My nephew's getting married on the other side of the US at the end of the summer. Because of other commitments, we will have to return on the red-eye immediately after the wedding.

My husband said, "Why don't you represent us?" He doesn't enjoy the logistical complexity and "forced fun" aspect of big family gatherings that much, and doesn't enjoy long air flights, especially when the time with family seems too short to justify the jet lag, expense, etc.

Because we are recovering from his infidelity, his suggesting I go alone pushed a lot of buttons for me--"Why don't you go by yourself [so I can run around on you]?" memories. So when I responded, I was very upset and angry. "I'm through with going to family get-togethers alone and making cheerful, loyal excuses. You better not make me go by myself!"

He backtracked: "I didn't say I wouldn't go, I just said I don't want to."

So . . . how do we get from here to "enthusiastic agreement"? I am feeling very much like "WE ARE GOING!!!"

Welcome to Marriage Builders, Amoret...

I hope you're reading all of Dr. Harley's articles (including the ones on infidelity), as it seems to me you are.

Best wishes for your continuing recovery.

POJA isn't just a response...it's a goal, IMO. What I see you and your FWH experiencing was a signal that there is an important issue...so give it the respect it warrants.

Set a time, place and commit to being Good Friends of Conversation. Identify your marital goal...to brainstorm until you come up with a solution you both can be enthusiastic about.

Both of you bring your Taker to the table...to keep you radically honest about what you're not enthusiastic about.

In this case, the issue is your FWH isn't enthusiastic about going to this family event.

Your trigger to assuming he meant he wasn't going was another issue. Not to be POJA'd. Catch your assumption--it harms you, your personal and marital recovery. Your trigger isn't bad or wrong...I believe what you meant was, "When I imagine going without you, I trigger right back to your A and thought you wanted to be alone to cheat again. Then I felt years of resentment for the times I chose to fulfill a family obligation without you. I won't do anything now which I will resent."

When you own and share when you trigger with your partner, then the trigger loses its power over you. And is an act of intimacy, gives your FWH the opportunity to acknowledge, validate your feelings from the trigger; how we help each other to heal.

I digressed...I think POJA is about priorities...I don't know how long you've been in recovery for...what stage you may be at or what work you've both done...is your top priority your marriage (which is you, FWH and The Marriage)?

I see you are looking at not only the wedding commitment, but also other commitments you have around that same time...seems to me, they are influencing each other in your perspective. When you set your top priority as the marriage, how would you rank the other commitments underneath it?

Are these other commitments on par with your commitment to your nephew? Are they commitments with your own immediate family (FWH, you and your children)?

I share this because what I thought was my high-priority to family commitment...really wasn't. It was a high-priority to my self-image...to what his or my family would think of ME. When Harley speaks of Family Commitment as an EN, I believe he means your immediate family first, then the outer circle of family...the extended kind.

I'd suggest beginning at sorting out how you're prioritizing and why...and then think up at least ten different ways (creatively) you can fulfill your commitment...and you've got one...showing up in person.

POJA is the resentment-buster in healthy marriages. Remember to not do that which you will resent; and choose to see your FWH saying he doesn't want to do that which he will resent, either. For the good of your relationship.

In recovery, it's really tough to remember you aren't opponents...you really are allies. I believe recovery is the process we do to get back to this reality again.

Be radically honest with yourself as to why you want to go and ask how it will benefit your marriage...and share your perspective. Part of the benefit of POJAing is to reach an understanding of each other's perspective. It's an act of intimacy...which knowing and being known.

Back to triggers...when I shared when I triggered, and my FWH stayed present, acknowledged, often apologized, understood...it helped me to catch my automatic DJs...and eliminate them, over time. You're gonna trigger without DJs, too...just cuts down the number of times you trigger.

When I triggered, I was flooded with anger, resentment and a great deal of fear. I would make myself reach out and hold my FWH's hand, sit sometimes silently, until those drugs in my body wore off. See, he wasn't cheating when I triggered...sure felt like it. From my assumption, I got all the emotions all over again. When I shared it, I experienced him in the present--helped me to not be reacting to the past.

Please keep posting...POJA isn't described as one meeting (though it can be)...you can come back to it again and again with more alternatives and ideas.

And remember that recovery isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.

LA

Amoret, one rule of POJA is that if there is not enthusiastic agreeement, then you don't go. Your husband hates these kind of events as you said yourself. He does not want to go under the current conditions.

POJA article here

Now, you can do something I used to do, and that was FORCE my H to do things I wanted to do even though he didn't want to do them. BIG MISTAKE!! It is thoughtless and an invitation to resentment.

It is also an extreme form of giving for him to agree to go when he doesnt want to go, on, that will eventually lead to EXTREME TAKING. [this leads to entitlement thinking] Here is what Dr Harley said to a woman about "sacrifice" that I thought was interesting:


I see inherent problems with going alone and inherent problems going with him. Going alone leaves you both alone for the night, which is a big no-no, especially after an affair. And with him going, he is going to resent being pushed and having his feelings ignored.

What I would suggest is trying to negotiate the trip in a way that makes you BOTH HAPPY. Maybe cancel other committments so you can stay longer. For example, since he doesn't like crowds, maybe he would agree to just attend a small portion of events, ie: a small gathering the night before. Then, the next day you could go do something else you both like, such as sightseeing, etc.

Do you get the point? Let him HELP YOU brainstorm to come up with - NOT a compromise - but a way that makes you BOTH happy without sacrifice. And there may not be a way! But, keep in mind that POJA does not mean you always get your way. If there is no enthusiastic agreement, then it is dropped.

My H became very willing to POJA when he found out that it was based on the premise that sacrifice is bad and it precluded me from my #1 lovebuster: INDEPENDENT BEHAVIOR.

We learned to POJA by negotiating items in the grocery store and it was VERY HARD at first [Dr Harley had to help us through this because it was SO BAD at first!!] but once we got that down, it became much easier.

Good luck, Amoret!

Thank you both very much, ML and LA, for your responses and suggestions about prioritizing, negotiating, etc.

Point of clarification: The wedding is Sunday afternoon, three time zones from our home. The "other commitment" is that I'm a teacher and classes start at my school the following day, Monday. Sort of non-negotiable, unfortunately. But we could see about going out earlier, so the trip is not just a forty-eight-hour jet-lag nightmare. Thanks for the nudge to think more flexibly.

LA, I also very much appreciated the VERY HELPFUL points you shared about triggers. I'm looking forward to trying them. (Better than my "YOU'RE the one who gave me these bad memories and feelings.") It reminded me of what one book said, that what I'm really insisting on is that he change the past . . . which is impossible and thus irrational to require.

And thank you for the link to the post which made the point that "fighting for your marriage" = "fighting the fear."

We've been married since 1982. We're coming up on one year post-disclosure. My husband's involvements, all between Fall 2003 and June 2007, were with 25+ other women, only one of whom he was emotionally involved with at the time of disclosure. (Not impossible, thanks to AdultFriendFinder, sex clubs, and wife-swapping "lifestyle" house parties.) He told his partners and "lifestyle" acquaintances his wife was doing it, too, but he admitted to me that he knew he was lying to them. "After I'd thought of it, it was something to say." (I have never gotten involved, emotionally or physically, with anyone else.) Our three kids are 22, 19, and 17. (Sorry, I don't get all those capital-letter abbreviations yet--is there a guide to them somewhere on the site?)

Obviously we did a lot of things independently for him to be able to pull all that off, and we have come a lot closer as we've worked to rebuild our marriage. (I'm leaving out the shock and agony here, but you can fill in the blanks.)

I am eager to learn more about making decisions with each other in mind. I don't know how to understand "enthusiastic agreement." I'm afraid we wouldn't do anything if we had to both be excited about it! Even little things. "I wouldn't go for walks with you if it took enthusiastic agreement," he says. "I like the idea of staying in shape and being closer to you, but I don't like sweating and it really takes a lot of time. I do it because you want to, not because I want to."

About buying one of the MB home courses, "Well, if you think this would help, I guess you could buy the first set." Not wildly enthusiastic. Are we supposed to negotiate, or am I supposed to buy the course?

