Always an empty history

[user=65523]claire[/user] wrote:


Do you think he'd be willing to talk with a perfect stranger like me? I know one thing. We can't go it alone and maybe if he could find some friends who have walked to road and battle their addictions daily then he could begin to walk through it. The other thing is a John Eldredge principle. He needs a real battle to fight and he needs brothers to walk into that battle with him.

Claire,

A couple of things.

You write, "I try so hard to be kind and serving and I am not enough."  I think it's incredibly important to be gentle with yourself and to step away from taking responsibility for his addiction.  I was an addict ore developing addictive behaviors of shame and secrecy and isolation for 20 years before getting married and for as many years of marriage.  Had my marriage ended, I would have carried those behaviors on into my later life.  Nothing my wife could have been or done would have changed that.

The problem is not that my wife isn't enough; it's my deeply-held fear that I am not enough.

Be gentle with yourself.

Why is the history empty?  It's vaguely possible that your browser preferences have been set by accident to clear the history after every session, but of course, it's more likely that he's hiding something.  If he's in recovery and is serious about that, then he should be open to a conversation expressing your concern, and he should be willing to commit to making sure the history is intact, and to any other monitoring software you might ask him to install.

You're right, though, that no amount of monitoring by you can make him become ready to surrender and to become a new human being.  That has to arise from inside himself.  To monitor him in order to help keep you and any children safe is completely appropriate; to monitor him out of a need to control his behavior when he can't control it himself is natural, but I think it will keep you tangled in his problem and will not bring you peace and joy.  At least, all of that is what I think I learn from listening to other partners of addicts, who are the only ones who know.

You say maybe it doesn't matter, and there's a way in which I'm inclined to agree with you.  If he's slipping further and further away - probably further and further away from himself as well as further and further away from you - then in a way, that's the real problem.  What he is running to when hiding matters - distant and impersonal porn, cyber-affairs, and physical affairs that bring you disease are pretty different things - but the emptiness remains a huge issue whatever his drug of choice may be.

I guess that's what I find so striking and sad about your post.  You title it, "Always an empty history," but maybe the deep problem can be said in fewer words, "Always empty."  That's life for addicts, and it's a life we bring to those around us.

Whether or not he finds real fulfillment, may you find it.  You can't fill his emptiness, but you can move to find your own fulfillment.

Just how it seems to a stranger n the other side of the fence.

Tim M.

And for wives of sex addicts......all we have is an empty history.  The lives we thought we were living were an illusion.  My entire life has been a lie.

That's a terrible realization, but it certainly fits with "always an empty history."

In some ways, it's freeing as well.  Once you realize that your entire life has been a lie, it's easier to let go.......because you're letting go of the lie, mourning the "loss" of something that wasn't real.

Forward ho.