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Right now, he is calling everyone he can (my mom, his mom, my friends) and begging them to convince me to drop the charges! NOT GONNA HAPPEN… besides, the State is the one filing charges.. I couldn’t even drop them if I wanted to… but I don’t want to so no problem there. Tomorrow is probably gonna be rough… Haven’t seen him in almost three weeks and the first time I do he’s gonna be in jail clothes and chains. Pray for me that I still keep the courage to press on and push for the permanent restraining order. Thanks sisters!
Love,
NataleThere is only one gun left in this house… mine… all of his were taken by the police. We have a gun safe.. two actually and they are very well locked up. He no longer has a key, only I do… and if he were to come back in the house (which will not happen anytime soon, if at all) I will not be keeping my gun either. The plus side… because of this he will never be allowed to own a gun again. The down side… he is military and his career is shot. His only hope now is to get a PTSD diagnosis to preserve his benefits (which means our health insurance as well).. and to not get a dishonorable discharge. Sad too… he was only 3 years short of retiring and getting all the perks that go along with it.
Thank you all! It is interesting how many of you commented about my having a clear, cool head in the situation…. that had not occured to me…. One of my good friends just told me yesterday that she is so incredibly impressed by me and proud of me for how I have handled everything since that night. I have not gone into some deep depression, curling up in a ball, crying my eyes out and unable to care for my kids…. I have just kept going (in tremendous physical pain too). My kids are still very well taken care of, my house is still clean (tho my AC is going nuts and will only blow heat out…. I live in FL and have MS which makes me very intolerant to heat… but thank God for the gorgeous weather we have been having so I have had some time to find some help with that situation). I’ve been redecorating, de-Matt-ing the house (as everyone around here calls it), and alot of the decore I have been adding has very inspirational words on it… so I have positive affirmations all over my house.
The strangest thing that is happening in all of this is…. my H worked from home and was pretty hands on with the kids… but since he went to jail… almost three weeks ago, neither one of my kids have asked for him, looked for him, said Daddy…. nothing! I cannot figure that one out. But I do have the police set to give me advance notice when they will be escorting him to the house to gather his belongings, so that I can make sure the kids are not here. They do not need to see him for those 15 minutes only to see him leave again.
I have been working with the women’s center here, getting help with the restraining order, getting help with the domestic violence/trauma counseling, and they paid my mortgage for Feb. I have absolutely no idea how I am going to manage in the months ahead until I get my tax return and until I can beging receiving child support. I am, after all disabled, so I cannot work to earn money…. and Im sure alot of you know… disability income is a joke… and is not enough to support a house with two kids. I have to try to get the car dealership to let me trade in my car (that I LOVE… I’m very, very sad about this… but I cannot afford the payment on my own) and to get his name off of my car. Is that even possible?
I have joined a wonderful church and have been attending for 4 weeks this coming Sunday… they have been amazing and helpful… but I am still at a loss for the whole finance situation!Don’t think I can afford the EBlaster one… specially since we have to get new clothes and stuff for my daughter until we can get her belongings out of her dad’s house.
Thank you so much NAP….. sometimes I don’t feel like the best mom… even when I am told that I am one. All I can do is love and protect my kids…. and do my best!
I’m with Bev… I had actually forgotten that I was tough. The sisters here have certainly helped me remember that… and build on it. Believe it or not… Al-Anon meetings helped me (a little) with that too. Mostly because I have made a dear friend from the meetings (who is also there because of porn/sex addiction). There is noting in our area at all for SA or S-Anon!
Penny…. good luck no matter what happens. My SAH does not go to SAA meetings (his choice because of the co-ed thing… which I can TOTALLY support) but he is in counseling, working the steps, reading the books… and the therapist is working on putting together a group in our area that is just for men… and my ‘sponsor’ from Al-Anon has a hubby who is military, like my SAH, has a porn/sex addiction but is doing really well in recovery, has done tours in Iraq and went thru PTSD as a result… just like my SAH…. so it looks like he may be able to become a sponsor or at least an accountability partner for my H.