He has the kind of personality where, if it's someone else's idea, when he first hears it, his initial reaction is negative. I've learned to email him ideas, so he can "get used to them" before we discuss them.

So--I'm thankful for your specific ideas, ML, on ways to make the trip something we'd both be enthusiastic about. I liked your grocery store example, too. Any further advice or examples eagerly sought--

Amoret

Amoret,

Thank you for your response.

Would you consider non-negotiable commitments in a new light? (I had to do this...it's tougher than just considering...I don't know how else to offer):

When you think of something as must-do...think...

Would I go to work on the first day of school if were in the hospital?

If my DH or children were?

If someone close to me died?

If I were throwing up every four minutes?

To know and set your priorities, not feel like a slave to your commitments (like always having to "represent" at family events alone)...consider all possibilities to SEE your thought process, your beliefs.

Not a right/wrong...a widening...which I think is necessary for POJAing.

That is tough to appear at a wedding on Sunday and go to work on Monday. Have you thought of more possibilities? How do you feel about participating by Skype (with video)? Getting a substitute lined up for your first day of school? Using the money to fly back there to fly out the bride and groom to see you for their first anniversary trip?

Gauge your own reactions...once you get the ball rolling, you'd be surprised at what both of you can come up with that you don't KNOW what your partner will think/feel about...which is an exercise in intimacy, too!

You already thought of extending the travelling time...would a connective flight (with a day's layover) provide your marriage a 12-hour-chance at an intimate getaway...to someplace you haven't been before...and can experience new...relaxing, no rush...just seeing what's there, together? Rejuvenate...re-bond...renew?

I wouldn't be enthusiastic about seeing a famous golf course, for example. However, my DH's delight and me choosing to see it like I would a landmark, a place of beauty or design, well, I very much could feel enthusiastic...and having five hours of UA together time in beauty would be where my excited agreement would come from.

Hey, I couldn't FIND my enthusiasm when I first read the POJA. I'm not kidding...I didn't remember what that felt like. Worth searching for!

And thank you for describing so well what it's like if you don't own your own triggers...keeps you stuck and frustrated...and somewhat enemies, eh?

I'm delighted you read the link...JustLearning is amazing to me.

Amid all your plans...what are you planning for your DDay Anniversary coming up?

There's an acronym list somewhere...DD - Dear Daughter; DS - Dear Son; DDay (day you discovered infidelity); DH - I use it for DearHusband; and some posters have created their own acronyms for their WS (wayward spouse) who didn't give it up (like POWS...Piece of Wayward blank)...I think.

LOL

BW - betrayed wife...I think you will see they are easier once you get a few.

Did your FWH decide he was sexually addicted? Did he get counseling and an accountability partner (in addition to you, of course)? An online one? Are you attending Alanon meetings, maybe, or another support group?

Along with your FWH acting transparently, are you still verifying sporadically (like with a keylogger?) his fidelity?

POJA is a great way to heal from too many IBs...so kudos on recognizing your marital weaknesses.

My post runneth over...gotta share one last thing...like the problem with enthusiasm and your FWH saying about the walk. That happened just last night with my DH! He got up from his nap after work and said, "Ready to go for a walk?" and I wasn't close to enthusiastic. I had been posting like a maniac on MB for hours, hadn't eaten, it was rainy when I'd arrived home (sprinkling)...can you hear my lack?

And I made an unenthusiastic face...because I did want UA time with DH...and I do like walking side by side...and he said, "How about we walk to Subway and get a sandwich?"

"What an awesome idea! I was thinking when you asked of walking to the gas station and buy crud food because I'm starving...and that wasn't appealing at all."

I became enthusiastic...and it was an awesome walk...fears from my assumptions (tiny ones) weren't realized...not worth dampening my own excitement...

And a clue to POJA...humans really don't do what they don't want to do...like your H described...he goes for his higher payoff...to be with you, to stay in shape...so he wants that more than not sweating. As for too long...heck, if you guys swallow the reality first and blindly agree to 20 hours of UA (undivided attention) per week to help recover your marriage (and use a chunk of it for PLAYING together) then the walking time becomes intimacy time...and you could throw in something fun (like water balloons or a sandwich) to add to it. At some point, our enthusiasm kicks in...

LA

Alas, I just spent an hour writing a response, LA, answering your very thoughtful questions. Then I pushed some wrong keys, and it's gone! Most frustrating, as I had bared my soul and expressed myself lucidly.

BUT I want to thank you so much for your kindness, encouragement, and good ideas. I will keep you posted.

Amoret

Amoret,

I hate that when that happens! With the new board upgrade, I haven't experienced a lost post...but previous to March's big change, everyone had to copy their post before hitting submit.

Was really frustrating.

You're welcome, btw. What I share with you helps me.

Thank you for being here.

LA

Good morning, LA--

You ask,
No, this is a distinct area of incompatibility for us. I am not sure what sexual addiction is (a .edu article I found on a Google search says, "What is significant is a pattern of self-destructive or high risk sexual behavior that is unfulfilling and that a person is unable to stop"), but I gave my husband an ultimatum before he arrived at the point of finding it unfulfilling, and he has stopped. (Maybe he's still viewing pornography, but he's stopped going to wife-swapping house parties and sex clubs, and he's stopped meeting "AdultFriends.") So I don't know if he is/was sexually addicted.

He thinks that it is perfectly natural and healthy to have sex with lots of different people, casually, by mutual agreement. He thinks that he is “polysexual” (a word he coined) and has an innate tendency to be attracted to lots of people. He thinks I and people like me are “monosexual,” meaning that we are attracted just to the person we’re in a relationship with. Exclusive relationships are somehow natural and easy for “us,” unlike for him and “his kind of people.”

My response: Everyone who’s sexual is polysexual. People who indulge their attractions (by viewing pornography, by intentionally dwelling on and immersing themselves in their fantasies, by acting them out with lots of partners) find it harder to maintain an exclusive relationship than people who consciously discipline themselves.

The first 2 to 2 ½ years of his “straying,” he found individual partners one at a time on the internet. One of those women convinced him to go to sex clubs with her, where at some point he met a woman who introduced him to a whole social club of “swingers.”

During his fifteen months “in the [swingers] lifestyle,” he met couples who were, so far as he could tell, enthusiastically agreeing in participating together in that “lifestyle.” That’s what he wants for himself and for our marriage. He has accepted that, for now, that is not going to happen in our marriage, but keeps hoping.

One focus of incompatibility is the clash between religious teachings about sexuality and his take on it. I don’t know if you are religious or not, LA, but I’m going to talk about it as an aspect of our marital journey.

I have been religious throughout my life, and he was raised in the same Christian denomination. He was not as serious about it as I was when we first got engaged, but he promised me he’d go to church with me every week (“Every week??!” “Well, yeah, that is the schedule . . . ”) and has followed through on that, except for when one or both of us has been out of town.

We have, by mutual enthusiastic agreement (or at least just as much his automatic expectation as mine), raised our kids in the denomination we were raised in, including sending them, through HS, to church-affiliated schools. He has been active in our local congregation and held important church offices. (The last time he preached was the weekend after he told me about his infidelity.)

There have been periods of his life when religion was more than a passive habit to him. He had a “born again” experience when he was in high school and then again in the early 1990s. He tells me he gave up viewing pornography then and tried to repress his attractions to other women for two years.

A lot of his identity and self-worth for the decade after his born-again experience came from his volunteer work and friendships with people in a quasi-professional religiously-based group. But in summer 2003 something happened where he felt abandoned and betrayed by his friends in that group.

That disappointment occurred (co-incidentally?) just a couple months before he started using AdultFriendFinder to meet women to have casual sex with. (He had gone back to viewing pornography in 1996 or 97, though.)

Not all these women were actually having “casual” sex with him. One told him that it had to be just his wife (me) and her. When he found an additional person to have sex with, she said she wouldn’t see him any more. (Why would she do that if she didn’t want to feel “special”?)

Another woman, the woman who took him to a sex club for the first time, fell in love with him and told him so. He said, “That’s not what this is about,” and refused to see him again.

