I am torturing myself.

[Autumn]

Hi, this is the first time I've posted here. 

Hope my rambling mess that I'm about to write is OK! 

One year ago after about 6 months of suspicion and me doing my own detective work I found out my partner had been lying to me for the entirety of our relationship. He had been on hookup sites, viewing pornography and cam performers obsessively. The most painful part was that he had met up with 9+ people, men and women. I was and am destroyed. A year later and I still am in so much pain. 

 

I can get past that he did this to me. I don't feel like I have all the answers, which results in me obsessing over every single meet. I need to know what they looked like, what they talked about and what they did. I keep imagining the scenarios in my mind and sometimes the just appear without any trigger. 

I'm so tired of this. It's emotionally exhausting and I just can't see a way out. Obviously he isn't keen on answering but he does his best but I can't help but feel he is downplaying the situations to save me but I find that is almost worse. 

 

Is there any getting through this? 

Does it get better or is this my life now? 

 

 

[Sunflower]

Hello AutumN

My heart goes out to you. I have experienced exactly the same. A year ago to this week that I discovered a message from a prostitute on my husbands phone. A year later and I am still getting new disclosures 😢. I obsess just like you do and a year later I am asking those very personal questions. We are told not to ask for details. But for me, imagining them was worse than the truth. I need to know. They definitely minimise what they’ve done. Through shame and not wanting to hurt us more. Unfortunately so far I have discovered that there is always more. 😟 But I just want honesty! I am devastated. You couldn’t wish to meet a kinder, gentler more loving man. It makes no sense! Are you both having your own individual counselling? 

[A_struggling_partner]

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.
 

 

[Sunflower]

Thanks Struggling partner. You have put in to words exactly what I have expressed to my partner this morning after more snippets of disclosure. Plus I am tired of only getting this through my obsessive questioning. But what you have just said about how they actually can’t do that yet is true! Now I see it. So thank you. It is so hard though to accept this. A very lonely place to be. I too question why I’m still with him. Worry I’m stupid and even compare myself to partners of domestic abusers who stay, because I do feel like I have been abused. It’s an isolating place to be during such unexpected isolation due to Covid. Sometimes I feel like I will never be happy again. Sending love to you all. Try to stay strong and reach out when you need to xx

[Autumn]

Dear Sunflower and A struggling partner

 

Thank you so much for your replies. As horrible as it is, its good to hear from people who are in similar situations and to know I'm not alone in feeling like this. 

 

 

I've had a very long slow drip of a disclosure too. I had to manipulate it out of him over a long period of time. He says he would have eventually told me but I don't think that is true. I find myself asking the same questions over and over again and often a new lie he has told comes to light. Things he told me a year ago when he was supposedly telling me the truth are coming out as lies as he forgets what he has told me. Things such as where they were etc, they're silly details really and they don't change what he did but they seem to matter just as much as the entire act. 

 

Its so so hard as although I do believe he is trying his best now, I doubt everything he says. We now have accountability measures in place, software on any technology and he keeps me informed of his whereabouts but I find this makes me feel like I'm crazy and even then I convince myself he's got past these barriers somehow. Sometimes I wonder why I'm still here but if I'm honest I do love the man and I know he loves me, despite all he has done. 

 

He is currently going through therapy. I had convinced myself that I was strong enough to get through this without help but a year on and it's still as painful so it's obviously not the case. I will get onto this as soon as I can. 

 

Sending you both big virtual hugs. 

Its so appreciated. 

[Sunflower]

Hello Autumn

Thank you for your response. I would like to say that I also feel that the lies about small things are completely important to me too! I say to my husband that they are just as important as the big lies. It’s about trust and it’s so damaging when you are trying to rebuild that. Whatever may be the cause of the sex addiction, I never felt so disrespected, unimportant and unspecial in all my life and it’s been done by the man I love the most in my life! For 21 years he made me feel the opposite and to discover his deception during all of it feels too much to bear. Like you say, my husband is trying so hard and is so ashamed. But I feel so much anger and sadness right now. I am not strong enough without therapy. Take whatever help you can. XX