I am new to all this. Not to journaling. It is something I have done most of my life. I am new to this genre. I wrote this a couple of days ago, just didnt know what to do with it. So here it goes..... 21 days since DDay, I am trying to live my life with Joy and Grace. It is my motto. Seek out Joy and meet challenges with grace. This is not an easy task. 21 days ago my husband came home from a solo trip to Miami to our son’s wedding. I could not go because I was ill. Before the trip I had prepared myself for something to go wrong. I thought for sure my husband was going to cheat on me. Things had not been going well for years. I would say it was a slow decline over the past 8 or so years. It’s hard to put my finger on when things changed. I was in a daze back then. My eldest daughter had passed away from an opioid overdose 11 years ago July. I was busy focusing on my other children’s grief and my own. My husband is her step-father and had known her since she was 19. She passed at age 25. I knew he had grief as well and I asked him how he was doing often, but perhaps not often enough. 3 years ago. The day before our 12th wedding anniversary trip I found unused condoms in his car. He swore up and down that he had not cheated on me and didn’t know why he had the condoms. He didn’t intend to use them. It just made him feel manly to have them. I found that he had been watching porn and doing live sex chats. We talked a lot. He convinced me it was just a one time deal. He was curious and didn’t think it was wrong. He was only masturbating. Not touching anyone else. We settled on I believe it is cheating and regardless it was over the acceptable line and we agreed masturbating with live women online was a deal braker. He was not to hide this stuff from me again. He said he was done with it. It wasn’t worth it according to him. It was hard to forgive him from that. He made no attempt to acknowledge that any wrong doing had been done even telling me it is okay if I wanted to masturbate with men online. I think it broke me. I worked hard without his help, he would just get annoyed and indifferent with me if I brought it up. Saying things like I know, but I am not going to do it again. I heard nothing but ...you are being ridiculous for having feelings about this. It was just a simple mistake. I decided for my own sanity that I needed to let this one go and find a way to forgive and move on. It took about a year, but I managed forgiveness. But I did not forget. The next 3 years went in waves. I truly love my husband, but I am sure I was not easy to live with. I would call in a panic when he wouldn’t check in for couple of hours. I would check the GPS app we had for the kids to see where he was. I would read his text to me and parse every word. I vowed not to look at his phone, I didn’t want to be that kind of wife. I wanted so much to trust him. He gave me no reason to, but I justified it in my mind. His gaslighting had worked, at least in some ways. When we would talk, which wasn’t often I would study his body language. I was watching everything like a hawk just waiting for the day he would come home and tell me he didn’t want me anymore and had been having an affair. I constantly asked him if he wanted to be here. He didn’t have to be married to me. He could be single if he wanted. It would break my heart, but I only wanted him to be happy. It was horrible and petrifying for me. Some where in that 3 years I think I had finally given up and resigned myself to having him as my a roommate for the rest of my life. That he really didn’t want to be with me, he was just waiting to find someone better than me or for me to have had enough. We rarely had sex in the past 8 years and about 5 years ago he started having erectile issues. After the condom find incident I had asked him to go to the doctors and see if his testosterone levels were okay. Doc said everything physically was fine, basically it was in his head. Great! So I am responsible for my husbands sex problems. I got old and grey and fat. He didn’t find me attractive anymore. I went on a strict diet and exercised, but gave up after several months of starving myself only to lose 5 lbs. My husband kept saying it wasn’t me, he still found me very attractive he didn’t know why he couldn’t get an erection. Over the years I had been asking my husband for sex and communication on a regular basis. I did a ton of research and tried all sorts of methods to get him to love me, to see me, to hear me. He had become extremely distant as well. No focus on me unless we were in public. Then he would always want to hold my hand and touch me and look to the outside world like he was the model husband. But at home. I got an anxious, air head, lazy guy that didn’t seem to know I existed. I talked, I yelled, I cried, I did everything I could think of to get and hold his attention, but nothing worked for very long. A few days and he was back to that guy I really didn’t like. I would point it out to him. Even our daughter would say things like, why are you so angry Dad? I began