He became very important to his “favorite partner” for sex clubbing (the person who introduced him into the wife-swapping social club). He found it very hard to give up contact with her, and she begged me to let their “friendship” continue. I agreed to meet her at one point when her turmoil was the greatest. She left the restaurant in tears when I explained that my continuing to be married was incompatible with my husbands’ having ANY contact with her.

I don’t think the typical woman CAN have “casual” sex, even if that’s her intention. But notwithstanding these three cases that I know about, my husband still thinks it’s possible. He still wants that for himself, and he wants me to try it with him.

He thinks that, if I would just give up my religion, I would find that I can enjoy casual sex on outings with him to clubs. (Well, I know a lot of people who aren’t religious at all who would have a problem with it.)

He thinks of me as someone who could lead a double life, as he did for several years, attending church and teaching children in church school, leading the “beginner” division of our denomination’s week-long family Bible camp, sending our kids to church camp, attending/leading women’s prayer group, or whatever. Or maybe he thinks that religion is just a detachable feature of my public identity.

But I don’t really experience my religion as a set of dos and don’ts, the way he seems to have experienced his. To me, my gut resistance to even imagining myself participating in a lifestyle of casual sex is not a matter of thinking “I would go to hell” or “Jesus wouldn’t like it.”

Here’s how it feels to me: I have ideals, and I want my life to reflect them. I want my life to be a deep, organic unity. I want to be what I seem. I want everything I do to be as transparent as the daylight.

Specifically in this case, I want to invest all my sexual energy in my primary relationship, with my husband. I don’t want to pull myself out of my spiritual, emotional, familial, etc. context. I don’t think I would survive it. I told him, “I’m a tree, not a popsicle.” (I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but he got it.)

So how do we negotiate, “I go to church with you; why won’t you go to a club with me? Why won’t you brainstorm ways that you could enthusiastically agree to participate in my favorite recreational activity?”

Yes, we are still stuck on my nephew’s wedding, but even though that one makes me weepy whenever I think of it, this one is much more deeply disturbing.

Hey, SAME forum...geesh, I'm feeble-brained today.

That's okay. You get what you pay for.


What does incompatible mean to you? We don't compromise on our beliefs...we do compromise in our choice of actions. Glad you're exploring what the term sexual addiction means in general.

You can see how you could insert any addiction in there...none are worse than the others...when doing those behaviors, making those choices come before what you really love and cherish, destroying yourself and those around you...seems like you can't stop. Until you do.

And he did. He stopped acting out...doesn't mean he stopped fantasizing, realized what was underneath the obsession, didn't revoke his permission to fantasy about strangers or anyone who isn't his wife...so he may only have stopped in part.

That's a step...doesn't bring together all his pieces nor protect your marriage from further infidelity, though. Alcoholics can stop drinking and act like dry drunks...they have a liquid to focus on...just as a coke addict has a powder to distract them...big step to stop taking them into their bodies...would you say your FWH has stopped taking in the images/words into his?

www.recoverynation.com has some great literature for PARTNERS of SAs...and a helpful program, too. Striving to understand, not to diagnose...so you can see parts and pieces...and the big picture.


Fear of intimacy would definitely make his beliefs seem natural and healthy. Our fears can do that. When we remain "casual" with people, we aren't really known or knowing...pressure is off...and we have objectified relationships...and the drugs we are addicted to reside in our head, our bodies...because they are cool drugs that get released when we dwell in our attraction. Until we see it's not real, hear the lies we tell ourselves...because how we treat others (casually) we will treat ourselves in the same way. We won't know we're significant, are here to know and be known; and if married, NOT in the biblical sense!

Our bodies contain our parts...we are physical, emotional, mental and spiritual beings...so we cannot do physical casually...for every gesture, expression and touch symbolizes who we really are...reveals and connects. To say we don't is to live in fantasy. To falsely make other folks into just bodies is big self-abandonment...what you do to others you will do to yourself.

Which stimulates the need to distract from the pain you cause yourself and furthers your urge to do your addiction again; go through the cycle you feel trapped by.

Remove any element and the cycle breaks.

Goes for DJs, AO's...the LBs...and helps us to eliminate them.

I think we yearn to know our real power and in distracting through addiction, we come to only know our power to distract.

What do you think?

The non-substance addictions are questioned because you can't see them...you sure can feel them. Don't forget about the drugs our bodies release in us...makes sense we can become addicted to them.

What we don't know early on is the three stages of marriage...the attraction (infatuation) stage, the knowing true selves stage (lots of conflict there), and the mature love stage...which is where the really great drugs are.

We can get hooked on the infatuation stage drugs...especially during the middle stage, when we aren't getting in the quantity we desire those original drug releases.

Fear of intimacy and fear of abandonment is what I believe all humans have...and react to them without knowing that's what they are or how to deal with those fears.

Dr. Harley includes SF as an EN...which I think is brilliant...because in marriage, it takes sex out of the sole realm of physicality...SF REPRESENTS a lot of stuff...to me, acceptance is number one...and what your FWH says about casual has this element in it...can also represent admiration, appreciation, attention.

Funny thing is...the fantasy is in extracting sex as just a physical pursuit...reality is that it represents just as all the rest of our choices do.

Interesting that your FWH believes some people are born, created, with stuff they can't change. Why would God create us unequal? At our core, we all are...what our challenges and issues are...part of our own journies...greatly differ. I don't believe God would make us to be slaves to anything within us...for he gave us free will and that would be a dirty trick to me.

No marriage is an easy relationship. That sounds like FWH has a very old belief in him...others make it look easy (to the outside)...I think in your adult experiences you learned no relationship comes naturally, easily...all require work, care, diligence and effort.

Why wouldn't they? As we swing between fear of intimacy and fear of abandonment, so, too, would our relationships, wouldn't they?


Well said...I agree. Relationships do dwell in reality...how much fantasy habits we bring to them affects, our halves, matter.

Parent/child relationships mostly come naturally...we all learn partnering relationships...and I didn't for over forty years.

Would you consider one of the hidden elements in his theory is that he would not be responsible for others' choices, feelings...their stuff. Even though you showed evidence their stuff was still there...in his belief, it isn't. So maybe acting from respect in the listen and repeat, really separating his stuff from yours, and from actions, will also give real relief within your intimate, monogamous marriage?

Up to you to be clear on how ENs are representative. This doesn't prohibit intimacy...it encourages it.

Sounds to me like you hear and understand how extensive his fantasy addiction is--goes to believing he can have the marriage (which stays fear of abandonment) AND the possibility of an open relationship someday (stays the fear of intimacy). Stay centered in knowing and not believing the same things.

Which means, when you slip, get reactive, re-center yourself in what you know and believe.

The reactivity signals you slipping into his fantasy, not the reality.

I'm kind of stunned at the depth of his double life, his self-image representations being such a dichotomy...seems to me it's like a double-abandonment of self...would seem to be hard to live in every moment.

I see your highest goal for transparency, radical honesty and reality. I support your goal, too. I also see where his quest is actually the same, and under the layers of constant self-deception with his self-image (not self), seems the opposite of yours on the surface.

Sexually abused men and women act out through sex...a shortcut, a temporary fix for their deepest ENs...as I said, acceptance, approval, attention, admiration...and just like a substance, leaves them feeling worse, takes more to distract, stuck in a slow-moving downward spiral.

Has FWH shared with you how he was sexually abused yet?

Again, does not excuse behaviors, it explains them. When we can see the ENs we act out (or act in) to be falsely met, then we develop a plan to stop coping and begin living skillfully, in abundance, not lack.

Esteem and respect built on crafting the best self-image shatters. Because self-image betrays true self. When we build self-esteem and self-respect from our true selves, acting to and from our own code (our own approval, acceptance, for our own admiration), our life experience changes radically. We get to know our real power, wholeness, limits and belonging. Resolves our double-triple lives as we see our ways of self-deceiving.

In accounting (I think you can relate), remember the forced balancing we are warned to not do? We listen to number talk and divine where our errors are in a lot of different ways. Forced balancing doesn't work in our goal to get to the real sum anymore than it does to get us to see the truth of our choices separate from our truth. And yet, forced balancing can be a way to begin to get to crucial awareness.

