Dear CT,

I'm glad you got checked out OK.
But since you can't trust your WH (no, you cannot) you need to keep on practicing safe sex.

And about what to do now.
The way I see it, there is the easy way and the hard way.

You might want to take the easy road and just believe him when he says "Honey, I will never again.. blah blah".
That is "easy" - you will not have to make any choices.
Not have to put up any boundaries.
Not have to change yourself.
You can kick him out 2-3-4 more times, then take him back and start over again...
Not so much fun..
But the easy way.

The hard way ?
Taking a hard look at yourself and yes, go look for the reasons WHY you accept this behavior.
Don't go "Oh, I'm such a terrible person."
You're not.
You have certain conditionings that make you act the way you do.
You can change them.
But not alone - you need a good counselor.
And YES - you also need to feel safe.
Can't do that with him in the picture?
How about Plan B?
There is no (current) OW perhaps - but his addiction to his fun & games with OW is a very tricky sort of "OW", harder to define and defend yourself against.
So you'll have to plan B his selfish, addicted behavior.

You are sacrificing yourself so HE can have some FUN.
That's what it comes down to.

You doubt it's an addiction?
Then why does he do it?

Dear CT,
the "easy" way is actually the self-destructive, enabling way here.
The "hard" way is making your WH face up to the consequences.
Right now he knows that no matter how he screwç up, you'll take him back eventually and he's free to do it again - again - and again.

I snapped at the point where I found out that my WH had done it "again" and still came up with the same "I'm so sorry, I'll never do it again" line.
He had said that before..
No more.
I might have had "enabler/giver/conflict avoider" tattoed on my forehead for all our M - but that was it.
No more.

MEDC

Thanks again for your support. I went back and searched under my previous name (teddy bear) from when I was on the MB website during 2000. It was so depressing to read how encouraged I was after we had attended a retrouvaille retreat for our marriage. I was convinced my marriage was 100% restored. He cheated on me a little over a year later.


BH

Thanks for all the effort you put into your reply. You have many great points. Again, it makes me absolutely sick to go back and read my old posts. I never thought I would end up here again. My H is really pouring on the charm and trying everything in his power to get me to work on my marriage.

So...should I divorce him and get it over with....or should I take an official "time out" from the marriage and work on ME--and at the same time waiting to see what changes happen in him?

He keeps asking me what I want him to do to show me he wants to get better. Any suggestions?

Dear CT,
I just wanted to say how sorry I am that you are hurting. It will get better.
I am in a very similar situation to yours. I think reading your post may have been a turning point for me. Here's a brief summary:

Married May 97
First Child born Dec 99
I stopped working Feb 01
WH began living the 'single life' May 02
Suspected EA Dec 02, probably ONS earlier that year
Sept 03 moved to TX, I was 7mo pg, he was still drinking
Feb 04 DD born- I had a back-up plan in case he didn't show up for her birth.
May 04 ONS on a business trip
October 04 WH in rehab (1 week)
Dec 04 EA (confirmed)
Feb 05 EA/ONS (confirmed)
Feb 05 Rehab (1 month)
March 05 PA with OW met in rehab
April 20 05 Dday for most of the above
April 20 WH rehab again (1 week)
May 05 Moved back to CA (WH was fired)
July 05 WH threatened suicide/tried to 'run away' to Vegas after another attempted ONS/whatever (overheard on cell)
Sept 05 WH fired from job after another drinking/sexual harrassment incident
Dec 05 Moved again
June 06 WH attempted to initiate another ONS (I went to pick him up and saw them)
July 06 Moved again
Aug 06 WH met current OW. Ongoing PA.
Sept 11 06 WH left home. Now living with OW, 25, single. Denying it, but I have proof.

OK, so you're wondering, 'what is she doing with this loser?'. So am I. I kept believing him- he said he would change (just like your WH), he said he loved me (just like your WH), he begged me to stay, he was sorry, he 'tried' (meaning he hung around, doing what he always does, and expected me to suck it up). I was crushed when I found out about the PA last year- I cried, begged for him to give us a chance. I changed because he told me all the things I did wrong to 'cause' him to behave this way. He made me feel like a piece of trash that no-one else would ever want anyway. He crushed my spirit, and yet, I stayed. He told me he'd made a huge mistake- he would quit drinking (he did, for a couple of months), he said he wanted us to be together, and he was so sorry, with tears and everything)

I didn't think I deserved better. I do, and so do you.
I refused to listen to help from the wonderful people here at MB. I said, very recently, that I was too weak to Plan B him. I was/am still hanging on to the hope that the person I loved was still in there somewhere, and he might just suddenly see the light of day and 'come home'. I thought if I plan B'd him, I'd miss my chance when he showed up, sorry again. The thing is, I think I didn't want to plan B him, because it just doesn't seem like it's worth it any more. I think I have given up.

