My journal

Day 40. No PM.

Things have been hard for my wife lately. She is dealing with a lot right now. On top of all the other highly stressful/emotional events going on in her life right now she has to deal with a husband like me.

Why has she been dealt this hand? What did she do to deserve this? She's being crushed by all this weight. I know because she tells me. I can see it. I can feel it.

The things she tells me scare me. The things she tells me hurt me. I want to believe they are said out pain and anger. I want to believe these things will subside as my wife begins the healing process. I try to keep telling myself that I did this. I'm the cause of this. Maybe if I tell myself enough times the pain I feel from her words will go away. Maybe I'll be able to eventually stand strong like a man and not allow these words to scare me. I pray for anything that will help right now.

I'm just scared to death the healing won't come. I know it takes time. It's only been 40 days since I've used P or psubs or M'd. Big fucking deal right(sarcasm for those who aren't sure). I've been lying to her about my P addiction since we met 9 years ago. She should totally be over it by now right(yet again sarcasm).

If you've read my previous entries you might have seen that I just saw a counselor. My wife hand picked her. She said "this is who I need you to see" at 11:30 at night after a night of unproductive back and forth. She told me she is like one of the only CSAT counselor in our major metropolitan area. I called and scheduled an appointment the very next day. The appointment was the following day. The counselor seems like she can really help me and even my wife after just the first session where half of it was paperwork formalities and the other half was sharing my background and her sharing knowledge that was applicable to me. I keep catching myself wishing the next appointment will hurry up and get here because I want all the tools I can get to ensure I have the best chance at eventually bringing healing to my wife and this family.

When I told my wife I had called the counselor and got an appointment, before I had gone to the appointment, she replied by saying she was proud of me and would love join when I and the counselor saw fit. I told her that when I had talked to the counselor to schedule the appointment she had already invited my wife to the appointment and that I would love for her to go to my first appointment. My wife's reply kinda hurt but I understood 1,000,000% because I've personally been through a similar situation albeit different. Her mom starts chemo and radiation 3 days before my next appointment(which we thought at the time would be my first rather than second appointment) and that for sure could be some major shit depending on the side affects her mom experiences. Still, the "ill see what I can do" attitude with the shrug shoulders emote that came with the message kinda stung but I completely understand her hesitation with the painful memories I still have of my father's battle with cancer.

Tonight she told me she didn't want to have anything to do with me or my counselor after probably our 7th or 8th straight night of me unintentionally stumbling on one of her triggers as soon as the kids go to bed and then falling down the rabbit hole of pain that only seems to get deeper as the night goes on. Eventually we remember neither of us have eaten all day so we quickly nuke something(most times although there have been times where one or both of us will go to bed without food all day), scarf it down and then pass out if our mind doesn't keep running to keep us up for another couple hours. Up again in 3-6 hours to rinse and repeat.

I don't know what to do anymore while I try my best to keep my mouth closed while she screams obscenities at me. Tells me I'm a narcissist. Tells me nothing I say matters to her. Tells me I need to stop trying to make excuses for my behavior (I feel i made positive progress although I know there are many miles yet to be walked) and to stop gas lighting all the time when a lot of the times I'm just repeating the facts as mind remembers them. Key words are "as my mind remembers them" as I don't want to claim I remember everything or even many things with 100% or even 50% accuracy. There is no doubt I have done my wife wrong. Way wrong. And there is no excuse on god's green earth that could change that. I mean I feel like to a degree yes all of these things she says to me are probably true as i think many of these traits are common human behaviors but to what degree is my prognosis I don't know. Thank God my wife sent me this counselor because I have really high hopes that she can really shed some light and bring some healing to this family.

I don't know how much longer before my wife breaks. Before she does something that she has been saying that I pray has only been said out of anger and pain, anger and pain that I also pray is healable.

I don't know how much longer I can take this without suffering some negative long term affects myself. How would I be able to help my wife heal then?

So what say you, nofap community. Your one of the major reason I've made such small steps but yet such long strides on this crazy journey to a healthy mind and to the ultimate goal of a healthy wife, family and marriage. I want too hear what you have to say about my situation. What insightful knowledge can I pry from your like-damaged-mines? What words of encouragement can I sway you to empatheticly or sympotheticly utter. Hopefully something... or maybe I'm just too boring?

I need something because right now it's struggle city and I'm at a loss.

Until tomorrow... or I guess I should say today...

 

Thanks BB. I will be looking for an AP within the next week I think. Will let you know if your the chosen one.

Thank you.

 

Day 43. No PM no urges. No time for urges. So much going on right now as far as consuming and learning about my situation.

Starting to reach out(direct message) to people I feel comfortable talking to the forums and still have a few more that I will likely reach out to. It's just a matter of being limited on time now.