to give up and just resign myself to the life I had. I figured I would live it till I just couldn’t take anymore. I would imagine what my life would be like without him. Being a single mother again. It had its perks and began to look like a decent option. I take care of all the money in our marriage. Unfortunately, he is horrible with money. I had even at one point started looking for apartments I could afford to move him into, but the downsides of having to share our daughter and trying to support two households was too much. I can barely keep our home running. And like I said I truly love my husband. I stopped trying to get his attention and just tuned out. In fact I started doing the opposite from seeking attention from him. I wouldn’t start conversations. When he got home from work I would put my headphones in and listen to a show or book or play a game on my phone. I had disengaged from our marriage and told him he acted like my roommate so I would take his ques and be a roommate too. I thought I could do that even though somewhere deep inside I knew this was the beginning of the end and I needed to brace myself for the hurt that was coming. The morning after I picked him up from the airport returning from our son’s wedding he was acting a bit strange. I had already prepared myself to find out he had cheated in Miami so when I asked to see his phone I braced myself for the worst. I thought I would find texts or emails from a random girl he had hooked up with in the hotel in Miami. All signs pointed to that. Instead there in his browser history was the evidence of porn and sex sites with live women. Through the next few days as we sat and talked and argued. Little sleep and little food. I was going to get to the truth no matter what it took. I would come to find out that my husband was not only watching excessive amounts of porn, but fantasizing about random women he met, putting every women in a category of how fuckable she was, Masturbating 3-4 times a day even at work, masturbating with live women online and was sex seeking while he was in Miami for our son’s wedding and I was home extremely sick. I even found out the condoms were for a girl he had previously worked with, but nothing actually happened according to him. It was painful to see how disappointed he was saying that she didn’t return his attention. At one point he told me that masturbating to porn was better than having sex with me and that he wanted to be free of me. He even told me with excitement how he had planned to and was open to finding a woman that would go back to the hotel with him and fulfill his fantasy. He was searching for his Maimi sex toy everywhere he went. On the plane, at the docks, at the wedding, back to the hotel etc. Categorizing every women. Wondering which one. That didn’t happen so he settled for watching porn and did live sex streaming with several women instead. Unfortunately, for him it didn’t work out as he had planned and he was disappointed. During this time I mostly sat and listened asking a lot of questions and probing for the truth. It was excruciating and exhausting. I had to walk a very fine line, act like a therapist and not a wife. Every time the wife came out in me he would shut down and become indifference. Like I had no business being upset with what he just told me. Sometimes he would even fake guilt to try to appease me. I called him out on it every time. He would agree with me just to get me to stop talking even though we both knew all that did was infuriate me. Finally, I settled on being just his friend and armchair therapist. I tried to sprinkle some wife in there, but I had to keep it little and discreet. He showed little remorse. Most of the pain and crying I saw was for him. He was scared I would leave him and he would be alone. He was upset with himself that he had essentially missed his son’s wedding because he was so preoccupied with sex seeking. He told me our other son had called him a ghost at the wedding. His fears of being alone and that he had upset our sons brought his only tears. Nothing for me or my pain. After all, I shouldn’t be hurt by any of this. None of this was about me. After the 4 days of non stop hearing how much he had lied to me over the years and how much he had deceived me I needed a break. I convinced him that taking “a time out” was the best for everyone. No decisions on our marriage would be made for now. So he agreed and packed up and moved out to stay at his Dad’s house. His Dad is not currently living there so my husband found himself in his childhood room alone in the house he grew up in. We agreed to no porn, masturbation or fantasies about women on our time out. He was to do nothing that had to do with sex or his penis. After he left he cried all the way to his Dad’s and text me to tell me. He was so sad, it was so hard to leave his family. I tried to be supportive, but in my head I couldn’t understand this. After all he hadn’t emotionally been then in almost a decade. When he left I watched his car drive away and a huge sense of relief came