A_struggling_partner

Hi @Lenet4, so sorry that you’re having to go through this. I would second what Christine says above about having someone to talk to yourself, especially if you are becoming frightened of your partner’s aggression. My partner had some elements of this when I gradually discovered his addiction nearly two years ago. I wasn’t scared of him, but I realise now that I was scared of him walking out - he tended to do angry stonewalling rather than aggression in the ‘traditional’ sense. I’ve come to realise that for my partner the anger is intrinsically attached to shame, so anything that hits his shame buttons has the tendency to provoke an angry response. As such, eye contact and ‘being seen’ while I tried to talk to him about his addition was not conducive to having any kind of productive discussion. We’ve had the most meaningful talks about it and about his past experiences while walking side-by-side - I think the lack of eye contact and the exercise helps to reduce the shame. It’s a hard path choosing to stay with an addict, and I think that I was too understanding initially, and did not put my own needs first enough of the time. However we are in a much better place now where we can discuss things more openly, and (I believe) he’s been sober for a while now. This has included a year and a half of therapy for him and I still wouldn’t say we’re out of the woods yet. The road out of addiction is a long and winding one!

Hi MonA, It sounds like you’re going through a LOT at the moment and I can hear the anxiety in your writing. I’m not sure I can be masses of help with your questions, but there are a couple of things that did jump out at me from your post. I’m not experienced in mental health so these are just things from my own experience. You said that your arguments with your partner are a reason for him relapsing, and I just wanted to flag this as something to take with a pinch of salt. In my case, I think my partner was slipping into using this idea to try to get me to back down from challenging him with my concerns. I think that this can become an excuse and can become manipulative. If he wants you in his life he should be prepared to take your feelings and concerns seriously, so don’t let this stop you from speaking about your reality and your needs. Although it’s not always possible, I’ve found in my own experience that approaching my partner to talk when I’m more calm gets a more truthful response compared to when I’m in an anxious or upset state,m. I think the latter makes my partner panic and try to minimise the issues to try to stop me from being upset, which actually makes things worse. It’s really difficult though, especially early on when you’re all over the place emotionally. Getting support for yourself is really important and can help to stop you from spiralling. Talking whilst walking side-by-side rather than face to face had much better results in my relationship early on in the process, as shame can make it feel really unbearable for an addicted person to be looked directly at whilst talking. I also just wanted to say that you don’t have to provide unconditional support to your partner. Addictions can make people tricky and manipulative, even if the non-addicted part is a lovely person, so one can end up colluding with the addiction if we don’t keep tabs on what our own limits and needs are. I hope that you’re ok and this coming week has some good stuff in it.

Hi Lorna, I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. I can completely imagine that it wouldn’t be any easier because it’s a (newly) ex partner. Betrayal is betrayal whatever the current status of your relationship. If there’s anything that you can take away from the horrible stuff you’ve found out is that his behaviour is nothing to do with your personality, physical appearance, emotional life, brain and so on. It really sounds from what you’ve said that he has deeply-rooted problems that are causing him to act like this. While you’re still in shock after discovery you can only take it one day (or one minute) at a time, remember to breathe deeply and be as kind to yourself as you would be to one of your friends if they experienced something so upsetting. I’m not in any way completely recovered, but can attest from my own experience and reading that of other partners on here that it does get easier once the trauma of discovery has subsided a bit. I talked to the Samaritans a few times at the beginning which was actually really helpful. Also distracting myself with work, exercise and so on helped to get me through the initial stages (though not easy in covid). Sending good wishes to you and hope that you feel a little bit better soon.

Thanks so much for your reply Ann. You’ve hit the nail on the head on what bothers me most about the process. It would feel like huge progress if my partner was able to tell me when he was struggling, as it seems like the secrecy is a massive part of the addiction mindset in the first place. I’ve tried suggesting before but haven’t set down a firm boundary/ultimatum on it. Perhaps I need to state something more clearly...