In this case, forcing himself to identify his real beliefs at work...the old, old ones..."If people know you they will kill you" ones...the ones where "If they like me they won't kill me"..."If they think I'm good (safe) then I don't have to be" and "You can't tell me what do." Within each is a speck of truth, shrouded in misunderstandings because when we chose to believe these, we weren't old enough to KNOW we had the power to choose what we believe.

Those are examples, btw.

Hey, it sounds like you guys talk to each other a lot...that's not jiving in me with his Asperger-esque portrait. Am I mixing up posters, again?

Spiritual leadership is an intimate act...and he made it non-intimate; just as he made SF into casual...just thinking here.

Forced balancing in this case would be to accept (not convince ourselves) of new beliefs: We are equal, whole, complete human beings (not doings); knowing and sharing our stuff is an act of intimacy; understanding there are false intimacies and real ones...and they are different; one is temporary fix found in our patterns; the other is a true connection of knowing and being known which unleashes a potent, stunning experience (long-term intimacy).

All of this I have found in God's design of humans. He created us with the ability to connect on several levels, many ways...gotta say that connection is incredibly important to God. And that unyielding two-way street...connecting in real intimacy with others means we can also connect in the same way with God and ourselves. No wonder we focus on one and it affects the other.

I admire you greatly for enforcing your boundary about no contact (NC). Way to go. You stood for your marriage with broad shoulders in my opinion.

When you said he thinks of you as able to thrive in a double-life, too--oh, wait...you said he thinks you could survive, not thrive, right?--I hear him wanting to connect in the narrow way he knows how right now...for you to experience what he does...like a shorthand we take and show someone else so they can "get us"; feel their feelings, believe their beliefs, think their thoughts...which means his own stuff isn't valid to him, IME.

Says nothing about you.

I love your being a tree not a popsicle, btw. And how you aren't trading off in POJA religion for clubbing...they are mutually incompatible...like raping your spirituality--would take a lot of fantasy to enable you to do so...because in reality, we cannot trade off our true selves (only self-image).

I take it you've had these conversations for a long time; and still he goes to church with you? I like how you respect his choice as his...not building up some debt you have to pay eventually.

Getting back to your nephew's wedding...where does the weepiness come from? What's behind your urge to go? When you really know your stuff (like about not POJAing swinging), you'll see this wedding issue more clearly...see if it hits your self-image or true self...and work from there. Your enthusiasm for brainstorming (which is also an act of intimacy) will rise, be more tangible...you'll re-acquaint yourself with this signal, I promise.

Have you been trading ideas on the wedding? Have you been knocking them down or discounting any of them? I do hold that showing up is 90% of life...our presence does matter. How much and for what is the important decision, on a moment to moment basis...you wouldn't go to a swingers club (show up) because it isn't right, maybe; you wouldn't because it would greatly damage your marriage because it puts fantasy ahead of reality...what is it about the wedding which might contain this same downside to showing up, or preclude you from being present in other ways?

LA

Hello, LA. I’ve re-read both whole threads today and have found a lot of stuff (about POJAing, about DJs) making a lot more sense to me. Thanks!

You say,


Yes, exactly. He hasn’t realized anything’s underneath it. He thinks wanting to have sex with a variety of people is a different way to be normal and healthy, the way many people think of being gay—another way to be normal and healthy.

The books I’ve read and the therapist we went to said that recognizing WHY the affair took place is key to preventing another one. But my husband’s take on WHY is just “I’m polysexual.”

Early on in our recovery, he wanted me to work on changing my thinking and my emotional reactions. “I love you. I wasn’t trying to replace you. But I’m different from you, and my needs are different. If you accepted that, it wouldn’t hurt you.” Or if he were feeling a little more impatient with how long it was taking, “You don’t have to feel bad. You’re putting yourself through it.”

(So you are entirely right about his feeling detached from other people’s feelings and “stuff”—not just those partners for casual sex, but mine, too.)

And when we looked at ENs last week (the week I discovered MB! Yea!!), he said, “You can’t meet my emotional needs for sexual fulfillment and admiration, because you are just one person. As a polysexual, I need sex and admiration from lots of different women in order to meet those ENs.”

So . . . so far, he won’t work with a counselor to discover what is underneath.

Fear of intimacy (as you suggest) may be part of it—but part of it may be how he’s wired (not polysexuality, but what the counselor called Asperger’s). He does not get satisfaction out of being close to people, is not fascinated by the understanding how they are the way they are. (Of course, this is much more a female trait than a male one—but some people consider autism-spectrum conditions to be cases of “extreme male brain.”)

He does not enjoy people as people—as other members of the human family, as it were. He is quickly bored by people who don’t have the same interests and enthusiasms he does. He is uncomfortable around people who are curious about things he isn’t curious about—would rather sit quietly at home with a book or a mandolin.

Even with family members, it’s “out of sight, out of mind.” He told me once, with our daughter away at college, that he felt very detached from her. He didn’t think about her or long to see her, though he enjoys her when she is at home.

She is going to Korea for a break year between college and grad school, and he told me in no uncertain terms that he is NOT going with me to visit her. “I have no desire to go to Korea. I can see her when she comes home.”

But he experiences himself as loving her very much, adoring her, considering her the perfect daughter. And he does not get it that most of us experience other people differently than he does.

Our youngest has some of the same personality traits. Until he was eight or nine, he acted as if he were the only sentient human on the planet, treating the rest of us like appliances. One of my favorite anecdotes, from when he was eleven months old, illustrates this:

Youngest son, age 11 mos., wanted to be read to. I sat on the sofa, watched him pick out a book and drag it across the room. He set it on the sofa next to me, then swarmed up onto the sofa himself. All without casting a glance in my direction, vocalizing to me, or anything. Then he arranged himself on my lap, picked up the book, and opened it. He took my hands, one at a time, and put one cover of the book into each. Then he physically relaxed back into my lap and exhaled. It was as if, “OK, I’ve set up my reading machine and pressed ‘play.’ Here she goes!”

My other children interacted with me (and probably yours did with you, too) . As babies and toddlers, they looked at me when they wanted to give me something, and handed it to me. They didn't treat me like a tool or a piece of furniture. But with youngest son, it was a matter of surfaces, not of relating to fellow humans. “I’ve watched what people do [when they get their mom to read to them, or (at the age of 12) get a girlfriend, etc.] and I’m performing the same visible behavior. What do you mean, there’s more to it?”

Anyway. Just wanted to give some evidence for the possibility that his not “getting it” about sex and intimacy was not necessarily all the result of fear or abuse or psychological trauma.

My FWH argued with me for days after he told me about his PAs. “I’m a good husband. Don’t you think I’m a good husband? I support our family. I do X, Y, and Z for you. You always acted like you were happy.” He had been careful to make sure that everything visible fulfilled his idea of what “good husbands” did. (And then he’d worked out his whole theory about why his Pas didn’t mean anything and should hurt me.)

"Isn't the surface the whole thing?"--not that he said that explicitly. It was as if he didn't realize there was anything below the surface for most people.

The absence of closeness in our marriage had always disappointed me, but he didn’t know what I was talking about. (“I thought I’d make someone so happy !” I sobbed, about five years in. “I am happy,” he answered, bewildered.)

“[Amoret] says that she wishes I loved her more, but I don’t know what she means,” he said to the MC. “I don’t see how I can love her any more. I certainly love her much more than I can imagine loving anyone else. I love her more than I can imagine anyone else loving her.”

[A brief pause while Amoret finds someone else to love her, just to demonstrate the fallacies in FWH's thinking. Just kidding.]

He does not remember ever having been sexually abused. He said most of the polysexual women he asked about sexual abuse said that they had been abused, but that his favorite partner was not one of them. He remembers being babysat (with his siblings) by someone whom there were later rumors about, but says he has racked his brain and says (I think honestly) that he does not remember anything like that.

