My Soul Aches But I'm Alive

My husband did the race he has trained for all of last year. He was amazing......fastest time he's ever done. He placed 19th out of 300 in his age group from people all over the world. It was exhilerating for him and I was very happy for him.

I was also happy it was over. He made a commitment not to do the same type of race again next year because of the extreme hours of training it requires. He agreed (again) to put dealing with the sex addiction at the top of his list and us getting to the place that we can go to therapy together. Within a week he was talking about doing a marathon so he could qualify for the Boston marathon. Within a week and a half he was talking to his brother about doing a mountain bike race out in Arizona. He has such gusto over it. He didn't say a word about the extra focus on his healing process....no gusto about that.

I do have to say that he has made steady, thorough progress in AA. He keeps telling me he knows he needs to follow the steps and make it all the way through step four - the resentment part before he looks at his sexuality. On many levels he is doing better and I do believe he stopped acting out with porn a year ago in Sept. When the porn was discovered I told him the only way I could stay is if he made a full commitment to face it head on. He has stopped drinking. His mind is clearer.

I don't see him making his sexuality a priority. Even when a sex addict embraces his recovery there will be difficulties. What are our odds in this situation if he doesn't embrace it. I can't keep living like this. I have made healing my own issues around sexuality from my childhood a priority, especially since the porn discovery. I have faced so many things and been painfully honest with myself. I've learned all I could about sexual addiction to understand with greater compassion toward my husband. I know in my heart that I can't stay under these circumstances. It's too big for me. I told him that I don't know what is right for him but I know it isn't good for me to keep going like this.....waiting....waiting....waiting.....

I told him tonight that if he hasn't come to the place by the first of the year to begin working on this together then I need to leave, at least until he decides he is ready or he doesn't want to do it. I need to deal with it wholeheartedly - full on as a couple. I said everyone has different needs and if his is to tip toe through this then I'm not the person for him to do it with. It was so painful and scary to say it but I had to. I can't stay in this house and continue to feel that everything else is more important. The message I get is that I'm not important. He must not know how deeply this has hurt me, to just keep casting it aside. I, at times almost feel that he has no understanding of what happened to me from discovering he was looking at porn for all those years.....knowing how I felt about it. My soul was shattered into a million pieces.

He doesn't want me to leave. He thinks I won't be coming back. He said he'll be too resentful and angry at me for leaving. He feels he's doing the best he can. I feel almost at a loss as what to do. In order to cope with the inability to deal with this as a couple for over a year, I find that I am in a constant state of disengaging from him as my husband, as my lover and life partner. I am with him for today. It doesn't feel good.......in a way, it is starting to feel like a slow death of our marriage. We're better friends again, and I have regained some of the loss of respect I had for him. We enjoy one another's company. He's easy to like.

Nothing changes the fact that I feel deep in my gut that if he doesn't truly face this then I will be decimated by some future discovery, event, etc. that has to do with his sexual addiction. It will show up again - it doesn't even take guess work to know it will happen. I feel it in my bones.

I keep reaching to reclaim myself in the midst of knowing I am not getting the very commitment that was made to me over a year ago. It feels like I'm losing my self-respect. I feel brokenhearted. My soul aches.

Today I was looking at a magazine and came across an ad for On Star Emergency Service. Steve Spence was driving home when he was hit head-on and knocked unconscious. It's the quote that Steve Spence made that left me in laughter (bizzarely so...like the cheshire cat or something - I felt my inner madness)...you know those times when you are feeling overwhelmed and something hits you just the right way and you realize the absurdity and ironic dark humor we all have in our lives. This guy had been in a car crash and almost died. I related to this man's statement. It's how I have felt over finding out my husband had a porn problem and sex addiction. The fact that I could find a connection to his feelings over a completely different life event left me laughing until I felt better.

"The collision knocked me unconscious. I'm so thankful I came out of it alive." Steve Spence