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Post by timoteiy on Aug 7, 2007 15:58:53 GMT -5
Thanks for the note Unico. I need to hear that others are struggling with the same issues. Things seem pretty bleak for me now and it sure helps to know I'm not alone. I want to join the human race again.Whoami thanks for taking time to look at my post. I don't have much time on a computer anymore; I have to wait to get on one at the library with a 30 or 60 minute limit or pay at the coffee shop. I work and have worked without stop through all this. I am presently training at for a better paying job, and it is stressfull. I am on a fixed salary for the duration of the training and my wife gets the full paycheck from my work. I have only taken 40 dollars in over 2 weeks from my account, and borrowed some money from family. When I go out to work I most often have to stay in other towns over night, and there I have proper facilities to cook, shower etc.
My wife has said some very vile and mean stuff to me over the years. Just about everything that she could think of to insult me has been said. She has attacked me physically on numerous occassions in a blind rage, using available weapons. I have escaped without physically retaliating more than just to hold her on the ground to stop her violence. I mentioned it to pastors (who, 2 different occasions, have made it into a joke, counsellors, who haven't taken it seriously, friends and of course here. Because I am the addict in recovery, I am supposed to listen to this anger and validate it. I understand why, because "blame shifting " or minimizing will get me back in the disease, and because in order for her to heal she needs to be validated for having taken responsibility for my disease for all these years.
My last conversation with her she told me that the neighbor said its good to see her happy, she's not been happy for so long. She talked about how capable/desirable/ good she is and how I messed up. THe most revealing she said was that she put up with my addiction as long as I was a good income earner, but when that wasn't happening, she started getting more angry. As per instructions I listened and validated her feelings.
I want to get better for myself. It may be a long time, if ever, before I get back with that woman. Abuse is abuse,wether or not I am an addict or not. I have tolerated many years of it. It seems so unmanly to even talk about this; I could physically easily counter attack. I could attack verbally. I choose not to, but to recieve and validate her complaints. Only time will tell if she will be able to forgive me and get some help for her angry outbursts. (She says she is alot less angry now, meaning I wa the source of alot of her anger.)
I am not the only one who has been blameshifting in this sick relationship. She is much more sociable and has a network of people who will come one to her side. She works at a women's shelter ( for battered women) ad alot of the women there have deep feelings of animosity for men, naturally. I can't afford the he said she said debate because it does lead me to blameshifting and , I have seen over the last 2 days that it leads me towards a relapse.
I have struggled terribly these last 2 days with staying away from fantasy and masterbation, often having to stop myself again and again. The supid part of it is that I really don't have much natural desire because of the type and amount of anti-depressants that the Doctor has me on. It has strickly been a desire to drug myself from the pain I am feeling, which I suppose is a small improvement from not even knowing what compelled me to do it. Still haven't acted out though.
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Post by LookingUp on Aug 8, 2007 14:35:42 GMT -5
Congratulations on not acting out. Do you think you're in the brain-chemical withdrawal stage?
Congratulations on realizing your wife is currently NOT a healthy person to have close to you. I pray she will choose to heal. I wonder how much of the stress she sees at the woman's shelter is dumped on you?
Hopefully as you heal, you'll learn new ways to stop abuse so you don't end up in more verbally abusive relationships (says a woman who's had two husbands and two bosses who were verbally abusive). I agree, I don't think society takes male/husband abuse as serious. I was amazed when a couple in a town I lived divorced after 15 years of marriage - because of abuse. The 90 pound wife had put her 240 pound muscular husband in the hospital more then once! He, also, refused to fall to her level but did try to protect himself. That was the first case of husband abuse I'd heard of (except for my Mom who had blacked my dad's eye before).
I said a prayer for your healing and serenity.
Here's a none of my business comment: When you get the legal separation - please be sure your lawyer helps you not only take care of your children - but also to have enough to take care of YOU. Even if you're a recovering PA and recovering abusee (verbal abuse victim), you still deserve to have a humane lifestyle... especially since you're working to better your future income potential. A none of my business question: is there any reason you're giving her all your money to the point you're destitute?
LookingUp
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Post by amaninfull on Aug 8, 2007 16:06:53 GMT -5
Timoteiy,
As I've mentioned before, I will go out on a limb and recommend disengaging physically and emotionally from your wife at this point. Engagement seems to be yielding nothing positive for you. It sounds as if you are under a fairly constant assault on your well-being. Please realize that you do not deserve that - no one does. And you cannot effectively recover while it is happening.
I know what I'm talking about: I was in an abusive marriage. One of the main reasons that I did not disengage sooner was that I felt guilt about my own trespasses, including acting out. In a sense I felt like I had it coming. I did not, and you do not. Being her victim will help no one.
