The Blindness of Assholes

A couple of months ago we took a family trip to our favorite spot. The place where all of the important things in our life together happened. We have recuperated there from tragedy, conceived one of our children there, and even named all of our children there. It’s where we have talked about retiring to someday. That’s how special this place is…

Until.

Almost a year ago at “full disclosure” I sat in silence as he said, “I didn’t and don’t want to tell you this. In fact, I called CSAT yesterday and asked if I had to reveal this or if I could reveal part of it because it’s bad, it’s really bad. I have so much shame around what I did. The last person I’m going to tell you about is Whore.”

The Player continued, “I know this is going to be painful because of who it is and what I’ve done. I’ve seen Whore very sporadically for 13 years on and off since a few years into our marriage and until a few years ago when I lost interest.” He took deep breaths. He started crying and said, “I took her to [vacation spot] when you thought I was there alone. I am so, so sorry.”

I shook my head, laughed/sighed in disbelief. “You what? You are an unbelievable asshole.” The CSAT told The Player to stop. No more for a few minutes while he checked in with me. I was in shock. My throat closed, I felt dizzy. Tears streamed from my face but I couldn’t put together a sentence. CSAT said, “Do you want to take a moment and take a break?” I shook my head yes. I stood up, grabbed my purse. He asked if I was returning and I said I didn’t know. I stepped outside to the parking lot and threw up a few seconds after the brisk air hit my face. Since I was already holding wads of tissue, I used them to clean my mouth. I got some gum and took a minute to decide if I was entering again. I decided I wanted to ask some questions I’d prepared. So I walked back in the room and sat back in my spot. I was calm. I was the kind of calm one should be afraid of and he was afraid.

He reached to hold my hand to comfort me. I looked at him like, “You did not just blow up my life AGAIN and want to comfort me, did you?” He pulled his hand back. “You can’t touch me. You don’t get the right to comfort me.”

“Let me get this straight. You took her to OUR place, our house. You fucked her on a trip I planned for you? A trip I encouraged you to take because of your stress? A trip I packed you for? Bought your groceries for? Are you fucking kidding me?”

He wasn’t kidding.

I find it hard to believe I will ever get over this particular betrayal. I’ve been back to our place but first with a friend and a short trip with him a couple of months later. I will not let those two assholes take my special place away from me. I refuse. I can’t lie though, it was hard to face it.

Those two fucking, fuckwad assholes.

Oh, and to add insult to injury he said didn’t invite her, she invited herself. He just didn’t say no. He knows (well, he says) it’s really bad and he isn’t trying to minimize how bad it is, but he wanted me to know that he didn’t want her there. He didn’t invite her. He wanted her to leave the whole time she was there because he really did want to be there alone and decompress.

What a shitty, weak, wuss of a man.

He better up his game in 12-step and figure that shit out. My “sponsor” (a woman who has been through a very similar story as mine) said he is too new in recovery for him to have even analyzed fully the relationships with these women that there isn’t even a way for him to address it with me yet. He better figure something else out because “I just couldn’t say no!” isn’t going to cut it for long. He is so blind to his behavior.

But hey! Let’s reconcile! Gross.

Hanging

We recently had some work done in the house that required us taking down several pictures in the house. One wall of pictures happened to be carefully selected and framed in black. At the center of the arrangement of pictures were pictures of our parents. All in their late teens and early twenties.

Side by side, his parents and my parents. One frame included two pictures, one of each of us at age three. Surrounding the central parent pictures were our siblings, our nieces and nephews and our children. There were a scattering of pictures of special people we consider family. Our wedding picture from almost twenty years ago carefully centered with photos of our children as infants.

I absolutely loved that wall of pictures. The pictures represented so much for me about family and love and acceptance. Each set of our parents together and married for decades. Rich history of togetherness that included children and grandchildren  and great-grandchildren. Special friends whose love for our family exceeded the bonds of blood relation in who they were for us.

