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Cindy, my heart goes out to you. I know how it feels, all of a sudden we are disposable and mean nothing to them.
My SA has ended things with me twice on his terms. First time was when he was in deep denial after my discovery of his addiction, after I moved out. He first suggested he’d go to therapy, then immediately turned utterly ice cold towards me. I couldn’t comprehend it. I flew to NY for a trip that had been pre-planned, and while I was there I naively expected I’d come home and he’d be all better/found help/fixed. Instead, I came home to him refusing to tell me his STI/HIV results and telling me he no longer wanted me in his life. He ended our relationship that night on the phone. The disbelief, shock, immense pain and confusion hit me like another tsunami of bricks. Just when you think things can’t possibly get any more painful. How could this man not even love me or want me anymore? We spent 10 “happy” years together, and now all of a sudden I meant absolutely nothing to him!?? How is it possible? Trying to comprehend it made my head explode, because it makes no sense. Why am I being thrown to the curb when I never did anything wrong? I always love, cared for him, treated him with respect and loyalty. I was a wonderful life partner to him. He’s trading me for porn and strippers now?? Is that how little and worthless I really am to him?? Pixels and drugged whores who don’t even like him, are worth more to him than me. The trade, the swap, is soul destroying.
I didn’t fully understand about addiction then, but now that I do, I know he did it because he couldn’t face his problem, it was too hard for him, plus he struggled even seeing he was the one with the problem, because he thought all guys do it. Denial is a very thick wall of protection. What helped me back then after he ended us, was reading drug forums, with parents and spouses talking about their husbands or sons choosing drugs over the family, it all started to make sense to me about what had happened. Before, I really thought I was the only one traded for trash. It was comforting to know I wasn’t.
While I was away in NY, truth was he had only gotten worse with his addiction and escalated. He didn’t feel any sadness about me being a million miles away, nor did he feel sad after kicking me out of his life because he had his addiction always to comfort him and numb him from any bad feelings. That’s why they can throw us away so easily because they don’t feel pain afterwards, they’re numb. So it doesn’t massively affect them. He now confesses that he didn’t want me to even come home, at the time he was wishing I never set foot back in our country. Wow, that hurt, a month ago we had been the best couple, I find his porn – then BOOM – suddenly he was hoping I wasn’t even in the same country as him – essentially not existing to him!
He hit his first “rock bottom” and asked my help to get him into recovery. He started real therapy from that point forward. Managed 30 days sobriety, and then he got major depression when the guilt and reality of his fucked up life truly hit him. He was no longer numb, so he felt it. He was crying every night and day. Plus side of this, he was finally being open to me about his feelings. Unfortunately the depression caused him to relapse, self-medicating the pain. After I found out about the hidden relapse months later, guess what happened, he did it again… tried to throw me away! Utterly disposable. After all the months of supporting his recovery despite suffering all my pain and trauma, helping him find therapists, being there in therapy with him, learning about his addiction, standing by him, consoling him over the phone… I meant less than the addiction again. My support meant nothing. I said no fucking WAY are you ditching me after all I’ve been through this year because of you. I felt he had NO right to do that on his terms – his addiction’s terms. It needs to be MY choice. I wasn’t going to let him, not this time.
I knows it’s crazy and if someone treats you as disposable you shouldn’t be with them anyway, but I felt this massive overwhelming injustice, that it needs to be my decision and not his. If it ends, it needs to be when I’m ready, when I’ve had enough. I haven’t done anything to deserve to be the one dumped.
To cut a long story short, it’s been a crazy rollercoaster year. He’s in recovery at the moment, and finally seeing some positive changes. Very cautiously optimistic. But I know I am always going to be disposable to this addict whenever he’s back in active addiction. I’m still unsure if I can live with that. I wish he was the type that sucked up to me after a relapse, told me crap about how much he “loved” me, begged me to stay etc, because the rejection and coldness from this other type of addict is so heartbreaking and soul crushing. It really killed my sense of value and worth, being swapped, traded, disposed. And it makes me want to fight for the relationship more just so things aren’t so unbalanced/backwards/wrong. Just so I can make a decision when I’m ready. It makes me feel insane.