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 9, 2007 12:35:03 GMT -5
Thank you Looking Up and A man in full. You words help so much in this struggle to come out of the darkness and heal. I am caught between the realization that I need to make ammends for the damage that I have done while living in this disease and the need to avoid the triggers that start dme down the spiral path to slipping and sliding. At present because I don't have alot of support locally and because of my dismal living situation, I am struggling with fantasy and a struggle of falling into a fantasy to drug my pain and the shame hangover that comes after I stop myself. I have avoided my wife as much as possible. Today I will, for the first time in 3 weeks see my son and take him out on an outing. He got permission from his mom. I can't help than worry that my wife is working on getting others that will condemn me.
I am also caught between the realization that I should not minimize the effects of this disease and the need to repeat to myself that I have committed no crimes that would justify the sentence I am living. The last time my wife talked to me she stated, " Its a progressive disease right? Who's to say that you won't start to abuse our children." My mind was swimming with that one. Even a suggestion that I would do something as horrid as that would send me to the pit of hell in this town. Even now as I think of this I have to drag my mind back into focussing that I need to keep it simple and 1. stay sober 2. get through this horrific training. 3. Try to stay healthy and get some social contact.
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 9, 2007 12:59:08 GMT -5
I went into adolescence living with a single mother. She had to get a university degree and a teaching degree and start into that work place while raising 3 kids, with little support. We had to move to a new town in order for her to do so . I had little of the parenting time that so many children take for granted. My older sister and brother moved out of the home by the time I was 11 yrs old and my mother moved to another town to start a job. She started drinking to handle the stress and I became desparately lonely. She either drank or she became a champion of many political causes. I think she stuffed alot of pain and thusly had trouble with personal interaction.
I didn't get the kind of communication of feeelings or facts of life that parents usually gave their children. Dealing with emerging sexual feelings in adolescence was not talked about much. I kind of got the implicit message that there was something wrong with me. We moved alot, and I only saw my father once from the age of 8 to the age of 15. Sex education for me was the 'cool' talk of the other boys. My own emerging sexual feelings coupled with this kind of influence seemed to be a recipe for mixing shame with sexuality. Having a sick man masterbate in front of me and my cousin at age 12 was a traumatic event that never got talked about.
I wasn't exposed to pornography until age 16 but before that the seeds of addiction, isolating and shaming, were already germinating. When other boys talked about sex I wasn't all that comfortable. I grew tall and skinny before going into puberty and it caused me alot of shame, in the absence of someone to talk to it about. I kept all my feelings to myself. Masterbation in adolescence was allways followed to a degree of moral shame.
I had become a relatively big strong kid by the age of 16 so I was able to land myself a job in the summer in a remote logging camp. There i was introduced to a rough crowd . There was drinking, dope smoking, fighting, and of course, porn magazines.
I finished high school at a private school run by an uncle. It was not a religious school, but they did stress alot of moral concepts, teaching co-operation in school work and helping each other, Long with a healthier home life and activities. I was involved with a more wholesome crowd, without the partying, drinking drugs and sex that took place more often in regular schools. In retrospect, this actually delayed the onset of the disease, even while I spend my summer in logging camp, As I payed my way through university, starting at the age of 17, my sickness grew with drinking, dope smoking, hanging with a crowd that I didn't bond with at all, and retreating into bouts of porn fantasies and masterbation. This began to separate me from the more wholesome crowd, who were advancing into careers and marriage etc., and who were to a large extend involved in community and politics. I was having minor breakdowns and all the while I was maintaining that "independance" from asking for help or even sharing my feelings with others. I concocted many medical and psychological treatments for myself in secret, to " fix" myself without letting anyone else know.
Further exacerbating the problem of isolation was the fact that I had supported the anti-thesis or the moral opposite position from what I was doing. I supported the feminist thinking and agreed with the horrible effects of the objectivization of women, even while looking at porn and incorporating this into my fantasy life and masterbation. I had turned into my own enemy.
I was deathly afraid of committment and intimacy, wanting to change myself before anyone got close and found out that I was a phony. I broke the heart of a women I was engaged with and who loved me, and proceeded to have shallower and shallower realationships and one night stands until a major depression brought me down. A tendency to isolate brought me into extended binges of porn and masterbation.
This scenario continued on and on with porn and masterbation, with shame , isolation, and debilitating depression constantly dragging me down. Now that I have had some time to lesson my defensiveness and let go of some of the denial, I realise that I have hurt a wife and children along the way. This is a horrible thought to me.