But he does have childhood pain that he says the casual sex helped him with. He has always felt hurt and self-doubt from wanting to have a girlfriend all the way through school and never having one. He remembers people making fun of his shoes, his acne, etc., etc., and longing to hear that someone thought he was handsome. (I think that his not finding human connection coming naturally made adolescence even more isolating an experience than it was for the rest of us.)

He says he found going to clubs in particular extremely healing. “Having lots of women look at me, admire me, be interested in me, all at the same time, was exactly what I needed. It assuaged the pain so perfectly. It directly touched the part of me that has always hurt.”

I said, “How about finding another way to address that hurt?” He is not at all interested in exploring that. He would rather have his theory about polysexuality (which does not perfectly fit with his very acute analysis of sexual attention from strangers assuaging his old insecurity and pain) than explore other explanations and alternate ways of getting rid of the problem.

So far. Maybe not always. Glad I am not obligated by Dr. H. to POJA clubbing! I will update you on the POJA on my nephew's wedding on the other thread (about enthusiasm), maybe tomorrow. This takes a lot of time, huh?

Thanks for listening. I look forward to any further insights or challenges you have for me. And check out my sigline signature!

Amoret

Amor!

Hey, nice sigline...clean, lean and informative. Thank you. Do you like it?

I want to thank you for coming to MB and posting here. I shared your posts and story with my DH for his opinions. I got attention, consideration and intimacy because I did share...and because you shared, too!

A lot of your last post resonated with who my DH used to me, IMO. Hence, the checking in with what he thought.

He had some insights...he said your WH's choice to believe that swinging doesn't hurt anyone is reasonable...because he can make up and believe anything to make it okay.

The key is that he uses it to distract from his pain. Remember that--because though distraction is a tool in healing, it's not healing. Just a part. Taken to an extreme, it becomes the repeated injury and adds to the pain.

Takes a lot of fantasy to stay ahead of it. Requires more and more...and you saw his escalation before.

Now, he stopped acting out...and he still has his pain.

A question (from me)...will you ask your WH if monsexual people do not have pain? Or if their pain is cured by one partner?

Not to convince him...for further understanding.

DH says he used surface perspective to manipulate (fantasy) his beliefs to be okay with adultery. That's after he got to see porn as adultery, as well.

As for sexual abuse...my DH didn't consider what happened to him to be sexual abuse. Until he finally told his therapist about it. See, it was filed under "non-issue"...normal. Again, the self-manipulation, supported by others, to make what wasn't right, okay.

Here's where I think you have experienced and understand this same base...where you knew something wasn't the same, something was important...and through self-manipulation (discounting, reconstructing, excusing...we have all sorts of tools we can use destructively), we make what isn't right, okay.

Hence, the double life is born...and it's born long before we act out...because we act in. I believe we are all equal, as I have said, same power and limits, same wholeness. I think you believe that, as well, because God wouldn't make one person polysexual and cut off their ability to have deep intimacy; he wants us to be intimate in our relationship with him.

So he doesn't make any of us unable to know and be known. Bottom line.

As children, we don't know that...heck we don't even know we are separate from our caregivers for five years...it's a process to reach that understanding...that it's okay we are different, separate from those we depend on for life itself. I didn't figure that out for 40+ years, actually, so I'm a real slow learner.

In John Bradshaw's books, he explains it really well...fear is a big part in understanding we are separate as children--feels like death...finding this out is frightful (and healthy); to allay our fears, we create a self-image in place of self...we build from the outside in, using the construction paper, the sticky glue and big scissors. It's not perfect...just has to be to us...to keep us safe by earning love through our actions, our reflections.

Essentially, we all live in a double life...we have a perfectly whole and complete self...stands separately and a part of everyone, designed and crafted from love. Self-image from fear. Self from the Creator's endless awareness, omniscience; ours from reactions from our parents, siblings, friends, strangers...the human mix through a child's perception.

Which one do you think does the most damage? Which one is the hardest to figure out if we're conning ourselves or not? Which one takes the blows from the fantasy that we can even re-create ourselves successfully when it is the most abandonment we can truly experience?

Great distraction, this self-image. Trying to shine it up, re-mold it throughout our teen years...trying this and that, basing on the response what to change to blend, fit in, be safe, belong.

All efforts to this surface self...and consistent betrayal to true self. Causes a ton of pain...which too, becomes a constant of our lives.

We are taught how to heal our physical cuts and bruises, soothe with medicines and cover with bandages while they heal...maybe even want to scratch them while they do. Is it not reasonable we would approach the rest of our healing, extrapolate it to do the same emotionally, mentally and spiritually?

We kiss the booboo...we express sympathy, acknowledgment, and the assurity that we will heal. We may use magical healing, like the kiss, the belief...and then see? All better.

Not reality...can't grasp all the physiological systems at work in our healing...we learn as adult that our bodies, our true selves, repair cell by cell, repairing back to the original schematic of wholeness, wellness.

Not magic, not bandaids (out of sight healing), not salves or other external cures.

Sure can seem like it.

Now...see where you posted first about your nephew's wedding...if I believed we summon courage, yes, even in an anonymous forum, to post and share what's most important to us...would that be the biggest issue for you? Or did you sort of come at it from the side...this decimation of all you believed about your marriage, this year of revelations and shock...and dug in, right away, to understand, learn and know what you did not before?

Will you, Amor, identify as many fears as you can name which were part of your choice to address POJA instead of infidelity?

Your equamity, to me, is stunning. A shock. Not because your WH is horrific by MB standards...I don't play that game. Your experience is yours...what your WH said about expecting others to experience people in the same way he does isn't Asperberger's to me...that's human. Normal.

Not real, though. As we do come to find out as adults...remains true for the child within all of us...a great example of a core belief. Comes from our parents, "How could you think that way?"

I believe your focus is understandably on comprehending your WH's stuff...and I am not ignoring yours. I don't want you to, either. You are as important as he is in your marriage.

I'm seeing terrific boundary enforcements, awareness, standing for your marriage and your half. I see near-obsession dedication to respecting by separating his stuff from yours...not making his choices because of you.

I'm impressed at times to the point of paralysis--my mind loops in, "How can she take this so well" statements and awe. Sincerely. I don't want you to react as I think you should (I don't do shoulds), I'm sharing my reactions because it's out of my expectations, experience and I think, you seem to represent my deepest wish of how I wanted to be, act and feel when I learned about SA and my DH's double life.

I hope you'll accept my questions about considering your own not as me trying to even anything up (I don't do the measuring) or make something not right, okay.

LA

Hello, LA--it’s very nice of you to ask.

I have an answer, but I hope you will let me know if I am missing something important.

You are right—FWH and I holding an entirely different set of beliefs about the meaning of sexuality and intimacy is a much bigger deal to me than our different levels of enthusiasm about being at my nephew’s wedding. I’m not aware of feeling any fear over sharing the main, real issue on MB, though.

You can tell that, since I have always wanted so much to be good (and to make things good for other people), my “double life,” or self-image, is pretty indistinguishable from self-righteousness and self-congratulation.

I mentioned that, I started a couple months ago to understand the dynamic of my marriage in a new way (that I had been seeing my husband as damaged, immature, selfish, or somehow “less,” so that I could see myself as the good, patient, insightful, loving person who alone could create the context for him to have a successful, stable family)—you remember all that, right?

Anyway, since I started seeing that in my outlook, I’ve been trying to discipline myself not to lapse into "wonderful me/horrible FWH" or “celebrity of pain” mode. I’m shy of my habitual (formerly unconscious) assumption that ANY analysis of my marriage would only show more clearly what a good, patient, insightful, loving wife I already am.

(Oh, and let’s not leave out that it would also show what a damaged, immature, selfish, or somehow ‘less’ of a person my husband is.)

[One early and very valuable challenge to my thinking: I was sitting in church about six weeks post-disclosure when I was struck with the idea that if I planned to stay rather than leave, that meant loving the husband I actually had, the man sitting there next to me—not the husband I had thought (pre-D) I had, or the husband I hoped he would one day be.

And “love the husband I had” didn’t mean some sort of lifetime sentence of probation. “The perfect [Amoret] will put up with having you around. And if you don’t mess up the whole rest of our lives together, maybe I will actually love you for the last five minutes of it.”]