We were rich in love and that wall represented all that was family to me. It represented everything important to me.

Pre all the goddamned discovery or “ddays,” I used to fucking love that photo wall. I used to feel happy when people would comment on that wall about how beautiful it was. I loved how it showed the blending of two families. The blending of us; the togetherness of our family we built.

I don’t feel that anymore, obviously.

I hate it now and couldn’t re-hang the pictures as they were. I couldn’t do it. I tried. I waited a few months even, thinking I might change my mind as things progressed between us and our “reconciliation.”

Reconciliation? I don’t know what the fuck it means most days. I know it doesn’t mean I’m feeling confident he is doing enough. What if he truly is at his capacity? I know what he is doing doesn’t mean he has a plan to stay sexually sober, other than to”stay out of bars” when he is traveling. It also means never be alone with a woman unless it’s absolutely impossible to get around because of business and even then the agreement is to stay completely in public. Those are excellent goals. Unfortunately it’s just the beginning of what I need to feel safe in our marriage.

I am hanging in a constant state of unknown. I hate being in limbo and I’ve worked hard to not be reactionary because it’s never good to make decisions during crisis.

It’s like those fucking pictures were mocking me telling me my relationship and family were never going to be that way again, so on the floor they sat. So a gift to myself was honoring what is and so I hung all of the pictures of the kids and included a few new ones of them. The wall that once held the pictures of two families blending now holds photos of the kids that are holding us together because they are the number one reason out of a few I’ve shown the compassion and grace I have to The Player.

Each day now, I get to look at a wall of my favorite people in the world and be grateful for them instead of looking at the floor of leaning pictures and immediately think about all I’ve lost.

It’s all broken.

“Do you have any strong glue?” he asked.

I asked him what broke so I could get him the right kind.

“My soap dish,” he said. I said, “Oh that? Just toss it, we have a million of those things.”

“But (CHILD) made it and I want to keep it.”

“Are you sure? I think I made it, look on the bottom.”

He told me he already looked on the bottom and it was CHILD. He got really quiet and when I looked up he’d started to cry. He said, “If we don’t stay together, on days I can’t be with them, I want those little things that they touched. Like this soap dish.”

“Oh,” I said, “You know I’m not going to be a dick and keep you away from your kids if split up. You know that, right? Because I would never do that. Never.”

Still crying and trying to hold it in, he said, “I know that but I know I won’t see them everyday like I do now. So I want these things.”

“Okay, we can glue it back together.” When I said that, I honestly meant only the soap dish. I have no idea about the rest of what is broken in our home.

I wanted to scream at him about how when he was fucking other women he must have known something would break. I wanted to scream that he couldn’t have been that stupid for two goddamn decades. I couldn’t have married someone that fucking stupid.

I didn’t need to scream, he was already thinking that.

One talk.

One day last week, The Player wanted to talk outside our regular Thursday morning talks. No was my answer. I left and came back. He asked again. I said no. He said he’d like to talk for a minute if that was okay. He had something to say.

Okay.

He said he’d been distant but he wanted me to know he was just a little down and he wanted to make sure I knew he was still committed, still wanted to work things out and be the husband I deserve.

Okay then.

He asked how I was doing. I said I was struggling because I’ve been doing some recovery work and I had a shit ton lot of realizations lately.