NataleOh, and I did find out I still have legal custody. That makes things much easier. And If/when he tries to drive down here to force me to give her back he will be driving on a suspended or revoked license… which I will gladly (teeheehee) point out to the police!
SAA scares be to death…. mostly because so many of them are co-ed… what the hell….. you put sexually addicted men and women together, where phone numbers are exchanged., etc…. who thought this would be a good idea? To make the these groups co-ed… to me it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen!
She will be 14 in November… so will her step-brother. I’m going to get her Friday (her dad and step brother will be on their way to a war hammer … whatever that is… tournament when we get there).I have the protective order ready to file, will be filing that and all other necessary legal paperwork tomorrow as well as going to the police department and department of children and families to file allegations/charges thru them. As far as I know… so far all the step bro has done (and I am not trying to downplay this by saying ‘all’) is walk in on her while she’s showering or changing and ‘conveniently’ falls asleep in her bed when my daughter, this boy and his sister (blood related) are watching movies together at nite. She told me she’d talk to her dad, but even if she does, I’m sure he’ll just blow it off as … “that’s just what brothers do”. We were told by 2 licensed psychologists (one who handles porn/sex addiction and one who handles children) that this sounds like grooming and if it is allowed to continue it will escalate. This step-brother of my daugher’s is my XH’s golden boy… football player…son he always wanted. So… even if he was made aware… I absolutely do not believe he would do anything to protect her. Hell, he knows about the self harming, she has been begging to go to counseling and I have been on his ass about taking her to counseling and he has yet to do shit about it. I cannot act or even warn her that I will be taking her back because he ‘absconded’… took off with her out of state and I didn’t hear from them for a month (there was no court order yet so it was not kidnapping and all I could do was handle it thru the courts)… He and his wife are both out of work right now so they have NO ties keeping them here and I would absolutley expect him to disappear with her again.
But my ducks are all in a row now and she’ll be home with me very, very soon.
Yes, I have a very good counselor who I have been seeing since May and I already have appnts set up with a very trusted psychologist for her when I get her back.Tiredofit.. thank you so much for your post… I do try to stay positive… tho sometimes it seems impossible to do so.. but reading comments like yours (and my other sisters) in response to mine it actually helps me hold on to my positive outlook. I am so glad that some of my posts can help my other sisters. You guys certainly help me! I will definitely check out that link… and thank you for the suggestions.
Love- NataleOMG I agree and relate with so many of you….
Artemis; you know the kind of wives you see on TV, like Debra from Everybody Loves Raymond…. the kind who nag, bitch, snoop, control, boss….etc….. well I always prided myself on NOT being that kind of Wife… and here I am (or was…. I have been healing alot and backing away from his addiction) the same kindo of wife I never wanted to be… SSUCKS…. and I freel ‘ugly’ about it. Tho I understand much better now that it was all symptoms and recations from the PTSD…
I almost went to jail once… my ex was very, very physically abusive to me (started right after the marriage license was filed) and I mean, I have permanent damage in my back due to his abuse… he held me up against the wall by my neck until I turned purple and started to pass out, slammed by head into and thru the car window, hurled beer bottles at me, repeatedly slammed my head into the ground in our front yard and each time I got a chance to get up andc run he’d catch me and continue doing it…. jst to name a few… well once, he was hitting me and I got super human strength and began slamming his head repeatedly into the brick wall on our front porch… the cops were called (where the hell were the people to call the cops when he was attempting to kill me???)but in the state of FL when a call is made re: domestic violence they are required to take both parties to jail…. for some unknown reason he came to my defense and begged them not to take me to jail… so, fortunately they didn’t… but they did take him.
As far as guns go… I have one too and there are probably about 10 more in our house… but to me…. that is too easy for the person being shot when you are doing it becuz of years of sustained abuse….I went from red to brunette. much of the red has already come back… so I’ll be (box) dyeing it brunette again soon.
