OK, so for a year now, I have know that I am married to a sex addict. I've always known that something was wrong in our relationship. It was pretty obvious. Unfortunately, although it was obvious there was a problem, I was clueless what the problem was. 8 years of marriage and learning investigative skills to rival any local detective, I discovered the vast scope of my husband's addiction, including prostitution, massage parlors, pornography, phone sex, online singles sites, and the list goes on... Upon my discovery, my husband was immediately agreeable to entering into treatment. That has been a blessing - for the most part.
The one difficult thing that has come out of us being in treatment is the fact that he had to disclose to me the nature of all the things he has done in the past. I have been able to start (finally) putting 2 and 2 together to realize the enormous amounts of lies he has told me over the years. So with this new found information, I have become completely untrusting of him.
So what do I believe? How do I know he is telling the truth? What I have decided is that I have to observe his actions rather than listen to his words. His words have hurt me so much over the years that they mean essentially nothing to me now. So her I sit, trying to figure out if our marriage has a chance to survive. And the only truth I can rely on is my own observations, and what's in my gut.
This has created another problem. Throughout the course of our relationship, he has gotten me so twisted around that I stopped trusting my gut (and as it turns out that I was usually totally on point!) He had convinced me that what I believed (he was cheating) was absolutely false, and that I in fact was crazy for thinking that way.
So here I sit, attempting to piece my life back together. I believe that he is currently sober and in recovery (60+ days now). He has created in me this doubt of myself that I never knew before him. So more than anything, I have to relearn how to believe in myself. That's what I have to believe!
About Me
- Laura
- I'm a 30-something mother of 2 adorable children. In August of 2007 I discovered that my husband of 8 years had a sex addiction. After my world stopped spinning, I began attempting to rebuild myself (from the damage of living with an addict for so many years). Additionally, my husband was agreeable to getting into treatment, therefore he is still living at home and we are currently attempting to salvage a marriage amidst all the chaos. Here is the story of some of our (my) day to day chaos.