Victoria,
Thank you for taking the time to share your story. I find it so odd that these guys suggest they go to therapy, and then turn ice cold. I am not sure what the personality dynamics are that make some turn so apologetic and others cold and distant. I am also not sure which is harder to deal with as the spouse. My initial thought is that it is more difficult to handle someone being cold, but receiving fake apologies are just as painful.
I have also gone on the drug forums looking for ways that others have coped with addictions. The things that your husband did and said are so familiar to me. The denial that he really has a problem because “all men do this” , numbing out from the sadness, the depression brought on by the guilt. What I find really interesting is that I don’t think that he really felt guilty for what he had done, it was just that he could see that I was struggling emotionally. I can’t tell if he was actually feeling anything because I do not think he has the capacity to feel. I think that he was mimicking what he knew intellectually how to respond to someone who was sad. I remember him just looking at me with a glazed over expression on his face as I cried like I had never cried before. He became very impatient with my sad emotions. I could tell he wanted to get away from the pain I was showing him. It made him uncomfortable, and because he did not have the internal capacity to react to my emotions, he wanted to flee. It was a similar kind of thing as telling a child to wait 30 minutes before they get back in the water. They dutifully wait because that is what you told them to do, but they are counting down the minutes to run back and jump in.
At one point he told me that I was punishing him with my sadness and that he was not going to continue to be punished. I was shocked for him to say this to me. I realized at a deeper level at that point that he did not have the capacity to “feel”. In his mind, emotions were an action that you used to convey a purpose. Emotions to him were not felt, emotions are a verb, a role to be played, an imitation to perform in order to get an end product. I realized that he was not feeling pain from seeing my sadness. My sadness was an irritation to him that was being performed by me, for the end product to punish him. This realization frightened the crap out of me because it was at that point that I understood that I was not making a connection with him. It made me wonder if I have EVER made a connection with him. I realized that the emotions that I thought were coming from him, through the years, were just a reflection of what I was feeling and wanting to see in him.
I know what I am talking about is deep, and I don’t know if anyone can relate. I am trying to put into words what my experience is. We have all been through so much heartache. I keep trying to peel away at all the different levels. Thanks for being patient with me.
Cindy, I think we can all relate to what you said, and you described it perfectly. Where you said,
“I am not sure what the personality dynamics are that make some turn so apologetic and others cold and distant. I am also not sure which is harder to deal with as the spouse,” my experience is that they often go back and forth. Maybe for some SAs it’s more clear-cut and linear, but that’s not what I’ve experienced. It’s more like getting thrown from guardrail to guardrail, never knowing what you’re going to get. In theory.. and I hope in reality too.. working through the 12 steps (and of course, therapy too) is supposed to help with this, because the ‘acting out’ is just the tip of the iceberg, and there’s all this underlying shjt. So the fact that your h just shrugged off all that speaks volumes. If you don’t mind my asking, was he raised in a really cold family? Because mine was..his mother is certifiable.. and the way you described your experience with your h is so similar to mine. As you said, “I realized at a deeper level at that point that he did not have the capacity to “feel”. In his mind, emotions were an action that you used to convey a purpose. Emotions to him were not felt, emotions are a verb, a role to be played, an imitation to perform in order to get an end product.” That really sums it up, and is why I’m wondering what his upbringing was like. My h was brought up in a household where the only emotion expressed was bitterness, courtesy of psycho-mom, and the kids were given the silent treatment by mom if they did something like bring home a report card with less than all A’s, for example. And dad just sort of deferred to mom and stayed silent while mom went ever more batshjt crazy. Geez, I got on a tangent here giving you the Life and Times of My SA, but the similarities of what you describe are striking, as well as the questions you have in the aftermath of realizing what his detachment meant. Sending you much love. xoxo
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