Arguing

After coming home from work on Sunday night, h and I had a "discussion." We hadn't seen each other for 24 hours, so we were just hanging out in the living room, trying to reconnect, talking about what happened in our individual lives over the time that I was away.

Sometime during the conversation, he got quiet and got a strange look on his face and then shuddered a little. I said, "You okay?" He said, "Yeah. I was just thinking about something." "Anything you want to share?" I said. So he hesitated and then said, "Well, I was just reading this article in the latest Psychology Today about taboos that are normal. I don't know how they get away with calling all of that fluff 'psychology.' It was a really lame piece."

Okay, not for nothing, but this month's Psychology Today has a photo of this chick in a leather outfit, complete with whip, on the cover. The title on the cover is "Twisted? 7 taboos that are perfectly natural." It went on to list sexual fantasy as one of the normal taboos. It was on the floor on the passenger's side of my van with some other mail that I forgot to bring in on Friday (I have a long driveway and usually get the mail when I'm going out somewhere...lazy me).

Anyway, here's me acting out:

Me: So what possessed you to bring that magazine inside?

Him: I was cleaning out the van before going to the recycling center and I brought in a bunch of papers. That was in there, along with the mail.

Me: So why would you have read 'that' article?

Him: Well, I can't exactly research this SA stuff on the internet because so much porn comes up. I was just curious if I was normal.

Me: So sexual fantasy is now 'normal' and okay for you?

Him: No, I'm not saying that. I just want to see if I am a complete whack job.

Me: Well, to me it seems like you are trying to justify fantasy. The title of the article is "7 Taboos that are Perfectly Normal." It seems like you were trying to find support for the 'fantasy is okay theory.'

Him: No. I just want to see if I'm normal.

Me: So if you are trying to see if you are normal and you want something to read on the subject of SA, why don't you pick up something by Carnes or Weiss, someone who is respected on this subject?

Him: I've already read Out of the Shadows.

Me: How long ago?

Him: Well it has been a long time.

Me: So you are saying, the chick with the whip had nothing to do with your decision to read that particular article?

Him: I would have read it anyway.

Me: Whatever.


Yesterday we went out to dinner to talk about it some more because we couldn't really talk without a certain five year old showing her sweet, smiling face. His idea, we took the discussion to a restaurant. Surprise, surprise, he didn't feel comfortable talking in public. So he didn't speak to me at all during the entire meal. I was mad. We paid the bill and walked out. Outside, there were three young women dining at a small table. P. was racing me to the car to open the door for me. I wouldn't allow it. He got in the car and blew up. "You don't have to humiliate me by not letting me open the door." I replied, "You wouldn't even speak to me for the entire meal. Now you want to be chivalrous in front of this table of women. Too bad. Who are you really opening the door for? Me or them?"

Yeah, the past couple of days have not been shining examples of recovery for either one of us. Thank God we have counseling tonight. I worry about this too. Last time we had an argument with the counselor mediating, he walked out on the conversation. This ought to be interesting.

Moving Right Along...

So here is what happened in group...

I completed Step Eight and am working on Step Nine! I never imagined that I would be able to start, much less complete, Step Eight. I had so much resentment festering toward so many of the people on my list. Especially my family of origin. Most especially my sister and mother. But, today, I'm choosing to release it all to God. In my heart, I believe that releasing it to Him, coupled with developing good solid boundaries will benefit me greatly in my healing.

I'm convinced that God was intervening in my life that day. I had just finished writing the percentages that I was ready to make amends to each individual, when I started working in the bedroom, cleaning and vacuuming. I lifted up the bedskirt to suck up some dustbunnies and rescue a few stray socks from the jaws of the Windtunnel, when I noticed some books that had been piled neatly under there. I pulled them out and saw that some were recovery material of my husband's. I tried to shove them back under there but there was something preventing me from doing so. It was a small, 42 page pamphlet sized book by John Eldredge. I think it was called, "You Have What it Takes." I am fairly certain it was highlighting some of the main points in Wild At Heart.

I started reading it (anything to avoid housework) and there was this one section that really spoke to me. It was about grieving the wounds from childhood. When I first read it, I thought, "Yeah, yeah, been there, done that." But one of the things that he said that stood out to me was, "It mattered." All of those abuses and neglects, they mattered. They mattered to me, and to God who loves me.