Hi there, wondering if there’s anyone out there to offer me some words of wisdom? I’m more than a year post-discovery, and my partner has done quite a bit of work on his addiction (addiction to porn as well as various types of physical acting out), including 8 months of therapy. He’s had a few months off from it down and I recently discovered that he’s been watching porn again (discovery again rather than being told). The trouble I’m finding is that I find the whole thing dispiriting and depressing. He’s due to re-start therapy next week but I can’t help feeling like maybe there’s no hope for us. While porn is the less upsetting to me of his acting out behaviours, it’s all part of the same thing and I don’t feel like it bodes well for the future. I’m resigned to the fact that if he can’t stop then eventually I’ll have to call it quits. Has anyone experienced something similar and it turned out ok?

Hi Freddiebear, sorry to hear that you’ve been having a tough time. I can empathise with the tendency to pretend that it’s all ok in the hope that it will be. I do the same thing sometimes - I just get so tired of the whole thing being my reality and when there’s loads else going on (as has been for me in the last few months) I don’t feel I always have the capacity to keep it in my mind! Re. your question as to whether it’s possible to go cold turkey and not have cravings, I’m no therapist but it does sound easier than I would imagine it to be stopping after 5-8 years of frequent porn use? I don’t think it has to mean that your partner is still watching and keeping it from you. It could also be that he doesn’t want to worry you by telling you if he has been struggling. But I do think I would be the same as you in questioning the situation. Would it be worth asking him if the two of you can find some more time to talk?

Hi OurLife, I’m so sorry that you’ve found yourself in this situation too. I do think that it’s possible for an addict to end up seeking out experiences that they wouldn’t otherwise have wanted, simply because they are seeking something more and more extreme to get the same effect from it. As I understand it, a person can end up pursuing men (or fetish topics, or illegal content) because their original interest no longer ‘works’. What I don’t quite understand is whether, once someone has hijacked their own ‘reward’ system in this way, it can permanently change their neural connections and therefore desires. I struggle to know whether I will ever feel like enough, and whether I will always be worrying that my partner is now ‘programmed’ to want something different. I completely believe him when he says that he find me beautiful, but what good is that if he doesn’t actually desire me!? The only thing that makes me feel better is that there is an element in my partner’s behaviour in which he is wants to feel disgusted, and in that sense it’s not as if he is exactly enjoying the experience. So he might be getting off on the behaviour but at least he’s not having an amazing time!

Hello IamEnough, really nice to hear from you - it means a lot that you’re thinking of me and the rest of us. I check the forums regularly but don’t always feel in a place where I can put thoughts down in writing. I’m having an odd time at the moment where in some ways I feel a lot better but I’m also struggling to keep traumatic thoughts and images from invading my space. I feel like my relationship is improving in the ‘now’ but it’s so hard that no amount of improvement can negate the past. Finding a way to live with it is going to be hard, and I don’t know for certain that there isn’t more to be revealed. I also worry that I am a mug for staying with someone who has treated me like this - I think this is compounded by the fact that I was seeing a great but non-SA therapist at the time of discovery who I feel saw me as a codependent and was trying to influence me to leave. Hope that you’re doing ok at the moment. And would be lovely to hear from everyone else too if you’re feeling up to checking in.

Hi Belle, I’m really sorry to hear everything that’s been going on for you. It sounds as if maybe the reason that your questions are still there and seeing people sends you into a ‘crazy state’ (you’re not crazy) is that your husband is still being secretive. I say that I don’t think you’re crazy because it sounds like an understandable response to your husband acting in a crazy-making way. It might (I imagine) be different if he had told you before that he would like to explore cross dressing so that you didn’t have to find out he had been hiding it from you. Not saying you should accept it as a behaviour but at least you would be able to feel grounded and make decisions about your life from a position of calm. In my own situation a lot of what has made me anxious, stressed and angry is the secrecy and hiding as much as the content of the betrayals. While it’s slow progress in my partner’s journey, the more openness there is between us the more grounded I feel. In terms of the future I don’t have anything very helpful to add as I’m quite early in the process myself, but so far for me, I feel like working towards honesty and openness for the addicted person is required for a partner to feel ok to try to build a relationship. Sending hugs your way

Hi Sunflower I also experience this, particularly around fearing that it won’t work. The way that I’ve worked with this so far is reminding myself that I’ve had crises along the way so far where doubt starts taking over but that so far my partner appears to have been committed to the process and making sequential changes that demonstrate that he’s moving in a positive direction. I think one of the things that’s hard for me is that whatever positive step has been taken the road ahead seems really long so there are always fears and doubts about the next step. I’m hoping that as the journey continues the accumulation of positives will help to increase my confidence about the future.