• I’ve learned a lot lately by starting an official 12 step program for me and I finally get it.
• I finally figured out that I need to expect zero from him in the way of empathy and support right now. Addicts are by nature, selfish, and he’s no different. He’s been doing these behaviors so long it’s going to take a long time to undo.
• I asked if he thinks he’s a sex addict. He basically said he isn’t sure.
• I believe him when he says he’s doing all he can but I told him it wasn’t working for me and I’d had trouble articulating it until now.
• I asked what he saw as a quality recovery plan and what it included. It was all about how he’s learned a lot about himself. Nothing about 12 steps. Or even one fucking step.
• I told him the only way for me to feel safe with him was to be able to measure his progress. The measurements I see through a 12 step program are 1) work with a sponsor, 2) connection with others 3) working the steps, 4) attendance at 12 step meetings, 5) and to use people in the program for support. I didn’t see that he was doing any of that, hence my strong reluctance to feel safe in our marriage.
• I don’t want to change the path he’s on because it’s clearly working for him. I respect that boundary and insist on me not driving his recovery.
• I told him I loved him. And I do. Even in his broken state. I said I want him well, I don’t want to break up the family and I’m proud of the work he’s done but it’s just not enough for me. It’s not complicated. I told him that doesn’t make what he’s doing wrong. Not at all.

He agreed he wasn’t doing the 12 step work we agreed on because he isn’t sure it’s for him. Great, no problem, except he never shared that fact and gave me a substitute program we could agree on, or even a made up one by him. He’s just been coasting. I had to figure it out myself and talk to him about it and now, doing some deep recovery work myself, realized what he is (or is not, as the case may be) doing isn’t enough. The big reason it isn’t enough is because it’s not measurable.

The 12-step program is pretty tried and true. There’s a path one takes on their recovery journey and even though it can take months or years, there is a clear path. You have to have certain things in place to move forward in recovery with a 12 step program. You don’t have measurements if, you’re learning about yourself and feel sure you won’t do it again.

That is so not a safe situation to be in, or maybe it is for his next wife, but it isn’t for me. He agreed that what I was asking for is reasonable and decided he’s going to try the 12 step program by finding more groups, locating potential sponsors. He decided he’s got to get into it to either get in or get out.

We had a couple’s therapy session with his CSAT and it was good. He had a breakthrough regarding empathy. Empathy has been and continues to be an issue. He believes he does have it, but just doesn’t know how to communicate it. With very little direction he said something that seemed sincere, was thoughtful and helped me understand that he is empathetic. I told him to do more of that as I cried. He tried it again this week and stumbled a little, the CSAT got him back on track and he did better. It’s been positive, he says, like “reconciliation is possible.”

I asked him how long he needed to explore this 12 step thing and he asked for two months, I gave him one. He has about three weeks to go and hasn’t been to one other meeting, although he did just print out the meeting schedule. It’s sort of lackluster, isn’t it? He’s so far not showing much gumption.

Too bad mediocrity isn’t speaking to me or we’d be golden.

A “How are you?” Text and Book Devouring

It was a simple text, innocent enough. A very good friend was checking in with me to see how I was. Nearly all of my good circles of friends know what has happened to me. I felt it was important for their support. Especially after I found out the cheating was for the entirety of our marriage. I think before then I was able to keep it more contained, but given that the risk was going up for the end of my marriage, I really needed to make sure I was surrounded by people who love me.

I am so glad I did. There was one friend that couldn’t get past the first round of revelations and so she doesn’t know anymore, which is fine. I needed people who would support me staying or going. I have that and because my circle includes a lot of friends, I really to get support in some form daily. I’m extremely lucky. I love that they love me enough to keep tabs on me.

Anyway, back to the text. I received this text at just the right time, right place. I was in bed, The Player was asleep and I was reading a new sex addict book (rather good, actually) and really taking in a few things from the book that are really scary and really sad. The Player, while working on himself, isn’t even close to being where I need him to be for me and our marriage. There’s a phase the writer talks about that includes denial and resistance and all of the signs point to The Player. He’s got some serious denial about what true recovery is going to take and he has resistance to the process of successful recovery as outlined nearly everywhere for sex addicts.

I think in the last two days as I was reading it just hit me. It hit me I’m going to have to accept the fact that we are not working on us, we are existing and “we” are waiting for recovery to really kick in. I believe he has been faithful in all the ways we agreed upon beginning post no contact with last AP and pre full disclosure. I agree he is doing everything at his capacity. I just don’t think it matches up with what I need and before I couldn’t answer why. Now I can.

