Love and Lies

I have been in SA for almost three months and my entire outlook and life experience has been uprooted and changed completely. I still stumble from time to time (being judgmental and superficial) but I have been absolutely transformed by the surrender of idolatry and sin.

Something to consider, if your husband didn't always love you deeply - do you feel he'd be going to the lengths he's gone to free himself from sin?

Have you read any books on sexual addiction and marriage? May I suggest a few good books?

www.amazon.com/Hope-After-Betrayal-Addiction-Marriage/dp/0825439353/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334592542&sr=1-1

www.amazon.com/Boundaries-When-Take-Control-Your/dp/0310585902/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334592497&sr=8-1

www.amazon.com/Every-Heart-Restored-Healing-Husbands/dp/030745942X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334592522&sr=1-1

I think a lot of change and opening of eyes can happen in a few months. Letting go a burden of secrecy and shame that one has been carrying all one's life and finding a hope one never thought was there are huge things. At the same time, I think recovery is (or should be) a long process of deep exploration and transformation, and that it's nowhere near over after the first year.

About his love: I don't think one can understand addicts if one tries to conceptualize us as rational actors whose behavior is consistent. It doesn't make sense that a person with depression who has a fine family and home and job and friends should be unable to get out of bed in the morning, but that's how it works. It doesn't make sense that a person with OCD who wants a snack and is in a hurry can't just this once just eat the M&Ms without first counting them and sorting them by color and arranging them, but some people have to do that. What we as addicts do is no more rational than that.

The self-perception of an addict is very strongly that we are split into multiple pieces. For me, there was a good Tim and an addict Tim, but there was also Tim the father, Tim the teacher, Tim the Christian, maybe others. Those pieces didn't really talk to one another. The addict piece and the good Tim were strongly at war with one another. I identified with the good Tim and not with the addict, and so on some level I perceived the addict's actions as not real, not mine. I would never do that. I won't do that again. That's over. It wasn't me. I don't have to think about it. I can't think about it. It wasn't real.

So we behave inconsistently and deplorably in part because we really perceive ourselves as having more than one personality, and because we hate and struggle to deny the existence of the addict within us. How can we love and lie? From inside, it feels like different people doing the loving and the lying. Or, perhaps better, we tell ourselves that we lie to avoid causing pain for some inexplicable act that we can't figure out why we did and that we desperately long never to repeat. It's just this once. Of course, the lies also protect us from exposure which feels equivalent to death, and they enable our addictive behavior. I'm not sure we always see that.

Can we love in the midst of all that fragmentation and brokenness and all those lies? Yes and no, I think. I loved my wife and kids as well as I could love anybody. I cared for them and I knew my responsibilities. I wanted to love them. I certainly didn't hate them or want them harmed. Knowing the pain I was causing my wife by my addictive behavior was really agonizing to me. Holding my newborn first child and looking down at his worried face was an experience of love I'll never forget.

But did I love them, really? Not in a deep way. I had spent my whole life running from my own feelings. I ran from fear and from shame and from a sense of inadequacy; but in hiding from people and hiding from those feelings, I hid from all my other feelings, too. So while I loved them as best I could, that wasn't very well. Love requires an openness and trust and vulnerability I wasn't capable of. I did my best, and I longed to do better, but my love was a pretty pale thing.

As always, I'm not writing this with pride or with a demand for acceptance or forgiveness or whatever. I'm just trying to tell my story as honestly and clearly as I can in the hope that it may offer some understanding to those who haven't been through this particular hell of what it feels like to be inside it. What you do with that understanding, or whether on reflection you think that I've yet become able to see myself sufficiently clearly that I have any understanding, is entirely up to you.

Peace,

Tim M.

LOVE "the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another, accompanied with deep care and affection"


By asking what is love? is it safe to assume this is in direct response with my post? I realized love is a lot of different things to alot of different people but I think we all have a general idea of what I was referring to

I see what you are saying about the acts and selfishness. My husband discusses this with me often. Thanks

Tim: Thanks for sharing. I might develop when I am in dialogue.

Thank you. Writing helps me clarify my own thoughts and feelings. As I said recently on another board, I write these long posts because that's the only way to find out what's in them. But I'm very pleased if in my recovery I am learning at times to touch my own heart well enough that I can touch someone else's, too.

I've missed your voice here, but I realize that you have a lot of self-care on your own plate right now.

Be well,

Tim M.