My story is a little different than the story I hear from other women. So different, and yet this story is always the same. Sex addiction in all its varieties is completely destructive to everything in its path.
Addiction came at me from many different fronts during my life. As I grew up and married my husband, I felt helpless to know what to do for all the good men around me that were falling to the destructive clutches of sex addiction. After the birth of my first baby, I felt called to the front lines in battling sex addiction, and decided to become a therapist.
I wanted to get out of the victim role, and become an active participant in helping others to heal from addiction. I started taking classes and getting everything I could get my hands on about sex addiction. Which, in 2003 was laughable. No one knew what they were facing or how to deal with it.
About the third month into my marriage I found my husband viewing pornography and acting out. I was naive and did not know about addiction. Not understanding that it was addiction, I attempted to solve his problem by asking him to come to me for his needs and not other women. I had it completely under control. I was willing to provide for his physical and sexual needs. After all I was his wife, and since he had me I could cure him. My love was all he needed right? I figured it was over, and I had fixed it. We were both so blissfully ignorant.
During this first year things were really pretty good. The only things I didn't care for were his excessive tiredness, sports obsession, and his inability to communicate or connect with me on an intimate level.
At first sensing this pulling away, I was quite desperate and offered sex as a cure.
I had grown up experiencing every abuse and neglect. As a result, I learned early on that I could use my body to get and obtain love for myself. This was what worked for me as a child, as a teen, as a young adult, and would work in my marriage too. I later had a qualified psychologist diagnose this as love/sex addiction. All that these words meant to me was that I gave sex to feel loved. It was the only way I could find love in this world, so I accepted this diagnosis at face value. I shut my eyes and was completely clued out to the "addiction," part of the diagnosis.
From the first moment of physical intimacy with my husband I felt severe, intense physical pain during love making. It felt quite torturous. As the weeks and months wore on it did not get better. I went to so many different doctors in an attempt to figure out why I felt such excruciating pain during intimacy with my husband. No one had any answers. What it ended up being was previous sex trauma manifesting in physical pain, but I wouldn't find out that my pain was trauma related until much later in our marriage.
Because my husband and I were not able to connect in a physical way, I started trying to connect to him on an emotional level. I started reading, and finding anything I could get my hands on to strengthen our marriage. I was completely in love, and in agony that I could not demonstrate this love in a physical way. I kept trying to connect physically/intimately with him always hoping that the next time intimacy would not be painful, and after the months and years wore on, I started losing hope of ever obtaining this for myself.
The next six years intimacy was grueling and torturous. I started to dread it. It would do a number on my husband to see me feeling so worthless, broken, and useless as a wife. As a woman I felt like an abysmal failure. Cody would never feel okay with putting me through that emotional and physical pain. I started to lie and tell him I was fine. After about a year I let him know I had been lying to protect his feelings...and he began to distance himself and isolate himself.
After all his addiction was alive and well, and he could go find his connection there. At the same time I put myself through severe shame over not being able to give him the physical connection that I longed to share with my husband. The guilt and shame kept me in a constant effort of reaching for him emotionally...but I no longer had access to him. I was shut down in my efforts to attach, and neither of us knew what was going on. Neither of us even knew the word addiction. Our physical relationship was strained, and we were not connected emotionally either.
Our third year of marriage was extremely difficult. I had just had my 2nd baby and we had just moved to a brand new town. My baby broke my tailbone during delivery. I was in excruciating pain, beyond that of my labor and delivery. My baby had complications and had to go to the NICU. My husband had a brand new job. I did not know a single soul. I would reach out in desperation to attach and find love from Cody, and he was not available. This was the time he had gone from intermittent viewing of pornography to binge behavior with his addiction. I did not know what the problem was in our marriage, but I felt the isolation. I felt the trauma of reaching for him, and being rejected, and shut out each and every time. It was a very lonely and scary time for me the next two years living in Logan.
He started into controlling addict behavior of using tactics of shame to control my reaching out. He would come home after I would beg for help letting me know the other men he worked with had wives who were amazing. These women had babies the same time as I did, but THEY did not need their husband's to come home and help them. These women were capable of managing. What was wrong with me? Didn't I know he was supposed to put in 70 hours at his new job. I found out later that this was never the expectation. It was all his own creation.
But at the time I believed him. I saw all these strong capable women. So, I turned to my Lord, my religion, and books, so I could be better. I could be a capable woman. After all this was a problem with me.
I read a book during this time called the Five Love Languages. Never in my life had I felt so emotionally filled and excited! Here was my answer. The reason that I wasn't feeling love in my marriage was because my husband did not know how to speak my LANGUAGE. And I was speaking his all wrong. This would do it! This would work. I just needed to communicate my needs with him and show him how I felt love so that he could connect to me in the way I had always dreamed of.
Massive EPIC fail!!!
Let me just say that this is NOT a book for couples with addiction and husbands with intimacy disorder.
I hope you can understand that the problem here was not me, and was not a love language, or his inability to speak it.
