Relapse and Separation

I will post more details later but long story short is that I found out David had started online chatting with misc. women again. 

Not only has he started again he:
1.  Didn't come to me or do anything to get help.
2.  Contacted some of the same people and used the same verbiage (22/m/FL) On here chatting because I can't sleep :)
3.  Has been doing it since mid March. 

I got 104 days of him not relapsing. 

So not only did I find out I:
1.  Tossed all of his clothing, toiletries, shoes out on the driveway.
2.  Called an attny to start the separation process.
3.  Used money that I was saving for a nice piece of furniture for our house (OUR HOUSE) to go get Botox.

Time to work on me and get back into COSA.  Hindsight is showing me how much I let him get away with and how little I protected myself.  He is not my problem right now.

I thought I was in shock...Wasn't that weepy...but now after an amazing weekend with dear friends, I think I am finally establishing so peace in my life.  I am putting my mental health first and I already feel better. 

Also...not much appetite loss.  On that note...gonna go eat some mac n cheese and call it a night!

Baby Steps

David and I talked through our fight last night.  He has a way where he doesn't apologize but acts really nice and almost childlike to get me to warm back up to him.  Didn't quite work this time and I waited until I heard the full "I'm sorry."

Some things discussed-
*he needs to reaffirm to me that he is serious about recovery.
*If I ask him to not sleep in our bed he needs to respect it.
*He needs to give me 5 non sexual hugs a day (hugs not going anywhere).
*He needs to set up his voicemail on his work phone so if I am mad I can call and leave a message rather then it going through his companies email. 
*I need to remember that we can't fix everything in a month and we are making progress
*I should help give David small goals that he feels are attainable (go to the SAA meeting and church) rather then expect him to manage everything.  He has a problem and needs help and support too
*He needs to NEVER say "You need to calm down" or any variant ever again. EVER.
*I need to remember that due to his childhood he has very negative ideas of psychiatry.  Agreeing to go is a big step.

I know he was at fault but I am seeing glimmers of the man he was when we met and first married.  When he would share everything with me.  This addiction caused secrets and guilt and resentment for years.  I can look back now and see the signs and symptoms but without the truth that we are working on there was nothing I could do to help him. 

Before all these horrible secrets came out I would not look forward to seeing him.  He was always grouchy and sensitive about everything.  Now I feel we are both happy to see each other. 

Strange...even though I know he did horrible things...I see more of the good person that he is now.  Strange.

Hindsight 20/20 (II)

I had touched on some of the things that I look back and now see a signs of an addiction but at the time just seemed like quirks rather than problems.  Some other items that I recall are:

1. David jokingly saying "Ha!  I think I am a sex addict!"  He asked what a sex addict was one day and I gave him the definition as someone whos thoughts or acts of sex start affecting his life in a negative way.  He didn't bring it up again.  I assumed that confirmed that he wasn't a sex addict.  Instead it confirmed in his mind that he was.  But David was not ready to deal with it.

2. After years of having sex with David he started asking for unusual things that he had never had an interest in before.  Really sexy lingerie. Shaving areas completely clean (you know where).  When I said that not all women do that he argued that they did.  I excused this as him just seeing girls in porn and assuming all "normal" women do this.  I had no idea he was exchanging graphic photographs of women and their shaved areas on a regular basis.  So his logic had gone from "that's what Porn stars do" to "that's what all women do".  He never connected that all women aren't in chat rooms sending naked pictures of themselves.  Such is the mind of an addict.  Logic does not exist.

3. Sex started lasting longer and longer.  Not the foreplay (that got shorter) but the act of sex itself.  After a girls trip I realized that all my friends husbands last about 10-15 minutes of true sex.  David was lasting 45 minutes.  It usually took multiple positions and scenarios for him to climax.  I would even do things that I didn't feel comfortable with (talk dirty, moan louder) just to have him finish. 

4. I am in my mid 30's.  Not old but past the age that I can wear things that undergrad girls can get away with.  I noticed that he wanted to take me shopping and buy me the things he saw younger girls wear.  Jean shorts, skinny jeans, uggs, super high heals, over the knee boots.  I took it as him just wanting me to imitate what he saw but after the discovery of his online habits I realized it was not just what he saw at school it was also what he saw online.  He had a habit of texting and chatting with undergrad girls-he told me 18 to 20 was his target.  He saw all these girls wearing these clothes that were sexy and trendy...why didn't his 30 something wife?