The first time I caught my SAH acting out after D-day and the 1st promises that it would stop… i ripped all the wires out of the computer in complete rage… he was standing on the front porch… I walked out and stood there in front of him… expecting him to say …. something…. anything… he didn’t… he stayed silent…. so I slapped him in the face… like you see in movies all the time! Then I grabbed all pix of us that were in the house and shattered them on the tile floors. I felt guilty like crazy about it… finally figured out a way to forgive myself… then a short time before his revovery we got into a fight… big time and I pushed off his chest and screamed ‘I FUCKING HATE YOU’! Once again…. major guilt…. there was a time, again a short while before recovery began, that I snapped mentally and was thinking about killing myself cuz I just had to stop the pain… some how…. and briefly I thought about killing him (and using poison to do it so it would be just as slow, painful and tortuous as what he had been putting me thru) but again… that was a brief and fleeting thought.
I too am one who is frightened by violence, especially in myself! I have endured so many different variations of abuse in my life (verbal, emotional, sexual, physical) from various people…. and only recently realized I had some how become these men that I hated for doing what they had done to me. The two instances above are the only time I have been physically abusive to anyone but I had become very verbally abusive.. not to those close to me… to total strangers… and when I looked in the ‘mirror’ I didn’t like who I saw. While I know I have to forgive myself for this… and I know at least with the physical abuse I had to have really been pushed to my brink… my snapping point… I will never, ever believe (at least not for my own life) that abuse is warrented, asked for or ok. It never was ok when it was being done to me… and I don’t want to get to a point where I think it is ok for me to do it to others.
Nataleoh… p.s. I wanted to add that I was a dancer (ballet and jazz) for most of my life and one of the things I lost because of the neurologic issues was balance. When I was pregnant (for like two freakin years…lol) it came back… (apparently with MS when you are pregnant you actually get to live symptom free… and this is actually true, but then when the symptoms come back.. they all come flooding back similar to a dam breaking). Until I had the spinal tap my balance hadn’t really been too bad since Gabe was born (and yes I had my tubes tied after him cuz pregnancies are really hard on me and he and I almost both died… if I had gone into hard labor – did go into labor- before the scheduled c-section we would have… so no it is not an option for me to just stay preggers all the time…LOL) Anyway… since the spinal tap my balance has been terrible and I have been stumbling A LOT and ending up with bruises all over my legs. Regardless… as someone who always loved dancing (and was really really good at it… when I was 15 I was asked to join a professional dance company… I chose the life of a teen – a toubled one at that – instead)… this has been one of the hardest things to deal with about my disease… but I have and will continue to find new ‘loves’ that I am at least close to equally as tallented at.
Any suggestions for hobbies or whatever any of you have found that you really enjoy doing AND helps you heal would be greatly appreciated.
Love – Natale (sorry this all was not intended to be so long winded! )Thank you all for your cheers and support! It is so nice that my SAH and myself are getting such positive feedback from my sisters!
To answer your questions about my condition…. I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis 5 years ago. I was seeing a wonderful doctor (while I was working as a paralegal and had GOOD insurance) then my condition became so severe that my 8 year old daughter (at the time this happened I was not married) had to help me dress and had to help feed me. I had tremors so bad that I could not write, type, dial a phone, cook, cut food, could only eat certain things by myself, could not shave, could only wear certain clothes if no one was around to button, tie, zip… for me. So, obviously I had to go on disability (which I am still on… I have tried to return to working in an office but I could not handle it cuz I couldn’t take breaks whenever I needed, control the temp (I have a low heat tolerance and cannot function if I get too hot… pretty ironic that I live in FL huh!?). So I lost my insurance and had to go on Medicaid and as a result was not getting good medical care at all. My tremors turned int seizures… I was so over-medicated that I have about a year of ‘walking amnesia’… I still have periods of my life during that time that I have absolutely NO memory of. By this time I had met and married my SAH and he struggled ALOT with what I was going thru. He had done a ton of research on MS before we even went on our first date becuz he knew I had it… and accepted me, disability and all. Well, once I married him I was able to get good insurance again, but my previous doctor was no longer taking on any ‘new’ patients cuz he was dealing with a cancer diagnosis, treatment, etc. Eventually my H and I decided to have a baby (still was unaware of the addiction)… so I weaned off my meds and began trying to get pregnant… and happily did about 6 months later. Well, 6 weeks after I delivered Matty (emergency c-section) I suprisingly became pregnant with our son. Once Gabe was born I began my search for a new neurologist, one that was well versed in MS. I began seeing her recently so she had to start from square one… sent me thru tons of tests, obtained all my old records, etc. Now we are not sure I have MS at all, and could possibly have transverse myalitis. She explained that my symptoms would be pretty much the same as with MS but the treatment would be different. And if I do have TM then it has caused permanent damage and I will be dealing with the symptoms for ever but that she will be doing everything she can to manage them.
