Disbelief

He offered me $5,000 to have sex with him.

I said no.

A few days later he offered me $10,000.

I said no.

He wanted to know why not.

I told him I wouldn't have sex with him while he was having sex with other women.

He said "It's only one woman and if you would just commit to me I would break it off with her."

I'm so glad I said no.

Cold

Shock

I can't stop shaking and I can't get warm. 

This is what happens to me when I discover anything new about H-er.

H-er accidentally sent me an email from one of his former lovers (instead of the insurance card) proving he is still in contact with her.  I called his second cell phone that he supposedly sold and he answered.   And then the next day his current mistress posted pictures showing that they are still together. 

But I am okay.  Because I required him to stay somewhere else for his visits for the holidays (though he is welcome at the house during the days).  I maintained my boundaries regarding intimacy. I reached out rather than isolating and shared my feelings.   And I faced the hurt and betrayal rather than hiding behind anger. 

But I still felt the physical shock of it.  I still had to put on two pairs of socks, my sweats, a robe, and shiver under two blankets for 30 minutes before I got warm. 

Devastated

My sons are handling the divorce very differently.  An Heritage #3 plays a lot of video games.  But he is not isolating himself.  He plays online games with his friends from school.  He is working hard in school and succeeding (100% and 99% on his finals so far).  He’s the one who came into my room early Sunday morning to wake us up for church (I can’t stand 8am church).  He pops out of bed every morning and showers daily.  Whatever emotional struggles he is having with it just aren’t visible.

Then there is An Heritage #4.  He isolates.  He doesn’t want to get up in the morning or shower.  He gets in fights with his friends.  He is disrespectful to teachers.  He gets in fights at school.  He’s suspended from the bus now.  And he’s failed his last two math tests.  Last night he cried himself to sleep.  He doesn’t want to have to spend any time with his dad because he thinks he is a jerk.  He makes comments like “kids have no rights” because he doesn’t like that a judge gets to decide how often he sees his dad. 

I stayed married to H-er because I had hoped to minimize the impact of addiction on my kids. 

I’m realizing now that it was always a no win situation.  Sure, I limited their exposure to scary people and situations because I had them with me all the time.  But they witnesses emotional and physical abuse and that’s another form of trauma.

My kids are messed up now.  That makes me sad because I contributed to it with my poor boundaries.  I’m owning my part.  It’s painful.    

Aware

Relapse.

One thing I’ve come across as I’ve read about recovery is that relapse is inevitable.  I think this is the single thing driving my decision to divorce H-er.  Say he does seriously start to work a 12 step program and gains sobriety even for a short time.  I can’t bear to go through the inescapable relapse.  It fills me with terror.   I’ve survived all these years because I went numb.   I’ve discussed this with my therapist.  I can turn the emotion off.  I become numb and I’ve gotten very good at it.   It allows me to function.  But I lose that protection as I work my own program.   I believe I can’t survive a relapse if I have to actually feel it.   

But there are two parts to relapse.  There is the addict who relapses and then there is the co-addict who relapses too.   That’s me.  I hate being a co-addict.  I hate looking at this list of 37 symptoms and being able to say I am currently doing a lot of them.  That means it’s time for a meeting and some self-care.    I can do that at least.  It’s a step in the right direction.

http://www.tlctx.com/ar_pages/family_involvement.htm

 

 

Successful

I’ve been writing down a lot of the negatives and feel like I should focus on a positive for once.  As I discussed failure with my therapist she pointed out one of my successes.   It was when we were discussing my children and the fallout they would have from living with an addict.  I could clearly see the trauma behavior in my 18 year old and my 11 year old but my 13 year old has seemed to mellow out and jokes and laughs and seems to have avoided it so far.  But it has to be there.   And I finally saw a glimpse of it.

He has a piano recital coming up and his teacher mentioned she could tell the boys hadn’t been practicing.  So I decided to help.  He started playing and he was trying to play the whole thing through from beginning to end, over and over, and struggling.  So I stopped him and suggested he just play the first two measures and once he could play those three times without messing up he could move on to the next two measures.  This progressed for a while.  My goal was to have him only work on the first two lines and then he could work on the last two the next day (unfortunately I didn’t share my plan with him).    He was doing pretty well and getting better. 