Thanks so much everyone for your replies. I’m not so shaky today but very irritable! We ended up talking about it yesterday which was good in a way, but also made me angry to hear how he had managed to explain away such callous behaviour to himself. I’m glad I have the certainty, but even though I had figured it out by myself before, I guess a small part of me was hoping that there could be some way that it wasn’t true.

Thank you so much for responding Rose, it means a lot that someone is out there reading and empathising. I hope that you are doing ok and also being kind to yourself x

I wonder if anyone is on the boards right now who can just tell me that I’m going to be ok? I’ve known about my partner’s sex addiction since Christmas and although he hasn’t yet told me the full extent I had been able to figure it out. Today I decided to go looking for what I already knew and found the actual evidence and I feel shaky and sick. He’s out for the day right now. Does anyone have advice about how to broach this when he gets home? In some ways nothing has changed but I’m also really angry that he hasn’t got rid of these things yet. He’s been having therapy for several months and has changed his behaviour a lot and is being more open but it feels like he’s not letting go of things if he is keeping and probably re-watching the mementos.

Hello Autumn and Sunflower, I’m so sorry for the situation you’re in. Mine is quite similar, although in my case my partner hasn’t ‘officially’ disclosed some things that I actually know, so assumes that I know only the stuff that he has told me. I’ve realised that a lot of the obsessing for me comes down to the fact that I don’t trust him in this arena (I found Paula Hall’s partners book useful on this part in that I do feel I can trust him in a lot of other areas, but anything relating to the addiction I cannot). The denial also means that he cannot comfort me around the betrayals - in reality I would feel a whole lot better if he could do this (genuinely, not with minimisations and platitudes), and apologise for his part in how I feel. My sense is that I won’t feel any sense of safety around these things until if and when he manages to gain a better understanding of himself, his addiction, and the ability to look me in the eye and face what he has done. It’s a really slow process - I can perceive differences in him since he started getting help but it’s tiny steps and his stage in recovery is nowhere near a point where he could make me feel better about what has happened. I’m in a weird place where I feel like I’ve got an extremely long wait for someone to be able to be on the same page as me. The changes I have seen give me quite a bit of hope that he will get there, but I’m on my own in the meantime. It feels difficult to share even with my closest friends because I judge myself negatively some of the time for staying, because if you had asked me before discovery what I would do in this scenario I would have said there was no way I could remain in such a situation. Reading the 12 Steps created by AA the understanding of how your behaviour has impacted others and making amends comes at steps 8 and 9 out of 12, I guess because an addict can’t do these things with genuine understanding and emotion until they’ve made some progress with the addiction. It’s really unfortunate in sex addiction that these things are what the partner needs pretty much at Step 1 - there’s a mismatch between addict recovery and partner recovery. I wish there was a partners group to help bridge the gap, but with covid these seem to all be online and I find video meetings almost more isolating than phone calls because I feel so distant from the world trying to connect with people through a screen. Sending love and wishes to you over the internet instead.

I’m really struggling with the lack of truth in my situation at the moment. I know a lot that my partner thinks I don’t know, but he’s still really early in treatment and any attempt I make to get him to acknowledge the truth tends to make him panic, deny and shut down. It’s so frustrating that what I need is acknowledgement of how much this has hurt me, but I don’t get much kindness or empathy if I express how I feel. I totally appreciate how hard it is to undertake therapy for sex addiction, but I’m finding it so hard that he can’t empathise with me. The lack of empathy is only around the addiction/betrayal stuff - anything else that has upset me, my partner can be so kind and supportive of. I’m so sad and angry, and the lack of acknowledgement of his part in me feeling this way is only making me angrier and more lonely. How long will the denial continue for? Can any addicts/ex-addicts/or their partners tell me how long it took for them to get to the point of empathy for the partner’s situation?