Shame in the World of Sex Addiction

What does one do with the shame?

Perhaps you left your sex addict. Perhaps you stayed. Perhaps you left and then returned for reasons that are only known to you. Perhaps you don't know what to do. Perhaps you are a sex addict. Or a co-addict. Love addict. Romance addict. Relationship addict. Perhaps it's all of these. Perhaps it's none. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

Perhaps you are me.

At the end of the day when I am laying my tired body down to rest, my mind begins to wage war. The images scorch before my mind's eye, searching for a place to make their home.

I no longer want this body to be home to the memories. And so, the endless riddle is, what does one do with the shame?

When it began to dawn on me that my partner had a sexual addiction, I did nothing. I believed that if I loved him through it, showed him my unconditional love, that somehow he would be healed. And in doing so, I nearly destroyed myself. And honestly, when I say I did nothing, that is not true.

I enabled him.

I became a willing participant. I owned his shame. I owned his disease. And for a while, I believe I became his disease.

In my journey towards recovery, I have had to face the very real fact that I absolutely cannot change the past. I am a natural born control freak, so this has been challenging for me to accept. Shame revisits me often. I greet it like an old friend, cry with it, scream with it, and sleep with it. It visits me in my dreams, in shadows of pain, in twisted memories. Always exaggerating the evil it thinks it is.

And yet, in moments of clarity, I have come to realize that shame is nothing but love at the other end of the spectrum. I am propelled towards love and forgiveness with shame licking at my heels. I cannot seem to run fast enough. The awakening for me has been in the realization of this concept: anything that brings us back to love, is simply love in disguise. And so now, I tell my old friend that it is no longer needed, it has already done what it was supposed to do.

Shame has inspired within my soul a longing, a search for perfect love and complete forgiveness, acceptance, and redemption, and, yes, a soul mate, beautiful sunsets, full moons, magical beginnings, and happily ever-afters.

And I am finding that this road is leading back to Me.

Gobshite?

I have been tossing and turning since I posted that last post. Mostly because it somehow feels like self serving gobshite ( a word I can't seem to get out of my head). Fuckery.

It isn't. Fuckery, that is. Self serving- perhaps. Fuckery? No.

It's just that I came from such fabulous insanity, and the only way I could spend my life, intimately, with someone else is if they, too, experienced insanity. Why?

I don't know, other than that is the only thing that ever felt right. I needed someone that was broken- too.

But, there is a catch to this broken. Who ever I was to be with had to be broken, but then they had to pull themselves up from the depth of despair with their finger nails and chose to live for themselves. Chose to live well, despite the odds. Fuck the odds.

What would you expect of a little girl who spent the first conscious years of her life in the grips of a man who laughed at her as she wore the mess of his abuse? And, who had to laugh with him, or he would give her something to cry about. Then this little girl spent occasional Sundays submersed in alcohol induced insanity- with her real father who she didn't know and never would. And grandparents, one of which who only grabbed her preteen breast on special holidays, when he was really drunk, after her grandmother urged her physically to "sit on your futhers knee . Go...veronna(again, she meant grandfather)." The cheek of him and her.

Where would you expect that little girl to be? On the street, selling her body? You wouldn't be alone. I saw it in there eyes as I grew up, rebellious- they thought I was there.

Oh, dear.

And then there is a boy.

This isn't a sad story- although, I understand it evokes that emotion. It is just a story about a girl and a boy, who against the odds grew up, grew up to want something more for themselves. Chose to live well, to live happy. Then they met each other.

Considering my requirement of having someone in my life that could appreciate life the same way I did and do, I think that the odds are incredibly small that, who ever that person was, that they wouldn't have addiction issues. I think, that I am not addicted to anything more sever than cigarettes is amazing.

So, there it is. Beside me stands a man that can understand and know where I came from and I him- and, we don't have to talk about it. It just happens, that after all that, he is a heroin addict... in recovery.

My point being- sometimes it's not that people choose to stay with an addict, they chose to stay with someone that has an addiction.

I think there is a difference. I know there is.

mantra: there but for the grace of god go I

Too Ugly For N.A.

My husband is a doofus.

I was getting dressed for my meeting yesterday, which (subsequently) I somehow managed to be too late to make. My man was on the couch, and he was so handsome and silly, and I kept sitting down next to him and kissing him, and it made me late...

But all day, I was talking about how we'd go to the meeting together. See, he told me that he wants to start going to meetings, but that he's going to have to say that he's going to go and then not go and make me cry fifty or sixty more times before he actually makes it to one and starts really being ready to go. I decided to make yesterday be #1 in the times when we'd do that little dance of madness.

So I'm getting dressed, and saying, "I'm so glad you're coming with me to the meeting tonight! It's like a dream come true! You're such an angel prince baby husband pie from heaven!" And he would say, "Yes! I am! Let's buy me things! Please make lunch for me!"

We did it all day. It was awesome. You should have been there.