Until the last two measures.  He messed up a couple of times and I went over to see if I could help him and offer some encouraging words.  He stood up, pushed me out of the way, yelled “leave me alone” and ran up the stairs.   Where was my unflappable laughing 13 year old?  I didn’t immediately chase him.  I waited about 5 minutes and then went in search of him.   He was hiding in my closet and was teary eyed.  I stood away from the closet giving him the opportunity to hide his face (I think he was embarrassed to be crying) and talked to him in a quiet voice.  I explained what my plan was and that by encouraging him to keep playing I hadn’t meant to imply that he was failing.  I told him I was trying to teach him how to break down a piece into more manageable parts that wouldn’t be so overwhelming and that I was pleased with the progress he had made and that I didn’t want him to feel like a failure because I didn’t think he was.   And then I walked away. 

He came down about ten minutes later and continued to practice until he got to the end of the first three lines.  I gave him a hug and told him I was proud of him for not giving up when he got frustrated and discouraged. 

I didn’t fail.  I gave him space, I didn’t get mad, I didn’t try to shame him, I recognized his emotions,  I explained my intentions to him, and then I let him make his own decisions about his behavior and gave him positive reinforcement and love.

(And I’m going to keep an eye out for those times he feels like a failure or shame.   Those are the scary emotions that I don’t want him internalizing). 

 

 

 

Suicidal?

There is life after death.  I was going to say I know this but decided I’d change it to I have no doubt about it.  (I’ve had too many people argue that you can’t really know something because knowledge is just a remembered chemical response to stimuli – the dangers of belonging to a philosophy group I guess.  They aren’t interested in my comments about the Holy Ghost.)  But the point is, not doubting that there is life after death means I have never been suicidal.  At least not in the traditional sense.

Because I have no doubt that death is not an escape.  “for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world." (Alma 34:33-34)  So somewhere in the back of my mind suicide is just not an option because I logically know it won’t actually solve anything.  It would actually make it worse.  (and I’m all for taking the path of least resistance). 

HOWEVER, at one point I felt so horrible and miserable and was in so much emotional pain that I remember crying in my bed at night and begging God that if there was any way I could cease to exist to please make it happen.  Not physical death.  It would have to go beyond that because the spirit would remain.  I needed my spirit-my very soul-to cease to exist.   I was still functioning at this time, I just cried the whole time.  I’d sit at work and interview people and cry while I did it. I eventually got through that ugly time (with some temporary help from an anti-depressant which stopped the crying).

Fast forward a few years and my mentality had again changed.  My mom died at 50 and I had come to the conclusion that 50 would be a good time to die.  My youngest would be 18 thus able to work full time and support himself.  I would have officially fulfilled my “duty” as a mother to educate, provide for, and raise my children.  At that point I didn’t really care to live longer.  (Again, I wouldn’t actively take my life but I wouldn’t fight death if it came.  I’d consider it a relief).  It was more of a “lost my will to live” like you hear about the babies in the orphanage who turn their face to the wall and die.   At the time H-er had just gone over my budget with a fine tooth comb and was pressuring me to sign up for a 401K and IRA because I needed to consider the future (every dollar of my paycheck was going to support the family and he was providing nothing) and so I told him straight out I didn’t care to prepare to live to 80 because I hoped I’d die at 50.

But then I thought I might have breast cancer and it freaked me out because I realized I didn’t really want to die.  I’m not really looking forward to the rest of my life but I definitely know I don’t want to die yet. 

So where am I going with all this rambling?

 

 

 

I’m lonely. 

 

 

 

I had to spew all those words out just to get to the two words under it.

So I’m going to sit and cry with my loneliness for a little while just to prove that it’s okay.   It’s not going to kill me--which is a good thing because I’m really not ready to die. 

 

 

 

 

Begrudging

My dad always includes a short little message (words of advice) at the end of his weekly letter.  This week it was a reference to D&C 64:8-11.

For those of you who attended seminary you’ll recognize “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.”

I’m really having a hard time with this lately. 

I remember years ago traveling to visit my grandmother in Dallas and sitting in Relief Society.  The lesson was on forgiveness and one of the sisters shared that she couldn’t forgive her father for his abuse and wouldn’t be able to until she stopped hurting from it.  At the time I thought “that’s backwards.  You forgive first and then it will stop hurting.”

H-er’s betrayals and behaviors and patterns hurt.   Whenever I am confronted with a memory or a trigger or a reminder I feel that pain again.  And I get angry.   Because anger protects me from pain. 

So where DOES forgiveness fit in all this?   Because I don’t think feeling pain is a symptom of not forgiving. 

However, in the back of my mind when he asks for another chance and says that if I can hang in there it will be worth it (eternal perspective and all that), I have thoughts like:  “why should you get me in the end as if I’m some reward? How is that fair?”.  And that smacks of discounting the atonement.  It doesn’t sound very forgiving. 

