Thrill

Sounds just about right in my experience. I could have written much of your post. Even the part about pretending some skank was his wife so they could swing together (you can tell I’m too nice to say “unattractive”, too).

It absolutely is the thrill. Sexual addiction is an intimacy disorder- they really don’t know how to be emotionally intimate with someone.

I am so sorry that you are going through this because it really sucks and it is so hard to get your head around. None of us really understand what is going on with the SA. We debate it often. But really, the most important thing is what is going on with you, and right now you are traumatized.

I’m so sorry, Carmen. It is all such a devastating shock, and you don’t know what’s real anymore after discovery. As far as love goes, I really don’t think these guys know what it is. Mine had a Craigslist hookup for quite a while, and I saw her pic online, and she was quite a hefty heifer with a pudding face. (Howzzat for mean?) And he’d get these crushes on strippers and lap dancers and go through hoops to see them and talk to them online and rescue them from their abusive boyfriends and God only knows what else. Basically he’s farked in the head. And the fetishes..ohh yeah, mine had those too, and reading his profiles on these godawful porn/fetish websites.. I dunno even what to say. Impossible to reconcile that with the guy I thought I’d known for 22 years. So yeah, we all do understand what you’re going through. And I am just so sorry for the pain and shock that you’re in. But you have found the best place to talk about it and to realize that you are so not alone. Sending you big comforting hugs. xoxo

Carmen,
I’m so sorry. I struggle with this too because learning about their issues just left me with more questions. Mainly I just don’t know if my sah has the capacity to love in the deepest sense.

It’s all too much to take in I know. Don’t try to rationalise or understand it. If you do you will end up in a complete tailspin. Thrill, fucked up, intimacy disorder, whatever it is, this has nothing to do with love, and before anyone tries to pin anything on you, it has nothing to do with anything you did or didn’t do.
I don’t know if you have been tested for stds but you should be and you need to get yourself to a trauma specialist.
I am truly sorry you’ve found this to be a part of your life.

I am sure I can’t answer that. I know the research and the opinions of a lot of different treatment modalities. Honestly it boils down to the individual man, from the very first use, to their use today. I only know about my husband and what I discovered about him three days before our first anniversary.

I said from the very beginning I was not even going to try to understand my SAs motivations for his “behavior”, I was not going to monitor anything, I was not going to be an “accountability” partner, etc. I would not babysit and I’m not his savior. He has his reasons. If those reasons make it important to him, and he wants it, he needed to say so instead of hide it.

I asked before we dated, I asked before we were intimate, I asked before we married. I wanted to know the sexual person I was going to spend the rest of my life with. There was absolutely no judgement forthcoming from any of those discussions. He even made up little stories throughout the entire time that displayed how many times he had refused to be part of visits to strip clubs, refused to sit through bachelor party lap dances and strippers. He refused to go into halloween costume shops because the costumes were “too revealing and immodest”. He made himself out to be the total opposite of exactly what he is. Not because I ever said it had to be that way. I thought it’s because he was an ex-seminary student with high moral values. Hell to the F*%! no. Wow, looking back, I even cried once that my past experiences made me so dirty in comparison to his, AND HE LET ME. What a freaking joke.

I have seen porn, I know prostitutes (not my friends at all, but I know them), I have been to strip clubs, I know people who go to swingers clubs, I have been invited to them but declined. I am not sheltered or a prude. A man with a healthy libido, and a great appreciation of women is a sexy man to me. I’ve even told my SA I would be okay with an open marriage, if that’s what we both agreed to (long before we were married. I have been married before and my personal preference is monogamy but I realize it’s a tough line to walk for a lot of men. At my stage in life, a man I could trust to be open with me is a lot more desirable than a man who pretends I am the only woman he desires.) I am completely sexually open and honest and it takes a lot to surprise me.

My SAs preferences shocked me to the absolute core. We separated and I watched to see what he choose. He didn’t let it go, he used through the treatment programs. He said the problem is that I don’t know how much he needs it. So, his real motivation is to just keep lying and protecting the behaviors. So be it.

I don’t want to know why he does it. That would mean somewhere in my brain there is a rationale that excuses the inexcusable. You do not do some things to other human beings, even under threat of pain to yourself. If you do those things for pleasure, it’s sick. Period. It’s not understandable.

He’s angry now, that I don’t want to know “what he’s struggling with”. The time for those discussions was when I first opened the floor. I am not listening to an endless diatribe on how abuse makes people do horrible things. He had his chance and he chose to entrap me in his hell through lies. All I can ever expect now is more lies, not understanding at all.