Need sleep right now. Until next time

 

Day 48. No PM no urges either. Not only that but I have had no urges to do any gaming and very few urges to pick up YouTube. 50 days ago I was indulging in all 4 of these activities unhealthily.

Oddly enough with all these things involving my phone, my screen time hasn't dropped dramatically. Reading nofap has mostly filled the void which for now I am kinda ok with but this will need to change. I will need to start replacing nofap reading time with healthier things that can help me and my marriage recover.

Just created a thread for keeping track of things I'm learning from my counselor.

Until next time...

 

Day 49. No PM or urges.

Busy day. Started rough. Mowed yard and showered. Wife wanted to do some photography related stuff on her PC which I think is great. She has so much going on in her life right now she needs to take some time to herself doing things she loves. She is an intravert so that's her recharge time.

To facilitate this i decided i would load the kids up and take them to the park. Having 3yr old twins pent up indoors after a really hot summer of having to keep them indoors due to heat advisories, when these 2 get bored, you're lucky to keep them from killing themselves or one another with the full focus of 2 parents. I knew I was no match for these 2 if I truly wanted mamma to be able to focus on herself.

She seemed happy about this until I got a little frustrated that the kids weren't helping get dressed to get on our way. I believe she said she felt like I was frustrated that I was having to take care of the kids while she did something she considers enjoyable. I felt like I said on multiple occasions after hearing this that I was only frustrated with the kids selective hearing and that I wanted her to be able to do her photography stuff.

I guess either I didn't say it or she didn't hear me because after some texting back and forth while I was at the park she said she didn't know that's how I felt. Hopefully next time this situation comes up it won't go the same way now that she knows i want her to have times like this to herself, especially on a day i have no other obligations like work.

To top it off, trying to wrangle up the kids from the park that they could have and tried to stay for another 6 hours, I forgot to check with my wife if I could pick her something up on the way home from the park. That didn't go over well.

Rest of the day kind of mellowed out and got to enjoy some time with the kiddos at gma's gpa's. I'm going to try to keep the rest of the night headed in a positive direction.

Until next time...

 

Day 50. No PM but I have had a few urges. I think it's because it has been a couple days since me and my wife have been intimate. Maybe I am experiencing the chaser affect? Not sure but the urges have been easy to move past so I'll take what I can get.

Something I haven't mentioned yet is that my counselor recommended 30 days of abstinence from all sexual behavior. HARD MODE. Wife is not excited about this and I can understand why. It's not her fault, she needs intimacy too and with everything going on in her life it can be used for some stress relief as well.

Not sure if it's something we are going to do or not. Not sure if my wife could take it and I don't blame her. To me the decision is hers because I want to do what is best for the marriage. If it's not something she is able to bare the weight of who am I to force it on her? What if she were to resent me or the recovery?

Until tomorrow...

 

I feel like im aware sex and intimacy are different. Sex should not come without intimacy though.

Not yet. It is something I plan on doing. My mom was big on counseling and love languages so I am pretty familiar with the concept although me and my wife have yet to do it as a couple.

I think this is where the love languages come in. Whatever actions are interpreted as loving and caring to her is what I need to focus on.

I'd sue ther crap out of someone!

I'm not sure. If money and time were not issue then I would probably take her places. Go site seeing, visit friends since almost none of her friends live within 200 miles of us. Just have fun with her. We used to take road trips up to Kansas to see some of her good friends. That was usually a lot of fun.

With the limited time (twin 3yr old, mother in law starting battle with cancer, work, recovery) and limited money (sole provider) I'm not sure what I would do. Im sure it would feel like a pretty grim situation though.

Thanks! Im quickly building a list of books I should read. These seem like they should probably be high priority although many books are getting that label these days it seems.

Damn it would be ez if this were the case.

Maybe blunt but true. Thank you very much for the info.

Maybe I can learn other ways to fulfill my wife once my D falls off. Or maybe, just maybe I can do it before then

Thanks again!

 

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!

Now that that's out of the way....

Day 57. No PM. No urges for P. Those feel like they have been long gone. Urges for my wife are increasing. We officially started 30 day HARDMODE about 5 or 6 days ago which is most definitely the culprit.

It has almost been a week since my last post and holy crapolly has it been a ride. The days following my last journal entry were very hard. My wife was struggling on many different fronts, I was struggling to find the right actions or non-actions to make to help, we were clashing hard. Every conversation left us both gritting and cursing with anger no matter how good our intentions were when choosing to roll the dice and have a conversation.

Well that changed Saturday (if my memory serves me correctly). I think we have identified two (of possibly many) big issues that were causing us to clash every time we tried to have productive conversations.