So finally, I'm about to walk out the door with 5 minutes to get to the meeting that is 25 minutes across town (I ended up just going to buy groceries and run some errands instead), and he says that he doesn't want to go because he looks too bad. He said he's too ugly to go to meetings...and he wasn't playing. He meant it that he thinks he's too ugly to go to meetings.

I wanted to cry, or slap him, or shake him. First, he's fucking gorgeous...a gorgeous, gorgeous, beautiful man. And second, last time I checked, you don't have to be in a fantastic place to start going to fucking Narcotics Anonymous. It's not like it's for folks at the top of their game, especially when you're just starting out. He said, "I look so bad, and I don't have a job. I want to start going when I look better and feel better and I'm working so I won't feel like such a fuck-up."

Isn't that the saddest thing?

The End.

For Mantra

So I have been thinking after reading your post this morning and feeling how much you are hurting...I can feel it at just the exact pitch and with the precise ache in the gut and the juxtaposition of rage and terror and disappointment all wrapped up...

One thing I've realized lately, though, is that no matter what I decide to do, I've got to take care of me. And I have to make the right decisions for me, regardless of what is right or wrong or what I think I deserve or whatever...I'm mostly thinking of all those posts that are about how we deserve better.

We do deserve better. We do. But if you want to be with your husband, and if you choose him, I don't think you should be sorry. If you love him, and he is a father to your children, and you want to be with him even though he is very sick, that is a choice that you can make without feeling shame. It took me a while to be able to accept that for myself...that I'm constructing the narrative for my life, and nobody can intervene in my story. If I choose my husband, even in active addiction, that's my choice, and I'll do it if it's right for me.

That said, I'm also absolutely committed to making sure that my needs are met and that I am safe. My money, my things, my sanity--it's important to me to protect those things. If I want some goddamned hardwood floors and my husband isn't able to help me buy them, then, I'll buy them for my goddamned self. That will mean that I can't loan him money, and that's not my problem. If he sulks about it, that's his bucket. Whatever I want or need, I can provide for myself...emotionally or physically or spiritually. As long as I look at my time with my husband as a gift and enjoy the best of it and look within to find everything else I need, we can be married and succeed.

I don't know. I'm doing the codie thing where I imagine that I'm wise and that I have a solution because I just know all too well how much you're hurting, and I hope you aren't beating yourself up for staying. If you don't want to leave, that's your life and your decision, and you're not stupid for it.

Please take care of yourself, and let me know if there's anything I can do for you.You can always come over!

The lost warrior...

I was happy when my copy of the movie "300" arrived at my work today. I ordered the Blu-Ray version of the dvd to play on my 50" flat screen monitor with all the glory of 1200 watts of 7.1 surround sound. I am a man, I beat my chest and let out a mighty warrior call that my ancestors would be proud of. Of course I saw the movie once before, on the big screen in all of it's blood thirsty glory. But now the comic I cherished, which became the movie I worshiped, now belonged to me in its spectacular 1080p of high definition clarity. The walls rumbled, as the first battle scene rocked the sub-woofer, and in that moment I knew my true self, and...felt such sadness at what I have been reduced to as a man.

Sounds silly I know. But it's not. It's sad that the definition of a man is determined by the car he drives, or his home stereo system owns, or the money he makes. Say it's not true, tell me that only some judge men this way, by the number of women he sleeps with, by how good he looks? Yes I know I am reaching to the far end of the spectrum, but the point I am trying to make is that as a man I have lost my warrior heart. I have lost the sense of conquering, my sense of adventure, and most of all the desire to save the damsel in distress.

As a boy I had little boy dreams, big dreams, dreams of being the hero, of beating the bad guys, of doing daring feats and rescuing the damsel in distress. What happened to those dreams as I grew into a man? I am not sure where those dreams have gone, but I can tell you that without them I am simply bored. So the question is how to recover the masculine heart, the secret ti my soul where I am a MAN, where I can delight in my own strength and wildness.

Where is that spirit of the Spartan Warrior? Who was bred from the age of 7 to become a Warrior, to become a true man; taught that there was no greater honor or sacrifice than to die in battle for the State of Sparta. Where the woman too have the warrior heart, after all it is Spartan woman who give birth to Spartan men. Where love is simple, and the passion is overabundant. Men loved as they fought, and loved to fight.

I want that passion, I ache for the sense of adventure, for the dreams of my youth; to explore and conquer, to battle and win, then come home to my wife and make love to her like there is no tomorrow. But I fear that like the rest of the men of the world, and even more so a weak addict, that I have become a pussy. Especially as an addict, where not only do we feel weak but we are looked upon and told we are weak; weak minded and weak willed.

But that is not the case, not for this man, this man is strong, this man is all man, all heart, and all soul. This man is awakening from his slumber, for I have been sleep walking for way too long. The world is soon mine for the taking, and take I will, conquer I will. First the fear, then recovery; I will fight, and I will rage, and I will never ever say die, and when that sweet taste of victory begins to drip from my brow, and I taste the salty sweat of my achievements, I will find my lady, and remind her of what it is like to be a woman. Something that she nor I will ever forget.