Wow! I forgot that God saw all of that stuff too. It mattered to Him. And it was strange to me, because my mantra used to be, "It's fine. It doesn't matter." It was how I would reassure myself that things would be alright, and that things weren't as bad as they seemed at the time. But that statement, "It mattered," gave me a different perspective. I didn't throw myself a pity party that day, but I cried for about five minutes, and just thanked God for that validation, for seeing what had happened and knowing that He cared about it. Because I think when I was telling myself, "It doesn't matter," what I was really feeling was, "I don't matter."

Bringing me back to my Step Four list. Weiss has you make a list of whatever you can remember from all of your years on Earth. Across the top of the page go the headings "Good, Bad, and Ugly." The good list are, obviously, the good things that happened to you or that you did. The bad things are the bad things that you did, that you are responsible for. The ugly things are the bad things that happened to you that you are not responsible for, wounds inflicted by someone else.

So, I looked down all three of the lists, and I FINALLY realized something. All of these things on my ugly list are things that made me feel sad, used, abused, ugly, _______(fill in any negative emotion here). The things on my bad list, that I am responsible for, are on someone else's ugly list, and maybe they are feeling all of those negative emotions that I felt, and I caused them that pain!

Actually, when I looked at it through that lens, I couldn't wait to go out and make amends. Maybe that sounds sugar-coated, but it was really how I felt. It reminded me of the verse in Matthew 5, 23 "Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering."

Bringing me to today. I wrote the first letter to my husband, asking his forgiveness for all of the harm I've done to him. I gave it to him and sat with him while he read it. When he finished, he, teary-eyed, said, "I can't believe you remembered doing those things. I thought you had forgotten. I was ready to never bring them up again, thinking it would have been petty to tell you that you hurt me after so much time had passed. Of course I forgive you. Thank you for acknowledging these things. It makes me feel so good to hear that you regretted hurting me."

I know that all of the amends might not go as well, but I am hopeful. The amends I am most reluctant to do are those with my family of origin. I will do them, but I will probably do the easier ones first, to build up some confidence.

Why do I feel like I just jumped out of an airplane?

M.I.A.

Hey, I haven't disappeared. I just told anyone in group that is also part of the book study, that I am having computer related issues. The fan in the computer is turning off randomly and then the computer shuts down to protect itself. Gee, that sounds like every relationship I've ever had!

Anyway, the problem should be fixed by Monday, God willing, and I'll update you on some new developments. Meanwhile, call me today or Sunday night if you get the chance. Excited to share what happened to me in group this week!

On Swallowing a Bomb

I was thinking yesterday about something that has really been bothering me since last January. It's weird. I don't know why I'm waiting until now to write about this because, even now, I'm not completely clear on why I feel the way I do. Maybe someone else has felt the same way and has some insight.

Last year, after my husband's third polygraph (failed the first two), I was presented with ALL of the truth about his acting out behaviors. For me, this was a good thing. I was able to decide for myself whether, after knowing everything, I wanted to continue in the relationship or walk away. Obviously, I chose to stay.

Here is what is bothering me. Part of the information that came out of that third polygraph was that my husband had a real live affair within the first two years of our marriage with a girl/woman he went to college with. Her name was T, and she was known by the guys in the dorms as "the roach." I still have no idea why they would call her such a thing, but that is how they referred to her.

T was sort of plain looking. She was just a little shorter than me, very thin, very pale, freckles, dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, smoke stained teeth. She probably went unnoticed a lot in a crowd, because her personality was sort of absent too. I tried to be friendly with her a few times when I would visit P's college, because I wanted to get to know his friends, but there was this impenatrable force field around her that didn't allow me to get to know her at all.

In the time P and I dated, I saw her a few times at parties and over the course of a weekend for a wedding we were invited to, and then we drove out to see her and another college buddy when they lived in Florida and we lived in Texas. I knew that she and P had been sexual when they were in college. P and I weren't married or even seeing each other at the time when that happened, so it was something that I was willing to look past because it was part of P's past. Everybody has a past, right?

Finding out about the sex between them after the polygraph was a strange experience. I was in the parking lot of the local supermarket, picking up a dessert to bring to the friend that I was going to visit moments later. I had left an email message for P that the polygraph results had come and showed deception on one of the questions. He called me over his lunch hour and said, "I have to tell you something. Remember how I told you that at that bachelor party, I kissed T? Well, it was more than that."