It’s the prodigal son kind of thing.   He’s run through his inheritance and ended up eating and sleeping with the pigs and now wants to come home to the feast.  And I’m sitting there thinking how unfair it is that he gets to sleep with a bunch of other women and now that his “libido has slowed down” and he’s “grown up a lot and learned from the past” so he’s done sowing his wild oats and ready to settle down, he can still have his cake and eat it too.  Quotes are his words. 

(Do I get points for throwing in lots of idioms?)

In other words: I use the word “gets” (in he gets to sleep with other women) as if he’s either getting away with something or the rest of us are getting gypped.   He points this out and says it’s not a better thing.  It’s not even a good thing.  One of his friends said that to him as well.  That it’s not fair that he gets to do all this but if he repents he gets the Celestial Kingdom just as his friend does who was faithful to his wife the whole time.   The “gets” implies the rest of us are missing out on something.  And I don’t want to go sleep with a bunch of men.  Really.  So I see the flaw in the “gets” but I don’t know how to stop feeling it. 

So this has to go on my inventory.  I just don’t know how to define it really.

Envy?

Resentful?
Begrudging?

 

Dispirited

In that small box I found a poem I’d written (before 2003).  It made me sad.

It really put in perspective just how long I have been co-existing with all these feelings.
 
Just play it smart
Hold back a little
Keep your cards close
Damn, you force my hand
I have to play it or lose
I lost anyways

Okay, next hand.

I’ll just be patient
My luck will have to turn
I see my chance
I play my cards
I don’t hold any back
I discard left--then right
After taking what he needs I find I have nothing left
And there’s nothing I can pick up
I’ve lost again

I finally have a winning hand

There’s no way I can lose
I wager everything I’ve got
I’ll be set for life
Who cares about a poker face
Just let me play my hand
I laugh and set my cards down
And the world seems to slow
One by one he shows his cards
The blood drains from my face

He beats my hand

I’ve lost it all
I don’t even remember how it happened

 

Deja Vu

H-er found a small box that contained some pictures, letters, and cards as well as a book that had been ripped into three pieces and taped back together (this was back when I thought our problems were communication or a clash in personality style and that the answers were in a book – you know, 5 Love Languages, His Needs, Her Needs, The Four Temperaments and when I broached the subject with H-er he grabbed the book and ripped it in three and threw it across the room). I’d packed these all up before our move to Nebraska at the beginning of 2003 and somehow it had gotten mixed in with all of his toys and moved to Utah in the Great Toy Exodus.  So I reclaimed it at Thanksgiving and took a trip down memory lane.  I wish they were dated (note to self:  date everything from now on).   There was an anniversary card from H-er that said “I will do whatever it takes” and a promise to take me to the temple if I’d be patient. There was another card that said “I want an Eternal Marriage -  and I will do whatever it takes.”   This time whatever was underlined. 

 
That night after reading it all H-er asked if we could go for a drive and talk.  Guess what he said…

“I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Sad

Here’s my Thanksgiving report: 

The drama was kept to a minimum this year for which I’m grateful.

Dinner was over an hour late which caused some grief for one of my sister in laws.  She had planned to leave at a certain time for some Black Friday shopping and so was now going to miss dinner.  She complained to my mother in law that everything wasn’t organized very well and they shared some heated words.  But then her 17 year old daughter walked in and said “I thought you were leaving soon.” In a perfectly pleasant voice and her mom turned on her.  She got an inch away from her face, pointed her finger at her and yelled “don’t effing embarrass me in front of my family!”   My niece ran out of the house.  15 minutes later they all came back in and went into a back room and her mom and older sister laid into her about her attitude.  She spent the rest of the night in the room crying.    And I felt sad for everyone.

Why do I share this?

Because as I watched it unfold I realized what was happening.  My sister in law didn’t know how to handle whatever feelings she was having (disappointment, hurt, etc.) because she was going to miss dinner and it came out as anger towards her daughter who happened to be in the wrong place and said something at the wrong time.  But then, it continued.  Instead of recognizing any of her feelings or actions she continued in anger and brought in reinforcements (she probably felt bad and anger kept her going so she didn’t have to face those uncomfortable feelings).* 

This situation just reinforced in my mind how destructive anger is.  When I get angry I HAVE to stop myself and tell myself it’s okay to face whatever painful emotion I’m hiding from.  And then I have to face it.  If I don’t I will hurt those who don’t deserve it.  I’ll hurt those that need my love and kindness the most:  My children.  Because they are the ones who are going to innocently walk into the middle of my anger. 

 

 

 

 

*I'm not a mind-reader so this is my best guess at what was going on under the anger.  I could be totally wrong.