5. After sex we used to always shower together if we had time.  The last 8 months before finding out about his addiction this rarely happened.  Either he would time sex so that we didn't have time to shower or he would just quickly rinse off by himself and head to his bed (he was sleeping in another room at this time).  Just and example of how sex had gone from being a time to be together to sex being a way for him to delay his addiction.  He has told me since the discovery that he hoped that if we had sex it would keep him from going online and taking over his day.

I am sure more things will come to light as we work though this hard time.  And I know that there was no way that I could look at all these things and say "I know my husband is a Sex Addict" but it does help me put it down on cyber paper.

Ameture Phychologist

Since I have known my husband I have always thought he had anxiety problems especially social anxiety.  He deals with social events either by avoiding them, drinking too much at the event to "have fun" or punishing me if I force him to go to an event (pouting is one of his favorite ways to punish me).

He has finally agreed to see a psychiatrist to get on something to help him with his anxiety.  Let me give you a couple examples of his anxiety levels when it comes to social or work things.  This way you can see the extremes he goes to to deal with his anxiety or punish me.

*Once drank so much at a party he had invited friends to to make up for the bad time he thought his friends were having that he fell down a flight of stairs, knocked out his front teeth, broke his nose and split his lip open.  We thought he had broken his neck or back as well but he was spared those injuries.
*At a Bar Mitzvah we were invited to he got so upset that I left him alone to go dance with some of my co workers (not out of jealousy but anxiety) that he not only left to go sit in the car without telling anyone...he moved the car away from the party so I couldn't find him and assumed he left me there and then didn't understand why I was upset.  PS it was a 5 minute song and I went right back to where I had left him sitting because I knew he hated parties.
*Got drunk one night trying to show a friend a good time (see a pattern) that he went into his office drunk at 1:30am to email a subordinate to see if anyone from the office was out drinking.  Forgot about doing it until he checked his email and then spent two nights worrying so much about it that he did NOT sleep for two days.  Not an exaggeration.  I read the email and said it was rather unprofessional but not harassing or inappropriate just way too late to be emailing coworkers to find people are out.  This made him feel better but he still lost days of sleep.

David is a happy drunk and from what I have heard about him before I met him he was extremely shy unless he was drinking.  He didn't date much in high school or college and had the same group of friends since he was in t-ball.  He never had to come out of his shell to make friends or get jobs.  Since graduating from college he has had to WORK at being social and friendly when not drinking and I notice if he is in a situation that he feels anxious (especially about being accepted) he usually lubricates the problem with lots of alcohol.  At least he is a happy, if sometimes clumsy, drunk. 

From what I have gleaned off the internet he is pretty textbook for the types of people that get into addictions.  This is one of his traits that always seem to be on the list.  Anxiety, and not being able to handle it in a healthy way, can really destroy your life.

Hindsight 20/20 (I)

Here are a few behaviors that looking back could have given a hint into my husbands addiction.  Being the trusting, loving wife I never gave any of them a second thought but looking back I see that they were all clues to a bigger problem.

-He always wanted to "get rid" of his porn.  One day I would find his collection (small collection) in the trash.
-He would want to reboot his computer to make a clean start.
-All of our computers would crash all the time.
-The settings on the computer were set by him to clear everything everytime it shut down and he would shut down the computer before letting me use it.
-When needing to get urgent work done on the computer he would either do it in front of me or go to a public place like a library.
-Over time I caught him masturbating more and more ...even if he knew I was on my way home he still couldn't stop.
-On the computer all hours of the night with no work related things needing to be done.
-Sex was more aggressive and more like a "fix" for him than anything to do with love.
-He asked me to disable texting on his phone and get rid of internet on it "to save money".  It would have only saved about 20 bucks so I didn't understand the logic. 
-Once he looked at porn on my parents computer while we were house sitting and crashed it. 
-He would have a huge list of things to do when I was at work (I worked weekends) and when I got home none would be accomplished.  Time always slipped away from him.
-He would say things like "I get a lot more done with you around..."
-If I caught him looking at porn online (I didn't think there was anything wrong with it...boys will be boys) I jokingly asked him to show me and he refused and turned off his computer.  So secretive about something I was not upset about.
-He stopped doing romantic foreplay.  Cuddling, touching, kissing deeply, looking in my eyes.  I guess the girls online didn't need that!

Hindsight now I see that all of these things were him trying to deal with his problem on his own.  He thought that just getting rid of the temptation would make him better.  Dvd's gone but the computer is still there.  Computer crashed but texting is still there.  Texting is still there but if I was around the temptation wouldn't win.

There was no way I could have realized the truth about all these things but maybe they will help someone else see some signs and start a conversation about porn or sex addiction with their spouse. 

Enough for my first day on this.  I do feel better getting it down on (cyber) paper.