The first one (definitely far from my only issue I'm sure) is that I had forgotten that my wife had told me that her behavioral therapist had referred her to a family/marriage counselor as well as the fact that my wife had scheduled an appointment with this new person.

Everytime we would talk I was always scared that not only was the anger she was displaying directly related to my betrayal which is hard enough, but also I thought she wasn't seeking help for it and was just assuming I was supposed to magically make it all go away. This ended up being the second issue.

This was all I needed to immediately go to defense mode as soon as things got uncomfortable. It's not because I didn't think she should be sharing her deep scars with me or that she shouldn't be telling me which knife I used to make them or how deep I cut or even when she would occasionally use me as a punching bag (not literally). I deserve most, if not all of that. It was that i thought she was not seeking help from outside and was expecting me to be the one to heal me, her and us.

There is no doubt that I play a huge role in her recovery from betrayal trauma and the recovery of the marriage but fixing it all was more than I could handle.

Well I'm confident now I was misguided in my beliefs. She has been reading the book and working on the workbook my CSAT recommended to her when she attended one of my sessions with me. She has also been scouring the net and nofap to help stop this endless cycle of destruction.

Saturday night we ended up having our first productive talk in awhile about recovery subjects and not have it spiral out of control and us both end up going to bed mad. I could tell something about her had changed but at that time I wasn't exactly sure what. It's also when I was reminded about her therapist appointment that I had forgotten about which made me feel pretty bad.

Since then our conversations have been great. We have both participated in conversations about recovery in productive ways. We have been able to be open and honest with each other without things taking a turn for the worst. It has been a huge stress relief and therapeutic for sure.

I can see she is making a huge effort to understand my perspective. Understand it has nothing to do with her and everything to do with me. She's learning that because I've used PMO for so long to avoid uncomfortable feelings that I'm probably emotionally underdeveloped in some areas. How much this addiction can really change my brain and basically make me incapable of feeling or rationalizing some things that I've subconsciously avoided over the years.

Im excited about recovery now. I mean, I was excited before but there was always a part of me that dreaded the long process ahead. That's changing though. Now instead of dread I'm starting to look forward to it.

There is so much I feel like I've missed out on during my 15yrs of PA. I can't name them all as I'm still discovering them on this road to recovery but one that I feel like will improve from all of this is my ability to emotionally connect more with my wife. Intimacy in it's true form is another one that I'm not sure I've really completely understood or fully experienced.

I'm so fortunate to have such an amazing wife. I can't fathom the amount of strength and will power, amongst other things, it took to go out and learn on her own as much as she has done.

Especially after it was I who inflicted such pain.

Until next time...

 

Ahh, you're probably right. Thanks!

Day 60. No PM.

Hardmode has been... hard. Kinda. I mean it's for sure really hard when my wife is just inches away and we're both in that mindset. I think it's only been like 8 days. The thing that makes it just a little bit less painful though is I'm really hopeful that it's going to be worth it. I guess only time will tell.

Im a little jealous that my wife has already had her recommended reading for about a week now. Mine is still in the mail and should be here within a week I hope.

I don't know if it was her books or what but she has really impressed me the last 4 or 5 days. She seems to be learning a lot of really great information and has shown great strides in her recovery. I find it hard to describe how much I appreciate and admire her for the strength she has displayed.

Had my counselors appointment today. It was good to share my wife's progress with my counselor. She was very impressed as well. I know there are still rough times ahead but there is hope and that's something I can hold on to.

Im trying to work on ways that I can show intimacy that don't involve intercourse. Sometimes it's hard to find good ideas because most of the things I read aren't tailored for someone who just betrayed his wife or parents with twins or for someone who is abstaining from all sexual behavior so it can be a bit discouraging. I have to keep looking and trying though. I'll be glad when this abstinence thing is over. I mostly just hope it helps though.

My homework is to make a list of healthy sexual values and compare with my wife's. I'll have to start researching healthy sexual values

Until next time...

 

Day 61. No PM. On 11th day of hardmode.

Depression sets in? Feeling pretty low lately. When signing up for hardmode for 30 days I didn't know I would be signing up to sleep in separate rooms with my wife.

She says she can't sleep next to me and not want want to do things with me. I respect that.

I think it's making it harder for me atleast when I'm feeling low. Feels like we're are growing apart. Feels like the time she wanted before this happened(that I stole from her) she no longer wants. She is also dealing with a lot of other heavy things unrelated to my betrayal.

Suck it up and sleep in the bed you've made I should tell myself. Easier said than done.

Until next time...

 

Been laying here a couple hours. Can't sleep. No hand to reach for to calm me. Mind is running. The longer it runs the darker the thoughts get... My journal no longer feels like a safe place...

God please numb my mind so I can fall asleep.

 

Not sure this nofap thing is doing anything for my marriage. Feeling like deleting my account.