The writer says there are four phases:

• Survival Phase
• Stability Phase
• Sustaining Phase
• Freedom Phase

These phases laid out in the book are the shortest, best explanation of what one needs to do or as a partner expect to see in recovery for (presumed) sex addiction. Short, concise and relevant. In the phases there is a little wiggle room on timing, but if one is using a 12-step, CSAT (certified sex addict therapist), individual counseling, and marriage counseling, this is a good guide. I love that I finally have something that makes sense to me. I’ve been floundering around asking, begging, seeking information about where we are in the process of this and if it makes sense.

I’ve been asking because something has been “off” for me and I couldn’t place my finger on it. Over the recent weeks I’ve said that he isn’t “doing enough,” and not “doing what I need,” but I couldn’t articulate why that was and this book, Stop Sex Addition: Real Hope, True Freedom, gives me concrete points I can make now. It’s such a profound relief, I cried when I read it last night. The Player was sleeping right next to me.

It is also extremely sad because it shows me we are really so very far away from truly reconciling. I had somehow pictured the 2-5 years our CSAT talks about as being one giant process and I hadn’t considered there were little, measurable steps to judge his and our recovery. Now that I have that, I actually have less hope it can happen in totality. I say that because The Player is working very hard, but I don’t know if that will be enough, based on the book’s phases and requirements.

For example, the book outlines each thing that should transpire in each of the phases (roughly) by listing the “Hallmarks of Quality Recovery.” Just to name a few, The Player should have a “circle of 5” friends in recovery and reaching out to at least two per week and daily if needed, weekly contact with his sponsor, actively working the steps of recovery, attending two 12-step meetings a week and he will have fully disclosed (he hasn’t totally although I know and feel comfortable I know the body count of vaginas and behaviors through polygraph). These things are not happening.

The Player is essentially making up his own recovery plan and because of that I do not feel safe in this marriage as it stands. The more I read, the more I learn that detaching from him is the best thing to do. I’ve been detaching but not in all areas and I think I may start going towards that direction.

I am not ready to say this marriage is over because of our children and importantly, he has stopped acting out. I am hoping that as long as he isn’t acting out and he is doing something toward recovery (albeit slow) he can remain in the home. I am not willing to blow up my kids’ world on the situation as it stands. I am however, willing to pull back more than I already am and even though there isn’t much to pull back, what I do have to detach from is pretty significant.

If I do, I’ll have to quit going to therapy with The Player. I’ll have to quit our weekly talks in lieu of weekly 10 minute sex addict check-ins (where is he in his recovery and if there have been slips/relapses). The biggest and hardest thing for me to let go will be expectations. I’ll have to let go completely that he’ll ever progress to a point to have true empathy for me and take in truly what he has done to me and us and heal our marriage.

My big fear is that I am going to detach myself right out of this marriage being of quality and to becoming super friendly co-parents and roommates for the kids.

I can’t write about this anymore today.

The Monikers We Choose

“If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better.” – Anne Lamott

In therapy yesterday with my husband’s CSAT/our joint counselor the therapist asked why I call my husband The Player on the blog. He said “The Player” is derogatory and that he wished I would change it. When I contorted my face a little bit, he said something like, “just a suggestion because it’s negative.”

When he asked about the moniker I immediately felt defensive. I was all (in my head and some of my words), “DUDE, I get to call him whatever the fuck I want to. If he didn’t want to be called The Player he should’ve treated me better. He did play me, after all. When he does something better with himself then maybe I won’t call him that anymore.”

I had to follow-up with something electronically and he gently asked me to come up with some alternate labels for The Player. I sent the following:

“The Player could be…

Now: The Participant

Hopefully one day:

The Monogamist

The Devoted

The Ally

The One

The Companion

Mr. Authentic

Mr. True Blue

Mr. Character

When I sent him that note he said he’d be interested in the range of labels that I could make for myself now and into the future.

