the traditional first step

A million drafts from the last couple weeks, countless angles to explore, some undeniable issues to face, and I’m circling and circling where to start. Brutal as it is, there is really only one place: the traditional first step.

Hello, my name is Eb, and I’m codependent to a sex addict.

whew, and now to explain that too much.

I have spent the last year in a relationship with a man who is a compulsive sex addict. I’ve coped, better and worse, with that knowledge for the last six months or so.

Complicated… just a bit. I fell madly for him from the very start. When Joe and I first began it was immediate spark, a glorious fall. It’s amazing, finding those rare intense connections. And it’s harder still to forget them – that intense love you can literally feel, the dreams and hopes, the incredibly good times, all the ways that you’ve been so good together. Even as the nightmare unfolds -a downward spiral of negative reinforcement, a trainwreck, too many broken promises and things gone awry- still, you hold those things, they hold you.

It hasn’t helped, either, that from the very beginning it’s been complicated, and there are a lot of other hopes and fears and karma and choices that were tied in. My relationship with him has been tied up in and symbolic of so many other existential life issues I’ve been wrestling with the last few years. There are a lot, too, of other issues, fears, and weaknesses, mine and his, that have factored in. It’s difficult to extricate them all, to deconstruct and clearly see what is what. Intertwined shades of grey. There’s a lot to hold onto and a lot to consider, but I’ll save that for another time…

When I discovered, the first time, that Joe had been cheating, and not just sleeping around, but some straight up depraved shit, I exploded. I did what any good feminist would do: kicked him to the curb with some righteous anger. Hell, as some may recall, I put a goddamn sign around his neck, tarred and feathered the bastard on the street. And goddamn if he didn’t deserve it.

Two weeks later, atomic bomb boom, the impetuous pull of connection, heart and body. we’re having a drink, we’re getting a hotel. He drops me off in a penske, him to work, me to walla, and tears falling. Over the summer, we reconnected. I recognized that he really did have a problem, an illness, and me, I’m too damn empathetic, too understanding, too bleeding a heart. And for better or worse, I fucking loved him, couldn’t forget that spark, the myriad good things. And we talked about it, some, tentatively poked at the issue, ways to be better. but change is slow, and requires consistent daily effort, continually honest acknowledgement of the problem. And we both slipped. Neither of us were really prepared to face it or do something, there was still too much denial of how serious it was or how daunting an issue to address, neither of us really put in the effort or commitment to stop, change. So when he fucked up, I kept reacting worse, yet still clinging to desperate hope for change. And we spiraled further and farther out of control. Though you know you deserve better, your heart still wants them. It’s hard to accept love isn’t enough, that it’s not changing.

“I can’t let it go,
and I can’t get through”

I don’t think I was codependent before, though maybe it was a dormant trait. Either way, in my fumbling attempts to face the problem, I’ve decidedly become so. It’s hard to help, it’s hard to face. This shit has changed me. The nature of the problem of loving a sexual addict, worse one who still hasn’t really faced their problem or stuck to the commitment of change, is that it makes you neurotic. You feel helpless, futile, not good enough, like you’re beating your head against a wall. You can’t make them stop. Even when you understand that it’s their problem, it plays on far too many underlying fears about life, love and our self-worth. A heady task for the strongest of souls to face. It conditions you, even when you resist, to worry, to be jealous, to feel emotionally insecure, to wonder why you’re not enough, to doubt everything, to be neurotic, to be paranoid – afterall, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you, right? And sexual addiction tends to be so much more sneaky than others types of addiction, you never know for sure if/ when they’re slipping, what’s going on, and you can’t necessarily rely on them for full disclosure. So you think too much, and you worry, and it cycles…

and it drives you fucking batshit.

Careful what you wish for, but all the same, it’d've been so much easier, it seems, if he could have just been a drunk or a junkie. A good old fashioned alcoholic, as we said once, while drinking beers in a room full of nitrous crackers and dinner plates of coke. It’s more tangible, easier to point to and harder to deny. It’s a well defined illness. The problem is obvious to you both. And more obvious when they’re acting out. You don’t wonder if and when they’ve slipped: the vomit reeks on the floor, irrefutable proof. The downward spiral, the grip of the illness and its effect on the addict and those around them is undeniable, even in denial. It leaves physical traces, physical destruction.

It’s rather like the difference between physical and emotional abuse: you can’t point to your shattered psyche in the same way you can to a shattered femur. it’s more frustrating, harder to prove, harder for others to see, recognize or intervene, but even so, it’s still just as painful and destructive. Similarly, the illness is not as well known, not as well recognized, and there is still so much silence that surrounds it on all sides. You feel like the battered wife, who after making a stink the first time around, but going back, can’t talk any more about the recent blows. The silence intensifies, ashamed to talk about the struggle. Afterall, you know you should know better, so why are you still here? Because you love him. Why? Who knows.

To be clear: this story does not have a character of The Villain. Part of me would love to stick that label on him. A friend told me he’d save me two years of therapy: it’s not you, it’s him, he’s the problem. But the reality is, he is not the only villain of this tale. There are several. He is a villain. I’m a villain, too. His addiction is a villain, as are my emotional issues. There are probably a few more bad guys in the mix. I try to refrain from labeling the women he fucked around with as villains (though a couple of them knew well enough what they were doing and will remain pettily labeled in my mind as fucking evil Cunts).

All the same, this isn’t a story with a bad guy, with a villain who did all this to me. I don’t think I want to be that passive an object. I want to be a protagonist worthy of accountability, and find a way to be honest enough with myself, clear enough in my understanding, to accept what is mine and reject what is not. It’s neither honest, nor true, nor fair to myself, to paint it black and white, say he did this to me. He’s done a lot, but so have I. There’ve been two of us, and all our assorted baggage, on this handbasket ride through hell. I need to learn to step back, see the roles each of us have played for what they are, accept I what I can and cannot change, and own what is mine.

 

I am codependent to a sex addict. I’ve long skirted the line of manic depression, and the stress of the last year has probably put me in the running for a borderline personality. That was really hard to say, but I’ve said it. I’m ready to drag this out in to the light and pull it all apart. I’m just starting to figure these things out, I’m sure I’ll falter at times. It’s going to be a long road, but I’m on it. again, feel free to comment along the way.

 

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Further reading on sexual addiction, for those curious, affected or afflicted by it:

• Cosa : Codependents of Sex Addicts / Co-Sex Addicts
• S-Anon : Family and friends of sexaholics
• SA : Sexaholics Anonymous
• SCA : Sexual Compulsives Anonymous
• SAA : Sex Addicts Anonymous

Please feel free to share, my writings and these links, with anyone you think might be facing similar struggles. It’s difficult and lonely, and terribly destructive to the soul. Feel free to reach out, though I don’t necessarily know what I’m doing either.

Besides my own reckoning, I hope this process sheds a little more light.

 

~ by velvetmonkeywrench on 26 February, 2011.