SOs feelings and thoughts through their partners Addiction/Recovery

He's absolutely not and his history of lying and cheating on me means I will literally never bother to believe or invest in that. He can leave if he can't live with that. I will never trust like that again.

 

@Warfman - I absolutely agree that when your spouse says no, the rejection cuts to the bone. It makes you question your self worth. It physically hurts. It causes extreme distress, when repeated. It’s is so hard to remain faithful when your spouse won’t be there for whatever reason. However, it’s no excuse. The temptation to seek out another man, to prove I was attractive, to affirm I’m good in bed, to feel desired, to feel wanted, was overwhelming. I had to find a way to combat that. Either by divorcing or in healthy ways. I did not want to lower myself in search of acceptance, love, and validation.

 

@SanctuaryWife this post in my journal may prove interesting too, it's where @Psalm27:1my light and I picked appart this question: https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?threads/tims-journey.78164/page-49#post-2988825

 

This sums.up my thoughts wrt your compartmentalization. I will never be with someone capable of not comparing me to disembodied body parts from a million teenagers he can mentally pick his perfect preferences from.
You all would not survive that reality either if it were reversed.

I have considered just blindly saying yes to the next person who comes on to me and holding my breath until it's over. For the validation. To feel like someone actually wants me. It happens nearly every other day and it would be so easy to just let other men make me feel special again. But I just can't. Even after what he did, the aversion to other people as a preference for him is too high.

 

I butt heads with a lot of people ….. mostly my son who argues with me about everything. Lol many times he’s right, but I can’t let him know that!( jk).

 

I am adopted.

 

He has been a liar with regards to this right up until he could no longer get away with lying. He chose over and over again to lie to make himself more comfortable. He stopped when he could no longer, not because he wanted honesty. For me, his words will always be lies. Never in our entire life will I believe him or emotionally invest in what he says wrt our relationship. I have told him exactly that. He can choose to stay or to go, but it's my truth. As far as I'm concerned, he is lying. Period. He doesn't have to stay with me through that, but I will always be honest about it.

 

It is the only thing my husband lies about. While he thinks that should make it easier, it actually makes things worse. If he lied about everything or most things, I would always 100% trust my gut that he was lying, but because he was so honest in every other area, it made me doubt when he lied in this area. That made me doubt myself, my perception, it made me feel guilty due not believing him.
When he began recovery he told me “ I don’t know if I can ever be 100% honest with you about this. I hate that about myself, but I also know I’ve lied my whole life and it has been the only thing I know. The shame I feel for doing this makes my first response to lie. It’s fear and shame. I only care about alleviating those feelings and you are not my first thought”
I accept this. In that, I understand what happened to him as a child has reinforced his shame, fear, and knee jerk reaction to lie. But he knows that sooner or later he will have to tell the truth and that has made it possible for him to be honest in the amount of time we agreed upon.

 

I just don't care anymore. I just assume he's lying and go on with my life, accepting only the answers my gut tells me or what I can confirm. If that ever becomes too much to live with and get through my daily life raising the kids and going to work to support our family, I'll eventually leave once the kids are gone. In the meantime, I've just accepted that I've allowed myself into a life situation where I'm trapped and just have to put on a face for the kids until they all move on to their future families.

 

Like, I know he's been sober for over a year now. (Edited to delete info I shouldn't share). The only reason he ever had privacy in the first place was because I trusted him and respected him. He's sober. I know he's in recovery, I can see the changes in him. Our lives are totally different with him in recovery. I just....don't care? That possibility for our future simply doesn't exist now that I know how he feels about me and how he feels about other people.

There is a preponderance of evidence that his preferences for other people are such that I simply can't be his wife at my heart. It doesn't matter what changes he makes or what he says. He could never look at another woman again his entire life, it doesn't matter. I already know what's in his heart and what his preferences were when no one was watching him.

 

I don’t think it’s shame dumping. We are expressing how WE see it, FEEL it, EXPERIENCE it. Did you not seek out attractive women? It doesn’t matter why, it’s the fact you did it. I “ think” my husband is attracted to me. Even at my age I have men express interest or compliment me, but I’m still left feeling like what I offered was still not good enough. I know my husband loves to be with me, he’s always loved who I am, but it still wasn’t enough to keep him from risking the loss of my love. He loved the way other women made him feel more. I mean isn’t that what addiction boils down to? You love that more than anything else you experience until it hurts more than it feels good. I do not believe my husband would leave me for anyone he’s ever seen in porn. But to me, he wants the illusion of them as well as the benefits of me. He wanted the best of me, and the best of them. And now I feel like he destroyed the best of me and time has destroyed the rest of me. Yet I’m still trying. Maybe not as hard as he is, but I wasn’t the one who caused the damage.