“You mean besides The Awesome?” I answered. I meant that, honestly. What else could we call me? <<< Not tongue in cheek.

Then I proceed to come up with a few more:

The Played (sigh)

The Participant (I am too)

The Fearful

Mrs. steadfast

The Lover

I told him I wanted to add Mrs. Stamina but I lack the patience gene.

I also said, thanks for challenging me, but I’m fine with calling him The Player right now. He did play me and a lot of other people. He led us all to believe he was a caring, devoted, steadfast, loyal person and husband and we all know that wasn’t true. He does admit he misled us and I very much felt played, thankyoueverymuch.

So why does it bother me that the therapist has an opinion about this very thing? Probably because I trust him and respect his opinion. I do think, however, since we get to make our choices that make us feel best, it’s okay to take their suggestions under advisement. I’ve done that and his current moniker remains.

If you think about it, I was sort of nicer than I wanted to be with the Moniker. The blog could have very easily been called MarriedtoaMutherfucker.Wordpress.com because the moniker Muterfucker certainly sits well with me today.

Next post up? Our Thursday Talk.

Related: same shit, different fucking day.

The Schedules of Cheaters

Since we dropped them in January, The Player nearly begged to get our scheduled affair/relationship talks back into our lives because he was concerned we were going in the other direction. He asked for three times a week, I agreed to one. Today is that day.

Yippee!

So, my life now revolves around scheduled talks, keeping our family’s life moving, making sure I’m detached from The Player so I’m not obsessing about him and his shit and of course, couples therapy.

It’s fucking pathetic. The thing that annoys the shit out of me is that I didn’t create one fucking piece of this misery, yet here I am having to deal with the fallout. He fucked things up but I am paying the fucking price. If I want my kids to have an intact family, I have to live my life with a goddamn, mutherfucking liar. Even if he can “transform,” he is still and will always be the man who lied to me for the first 20 years of our marriage.

He will have you believe none of his (literal) fucking other women was planned. Apparently his dick ended up in the vagina of (free) whores everywhere just by chance. He actually said, “I didn’t know sex was going to happen until we were in the elevator kissing.” He will have you believe that they were all flirting friends because of business or the way he is and that all the fucking, “Just happened.” and he will have you believe that they aren’t really “affairs” in the first place.

What the fuckity fuck did I just type?

You read that right. He didn’t consider these ongoing “relationships” with these women affairs because he didn’t buy them gifts, carry on with them outside of conferences or even fuck them at every conference even though they could have, he wasn’t obsessed like he was with his last whore and because they didn’t invade his life with me.

What. The. Actual. Fuck?

I’m done talking about this today but I have a little handy list for discussion with the therapist as well as for our next Thursday chat.

First question up? “If there were no plans like you say and you ended up in elevators kissing people, which led you to fucking people, what are all the emails back and forth between you and some of them lining up your travel schedules? What was the line to whore #something, “I forget, do we have travel planned in next month or do we need to create a trip?””

So, wait? That was making no plans and having no communications like “real affairs”? Answer me that, mutherfucker.

Too good.

I’m too good for him.

That sounds fucking horrible doesn’t it? Righteous. I’ve only said that out loud to a couple of people to hear but I said it sort of kidding but I really wasn’t kidding.

I’m not kidding. I’m too good for him. The ironic thing is when he had his fucking fake persona I thought HE was too good for me. He came from a stable family without huge issues, his parents stayed married, he was raised in a church he attended weekly for his whole life, he was a “good” guy, he was successful, caring, smart and if I look closely, insecure at times with his own ability. Not often did he let that show. He was the hero in my family, the one who bailed out his sisters and my brothers if needed.

When I was speaking to someone who also has a cheating, liar, “sex addict” for a husband but way farther down the road in recovery, I told her, “I know it sounds bad and I know I’m not perfect, but…. (pause), I really think I’m too good for him.” She said, it was no doubt, I am, but that has nothing to do with figuring out if I’m going to stay with him or not. If he fixes his sorry fucked up ass maybe I wouldn’t be too good for him, but right now I am. Face it.