My advice to you? Run while you have the chance. Throw him out (separate for a period?), and give him a chance to *really* get help, *really* discover what is driving him to do these things. He has to want to change for himself, and not because you asked/forced him to. My WS now blames me for 'making' him go to rehab and ruining his life. (He was throwing up on the carpet, begging me for help/more alcohol, saying he wanted to die, etc. I did what I thought was right at the time), You have the chance to retain his respect for you by doing what I *didn't* do- stand up for what you believe in. I made the mistake of taking him back with little or no change on his part, and now I feel lower than the underside of a snail. And he knows it. It sucks.

Good luck with whatever you do. I'm sorry for such a negative post, but I guess I wish I had a do-over, and could be back at D-Day #1. I wish that I had made better choices then for our marriage, but instead, I went with the 'oh, but I love him so much' feelings, rather than the facts that were staring me in the face.

But most of all, I wish I had left *HIM*, rather than staying and hoping and suffering until he left *ME*. Thishas been infinitely more painful than leaving the first time would have been. I feel like such a fool.

Thanks for posting, and know that you will probably get much more constructive Marriage Building based advice, based on restoring your marriage, from other wiser souls than I.
Take care CT.

Of course it matters. If you know what you are dealing with it can be treated. And IMO it needs to be treated

Sexual addiction is a whole different kettle of fish from an affair. It is underdiagnosed, undertreated, and horribly underestimated when it comes to how devastating it is to spouses.

Rather than asking "Do I want to be married?" (because the answer is almost certainly yes, at least under some circumstances), I would instead ask yourself, "Do I want to be married to a grownup?"

I suspect the answer there is also yes. The really hard and sad thing is that this man has not been a grownup for a long time, if he ever was. Addiction of any kind stops emotional development in its tracks -- which means that your husband stopped at least a decade ago, and probably much longer ago than that.

Addiction is only treatable when the addict does it for himself. It doesn't work when the addict is trying to do it for someone else, or for some external reward outside of himself. It works when the pain of addiction becomes so terrible that it's less than the pain of change.

Your mom noted that you react like someone who has been abused. She's wrong about that, I suspect. Instead, you react like someone who is in a betrayal-bond relationship. That's one where many of the emotional bonds are built on the destructive cycle of broken promises, broken trust, broken love... and the occasional opposite. It's like a captor-prisoner bond, but even more insidious.

So there are two of you to heal. You cannot do one single thing to make him want to change. He will have to decide that for yourself. What you -can- do is understand that there is NO CHANCE for your marriage, your relationship with him, or anything healthy with him at all while his addiction (and your response to it) are active.

It doesn't matter what you want or what you decide you will do. That fact remains. An active addiction makes it impossible to exist in anything other than chaos. So it's not picking whether you'll remain married or not. That choice will only become available once you are healthy and can evaluate his health. Right now, the choice is whether you will continue to live in chaos or not.

Not much fun, I know. But there you go.

Oh, and in addition to getting to your doctor for anti-depressants, don't forget to talk to him/her about your sleep and eating. If either of them are way out of whack, get some help with those too.

You might want to read about sexual addiction (www.sa.org), betrayal bonds (Betrayal Bonds by Patrick Carnes), coaddiction, childhood sexual abuse, and Harley's articles on addiction. I have not given you the reference to his article on sexual addiction because, in all honesty, his advice is way too weak in comparison to the horrible strength of a sexual addiction.

Instead, I'll give you the drab picture he gives of drug and alcohol addictions. Sexual addiction is just as bad.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5048a_qa.html

And here's a quote, from his rant about the co-dependency movement ruining marriage counseling, about the effects of alcoholism on marriage. Sexual addiction is just like that. Except worse.

" When an alcoholic is married to a loving and caring spouse, the spouse's love and care is sucked in like a black hole. It drains the caring spouse of everything they have, leaving him or her not only exhausted, but also having failed to meet their sick spouse's needs. In these cases, the non-alcoholic spouse must emotionally detach themselves or becomes emotionally destroyed."

And in fact, that's a great article to read, because it will help you decide whether you're in a healthy relationship, or an emotional black hole.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi8110_cod.html

Dear CT,

How can WH show you he wants to get better ?
Well.. by now, that's not enough anymore in my opinion.
He needs to BE better before you can really recover your M.
And that will take time and a lot of hard work.
I know there are groups for sexual addicts etc. like there are for alcoholics, that might be a start.

About the "is it really an addiction" ?
Let me ask you again..
If this is NOT an addiction,
then why does he keep doing it ?
I mean... so many OW in a few years of M ?

If it's not an addiction..
What sort of a person is he to make you go through this pain, just to have some fun?

OK, so your "investment" of 10 years M might have been a "waste" ?
No.
You have a DD that would not have been in this world but for this M.
So no matter if WH will be in the picture later on - DD will always be.
And by the way - we are all allowed to make mistakes / bad judgements and later change our minds.
It's called GROWING.

It might be a good thing to go to an Al-Anon meeting and mentally replace "alcohol" with "sex".
They have good info on enabling etc. for PARTNERS of addicts.

My dear - start thinking about YOU.
You have already invested too much in WH.
He needs to do his homework.
A lot of it.