I have my appnt with her on Thurs to get the results of all of these tests and to see where we will go from there. I will keep you guys posted as to what I learn.
Love – NataleAmen about your Amish comment Debinca….. I found that extremely intersting! Thats a polite word for what I really thought/think of that fact…. :-/
Thanks to all of you for standing up… making a point to try to calm my distress here. I do appreciate everyone’s opinions whether negative or positive and would never want any one to feel stiffled (sp?). there are just some instances that have happened with others in the past week where I feel under personal attack… even tho… while it could be seen this way… I was not trying to name call, brow beat or personally attack anyone or put them down! And I do not feel at all that the things I say that are positive because (by the grace of God) things are improving in my life… are giving false hope!
NataleDebinca – I adore you!!! You speak (type…lol) how I feel and you have helped me clarify in my own head and see a different way of… I guess accepting… what has been bothering me on this site. The ways I feel about the way some things have gone down on the public (MTASA) site… not so sure about acceptance there… but you have given me a bit more hope in regards to the SoS portion. Thanks
Bev… I don’t blame you or fault you one bit! I am very supportive of you and the excruciating choices you have had to make to protect yourself… your family… YOUR life!!! I admire the strength I see in you! And I agree you have ABSOLUTELY nothing to appolagize for and I don’t see that he would deserve an appolagy from you! Keep going strong! I think you are doing a wonderful job!! You have also helped me out quite a bit since I joined the sisterhood!
With Love and Respect,
NataleI never once said that any of you should forget what your transgressors have done and in some cases are still doing. In fact I specifically said that forgiveness does not mean forgetting (as you can see in the quoting of that sentiment from my post in Karen’s subsequent post). Forgiveness is not for the SA (transgressor) it is for yourself. It is the only true way to heal, recover, move on and find happiness whether or not that person remains in your life. And for anyone who is still confused by the meaning of forgiveness I strongly implore you to watch the movie “Fireproof” and the Lifetime Original Movie, “Amish Grace”.
And as an added note, but in no way less important point as the one above… I am really getting jaded by the fact that almost every time I voice my personal opinions, feelings, beliefs, etc… as I relate them in MY life I receive so many posts/comments where people are taking them as personal affronts against them as to what I said and persecuting me as a result of said opinions, feelings and beliefs. Yet so many other posts, ones that are angry, negative and depressing are praised and glorified! It is really not feeling much like a ‘sisterhood of support’ to me.I agree with Debinca (including the fact that ours don’t seem to be popular opinions). Couples (affair recovery) is a must and yes… only if you are SURE recovery is being done. I have seen in the books the triggers that happen in certain everyday situations and the best ways to try to handle it when it does. I do believe that in order for us to heal, recover and succeed when we choose to remain in the relationship takes work on both our parts. I realize (tho I fought it tooth and nail at first) that while I did not cause the problem… I am not the SA… and he continued to re-traumatize me over and over again…. some and I mean some of the fault does lie on me for some of the actions that I have participated in. That is not to say that I am wrong for having normal reactions to traumatic events… I just want to say that I realize that I have healing to do as well. I do believe that the addict can change… if I didn’t then I would fall into that same category (being a former drug addict) and I just simply don’t buy it. What I believe is that he can do all the healing and recovery, etc… he could be 100% sober for the rest of his life…. but if I don’t do the healing and recovery that I need to do, then it will all be for not. And, whether we choose to stay or to leave.. if we do not heal, our kids will still suffer. And I believe that if I do not heal and stay angry with him all the time and can never find it within myself to truley, truley forgive (not forget… forgive) then I am no better than he is or was.