But back to posting on MB: with my husband and me on such different pages about the meaning of what happened, I still really CRAVE affirmation for “how well I’m handling it” and emotional validation that it was a really, really bad thing that happened to me.

(Not getting as much from him as I’d like, though he is trying—he admitted Memorial Day weekend for the first time that he had promised me a sexually exclusive relationship when we married, that sex with all those people was wrong for him [because of that promise], and that he was wrong to tell all those lies to me and about me. First time I’d heard those things from him. It really helped.)

I had the expectation that posting my biggest issue at the top of a thread on MB would attract a lot of warm, affirming messages that would make me feel better about myself and less hopeful about my marriage.

But right now, I feel like need challenge, insight, and ideas more than I need to feed the self-image of good wifehood.

Does that make sense? Or am I totally missing the point? (Or in denial about something glaringly obvious?)

I felt I had basically everything to learn about POJA—and it sounded like this particular online community could teach it to me. That’s why I started with that.

You are doing a great job helping me “get it.” Challenges, insight, and ideas. AND affirmation and emotional validation. Thanks so much. Have a great weekend—

Amoret

Amor,

I believe you about no fear sharing on MB. Totally.

You have the fearlessness where I don't...and I think that's part of my awe.

So, you believe that if you perceive warm, affirming messages about yourself it would be detrimental to your marriage...the thriving marriage you really want, is that correct?

Your power with words for self-expression, nailing down your self-image so fast, and your seeming acceptance of it as rapidly...I hope you're getting here that you've gotten a lot that my fingers are gaping. They're stunned.

What I just read in your post for the second time was a woman who, without harsh self-deprecation, nailed her false payoffs like knocking down dominoes across a kitchen counter, to a woman who felt like she had to move stone henge and often, still does.

I don't know what to say. I think the way you respect yourself, with this gentle, humorous and shining, loving light is inspiring. I'm taking inspiration. You can't have any.

Did you share the realization you had that Sunday with WH? I would want to go to church to sit next to you to have one of those!

Hey, this is all about me, so don't think otherwise, 'k?

Btw, about your WH's statement, JustLearning says when we took our vows, we were vowing to ourselves, what we would and would not do. Thought I'd add that in there. JL rocks.

I'm not buying, btw, that you and your WH (I haven't put the F on because again, he's stopped the behaviors, not the rest...which leaves him vulnerable again...not a judgment--helps me to remember), hold entirely different set of beliefs yet...because for 20 years, he didn't do what he did...he distracted at one level for a purpose, for a reason...and the church work, well, the spiritual intimacy you both shared, which includes a huge betrayal, too, just doesn't point to radical honesty right now.

Has he disclosed the event that led to his breaking with the group? You've identified a big trigger for the A.

Is he open to reading Patrick Carnes, Out of the Shadows?

Or coming to MB and talking with AskMe on his own thread?

I don't you're missing anything, Amor. I think part of you coming to MB was for me. I'm really grateful.

What do you think about this concept: pre-A you guys were experiencing false intimacies?

Here's a list our MC gave us of twelve intimacies...

1. AESTHETIC Intimacy (sharing experiences of beauty)

2. COMMITMENT Intimacy (mutually derived from common self-investment)

3. COMMUNICATION Intimacy (talking and sharing, the source of all types of true intimacy)

4. CONFLICT Intimacy (facing and struggling with differences)

5. CREATIVE Intimacy (sharing acts of creating together)

6. CRISIS Intimacy (closeness in coping with problems and pain)

7. EMOTIONAL Intimacy (being tuned to each other's wavelength)

8. INTELLECTUAL Intimacy (closeness in the world of ideas)

9. SEXUAL Intimacy (erotic or orgasmic closeness)

10. SPIRITUAL Intimacy (the we-ness in sharing the meaning of life)

11. RECREATIONAL Intimacy (relating in the experiences of fun and play)

12. WORK Intimacy (the closeness of sharing common tasks)

Copyright 2005 Peter Davidson Innerwealth Seminars with permission This is an MS Word doc, btw.

And would you consider dismantling the self-image, slowly, with the same love I see you viewing it?

LA

Hello, LA--

WOW! I was really overwhelmed by the warmth and generosity of your last couple posts. I took the last 24 hours just to kind of let it soak in. Like water on thirsty ground.

You ask,
Yes, that's my fear. Last time I exchanged emails with my best friend from college (one of maybe five people I've explained everything to--you [and whoever else is reading this exchange on MB but not posting] make six)--she said, "You must be so tired of working so hard to save your marriage, when he is not trying at all." (I had updated her that the church/sex club equation had come up again last week.)

Her take (and three of the four other people's take, too) seems to be that I will eventually exhaust myself emotionally and dump FWH. So while it is great to hear from her and others who know the details of this struggle I'm having,

(I have felt really isolated, because I haven't told anyone in my or his family, and the kids just know that we're "working on our marriage." FWH says, "I won't be able to live here with you if you ruin my reputation."

(Well, that was when he said it in the most clear-cut (=harsh) terms.)

and while it is so precious to me to know that others are cherishing my hurt feelings and binding them up with their kindness and understanding, it is discouraging to hear from them that they think the damage is basically fatal already.

You said last week,

which rather took me aback at the time. "Well, that makes LA the only person on the planet who doesn't like me MUCH BETTER than him . . . It must be because she doesn't know either of us."

(How has poor FWH put up with Amoret this long? LA asks. Talk about DJs.)

But I was thinking about it again, and I got a little nudge today that, excuse me, God and a whole bunch of other people like both of us equally, too.

(I do keep slipping into this reflexive "What do you mean I'm a perfectionist; I'm already perfect" thinking.)

I really appreciate what you said earlier:

This explains why I felt instantly much, much better (this was months and months ago) when I quit ruminating and considering and just said, "I am a free woman, and in this country, I have a right to determine the conditions of my marriage. I am not interested in an 'open marriage.' I will not be in an 'open marriage.'"

When he first asked me to go to a sex club with him ("We don't have to 'play' with anyone else"), and even the second time, I felt like I owed it to him to imagine myself in that situation and explain to him why I couldn't go--how it made me think and feel.

The most recent times, I've declined to "slip into his fantasy."

It was sure nice not to get myself all worked up about it. Just to say, "No, I'm not going to a place where the whole point is to break your promises. I don't want sex to mean less to me than it does."

I have considered quitting listening to his rationalizations and arguments ("Hearing this hurts me, so I am leaving the room"), but I haven't yet. At the moment, I am the only person he talks to about this, and I'm afraid of denying him myself as an outlet. What do you think?

I am still not clear on "Forced balancing." I need to go back and re-read that post of yours.

I appreciate your saying,
I've been meaning to say that I took that as permission to say, "Thank you for being willing to go to the wedding with me." (He is.) "Thanks for showing me your support and care by coming to church with me. I am not going to fuss with you any more about your coming even though you don't want to."

(???--I said this last Monday, maybe, and then, this weekend, he said to me, "I'm not coming today." To which I replied, "I'm glad you are not coming if you don't want to. I'll see you in a couple hours.")

I felt fine both times! I really appreciate your support as I grow through this stuff.

Thanks for your thoughtful suggestion,
Ah, but she keeps showing up, the silly girl. So I give her a lollipop to keep her quiet and stick her on the couch.

I love what you said about not bullying her, or whatever wording you used.

Right now, I'm conceptualizing myself more as discovering my "true self"--whatever you would call it--than as dismantling the self-image.

I really like A. E. Houseman's poem "From Far, From Eve and Morning." It's about connecting. The lines I like the best,


I like to keep this in mind as a way to remind myself to be aware of others. It occurred to me, though, that as I get to know my true self, I need to ask her those same questions ("What's in your heart? How shall I help you?").

OK! That feels like enough self-indulgence for this evening. Thanks SO MUCH for your help--

Amoret

[Yes, it means "little love," but I was thinking of it not as a self-criticism, but as an endearment. Comparable to "tiny sweetheart," which is what my father calls my stepmother. . .]

