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Post by lee1234 on Dec 17, 2007 0:31:33 GMT -5
OK, so we are early in this process, but I just need to know when empathy is going to develop so we can have a normal honest converstion about feelings. I just went in to visit with him in the next room. We laid around for a while snuggling and playing. I asked him how he was doing urges/relapses, etc. He said fine, nothing to report. He asked how I was. I said I was having a hard time being relaxed around him, having a hard time feeling close to him. To be honest, I am trapped between wanting to love him and wanting to hit him. I want so badly for him to be a husband and father to this family. I want it so bad for him. And my own physical needs are returning, and I want to be able to be intimate with him very badly... but I can't get past the problems we have. My mind kills any spark I have. My brain tells me STOP! Haven't you learned? It's way too early to be intimate.
So, after telling him very little of those emotions, just that I couldn't relax around him, he rolls over and says nothing.... and my brain was right... I have no business being intimate with him yet. He can't seem to process that my feelings of hurt will last for a while. I don't know if he can handle hearing them yet. I want so badly for him to be able to hear me and protect me and love me the way a man should love and protect his wife, but he can't. If that's not a sign that we aren't ready for intimacy, I don't know what is... I got up and left, returned to my work. It's the only thing giving me positive reinforcement right now besides my daughter. So when she's asleep, I work.... All I can say is I hope things will get better... I want a husband again. I want a man to love me and protect me and take care of all my needs. Is that too much to ask?
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Post by zerotolerance on Dec 17, 2007 1:37:36 GMT -5
No, it's not too much to ask, in general, but it sounds like it is obviously too much to ask of him, at this point anyway. He will only gain empathy when he egages in growing a lot of it imo. Healing for me has been a journey I'd describe as growing empathy, and I did it by learning everything I could, about me, about him, about others, about p, about the harms, about love, about the soul, about mental health, sexual health, dysfunction, abuse, etc.... P-ng creates an upside down, outside in view, rather than the correct right side up, inside out. It's not always a two way street, and there are lots of dead ends. While thinking from that perspective it is pretty much impossible to put oneselve in someone elses shoes. He may not feel it in him, an thus then be able to imagine it in others like healthy ppl do whatsoever. They just don't see a need to do that, cause we're the ones messed up, not them. We should be polishing their shoes per se according to their p warped views. When their view is upside down, outside in, and backwards, they can't even begin to image what we are really talking about anyway. The only way out is for him to do the work of seeking a new view, THE TRUTH, rather than pretending that you are just defective, or whatever he rolled over and thought about. He has to WANT TO think of you, him, and the relationship, and what's wrong, and how to fix it, and WANT TO get it, and WANT to change it, and take NEW actions to ENSURE IT. If he always does what he's always done, then you're always gonna get what you always got.
What's he doing as far as recovery work?
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Post by LookingUp on Dec 17, 2007 10:08:38 GMT -5
My husband does those types of things and he's been sober for 11 months and PA has been an issue for several years with him promising he'd quit. Very infrequently, he will have an A-Ha moment and I think have some limited empathy and some nominal honest communication. It's slow - he's had decades of faulty thinking to undo to even want empathy. I remember about two years ago I talked to him about his lack of empathy - his response was "my definition is empathy is sympathy - and nobody died so I don't give it." Aurgh. I don't think he was being intentionally mean - it was just where he was at the time - totally unable to look past his me-me-me attitude in the emotional realm. He is tops for doing things to help me - cooking, laundry, cleaning, running errands, ets - just is clueless how to be supportive emotionally or how to be a good listener... he's slowly learning as I learn those skills and then he mimics me (at least that's my opinion).
It's my understanding they use porn to numb emotions and avoid reality. THus, to feel empathy (feel harmony of other's feelings), they first have to learn to feel their own emotions. When you first stop an addiction - you not only have the ongoing emotions to feel and learn to express - you have the stuffed emotions.
When I quit numbing life with my food addiction, it took about 4 years in weekly counseling and weekly Overeater's Anonymous before I started having empathy again. Unfortunately, there isn't a quick fix.
It seems I read somewhere that it takes 3 to 5 years of sobriety plus active recovery to regain what the addiction stole.
LookingUp
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Post by mo4wo1 on Dec 17, 2007 11:21:28 GMT -5
I believe my H empathizes with the pain I feel & has come to empathize with the feelings I have had for years & why I have reacted the ways I have over the years. It's a huge part of why he has been hiding so much for the last 2+ years, to not cause me pain, despite the fact of the flawed thinking that takes. Before then it was to avoid what he saw as "inconvenience" (my "nagging", "harping" & "b'ing"). The addiction has him in it's grips, still, so he hasn't stopped everything. And his very ingrained rational to lie and/or mental "issue" regarding this (what I feel is an) apparent need to lie is part of his reasoning to continue.