You will never understand someone who lies to direct questions. That’s why I don’t even trust the research. How did they get their data? They asked addicts about their behavior, and took their word for it. I guarantee you they didn’t follow them around with video cameras and get the actual data. Truth is, we’ll never know. We’ll only ever know what they want us to know. I chose to let him have his lies, I can’t operate with all that withheld information threatening the foundation of our relationship. Unknowns would be no problem, if I could trust him. Catch 22.

Oh God how I WISH that was not in my head, or heart. It changes absolutely everything. Damn.

Thanks, Bev. 🙁

Mine just wants to wait me out, and eventually after he’s done every treatment program available, I will have to accept that his is the only logical response to his life and there’s really nothing wrong at all. I say, he can have it. Just not it, and me.

It seems that there are men like Lynn’s husband who enjoy their sexual lifestyle so much they can never give it away. Not only that there is a sense of entitlement to it no matter what harm they cause. Then there are others who want as Bev says to be a real human who understand the hurt they have caused and are sincerely remorseful. BUT will they live on a precipice all their lives? Is it like my addiction to chocolate? I can abstain for long periods and then I give into the temptation and eat a couple of squares. Sometimes I am satisfied with a couple of squares but at other times that couple of squares leads to a full blown return to eating it every day. Simple analogy I know.

Carmen, my husband had serial affairs over a long time, and he was “in love” with all of them. I found out about this in August. Absolutely devastating to be married to a man who has a need/desire to fall in love with other women. I don’t know if love is common, but I do know that this kind of “love” isn’t love at all,it’s about the high they get from being “in love.” I look back on my memories and think “oh, that beautiful sunset I shared with him and he took a picture of? it wasn’t to capture our moment. He undoubtedly sent it to the her of the moment with a note saying “wish you were here, love you”
I don’t think we can bargain and make this better, I’ve tried:) you know, the if only my husband were just into porn, maybe an occasional strip club, a nameless one night stand, etc…maybe then this wouldn’t hurt so much. The reality is that it all hurts, it’s all horrible, it’s all absolutely devastating. And it should be. I am really sorry for your pain and all of those images you have in your head now, and I am so glad that you are here. It does get better.

Carmen – so sorry for all of your discoveries. Trust all of us – we know what you are feeling like no one else can.

I want to echo what Courtney said – it’s all devastating…whether it’s a series of random one-night stands or an ongoing fuck buddy. My H went to prostitutes but in the past year, he had longer-term “relationships” with at least two of these prostitutes. One who he found dead of a drug-overdose in her van partly due to a prescription he helped her get (that’s another story for another day). Even after all I knew about his paying for sex and even getting arrested for solicitation, you know what shook me to the core more than anything? Finding out that he spent the day with her one day and finding pictures of the two of them – not explicit ones but just of them “hanging out”. To me, that was almost worse than anything b/c it showed to me that it wasn’t just about “sex”. For me, it became much more “real” when I realized he had some sort of emotional attachment to these girls and that he continued to see the one for months after D-Day. Hell, he’s probably still seeing her – he is just much better at hiding it now.

FC, he’s probably not even after the sex so much. He’s after the adoration beforehand, the foreplay where someone admires him completely. Sick, sick, sick. What was the solicitation arrest about? Yikes! I can’t imagine finding those pictures. I feel sad for how that must have felt for you. If you are talking about prostitutes, I don’t think he had an emotional attachment in the same way we think of emotions. They are both such a mess. They are completely using each other. It’s about manipulation. That’s not an emotion. They are both trying to get something very sick from each other. He was after kibbles (Chump Lady). It’s not love, it’s not even emotion. That’s part of the problem. They aren’t experiencing emotion like the normal world does. They are dead inside. You have to be to do this.

Catherine, I think of the chocolate analogy so much. I’m the same way with chocolate. Can my husband really not go after the chocolate? I think the difference is, if they get spiritually well, really moving toward wholeness emotionally, socially, physically, mentally, the prostitutes, the behavior is incongruent with this healthy person. They look in disgust at the guy that did that, just as you do.

Carmen, You need to focus on healing yourself. Get a good trauma counselor. You are experiencing trauma, severe trauma. Take care of yourself. Focus on yourself. I know this advice sounds so counter-intuitive, but you will come to realize focusing on yourself is the only way to go with this.