Seeking opinions

Annie,

I don’t give a shit what he has to say. What I give a shit about is this:

“I go from guardrail to guardrail, from gullibility to rage to paranoia..just all over the place.”

really??? and you wanna know what we think? okay, then fine. I will tell you what I think.

I think that there are three choices.

1) stay on the roller coaster from hell (but look the other way and don’t complain!)

2) stay and complain, and complain and complain and question and burn a hole in your stomach, cry, scry… wail and rail… and wonder and ponder and wonder some more… and maybe? no not maybe??? maybe??? and where’s the guard rail… omg… i’m falling…

he apologized.

relief… until…

no… he didn’t. okay, let me ask my sisters on SOS what they think… is he being sincere??? more anxiety, more worry… oh please, maybe someone will tell me the one thing I’m longing to hear… that tiny shred I am praying for????????

(end of choice #2)

3) GET THE FUCK OUT!!!!!!!!

this isn’t just for you. Its for ALL of us.

choose 1, 2, or 3.

If you are this miserable about whether he’s “sincere.” If you HAVE to QUESTION IT???

guess what???

it is not sincere. he is NOT sincere. he is a fucking pig and you cannot make a silk purse out of his pig guts.

Love,

L

I read what he had to say… omg!!! he said it right here, in plain English.

“I have consistently been avoiding any other women contact to the extent possible.”

the extent possible is NOT AT ALL!!!!!!!!! not then, not now and not in the future. he doesn’t even know what he is doing… but I’ve said all of this a 1000 times before.

nothing against you, honey. Oh, I’ve done the same thing to myself, too… that’s how I recognize it. He can’t change because he can’t see the thing that’s wrong that needs to change in the first place… even when he says that NOW he gets it.

he doesn’t get it. he can’t.

i’m really sorry, honey. it sucks. it really, really sucks.

(((Hugs)))

honey, your gut is TELLING you!!! read your first post. read the pain in your words. that is your gut. its your head that’s mucking everything up. it so wants to believe… but your gut is hanging onto that guard rail for dear life.

more hugs.

as far as gut i have never trusted mine ever. i belive this is a process to learn.

Annie,

Anyone who decides to stay with a Sex Addict and work together to try to save the relationship has to realize that the path is full of twists and turns.

If the SA is willing to try they will make many mistakes, there will be slips, but those mistakes, and your boundaries and discussions and anger is how they learn.

I think he did a lot of positive things. He addressed what he had done, he went to meetings, he talked with his sponsor, he apologized (and, unless you lock him in a cell he will have contact with other women, so I feel that his statement about avoiding contact to the extent as possible was honest) and he addresses how what he did hurt you.

That is a lot for a SA to do. They have a lifetime of bad behavior and lousey coping skills to relearn.

In my book he did okay as far as that goes. What is not okay is that he didn’t tell you. That needs to be addressed. Lying is the last thing to change, and often they will never completely give it up. It’s their defense mechanism.

But I know only too well the doubts, the anger, the reoccurrence of the rage over even the slightest issues. It is not easy. But, if you can’t acknowledge the progress, even if it is slight, then it will not work.

I guess what I am saying to you, and to anyone else who thinks that there is enough good in the relationship to give it a try, is that you cannot expect them to change overnight, and, they will never be perfect. The best that you can expect is slow steady progress.

If you are not in it for the long haul then it is best to sever the relationship and move on.

My two cents for the night. Now, I’m off to bed.

Big hugs Annie ~ JoAnn

Annie, if you want it to work you have to acknowledge that you are turning a tanker around in terms of behaviour and accept that its going to be a long, slow process as JoAnn says.

You are dealing with a lifetime of behaviour and reaction… its hard for them – it is. The fact that he has even acknowldged that he’s done something wrong is an improvement?

I dont know how old your husband is, or how long he has been acknowledging his SA but if he’s over 40 and its anything less than a year then you are going to have to be patient.

I think it must be like relearning to walk after a double leg amputation. Its a whole new system. If you want to be together patience is the only way forward, and encouragement and recognising valient effort when it comes. OK, to us as partners its a pitiful effort, but for them its herculean.

The pain does lie in the lying. It does lie in being put down by them in front of others but these are learned behaviours.

My son (age 6) today pulled the curtains down in the front room and pulled the curtain rail down with it. He came up and told me straight away that he had done it and he was sorry and I yelled at him. I then realised what I had done. Will he come and tell me something immediately again? No way – his face of hurt and fear said it all. I immediately apologised and we went down together to fix it. I said thank you for telling me and I am sorry I yelled at you.

