Addiction and Marriage

A respected blogger in the field of female porn addiction, Beggar’s Daughter, had an interesting thing to say today:

“…It has opened up healing conversation after healing conversation. After the most recent, I realized that the fear I had of what the future might look like is a fear any female struggler is going to share. It’s not unique to me simply because I’m an author and speaker; it’s shared by all of us.

No one has been there. The leading female voices on female porn addiction are all still single. There aren’t resources for marriages where the wife is the addict/former addict. There aren’t counselors trained to handle this specific scenario.”

Now, I’m the first to admit that I’m not a “leading voice”, but I sure am an authority on it, being that I live it day in and day out.

A little background: Jim and I were friends for years before we dated. All that time the addiction was either brewing or being active. I hid it really, really well. When we dated, it certainly affected my life and our dating relationship, but I was utterly clueless about it. It wasn’t until after we broke our engagement that I figured things out and got counseling. Jim and I stayed broken up for a good 9 months and I was free to concentrate on my recovery unhindered. HUGELY important.

When the conversations about getting back together started happening, I was so scared. I had been so messed up. Although he had absolutely played a part in our breakup, I feel like a lot of it was my fault. I had given my counselor (which happened to also be his counselor) permission to talk to him about my addiction. That might have been a little unorthodox, but I had no clue where to start. After that, one day I gave him my recovery journal, where I had been utterly honest with myself. It was brutal, but I wanted him to see the journey I had gone through. I wanted him to know that the sobriety that I had fought so hard for was something I valued and didn’t intend to turn my back on.

Fast forwarding 22 years (actually almost 23 from when we started all this!), obviously from this blog I still struggle. Whether that will always be the case I don’t know. I hope not. Sometimes I struggle with being honest with my husband in it–or even after it. He is not my accountability partner. I DO have a woman accountability partner and she gets emails about my internet usage. Jim gets them as well. He also gets what I think are instant alerts (not a weekly digest) where if something looks really fishy they let him know immediately. It’s not foolproof. I think it looks for keywords, and that alerts him when I’m reading an article on a Christian lesbian talking about choosing celibacy. We roll our eyes and move on. I do think I will always have that level of “big brother”, that much I can say.

I obviously can’t speak for how he feels about it. He’s seen me at my worst and he’s seen me when I’m not struggling at all. I think part of the wonder of marriage is he’s seen both, loves me as I am, and will be with me ” ’til death do us part.”

In Which I Practice Self-Care

There’s a sort of movement going on right now about self-care–bubble baths, glasses of wine, “Me time” etc. f you want to practice it, you go right ahead. But I’m not talking about that.

I’m talking about the actual caring of myself–my body, my pain, my self-worth, even my darn teeth.

See, as all of you know, 2017 was, let’s just say a bit of a whirlwind. And there were certain things that HAD TO BE DEALT WITH. LIKE RIGHT NOW.

And I wasn’t one of them.

Oh yes, I absolutely blame myself. My husband is not going to nag me to go to the dentist. Or ask about my nutritional choices. He would view those things as my responsibility–rightly so–and leave them up to me.

But hey, it’s 2018! And I’m in pain. ALL THE TIME. And my teeth haven’t been looked at in…um….well over 18 months. And I stopped taking the medicine I need to take. And I’m eating crap and sugar way too much. And if you look up “sedentary” in the dictionary, well, there’s my picture!

So on the 31st I meet with my new dentist. Feb 1st I see a dietician. I started eating better (or at least paying attention to my choices!) yesterday and mostly recorded those choices in My Fitness Pal (app). I also, because of those good choices, took my meds (which HATE high fat choices and make me pay very quickly). I see my endocrinologist Feb 21st and a nurse practitioner in my new doctor’s office this Friday where I will talk about my back and my chest. My back is the everyday of my life pain thing. My chest….

Here’s the self-worth/happy with myself part. I’m 5′ 1.5″. I weight…well, a lot more than I should, but I’m not rotund. I’m also a 38G. Yes, a G. Such a great letter of the alphabet, but describes a part of my body that I’ve been very unhappy with for many, many, MANY years. I’d like to find out if insurance would cover a breast reduction surgery. If they would, then it’s going to become a conversation between Jim and me. If they won’t, well, I guess we’re stuck because that’s something like $12,000 and that’s not something we have just laying around. I guess I go to counseling to make myself happy with my body?

And oh, how difficult it is to preach “love your body” to my daughters while I’m so dissatisfied with mine!

So there you have it. Me. Aching, overweight, unhealthy me. We’ll see what 2018 holds!

Lightbulb Moment

2017 was CRRRRRRAZY. It was a lot of work, worry and boxes–between getting the house ready to sell, selling the house, trying to find a place to live, moving into the apartment, finding this house, waiting for this house, moving into this house, unpacking in this house…..it just never ended.

Except now it has. With the exception of the basement that needs organization, the remaining drive-up storage shed of stuff that will mostly go in the basement (but not until it is WAY warmer) and the friend who is bringing over our shed stuff (lawn mower, snow blower etc) this weekend, we’re pretty much good to go. The house is, honestly, unpacked. (We worked very hard in December!)

So here we are. There will always be a “to do” list–that’s just the nature of home ownership. Ours is a bit long right now because of all the things that need to be dealt with fairly quickly, but still, the way I put it to Jim the other day feels right:

It’s figuring out what life looks like and how we live it here.

The crazy journey is done. We finally got off the merry-go-round. Now, it’s just LIFE. Making friends, making memories and hopefully finding happiness here.

So many people are picking a work for the year. It took me a bit, but I came up with one this morning:

ENGAGED

2017 I was utterly focused in our lives. I had no extra energy or desire to be outward focused or bandwidth to be engaged in anything other than us.

2018 is different. Living so much closer allows for involvement. My initial reaction is always to say “NO!” to almost everything. But I’m fighting that and rethinking it. Yes, I actually CAN help with the art show–we live really close now, so it’s not a horrible burden. You want to stay after school? Sure! Go ahead! I’m only 10 minutes away now, so it doesn’t matter. You want to get involved in a school program? Ok! We’re only 7 minutes from there, so sure!

It’s weird. But GOOD weird!

Happy 2018 everyone! Thanks for sticking around for the past year. I can’t wait to see what this one has in store for us!