What I am saying is, I believe my H gets that the behavior is wrong & that it hurts me. But I seriously do not think he knows how to stop.
Or he's a big ole faker & is doing one of the most elaborate games on me to get me to leave, which I can see too considering who his parents are & how they were/are.
But my heart, my instincts & my soul tells me he does get that I am in pain. The guilt, shame & empathy just isn't enough to snap him out of his addiction, though. It just is.
Now that I think about it, as long as I have known him, he's always "empathized" with his mother. He's always excused her behaviors (neglect of him & his brother, the decades long affair, her lies & manipulation) due to his father's behaviors (physical & verbal abuse, manipulations, lies). He feels empathy for characters in movies & stories! So much so that sometimes, he has to leave the room because he'll feel so embarrassed or afraid as if it were him in the story/movie & the scene was really occurring. He even holds his breath during underwater scenes!
He has empathy. He just didn't have it for me back then. Maybe due to objectifying me to the point of non-realness. But then again, lol...
He has told me that he "felt" the pics we regularly used would ask "Why don't you come to us anymore? Are we not good enough?" or they would feel "neglected" when he would cut back or focus on different porn for a time. They were very much like imaginary girlfriends.
Crazy stuff, I know.
Wow. I need to reread this crap.
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Post by lee1234 on Dec 17, 2007 13:10:22 GMT -5
He's doing a recoverynaition workshop and therapy. His first session by himself is today and has another one Friday. Then we get together again with the therapist the week after. We had one together last week. I've put K9 on the computers so he can't access P and so far we are going on three weeks of celibacy. He had one slip that I know of where I caught him m/b w/o p. Another day he had a serious depressive episode where he barely moved all day (last week). I didn't fix him a dinner plate and he had an angry outburst as a result. I know I should be sympathetic when he has a depressive episode, but it felt like I was expected to be his slave. I feel like when I do cater to him on depressive days, it's enabling him to do so. I'm not real sure how best to handle it. But we did talk about it after our daughter went to sleep and that's an improvement over how we've handled things in the past. So all in all, I think things are improving with occasional set-backs. I do think he expects too much of me as far as my affection and trust go. Less than three weeks have passed since d-day, and I just don't feel emotionally close to him yet. I still need time to rebuild that. It's going to take more time. I just don't understand why he thinks less than three weeks is enough time to recover from years of p addiction. He IS doing more to overcome this problem than ever before, and that effort should be rewarded. He is back in our home now and part of our lives. He's just going to have to be more patient for the love to grow back.
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Post by zerotolerance on Dec 19, 2007 16:22:09 GMT -5
Three weeks is not long enough to erase how ever many years of reenforcing bad behaviors he's engaged in. More likely than not, he just recalled some of the p in his mind that he used to mb too. That's not, not p-ng, it's just not using NEW p. My h gets depressed when he can't get his p fix too. The reason he probably thinks 3 weeks is long enough, is because he's not really addressing the problem. He doesn't see the severity as it really it is. Doing more to overcome it is not actually overcoming it yet. Esp if he's not doing it for the right reasons. He may be doing it "for you", and if so, then he probably expects you to do something for him in return. My h plays tit/tat games like that, and he expects me to always read his mind, rather than him having to actually communicate. And he gets disappointed all the time by expecting me to do stuff that I have no intentions of doing because I am not an appliance he can use that way. I'm not babying a 50+ year old man. It is enabling when we do that imo. It's not your place to cater to him, that's an objectified p-induced FALSE expectation of us imo. If my h wanted supper, and I cooked, which I rarely do anymore, then he can drag himself up and come downstairs to get it, just like you dragged yourself up to fix it. It sounds to me like your h maybe having withdrawal symptoms. You should be supportive, but not enabling. Don't cater to him, and don't baby him, because that won't help whatsoever. One factor of the problem is their sense of masculinity is so ingrained with the p/mb, they get depressed because they think that without it, they will no longer be men, or some other nonsense. They give their souls to p, and when we take the p away, it must feel like they are loosing thier souls and their manhood when in reality they didn't have either to begin with because they aleady gave it to p. Continuing to use just prevents them from having to recognize these facts. His fantasy view of himself is collapsing so he's desperate to feel like he can still control something maybe. You are wise not to let him transfer that bad thinking in to having even more unrealistic expectations of you.
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