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Post by LookingUp on Aug 9, 2007 13:05:03 GMT -5
I need to keep it simple and 1. stay sober 2. get through this horrific training. 3. Try to stay healthy and get some social contact. Great plan. I hope you have a great time with your son on your outing. LookingUp
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 11, 2007 14:55:06 GMT -5
I haven't been posting because of a lack of a computer and haven't had contact with others in recovery. I slipped two days ago. Not with porn, just with masterbation and fantasy. It was a struggle leading up to it to the point that I actually made a decision to slip. I just couldn't stand being in my own skin. I have alot of remorse and have been knocked back a step, but the commitment to healing has made me look at the situation and know that I was just a slip waiting to happen. I have to committ alot more time to this process, and need to get more contacts so that I can keep it from being an isolating vent. I have to force myself not to isolate, because the isolation leads to the disease
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Post by LookingUp on Aug 11, 2007 15:06:07 GMT -5
I have to committ alot more time to this process, and need to get more contacts so that I can keep it from being an isolating vent. I have to force myself not to isolate, because the isolation leads to the disease Sounds like your slip was a precursor to lots and lots of reality checks. Sorry you sliped but glad you learned from it.
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Post by amaninfull on Aug 13, 2007 13:13:38 GMT -5
Timoteiy,
Just wanted to let you know I'm thinking of you and am on your side, as we all are here.
Your first priority - indeed, your duty to your children - remains to establish yourself in a more secure situation. Starting where you are, this will no doubt be a challenge, but we all must start where we are, and without challenges, what would life be?
You need to establish a home, modest as it might be, where you can rest your head at night in peace. You need to establish some positive cash flow, modest as it might be, to cushion yourself against the blows of fate. You need to keep those who want to hurt you far enough away that they cannot do so; you need to turn to those who want to help you in your time of need - a true friend is glad to be there when you need them.
All of these things might take substantial time and energy to put in place. That's life. That's your life. You get up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other. Know this: you have already done some very difficult things in life, and you can do this, too. And: there will come a day that you will look up and see that putting one foot in front of the other has led you out of the woods and into a clearing.
yours, AMIF
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 13, 2007 14:53:31 GMT -5
Looking-up--- thank you for keeping in contact. My slip is a sign that I need to persue my recovery and get more entrenched in it. The 1st while when I was involved with posting here every day ( when I had free access to a computer), I was holed up for hours reading and posting and contacting.... I wasn't getting alot done in other areas of my life, but I was doing good in keeping from slips. Its waht I have to doto keep sober.
AMIF- Thanks You are talking the neccesities that I have to take care of that are most important to me now. They seem simple but when I'm depressed and feeling isolated it doesn't seem to take very much to trip me up in the simplist of tasks. I go away from town with my work for an average of 24 hours every 2nd day and have a place to stay there with all the facilities, and I am lined up to live in a motorhome soon that is walking distance to the station that I am dispatched to work from. I don't really want to move into the motorhome just yet because there is a friend who's family uses its kitchen right now while he is building the kitchen in his fancy home that he is finishing building. He has a wife and 3 kids and they will want to naturally use it at all times and I work around the clock shifts that often leave me sleeping in the middle of the day.
It is very hard for me to face all the multitude of things that I have to do while having to live face to face with "the wreckage of the past". I have caused alot f grief and pain while caught in this dis-ease. I even have trouble defining the disease. Depression, addiction, attention deficits, disfunctional backgrounds, spiritual disease, its all just ingredients in a witches brew to me. I need personal contact.
Last night I got into town from work at 21 oclock. I had been training 22 hours out of 30&was worn out, hungry, confused, ad struggling with the notion of anoter slip. I rode my bicycle past "bear square", a place in town where there is live entertainment at night during the summer. I ran into an acquantance who knew of my situation who was also a pastor ( and a shrewd businessman) he asked me some personal questions about my plight. I was very evasive because a) his wife is friends with my wife and there and there would be a chance for my wife to get information, control, and b) because I have had trouble with the religious route and it has only lead to more isolation and shame.
At the same time I have a very nagging doubt as to my perception of these encounters: suspicious, over-cautious. I don't want contact with people my wife is in conact with but that pretty much cuts out every personal relationship I have kept. I can keep in contact with some but because of many things she has said to me I fear that she has this "power" to turn them against me. There is some glaring evidence of this and sometimes she tells me of people who confirm to her that I am the a- hole she says I am etc. So I can't tell reality from paronoia sometimes.
just wrting this has been good for me . I just realized that the best way to deal with this situation is to be open about it with these people. I will make a plan to do this and be honest in saying to these people that I fear that either they will be information gatherers for my wife or they will condemn me in the same way she does.
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Post by LookingUp on Aug 13, 2007 14:58:21 GMT -5
will make a plan to do this and be honest in saying to these people that I fear that either they will be information gatherers for my wife or they will condemn me in the same way she does. Great plan. Glad you're making plans to live in the motorhome - I think you're wise in waiting until it isn't in joint-use with the man's family. LookingUp
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 14, 2007 14:59:58 GMT -5
Thanks Looking-up.
Today i phoned to arrange a meeting with one of my kids. I think they are uncomfortable. My son said we should go for dinner "all of us", meaning my wife also. That made me sad. He still has wishes for us to get back together and my wife doesn't.