Just a thought but we are dealing with 6 year olds…

Annie,

Obviously, I am not the best example here of how to successfully navigate these murky waters of SA. Just trying to get things straight and detach so I can move ahead with necessary planning without going bonkers. It is important, I think, to say that this email has similarities to those I’ve received from my SAH, Here’s what it say’s to me as I’m learning SA translation:

I finally get it that … I was entertaining young women (N) again and sliding in a criticism of you at the same time which makes it much worse. = I am going to claim that I was unaware at the time that my behavior was wrong. So, either H has no sense of boundaries and needs hindsight to say “Hey dude, you’re screwing your wife over and objectifying a co-worker”. Or, H wants to hold ignorance as his defense, to which there is absolutely no counter. This enrages me, because I married an ADULT, or so I thought. And I don’t buy it, because my H has successfully been hiding all those behaviors he claims he did not know were wrong. Systematically and continuously with secondary phones, passworded external drives for the computer, even destroying peripheral computer power cords that I USED for school, so that I would not “accidentally” run into his porn stash (all admitted later in second disclosure, not the first disclosure, please note). Nobody hides something they don’t think is wrong. Your H did not tell you about this, he was caught. Nuf said.

I’ll deny that I had some ulterior agenda … but it was old behavior.= RED LIGHT – “I’ll deny”. This is doubletalk. Old behavior is why he is in recovery, right? So chosing old behavior patterns is an ulterior agenda, in my opinion. He knows where that gets him and he chose the fast track. He’s even right out front that he’s denying it.

I talked to a guy tonight at a meditation in recovery meeting who is in SCA here as well as AA and he helped me understand in describing the behavior that he has to avoid that I need to avoid the “jovial guy” behavior that you’ve been critical of in the past. = I have heard this so many times now it makes me want to scream. (Actually the first week of disclosure and recovery meetings I drove far into farm land and screamed as loud as I could for several nights, just so that my children would not have to listen to it). Here’s what I hear when they say that: Someone (Counselor, SA facilitator, recovery group member, some guy he talked with about this), more credible than you, told me, “You know, this behavior hurts your wife and relationship”. So, now that I (SAH) know that this behavior has been shown to hurt other wives, it must be true that it is wrong and hurtful. What I want to scream is “Holy God, who is better able to tell you what hurts me than… ME.”
And renaming the SA acting out with something inocuous that makes you look like your are completely out of touch and over reacting is so lame. I mean “jovial guy behavior”, really? Let’s just say it, looking to get laid.

He’s going to text me the address so if you see a message from a local area code in the verizon log, that’s all it is.= Sarcastic jab about your monitoring his calls. Don’t buy this, he deserves to be monitored. Not your bad, it’s his.

I’m sorry I’m not more insightful at the right times and I’m especially sorry that I slipped in a dig at you.= The “at the right times” is a sarcastic jab at you, again. Translated as “I’m a good guy and yet you obviously expect me to be perfect all the time and I will never be and I’m not sorry about that.” He’s minimizing the whole thing.

Like I said before I think I was in a bad place with us that week and I guess I was feeling resentful over many things, my bad of course since I can’t afford that and like you said in a text message, I can’t afford to lie or make up stories. = Here’s the golden nugget, I did it because of stress between us. Denial. He is using this because it makes you part of the problem. (Where the co-dependent theory kicks our ass, as far as I’m concerned it’s a crock) You are not. His decisions are the problem. Every relationship has stress. Dealing with it the way he does is not normal or healthy.

I really regret what happened and I’m sorry you had to hear it third hand from C. = Sorry I got caught

I have consistently been avoiding any other women contact to the extent possible. = This is crafty. In some ways I have to side with JoAnn, he can’t possible avoid ALL contact with other women. But the “to the extent possible” has been used by my H and then later disclosures show that his “possible” is just another word for doing what he wants when he wants and saying he just didn’t know how to overcome old habits.

I know you are really unhappy with me and I understand it better now, I was somewhat clouded by my own resentment earlier in a stupid way that limited my ability to see what I was doing. So I was that blind idiot you called me.” = He does not say that he’s unhappy with HIMSELF!!!! That’s what recovery is all about, so I’d really be wary of this one. It’s a lot of finger pointing and no ownership of the behavior. Again the resentment card. You can be resentful and not go looking for other women, that’s the bottom line.

Annie, he knows what you want to hear. He knows this because he’s been perfecting this act since childhood.

I’m sorry if my posts seem to be “negative.” I am normally an extremely positive person. I used to believe that most people, were decent and good and now, time and time again, I have been proven wrong. I was looking at the ENTIRE picture and what it painted in my mind, was a sick, lying, pathetic individual.

And yes, a lot of women stay with these men. However, advice was asked as to what I thought.