During this time of me trying to connect to him, he was connected to his addiction. He did not need to connect to me. He could not see me. He was in preoccupation and put all of his energy in perpetuating the lies, and ritualization. It kept his entire energy to sustain this secret. The connection of addiction that he was getting was always there for him. Addiction new no physical limitation. Pornography and masturbation asked nothing. It never needed to know if he was there. It did not have young children or needs. It was a constant and he knew exactly what to expect day in and day out from pornography and masturbation. It was always there and instantly available if he was feeling any negative emotion. It was rigid and inflexible. The only thing it craves is more and different. Cody was willing to do what he needed to get a more potent drug. With his drug he was able to numb out all pain, and keep everyone safely out at arms length.
I on the other hand would turn to him, and reach for him, and get shut out. He did not need a connection with me in all of my physical limitations. I got hurt when he was distant. I felt pain when we were intimate. I was not a reliable place for him to be connected to while he was in the height of acting out behavior. He was getting a very calming and pleasurable drug. How could I compare with that?
And with this intimacy disorder called sex addiction he missed out on all my efforts of connection and all my efforts to reach for him. He was completely checked out and unavailable to me, to the kids, and to life.
My parents and others were often concerned because he would fall asleep so easily and everywhere we would go within minutes he was unconscious. He could not keep his eyes open when he was not at work. There was nothing in life that could hold his interest. It broke my heart. He could not engage with me. If he had to engage in his life, his mind (so unable to cope with reality) would shut it all down. And I was a casualty.
I would try to talk to him, and to connect, and would plead for love, and togetherness, and he in the middle of my tears would fall asleep. Either that or he would go into rage. This was repeated over and over again. I felt so desperate and I started to feel worthless, and tell myself that my feelings were completely unimportant. If I had them it caused such severe pain, they were not serving me to have them. I decided to do exactly what I had done as a child. I stopped feeling and longing for connection. I stopped turning to him. I felt so alone. So isolated. So miserable.
I started to numb.
This was years 1-5 of our marriage.
Remember love sex/addiction? Now it is time to share what I was going through in MY addiction. In my effort tell my experience I will be sharing what I felt and the knowledge and rational I used to keep myself in denial. Keep that in mind as I know the lies and deceit now that kept my addiction going.
During these five years I had been talking to one of my previous boyfriends. This ex was the one I was not completely over at the time I got married. I foolishly told him when we had lived together that he would always hold a special place in my heart and that no matter where life found me, I would keep that place in my heart for him.
AND now I was married to a man who would not connect with me. I was completely anxious to keep my word to my ex.
My ex and I started calling each other. It was about once every one to three months. I looked forward to every second of our hours long conversations. I would not let my husband know who I had been talking to.
Our conversations were deep, and connected, validating, and fed my starving heart. Sometimes they were completely inappropriate and I would tell him if anything happened to Cody, I would want to pursue a relationship with him. Sometimes he would call me a pet name we had during intimacy.
I of course knew this was not going anywhere inappropriate. (remember my torturous physical pain during intimacy.) My denial served me so well.
I saw the whole thing as harmless. I was so clued out and disconnected from my life. I had no idea what an emotional affair was. I loved the attention. (remember love/sex addiction). It was this love of attention I craved. My motivatior of belonging and attention kept me going back to my own sex addiction. I never knew about pornopgaphy for women. I did not know that by feeding this emotional affair I was actually getting the SAME exact chemicals in my blood stream, as Cody was getting in his sex addiction. As a woman it manifests itself in different ways than a man, but without ever acting out, I was taking a hit off a potent drug. This can all be created in the mind and with emotional intimacy for a woman.
I would get off the phone with my ex and fill loved and valued. I went to this connection over and over again in my marriage. Do you see the pattern of addiction? I did not. I do now.
I felt so much better. I was not getting connection of any kind from Cody so I would turn to my ex to fill this need of validation. And my ex provided me everything I was seeking. His attention was a potent drug.
Finally right before year five of my marriage my ex invited me to do energy healing work with him. He offered to drive to my home in a different state and fix all my energy alignment.
Now I know that I had been completely clued out to my emotional affair, but this raised every red flag I had at my disposal. Over the phone our relationship was safe, and completely innocent.(Innocent from a denial point of view which I had during this time)
Inviting a man who I had a very deep emotional connection, and had previously connected to on a physical level and lived with, into my home to sit with me and be next to me and do intimate work with me...
Well, the two of us had already been down that road eight years ago. It was pure misery for three years of my life. I was not excited to revisit that pain. I was married now to another man. This offer of his was enough to shake me awake. I could finally see the reality of the situation.
I went to my therapist and told him the situation. I was able to get good clarity. I was able to see how I was being used for only one thing. That had been a pattern for my ex, and I was able to see clearly how I was again being used for one purpose.
I cut off all contact that day. I never so much as spoke to my ex again. I changed my phone number, and because of a job transfer we moved to another state within the month. I felt like it was a good opportunity to never connect with him again. It was over.
Oh, how addiction was not over
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