I stood there in the parking lot with a grocery store bakery layer cake in a yellow plastic bag hanging off of my arm, getting the news that he had in fact cheated on me, on my cell phone. I tried to strong arm our preschooler into her carseat, while cradling the phone between my ear and my shoulder, at the same time balancing the chocolate whatever-it-was so that it didn't lose all of it's icing.

"Hold on" I said. I set the cake down on the front seat of the van, buckled up the protesting four year old, and said to our son, "Watch your sister!" I clicked the door locks shut, and watched the van from about 20 yards away. "You want to tell me this NOW?! I'm going to D's house for lunch this very minute. How the f--- am I supposed to compose myself by the time I get over there?"

I snapped the phone shut and forced my body into the van. My son had the "oh, sh*t, mom's mad" look on his face. All I could think of was, "How am I going to pull this off? How am I going to look like I didn't just swallow a ticking bomb? How am I going to put on the "everything's just fine" expression?

But I did. And I wore that expression for two straight hours while we sat talking about the school district, and our other children, and how well our boys get along together, and their new trampoline, and their bedroom renovation, and what a great summer we were going to have together. And that bomb just kept jumping around in my stomach, threatening to pop out and onto the table for D to see. But I just kept holding it back.

Then we drove home. And the bomb just stayed there until I could finally speak to my husband again at 4:30, when he would be driving back over to his mother's house. And finally, my insides exploded. "HOW COULD YOU!!!" But not for the obvious reason, although that was one of them.

How could he? How could he have slept with THAT woman? How could he keep that secret from me for 17 years? But most weighing on my mind was how could he have kept me a slave to my own shame over the affair that I had had (when he was in anorexia mode), when he had done the same thing? He kept saying to me every time he would act out, either emotionally, or m-ing or ex-ing, "At least *I* didn't go outside of our marriage!" HOW COULD HE let me keep punishing myself for my own affair? How could HE shame me over the same thing he was guilty of?

I quickly justified my sin, "I was at least *lonely*, you were just *alone.*" (Sidenote: what I did was horribly wrong, and I will never condone nor defend what I did. It was WRONG. I was WRONG.)

But that is just how I came to find out. Afterward, he also told me that when we went to visit her and P (a friend) in Florida, that he laid there that night, m-ing, reliving the memory of cheating.

Believe it or not, THAT was the day I came to understand that he was an addict. The day that he admitted sleeping with HER. Please don't misunderstand me. I've made it clear before that I am not "all that." Physically though, I am certain that I have more going on than she does. I know that sounds horribly vain, and I realize that physical attraction is only one aspect of a person's makeup. BUT, my husband didn't want her for her personality that night. He wanted little more than fifteen minutes of her time.

I know, that was a long way to go to get to my point, but bear with me. It's almost over.

What is concerning me is that, my anger towards her was so fleeting. It lasted about a minute or two, relatively speaking. Even now, I can't really muster up a whole lot of feelings when I think of her sleeping with him. I could probably still invoke some anger for all of the people he's had emotional affairs with. I won't, but the point is I might still resent some of their behaviors with my husband, where I'm willing to give her a free pass. I just don't understand this.

One of the reasons I've come up with is that maybe the emotional affairs bothered me more because they were ongoing and they were based in feelings, and could have easily been based in love. Whereas, the physical affair was a one time equivalent of getting an itch scratched, although I do understand that it is not as simple as I make it sound. But the physical affair didn't drag on and on with drama. It was very cut and dry.

Another reason I think it may have bothered me less is that it didn't mess so much with my already low self esteem. Maybe I felt superior to her in the looks department, so I wrote her off as being "less" than me. God forgive me if that is the case.

The last reason I can think of is that I have been characterizing her lately as a sex addict. My husband told me that she certainly acted like the other female sex addicts in group and that he would classify her as one, having been with her several times. But, my question is, is the crazy codependent in me feeling sorry for her, thereby forgiving her for committing adultery but not completely forgiving all of the others that didn't commit adultery.

So anyway...that's where my head's been lately! Forgive me for rambling.

Finished!

Well, I finally finished Step Seven. Yay! I think I may have been taking a long time doing this Step for a few reasons. One, and probably the biggest one, is that finishing Step Seven means I am on to Step Eight. Making my list of the people I've harmed and becoming willing to make amends to them all. At this moment in time, it seems like an insurmountable request. I don't know where I am going to summon up the strength to do this.