Amor,

Yes, I was thinking very affectionate for little love...until I read you writing it and got, ohyeahhuh. I can see that.

When you feared people supporting you to the detriment of your marriage, that's a reasonable fear. People who love you want you out of pain fast...hits their pain center, too...so they kind of have a vested interest. Mostly, our relatives do this...just as they wanted to get you to stop crying, hurting, feeling anger and the rest...you remember.

Here, you have friends of your marriage. We want your marriage to thrive, though half of that is your own personal recovery separate from your marital one. Interwoven.

Similarly, your self and self-image enters into this...getting to know one from the other is the tricky part. Your self thirsts to know and be known...as is...no tweaking. Your self-image, as you nailed so well, relies on the tools of judgment...comparison, false payoffs, evaluative trade-offs and giving to get/tit for tat. We know these well in childhood. That's the only signal I know...when I flash back.

Acting from our child, btw, isn't exclusively bad, even as adults. It's how we experience attraction, play together, ally ourselves with others...can be as connective as it is disconnective at times. Up to us to choose when we ACT from our child, or just know our child's reactions.

Feed your true self, Amor...in your close God-times, when you hear the whispers...you know it's not with a clap of thunder, shuddering you to SEE what you're doing...it's a tender revelation, spoken softly, firmly...through images and words...and feelings. You already know these...I say this to example how to seek your self...same way...follow His lead, 'k?

That's how we nurture ourselves...through exploring, discovering, owning and amending...it's a daily process.

Would you consider your friends (who you fear supporting you and not your marriage) may aid you through their ways to highlight the ways inside yourself you did the same thing? Help you to see where you chose to create and maintain resentment, feel false self-image-confidence...and maybe overlooked where you built real self-respect? Like your boundary enforcement which I applaud...you weren't lost in your self-image as I was...you saw it clearly, knew your core beliefs and acted from them...that's rock you're building on...the self-image is air. You can handle it.

What if you cannot exhaust yourself emotionally with WH because you haven't been investing in him emotionally for awhile? I'm asking, not telling. I used my stuff, almost exactly as you described, as a way to not emotionally invest in my marriage and yet hold my DH accountable for all my emotions. It was a really fascinating bait and switch, when I came to realize it.

I bound my self-image to him...and his to me...(with permission)...not true selves, see? False intimacy...and what we wear down from, feel exhausted physically and emotionally, is our self's resistance to focus where we have no control...make our SELVES dependent on their actions...reactivity is a drain. It's a great intimacy blocker, too. Would you consider that as your self signals you, and you miss the signals...furrow deeper in your partner's stuff than your own...that resistance is drag (literally) on your being? Sure can feel exhausting...working so hard on the marriage and not factoring in you, your half, really...only more subtle ways of giving to get/tit for tat; reflect and be reflected as we want, how we want to be reflected, when we want to be.

I just suggest this...not a cure all. Lots of rejection, self-abandonment and abasement kept me in my cycles...loathing DH when I was really self-loathing. Where my focus is...there is my treasure.

When we focus on lack, our life experience becomes one of lack.

Even of our partners.

You said you guys were living independent lives for those years...I imagine a slow build-up to that...and a lot of security "Well, he seems to be doing the right things" and you let go dwelling in your thoughts on your union, your unity--and now that filing away isn't there...is it?

Your WH greatly fears being seen for what he's chosen...he takes it for what he IS...he's not. Don't lose sight of that. Talk to him about revealing to your kids...because they know, have picked up on, overheard and misunderstood AND understood...do not doubt they are thinking you're just having problems...they've seen the websites, most likely. Don't let them swirl without knowing the facts from their fearful fiction.

WH can come clean at church as well. None of these revelations would be punishment...they would be him living honestly in his one life...committing to himself--he's worth it. And his one life (which is really what we have) is abundant...as he is, too...not requiring artifice...which is false acceptance...and think about it...constantly rejecting (that's what false acceptance is...fear of intimacy...if you really knew me you wouldn't like/love me).

You reached right for that when I said I liked you both equally. See how it comes from our sibling times, our inner child...to be liked or die kind of reaction? You can see where we'd base a lot of beliefs from that foundation...and now, as adults, they tumble down. You can't make yourself liked, loved or safe...you learn to know you already are...always have been and will be. Because you're a creation of God.

And see how you swung it back the other way (and your humor cracks me up...you have a deft touch of lightness in that darkness, Amor...don't be afraid to find out how marvelous your self has been all along...before a word was spoken or an act taken)...when you exampled the automatic DJ of well LA must think I'm the horrid one.

Neither one of you are the bad guy...neither are the good guy, either. Humans do and don't do. Our purpose on this planet is to know and be known...to know God...be known by him and ourselves...with each other. We're all a package...not one thing, ever. To limit ourselves to flat labels and little boxes is to diminish God's magnificence as his creations.

I see both of you hurting and reacting from same stuff...I see both of you healers within your marriage, and both have done damage...to yourselves, too. I believe, side by side, you both can get to thriving, and know your wholeness and live within healthy boundaries, from love and respect.

No doubt in my mind. I like you both equally.

If you couldn't do damage to anyone, Amor, would you exist? Can you ever be better than any of God's other creations? Safer? More loved?

Remember God's commandment...no false gods before me? How about self-image? Would that count?


I'm chuckling again...yes, yes, yes in my experience, my response to criticism was to disown MORE of my self...as you said...oh, perfectionistic behaviors are now bad? Okay, I won't do them anymore. LOL. I don't fault folks for striving to be perfect...so they can be PERFECTLY safe...we were made by perfect hands, our true selves...that's gonna get botched up in the translation, isn't it? Along with fantastic survival instincts, our old brains for survival...and our new brains, for thriving...we're going to have a great deal of overlap.

Change your beliefs and you change your life experience. God doesn't require perfect...you can't earn God's love though you share in it; you can't earn God's punishment (I believe) because consequences come from our choices...we experience a lot as punishment...until we see they are consequences...and we accept, we experience them...not God punishing us to make us better, live better, do better, until we're perfect.

Would you consider sharing with your WH sometime, something like this: I won't aid or enable you to self-destruct. I know you can and will. I won't participate in your addiction because I love who you really are, wholly, completely...I accept you choose...and that I choose to love you. I accept you choose to love me. Together, I believe we'll learn to love ourselves terrifically."


LOL...your lovely, loving little girl is not your self-image...she's who you are when you created your self-image...hug, hold and parent the child...dismantle the image. Wasn't real.

Yes, ask of your true self to know yourself...in reality. True self needs no help, btw...nothing broken, not undone or unformed.

Can you sort out from helping...that you're a human being, not a human doing? What if others aren't in need of help, only of sharing? You sharing, and them sharing? Know and be known? Would that make everything collapse into wrongness?

What if you cannot help but to help when you don't know you are? What if you help because you are...and so do others? Would that change your mandate, your choice of poem?

Connect with me without hesitation, say what's in your heart and I will listen and rejoice and sorrow with you...for we widened our lives in this moment. I gotta look up that poem, btw.

I think you're also learning you don't have to work yourself up in life to enforce your boundaries...no running emotional start required...because humans do and don't do. When your boundaries are well defined, reasonable and go around you, then no running start required. You enforce them because they are about you.

We had to take running start, use our emotional signals like anger (signals a boundary crossing) because we feared we would be convinced or controlled into crossing them ourselves? Maybe that fear directs us to a cache of hidden beliefs...which affect our choices in our relationships?

Not knowing self causes fear of self, I think. What do you think?

Like you truly being okay when you see his choices as about him...and seeing his choices to be present about him as well as absent...and the grace we have to witness others' choices as well as our own...I'm not blowing hot air here...you really will experience immediate relief, breaking patterned DJs--gives us a pattern of experience. Relief is in part freedom...you don't know what comes next, what choices will be made; you'll see yourself new every day...and others.

Self-indulgence or self-care?

Thank you for being here...you're amazing.

LA

I haven't seen anyone suggest COSA yet (Co dependants of Sex addicts). They have an online presence, if you can't get to a face to face meeting.

Great suggestion, MO2...I didn't know they had those...and just had a "duh" moment because I figure they do have all the same groups as AA does.

