directly. When I'm practicing it, it makes me feel happier. There's no simpler way to state it than that. I feel better about myself which reduces the shame and allows me to focus on the good things in my life. This clear benefit associated with self-compassion has moved me in the direction of internal motivation, but it isn't always so clear. There are still days where I have to ask myself why I'm doing this or that. Who are my actions for? As I've observed in the past, acting in order to receive validation from someone else is rarely sufficient and often temporary.

 

Yesterday morning before work my wife attempted to ask me if I had groped her in the night (we had been snuggling). This is something that I have done in the past, but not in a long time and we do have a specific boundary for it. When I heard that question, I connected that experiencing that behavior now, given our past, would be really triggering for her. Unfortunately, I succumbed to the impulse to take what she said personally and to defend myself. One of the cruel ironies of poor emotional intelligence is that I'll try to avoid a certain outcome, and because of lack of skills or overcompensation, I'll end up creating the very outcome that I sought to avoid. That's what happened yesterday. As I tried to communicate how much pain that question caused for me, all she could see was my squirming and justifying my position. We did get a brief opportunity to reconnect before heading out the door, but it was not my best moment by a long shot. Over time, I hope to approach a situation like this with empathy first (mouth shut), then respond to her skillfully.

After the last relapse, I felt strongly that having a regular outlet for emotions (e.g., journaling) is critical for me to return to baseline day after day. Not connecting with my true self leads to mindlessness leads to acting out. On top of this, finding at least some positivity and/or gratitude each day is very beneficial. This tells me that I am enough and that I do have some good things in my life. It is important for me to acknowledge those things on a regular basis because they directly counter the helpless/hopeless denial narrative.

Short but important post this morning. May you find peace in your recovery.