I am realising that at this point the realtionship is dead. I don't think my wife wants anymore to do with me but I have given her my all my paychecks from work and only ask for an allowance, and live in a tent riding a bike around so her life goes on less disturbed. I think she just doesn't put the nail in the coffin and say she's going to a lawyer because she will be forced to make sacrifices.
She lived suspicious and angry at me for years. She lived feeling crazy, keeping the 'secret' of my sex addiction from alot of people to avoid shame.
The last time she caught me was the straw that broke the camels back- for both of us.
Now, out on my own I have to struggle to get help and get healthier.
I have been making a conscious decision to stop defending/minimizing/ and get out of denial about the effects of my disease on our relationship.
Now as I admit to my wrongdoings, she is finally validated and vindicated. Even the things she accused me of doing that I didn't do, she believes! Trust is totally lost. She has talked to other people about it and got it out in the open. She would look foolish going back with me after all I have done. When we talk she has an interpretation of all the problems stemming from my disease. I can't argue. It would be excusing. I can't deny. She says she lived a lie. She says she tells other women how unattractive i made her feel and all the things she did to improve our relationship and they cried with her. She has been confirmed that she is a beautiful women and that I had destroyed her self image. In order to keep out of denial I have to agree. All I can do is work on my recovery and try to maintain a relationship with my kids.
This seems so inevitable! This paradoxical moment has arrived that I feared so much. After years of me fighting so hard against getting help, not wanting my wife to have the upper hand. I admitted to needing help, got out of denial, and opened to alot of pain. She says its too late. She would know.
Its parodoxical because she used to say that she hated the thought that I would get better on my own but "not do it for her and the kids"
It feels so horrible being the scum of the earth.
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Post by amaninfull on Aug 14, 2007 15:55:18 GMT -5
Timoteiy,
Hang in there, buddy.
One: I think you have absolutely the right instincts about finding someone - pastor, counselor, therapist - to talk to. Someone who has absolutely no interest other than yours. I also think you're right not to choose someone who knows your wife, if for no other reason than that it would put them in an awkward position.
One more thing: yep, it sounds like you messed up pretty badly, and yes, it's reasonable to expect a partner to be very upset about this. However, in reading your account of her behavior, it seems clear to me that your wife has significant issues that are quite unrelated to your trespasses (though her issues may have found their most potent trigger in your trespasses.) Frankly, it sounds like she was a loaded gun waiting to go off, and your confession gave her the excuse.
Whether or not there will be any hope in the future for your relationship with her, it's quite clear that right now the best thing for you is to stay out of her range. I understand that it may be quite a difficult thing to let that deep and long-lasting relationship go, but it seems like that is what is required for your survival right now.
Do the work of establishing yourself as an independent person, and the rest will gradually fall into place. It will. I know.
"All I can do is work on my recovery and try to maintain a relationship with my kids." Yes. That's a beautiful thing.
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 14, 2007 17:30:46 GMT -5
Thanks Amaninfull
To be fair to my wife, I would have to say that she is actually a very good person. Everyone loves her, she has a sociable demeaner that people naturally gravitate to her for conversation and advise. She is beautiful, a good cook, she has looked after ourt children and has a genuine concern for other people. She has a family, that although there has been a fair measure of dsyfunction, alcoholism. violence and crazyness that would seem hard to fathom, they love her and keep in contact. She was abit spoiled in her family, while I was more of the neglected type. I couldn't hold a candle to her.
What I feel like is that all I have got is her angry side, her resentments, and while she has this popular following of freinds, I am the focus of scorn. I have seen the rage and violence and now, as I admit to my wrongdoings, she says, "BECAUSE I CAUGHt you, YOU A-HLE", and feels exponentially more righteous in this anger. I need to talk about this over and over and start the grieving process.
As an addict, getting to feelings is difficult enough for me. I have to get stopped in my addiction long enough.
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 14, 2007 17:52:59 GMT -5
I would pull the plug on this realtionship and get the lawyer, split everything and move on with my life. I just can't help holding on to that last glimmering hope, however small, that she would want to be with me. I fully understand if she doesn't and it would be hell to go back there now. All in all I think that even when I get better, stop acting out, become emotionally available, she will still be angry if I am the object of blame for all the bad., ANd there's no sign that she'll ever think differently. Let her vent, validate the feelings, take it like a man, they say. Listen to the tears, the accusations, the anger, the hurt, yes allow those feelings. My wife has allways been a very emotional being and expresses severely. That's no guarantee for healing our relationship, or her, for that matter. It is just a sign that I accept how I hurt her so deeply.
Only the close people in our lives can hurt people in the way that I hurt my wife. Only when trusting someone with your heart can you get hurt. That's the thing about this disease. It stops you from getting hurt. And loved.
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