What I used was www.recoverynation.com. And I don't think my way is the only way by far...I did attend one meeting of SAA...and didn't find a meeting for the SA-Alanon portion.

I used Alanon directly.

I'm interested in the title of the group, though...is it the same for SA that ACOA is for alcohol-related support? Adult Children of Alcoholics? I can see where the co-dependent comes in for all of them...didn't know someone put it in a title like that.

Thanks for pointing COSA out.

LA

Hello, Mof2 and LA; thanks so much for your interest and support.

I took a look at the website you suggested, Mof2. Thanks for pointing it out. Based on their list of identifying behaviors, I don't see myself as a codependent of a sex addict:


So I don't feel like part of the group the organization is geared toward. But thank you for the suggestion.

OK! I want to respond to your earlier post, LA. I'll come back and add to this--but it is time to listen to an MB CD as part of our course.

Thanks--ttyl--

Hello again, LA (and Mof2)--thanks for being here for me.

I am posting a "reply" to my own post so it will be at the bottom of the thread--not sure how this works and want to make sure you find it OK.

But I will be responding to some of your thoughts, LA, in your 6/17 post--and, by implication, to your suggestion, Mof2.

LA, you wrote,


OK. I hope you will tell me I'm wrong if I am! But . . . it sounds to me like you've just explained why I am backing off on my H's "stuff" (polysexuality/sexual addiction/whatever) right now.

I know that compulsive sexual behavior often happens in people who were sexually abused as children, but I don't know of any sexual abuse in his past. I've accepted his "No, I wasn't abused--I've wracked my brain, and there's nothing there." I am not in a position to know more about that than he does.

(I had a painful relationship when I was nineteen that taught me that I can't deny other people's version of reality. Other people feel the way they feel and see things the way they see them. I can't be more of an expert on their experiences than they are.)

It has been really helpful to me (one of those things that came to me in church) to know that I am not responsible for my husband. It's not my job to
A. love him back to religious faith,
B. love him back to monosexuality (if it exists), or
C. love him out of Asperger's/whatever makes him less than sensitive to others' emotional experiences.

It feels much more manageable to me to just love him as my husband without challenging myself to love him well enough to enable him to make all these changes.

(I read recently in a "Christianity Today" article about sexual addiction that counselors are seeing more men with sexual addictions now that were not abused as children. The author cited the counselors as saying that internet pornography is capable of providing the requisite brain re-wiring that it was thought only abuse could do.)

So right now, I am not pursuing the "What's wrong with you? No, really, what's wrong with you?" line of thought at all.

(Not that I got that from what you wrote, LA--but that is how it would come across if I said it to him.)

Meaning, I'm not asking him to read the Patrick Carnes book right now. It feels to me almost like a DJ. ("I know more about you than you do, and it's something BAD, and here--fix it.")

Meanwhile, in case anyone's asking: Do I want to be married to someone who (1) wants to have sex with whoever he's attracted to, (2) thinks that ought to be OK, and (3) finds me controlling and demanding and judgmental in not being OK with it?

No, theoretically speaking, in the abstract, I do not want to be married to that person.

But speaking in practical terms, I do want to keep my promises to myself and to this man, if I can. I do want to build a peer-to-peer marriage rather than one where I'm conceptualizing myself as on the upper step, morally speaking.

OK! Back to when you said,
Yes. And I have told him this, too. That I don't entirely believe it when he says that "hedonic calculus" is the system that informs his decisions. ("What will bring me the most pleasure?")

For instance, when DS (now 19) was sick with depression during his high school years, H was a marvel of patience, faithfulness (not to me--the As had already started, but H faithfully fulfilled his fatherly role during that time), and responsibility.

He didn't hold up his end of all those pointless, fruitless, depressing conversations for the pleasure of it. He didn't do his share of driving to psychologist's appointments for the pleasure of it. He didn't listen to me worry and cry for the pleasure of it.

I could have (I would have) done all that boring and sad stuff for our son without him, but he did his share.


Yes. I knew about it at the time, shared all that pain and confusion with him. The group, which had previously made him one of its official spokespersons, thought he had betrayed its values and let them down (nothing whatever to do with sex) when he publicized the fact that he had an honest difference of opinion with their "official" stance.

There was a public "calling on the carpet" and he lost his position of trust. He cancelled his membership. It really made him feel a tremendous sense of loss: he was humiliated in public and he lost a lot of people he had considered friends. He is still very bitter about it.

When I was piecing together the timeline of his As, I pinpointed that as the point when he went from looking at online pornography to contacting people for sex on AdultFriendFinder. When I figured that out, I asked him about it. He said, "Yes, that's interesting." He acted like it hadn't occured to him before.

You said,
When we talked about this with the MC, he was totally, adamantly unwilling to do either. Thank you. You got that right! He thinks he would have to go hide in a cave and nevermore be seen of anyone he previously cared about (but maybe with the compensation of coming out on weekend nights for trips to clubs . . . )

Anyway, about coming clean at church. One of the "trust-building behaviors" on my list (the MC had me draw one up to share with H):


His response, "Just dismiss that from your mind, because it is not going to happen. Ever. Next item?"

So I'm not going to bring either type of reveal up again until I have a bit of an opening from the MC course we're doing, or until I sense he is a bit more open to bringing his two selves closer together--closing the gap between his double lives.

Thanks so much again for the encouragement and support. It is really helping me.

So--I would like to ask for more. Can you look at my question under "Other topics" about "Impasse over hurt feelings"? "Impasse over hurt feelings" thread

Thanks so much again for being so generous with your time and insights--

Amoret

Hey, Amoret...I missed this post. I don't know how...but I did.

Yes, you got it right off.

Next, ask WH to consider counseling with someone who specializes in sexual addiction...we found a Christian-based MC with that specialiation. Doesn't mean he is...means he can explore stuff with the counselor.

Gee, you learned that at 19 and didn't lose it? Dang. Well, okay...no wonder I admire you.

Interesting about the article you read. Thank you for sharing. I'm no expert...I do know that from porn not being something bad, my DH struggled with it all his life until the last three years. He feels incredible relief and joy now where once was a constant anger, fear, shame and pain.

He also found porn to be an act of aggression for him...a place for his anger.

Experiences vary.

You can ask anything, Amoret...it's asking, sharing your questions...when you base your choice on possible response, you are betraying yourself. Respectful to ask and let go the outcome, 'k? It's intimate...knowing and sharing your stuff...not focusing on resolving...on sharing what's in your thoughts, even that you were choosing not to share based on DJing his response. Affirms your intent comes from respect...from your own code.

I used to ask to set up my DH...to delve, "dig" we called it. So I stopped all questions to center myself...which I do going from 0 to the 180 and then back to the 90 degrees. Your way sounds more direct. Let me know if I misunderstood.


Reality is right now...your partner is not having sex with whoever he's attracted to; doesn't demand you do so or he'll divorce you, is that correct? Actions separate from thoughts...yes, our thoughts are important and they do lead to our actions...it's a process he put into reverse right now.


I said that I choose not to believe and I see you don't believe his perspective right now. That's okay for you not to believe. You don't even have to tell him. Good for you to know that we can suspend our believing in our partners and still partner. It's not forever.

What do you think, Amoret? Could his sentence be identical to "What will bring me the least pain?" "What will obscure and bury the most pain?"


Really? Because there was authentic pleasure in all those things...the acts of love giving him loving feelings and the experience of being loved. Again, from my belief there are no one-way streets. Actively enjoyment even in the darkest of times can feed self-image and give us pleasure. Acts of love gives self loving experience.

And it lasts long after the actions are taken. I believe, those acts last a lifetime.

Interesting parallel to me...that the crisis was at its core a difference of a certain belief...and what truly struck your marriage was him choosing a different and important belief. Was the original schism from a core belief or a non-core one to the group's purpose?

I like your choice for trust-building actions...there you are asking and letting the response go. The way back into your marriage is built on choices. I'm so glad you have your own in full sight, with both hands on them.

I'll make sure I don't miss the link you provided to the other thread, either, 'k?

LA