Once in therapy we were talking about how one of the whores ended up on a business trip, hiding in his hotel room for four days and how another whore met him for a couple of days at a resort on the way to a business trip. Yeah, I thought he was working. He was a mutherfucking Player. He pleaded that it really wasn’t what I thought, that he hadn’t “invited” them to come, they just sort of just ended up there after saying, “Why don’t I come?” and he didn’t say no. Recently, he said about the many other women who adored him, “I couldn’t say no to them or they might not adore me any more. I just couldn’t say no.” I told him I had to disagree with that because for the past two fucking DECADES he’s said no to me, basically saying FUCK YOU WIFE, NO, YOU DON’T GET WHAT I PROMISED YOU. He’s said NO to monogamy. He’s said NO to character and morals. He very much was fast and hard when he said FUCK NO to our marriage vows.

We’re all broken in our own way, I suppose. It’s his broken ass that has really fucked me up, from the core. The very foundation of everything I believed in is gone. Never to return. Now people – him, therapists, other betrayed spouses – talk about new beginnings, opportunities to grow, fresh starts, forgiveness and having a “deeper” marriage than before. Fuck that and the fucking betrayal they rode in on.

I was pretty happy in the one I thought I was in, minus the inauthentic, fucking liar cheater, “sex addict,” of course.

Detached Marriage

There isn’t a way to detach from the chaos of the “sex addict” and hang on to the marriage. It is not possible for me because in order to detach from the addict I have to back out of a lot of discussions that could benefit the marriage.

I have a lot of things to say and The Player was right, they are bubbling to the surface waiting to explode in his fucking face. I have a lot of questions still about the timeline of the affairs and some details of the affairs and the people, most of which I knew or knew were work colleagues. I want a few more details, mostly on timing and money.

I’m detached now mostly from discussions, except for a therapy visit a couple of times a mont and don’t feel I can ask him about details anymore. Then, I remember a condition of his staying in the home was to work a 12-step program and I don’t think by definition he is “working” is very hard. He goes to weekly meetings and has only reached out to his sponsor three times that I know of in four months although they do see each other weekly at a meeting but not before or after as to work on any of the steps.

Do I have the right to find out what is happening with his 12-step program of recovery? Or is that crossing the line of detaching that I’ve put in place?

The Player’s Words

Since therapy a couple of weeks ago, The Player is trying to be more thoughtful about what he says, about listening and about really hearing me.

It became clear he needs to up his game in the empathy department. He’s not considered me and my feelings for so long that he completely shut out how I feel about anything. His counselor told him he wasn’t getting it and that instead of repeating how he is sorry he did this or that because of this or that he needed to start considering what I was saying. So in addition to hearing what I say, really listening to my words and my pain and take them in.

Later that day, I emailed the counselor to ask him if empathy could be learned or if you don’t learn it you never will. He said unless the person is a true sociopath, empathy could be learned. He said there would have to be a long time without destructive behavior in the way of him learning it that it’s like a muscle that atrophies without enough use.

The real question is, can The Player do it? Can HE learn empathy or can he retrain those muscles to walk again? I don’t know. It’s one of the big questions I have right now and I’m not really getting any answers. I’ve backed so far away we don’t really talk about deep things unless we are with his counselor so it’s hard to say if he is getting closer to really taking in what he’s done. I know he feels shame and guilt but aren’t those two things as a result of getting caught? They aren’t really taking in how deeply he hurt me. He says the right words, “I know I have no reason to ask for another chance because of how badly I’ve hurt you.” But the empathy isn’t there. He’s confused about what empathy is, really.

His words are just that; words. Actions are what will speak louder. If you look at the cards he’s given me over the years in most of them he says something about how he hopes he shows me with his actions how much he loves me.

I heard him loud and clear.

He wants me to stay?

He’s got a long way to go.