over me. I plopped on the bed and thought. What do I do now. I tried to start to process all things that he had told me, but I had to go tell our girls that Dad and I were on a time out and that we we're not getting divorced. During a somewhat heated discussion the day before our youngest (11) had walked in our room unannounced and heard my husband say angrily yes he had cheated on me. (appeasement to get me to stop talking about it) and she flipped out. Her sister and I got her calmed down, but she wouldn’t even look at her Dad. Both the girls asked me if I was okay. I lied and said Im a strong women. Don’t worry about me. I will be fine. I had to assure my youngest that I would do everything in my power to save my marriage and our family. She looked at me through tearing eyes, hugged me tight and sobbed she is sorry for anything she has ever done to upset me. I don’t deserve that. I am the best mom anyone could ask for, she doesn’t deserve to have such a great mother and that she loves me no matter what happens. Her sister took her to her room where they could talk and told me to focus on me. She would talk with the little one. She was there if I needed her. I reassured them both this had nothing to do with them. They are amazing kids and I will always do what is best for all of us. After my husband had left. I started doing research online and found a site that talked about porn addiction. I thought that’s not real, but I’ll read it anyways. Wow, my husband, from what he had told me and I had seen, checked all the boxes. Must be a fluke. On to the next one and the next one. What? On to scientific research papers and so on and so on. Porn addiction is a real thing? WTF? How did I not know this? My eldest daughter had died 10 years early of an opioid dependence. I had walked the path of addiction and mental health with her for almost a decade before that. How could I not have seen my husband was in trouble before? How did he hide this from me? Wholly fuck how was I going to live with an addict again? I sent my husband some screen shot of what I had found. After some back and forth he finally said, kind of sounds like what I have been doing. What? You think you are a porn addict too? I’m fucking married to a porn addict? How could this be? My husband is shy about sex. When I try to talk about it he just all nervous and can’t even speak. The man who blushes when I say the words blow job is a porn addict? The man who told me he hardly ever masturbates and has only seen porn a couple times in his life is really a porn addict. I was in pure shock. I was prepared for the cheating husband, not this. What did this mean? My sympathy for him and my pain of all those years thinking I wasn’t enough made me cry for the first time since DDay. I called my husband but all that could come out was deafening sobs. I cried for about a half hour on the phone until I finally got myself together enough to talk. What was on the other end of the line shocked me again. I was met once again with indifference. Oh sorry that your crying. Appeasement. Oh there, there emotional little one, is all I heard. Was he just appeasing me when he said yes he might be a porn addict? When he told me he thinks he needs help? When he told me that he couldn’t tell his fantasies from reality anymore? Was he just saying that to make me shut up? Luckily my muscle memory kicked in about what it is like to live with an addict. The ups and downs. The addict brain struggling with sensible brain. I would chalk it up to my crying met with the addict brain and not my husband. I gave up trying getting through to him and went back to my research. Over the next week I began just typing stuff. It is incomprehensible. Just random thoughts, a lot of anger and pain. I drafted a couple of emails I never intend to send to my friend who is on a month long vacation in Bali. I cant ruin her joy. I reached out to my best friend who lives across the county and made plans to see her next weekend. Just told her my husband isn’t living at home and I needed to see her. I haven’t talked to anyone else except my husband about this. I have to keep my feelings closed off from him for fear of his indifference which just exacerbates my hurt and reaffirms he doesn’t give a fuck about me. Knowing that I am getting close to seeing both my friends to vent has allowed me to put my hurt a side a little easier. I promised myself I would not make any decisions about my marriage until I had talked to both my friends. I feel I need to come from a place of grace and not anger and pain. Really look at the situation from all sides and make the most informed rational decision if I want to continue our marriage or not. I also told my husband that no matter what I will support him in his recovery and help him find a good therapist to help walk him through the healing process. Just trying to be supportive, loving, and find my compassion as I gather as much information as I can and breath until I see my friends and am able to unpack all this. Seek out Joy and meet challenges with grace.