See, it would be easier to do if there were any effective communication in my family of origin. I just picture myself as Lisa Simpson from the sitcom "The Simpsons" giving my letter to my sister (played by Nelson Muntz) and the trademark, "HA, HA" coming out of her mouth. This is the part in the show where I walk away from Nelson wondering why I even bother, dragging my saxophone behind me.

Looking at it now, I can see why I would dilly-dally and not try to go barreling into Step Eight. Being the laughingstock of "Springfield" isn't on my list of "things to do" this year.

Another reason I think it took so long was that (again) I was aiming for perfection. I wanted my prayers to be perfect. I agonized over them, writing and rewriting, as if God was my ninth grade English teacher with a penchant for red pens. Have I learned nothing? I really need to be saved from myself.

Prayers Please

Oh, hey everyone. I haven't posted in a while. I will probably post more next week as I finish my Step Seven. I'm almost done. I've got about eleven more defects left to pray over. At the rate of two a day, I should be done by the time group rolls around next week. Yay!

I was just wondering if I could ask you guys to pray for me this weekend (and for the next eight weekends in a row). I begin working the 36 hour shifts for my private duty lady starting tomorrow morning at 7am. I am very nervous about being able to physically and emotionally handle this. I realize I should have prayed more before accepting this responsibility, but of course now I'm struggling with having agreed to do this. The good news is that this is not a permanent situation. It is short term while a coworker recovers from shoulder surgery. The bad news is I'm cramming an entire full-time job into the span of one weekend. For the next eight weekends. Does the word "unmanageable" mean anything to me???

Thermonuclear Reaction

Okay, just a warning...I am having a meltdown of biblical proportions today. End of days type of a meltdown. The kind of conniption that is only rivaled by Godzilla's wrath on Tokyo. I want to chew people up and then spit them back out. Once all of the time zones catch up to a wakeable hour, I'm going to make a phone call to help me get my sanity back.

I'm having a really tough time with my son, A (aka Spike). He's taken on the bad habit of lying lately. It's like you can't rely on anything he says, from where he's been to what he's had for breakfast. Also, he's just been downright defiant.

Our most recent "match" began on Friday. This part is absolutely ridiculous and I am embarrassed to even write about it. I came downstairs in the morning to an freshly opened box of Golden Grahams. No big deal, right? Well, I said to A, "Could you do me a favor? Can you please not open any more boxes of cereal until we finish the other *five* that are open? I don't want them to get stale and subsequently get wasted." The reply, "Sure, mom!"

Monday morning, I'm looking for cereal for my daughter. Open the closets, low and behold, *all* of the open boxes of cereal are gone! Wow, either someone was really hungry on Saturday and Sunday or my intelligence is being underestimated by a sneaky 15 year old.

Yesterday, I was cleaning out the garage and getting the recycling together. One of the paper bags tore open and spilled out onto the floor. A paper that was folded up so small that it looked like a cube caught my eye. On it were instructions for hacking passwords off of any computer that runs Windows.

Spoke with A, he did take all of the open boxes of cereal and hide them in his bedroom. He didn't like those flavors, so he figured he'd get rid of them himself. Nice try!

Asked him about the instructions I found in the garage, and he says, "Okay, that was me. Do you want me to tell you whose passwords I have so they can change them?" Hello, that is not the point! You cannot unring a bell! Now that you have the knowledge of how to get anyone's password, it doesn't matter if we change our passwords a hundred times, you can just summon them up anytime you want to!

After that discussion, I moved on to an incident that happened about two weeks ago. I was going upstairs to get my pocketbook so that I could leave for work. I heard A telling my other son T, "Don't worry. Mom will never find out." Then T said, "I am really nervous about this, A." Asked him what that was about. That was because my husband was running a virus scan on the computer and T was nervous because he had downloaded *porn* onto the family computer. My son A had removed it prior to the scan to save T's behind. Yeah, 13 and 15 year old kids looking at this smut. I nearly had a stroke!

But of course, the boy with an answer for everything says, "I don't see why you are getting all upset about the porn. These people are paid actors. Nobody is forcing them." I went into an absolute tirade about the correlation between porn actors and a history of sexual abuse. He just sighed and gave me the "you are so stupid" look. Then he tells me of the "married couples" that are doing this for extra money. Yeah, "it must be true because I saw it on the internet" reasoning.

I have *so* had it! I am ready to smash their computer to bits this morning! And it's not even 8am yet!