What is love?

I saw my husband did not love me when I described how he betrayed our agreement about how to disclose his addiction to our sons, and how it felt to be hearing intimate details of his addiction for the first time in front of my sons with no preparation, no support for them or me, and how it felt for him not to care about how that experience was for us, how traumatizing it was—when I told him all this and he replied “Well I’m sorry you felt that way but that wasn’t my experience at all, and that’s not going to change”. I knew then that he did not love me and he might not love my sons. In that moment I realized that loving this man was now impossible for me. I couldn’t stand him when I saw who he really was.
You see, we often say that the real man is underneath the addiction, the real man we love is in there somewhere and being trapped by the addiction. But sometimes, deep down, this is actually who they are now. It’s who they choose to be. And their program and therapists feed them these inane responses to use with us, that only ensure they will NEVER take responsibility for what they have done to the people who tried to love them.
So what’s to love about that? Nothing. it is what it is.
Today is my SA’s 60th birthday. He’s alone. He deserves to be alone. And I’m sure he will have a lovely pity party for himself and then use that to justify something awful that he will do.

Love,

Love to me is putting another persons well being and happiness at an equal level to your own.

I believe that my husband loves himself more than he loves me.

I never let that knowledge really reach the surface of my consciousness. Inside I felt shame for thinking that he loved himself more than me. I felt guilty for my thoughts and turned it around to myself that I was the one who was so self centered. How could I think something like that of someone. Obviously I am immature and needed to get over myself. Feeling shame about this, I poured myself into him more. The more he closed off emotionally, the harder I worked to make up for it. He was a bit self centered, but deep down, I knew that I mattered to him. At least this is the facade that I tried to make myself believe.

I did not know that he would hurt me to the core and not be able to place his needs aside in order to show compassion for the pain that he inflicted.

When I discovered the extent of his acting out, I had a visceral
reaction. It was, and continues to be, an out of body experience. Never in my life have I been so close to a complete mental and physical breakdown than at that moment. The intense shock to my system has affected me and I struggle with it to this day. It has been almost three years since I found out, and one year since we separated. For those of you who are just beginning this journey, I hope that my timeline does not discourage you. Some do not take quite as long as I have. I have learned from all the research I have done and all my sisters here, not to be hard on myself about where I am with my emotions. I am learning to love myself and to trust my feelings.

I needed to see and feel a visceral reaction in my husband. I needed him to feel equally distressed by the pain I was in. This is a difficult thing for me to write because it sounds like I want him to suffer. I am not like that. I do not wish for suffering of anyone. It is just that I needed him to show me beyond any reasonable doubt that he himself felt terrible to have caused this pain. I needed him to put aside his self pity and and comfort me. I needed to know at this moment, that I was the one he loved. I needed that to be the number one priority. Him proving to me that he loves me and does not ever want to hurt me again. I needed to know that he is going to do everything in his power to try and get better and that he is going to do what ever it takes to prove that to me.

The fact that he reacted like a typical SA furthered my shock. I had to educate myself about how he was acting because it was hard to believe what I was seeing with my own eyes. The blaming, deflecting, minimizing and defensiveness was not giving me comfort. His reaction to my pain became a deeper level of heartache than the original offense of acting out. Because I do not like conflict and because I did not want to believe what I was really seeing, I would question myself. I find that I repeat over and over and over and over again the details of our conversations. I write about it, I dream about it, I talk to friends and family about it, hoping that I might find something in the conversation that I missed. I try to convince myself that because I was in such emotional pain and shock that I was not processing correctly. So I replay the events again and again and again. It seems that I always come up with the same conclusion.

That is that I need to trust in my inner being. I need to trust that something is very wrong. I need to trust that I know what I need from him to believe that a sincere recovery is in place.

So many more thoughts that filter through, that I find that it is easy for me to fall back into my self doubt. I believe now that this is part of post traumatic shock syndrome PTSD. I do believe that I need to get some professional help to see me through this.

I am proud of myself though for hanging tough and holding on to something that I need. It is has been a journey with rough waters. I feel like I am blind and do not have all of the answers, but I am moving. I am trying to hold on and wait for some calm. The moments of panic have become much fewer, and the doubt I suffer with is reducing in intensity.

I am still on the journey and I am not pleased with the destination. I still wish it could have been different and trying to let go of the sliver of hope that he could make the changes needed to recover. I am getting stronger every day by accepting that I am not dealing with something that is “normal” . It IS normal for me to want the things that I am looking for, it IS normal to have heartache when that does not happen. I must accept that he is not normal and therefore is not going to react in normal ways!

Thanks Cindy,
Yes, it’s a bitter pain that erupts on these “special” days. I’m glad you named it for me. I am so exposed by this tragedy of having loved someone who didn’t really love me. I will always be a little exposed, I think. And that’s becoming okay. Because it’s a way in for others to connect with me when I need them most. Thank you for reaching through to me, today.
D.xo

Wow, Cindy.. yet another post of yours that I am going to copy to my journal. Thank you for describing exactly the way it is for me too.

Love for me is being strong for both of us when one is weak, but love of self is being strong enough to know when you have a parasite sucking the life out of you for his own survival.
Love is patient, but love of self is smart enough to cut your losses, respect yourself enough to know and believe you did your best and thats all anyone can ask or expect of you.
Love of someone should never hurt, if it hurts to love yourself because you have become ashamed of the woman you are its time to get another plan.
Love should never be embarassing or bring shame and tears to your eyes when you say I love you, only a smile.
Love forgives but should never forget. You always need to know where you came from so you never go back.
Love makes your heart skip a beat not sink into dread, like when the phone rings and its him.