I thought and still do… that he’s full of shit.

100%

I’m really sorry though. Its easy to do our own minimizing, denying, making excuses, and looking for any little hint, any little tiny scrap that he’s on the up and up, when our guts are telling us… NO, HE’S STILL LYING!!!!! I believe with all of my heart that in order to decipher his “words” which basically are meaningless, is to look at the big picture. He confided in someone that was off limits and inappropriate, dissing you and then confessed all of that to someone else. I don’t remember who. Its not important.

eeewwww… that’s disgusting!!!!!!!!

Now, please… I am NOT strong. I’m as weak as they come. I am nearly 56 and I have a business which right now, is going to be the death of me.

However, I cannot spend the rest of my days with a snivelly, wimped up lying coward who steadfastly, spent the better part of 25 years trying to convince me, what a loser he truly is and what an even bigger loser I am, for staying with him. Well, ya know what? I get it now. I really, really do.

This is the way he is. He does not really have integrity. He does not really wish to keep me safe and to cherish and love me and put me at least 2nd or 3rd. No, he treated me like shit, and furthermore, I believe that there’s not one woman on here, who hasn’t been a victim of the same heinous treatment! And in most cases, its a helluva lot worse!

I gave him chance after chance after chance to change.

nope. no can do.

and its enough. enough. enough.

not that I’m happy– yet. no, it hurts like hell and I feel like I won’t be able to make it. but, its not all bad.

Look, I lived without him for the first 30 years and I can live without him, for the next 30 years.

life is simply too short and what happens when I wake up and I’m not 56 but 66, 76… with nothing to show for my life, but an empty life with a loser.

Annie, I do believe that you understand the score, but are staying out of fear. I believe that is true for most women who are staying with these guys, with the exception of maybe a few and some, who are more elderly. I get that one too. But, then… please, to save your own sanity, please, please stop complaining and trying to change them, and accept them exactly as they are– vaginal warts and all!!!

Love,

Laurel

Anniem, please don’t apologize…you are not complaining, and I’m not so sure you are staying out of fear. It takes time to sort things out and when you feel pulled in all directions, that’s normal. That’s why this place is so great, because we are allowed to voice our fears and indecisions.

I thought at one time that my age (I do not consider myself elderly :)) played a big role in my decision to stay or leave too, but I know now it has nothing to do with it. My heart and mind and body still expect no less than I ever did. It is a matter of how we want to be treated and loved. If you find you can’t get what you need, and expect from your relationship, then you can decide what is best for you. I would however have a plan and create some boundaries in the meantime so you feel safe.
Love, Lindy

I just want to add that I don’t understand the concept of “creating boundaries.”

This IS a grown man, we are talking about, right? 🙂 And it is the person who has committed to honor and love us, right?

I told my h 5.5 years ago, that he must stop chatting and having sex with women online. He PROMISED ME, NO SWORE THAT HE HAD.

nope.

in fact, he went further. not only did he not respect and honor my wishes to be kept safe emotionally, and otherwise, he went several steps further and met some of these desperate women in person…and then kept at it to keep finding more and more…(and telling me that it was okay to date) and then gloated about his conquests to an old fuck buddy.

So, what does it really accomplish? Does it give us a sense of “control” in a situation where there really is none? Let’s face it. If he wants to act out, he’s going to act out and there isn’t a bloody thing we can do about it. This is reality.

And why do we have to be acting like his mother? Well, whatever. If it works, for some of you, then fine. Its just not for me. g’nite.

Dear Annie,

When I read your husband’s email it sounds the same to me as when I read one from Lynn’s husband or Heidi’s husband. In other words…I don’t really follow what on earth they are saying? Its like the words sound good but somehow their meaning is all over the place. From what I can see Ms lindy and Claire have husbands who have risen to the occasion….it seems their behavior matches their words? Your husband’s behavior does not seem to match his words. These men are consummate liars. There really isn’t anything we can trust but our gut and their behavior. By the time they are through with us…many of us no longer know what our gut feeling is. That pretty much leaves us with their behavior? Your husband shot you down to another person…a person he wanted to act out with? He said you do nothing. To me that is pretty hurtful and I don’t know why you would say that to another about your wife. It illustrates where his mindset is and I wonder if you would EVER know this if your son had not told you? I also wonder what that sounds like to a son in reference to their mother? I guess as long as you cannot envison a life without him there is little to be done. Many of us cannot imagine taking the final step, Annie, so there is nothing for you to be ashamed of. I don’t want to bully you into leaving him. I just wish that each and everyone of us would never have to be hurt by our husbands again in this way. 🙁 Chin up.
Karen xx