SOs feelings and thoughts through their partners Addiction/Recovery

I think the concept of being redeemable and reconcilable to Christ is different than being entitled to a happy intimate relationship to another human. I find it an offensive ideal that an addict can fail to meet the standards that Christ set in laying himself down for us, yet the betrayed spouse is regularly reminded of Christ's forgiveness and that we are called to that.

God will forgive him and he is redeemable in Christ, but that does not entitle him to my trust or admiration ever again. My sacrificial love for him is in not exposing him to his family and kicking him out to not see his daughter as often, despite actively wishing I never had to see him again. My sacrificial love is supporting him and our baby so that he can stay home and take care of her and being respectful and friendly to him and maintaining the trappings of a romantic involvement despite my active wish to just run away. My sacrificial love does NOT have to involve trusting him and investing my heart into him again. It is perfectly reasonable and Christian to forgive someone, but to keep the distinction between "forgiveness" and "I have to love him and invest emotionally in him the same".

 

We are also not called to cheat on our spouses, but it's convenient to insinuate that betrayed spouses should forgive when the addict already "got theirs", as it were. How many men could I go out and cheat on him with that he would be required to forgive me for? 100? 300? His number would still be beyond mine even if I did it daily for years.

Eta: a divorce in our cases would also be biblically justifiable. Unfaithfulness is a biblical reason for divorce. As far as I'm concerned, I am going beyond what is required of me so that he can stay with his child and live a comfortable life as a stay at home dad.

 

I let go of the “ got theirs” belief once I really looked at the entirety of our marriage. My husband was never content, never happy, never in the moment. My husband missed out on so much joy, so many precious moments, so much happiness. Yes, he lost out because of his choices. It doesn’t change the fact that I lived a life full of connection, joy, love, while he struggled not to kill himself. That’s hard core self hate, misery. When I said “ I couldn’t stand to be around you” his reply was “ I couldn’t stand to be with me either”. Early in recovery I told him “ I can always leave, but you will always be with yourself, you cannot leave” I don’t regret marrying him, without him I wouldn’t have my three kids, I wouldn’t have the relationship with God that I do, I wouldn’t have the knowledge to pass onto my children about pornography, sex, relationships.

 

There is also the reality that some hurts are far greater than others. There is a reason God allows divorce for adultery and Jesus said “ if you look at at a woman with lust you have committed adultery”. You can forgive but not want a relationship with the person you have forgiven

 

Also, the conundrum with porn addiction , forgiveness for your actions 5 years ago? 1 year ago? One month ago? The last hour? Unlike a one time affair , it’s ongoing abuse of the relationship with seemingly no end in sight.

 

I have already forgiven. Again, that absolutely does not mean that I trust him or want a real relationship with him ever again. The elders at my church growing up systematically raped the children of our church. I had an abortion forced on me when I was 10 to avoid people discovering their crimes. I have forgiven them all. I hope they are happy in the arms of Christ one day. I still do not go back and see/maintain relationship with the people who knew and did nothing, despite being called to forgiveness.
You feel like I should forgive "better" because it involves things that you have also done and it's natural to want to minimize and have validation that what we ourselves do isn't so bad. I do not have to forgive to the extent that you seem to think I should, in the sense that I should take him back and embrace him as a victim of his own choices and trust and love him again. That is an unreasonable expectation and not at all what Christ expects of us.

 

It is the solution he has chosen. I am totally open with him about my feelings. He also knows that he should find employment as the kids start to move out and that I do not plan to stay past that. We are together for our family.

Ie I have looked him in the face and told him my life would be better if he took the initiative and chose to leave (he needs to find a job and figure out childcare, etc). He would rather hold on to hope that we will be okay one day when we absolutely will not. He insists that he will show me over the years how he feels about me and I have very openly told him I will never feel that for him ever again.

 

No.
Not when what he's addicted to is cheating on me. This isn't cancer beyond his control. All he had to do was not marry me. Or to tell me before marriage and let me choose.
Or realize that if he could do that to me, he did not actually love me and move on to someone else.
Or even just not get me pregnant. Literally any of those things.

 

Sometimes the choice to stay is more a matter of logistics. By the time I knew my husband was not going to change , I had been with him 15 years, two kids, and was a sahm. Leaving meant going to work full time and putting kids in daycare, splitting finances, losing my ranch, traumatizing the kids by splitting their life into dads house and moms house, possible exposing them to women my husband might bring home who did not treat them well, letting my husband have them 50% of the time and I lose out on half the birthdays,holidays, weekends, taking them out of private school, No freaking way! I decided to make the best of a horrible situation for me. It wasn’t hard since he worked so much anyway.

 

This. My first husband started cheating on me after I had my first lumpectomy for breast cancer. Then opened up our marriage because he wasn't into me anymore if I was going to be "mangled".

I divorced him and it was a total shit show. I will likely never financially recover enough to retire. It was an incredibly hard decision to make my kids with him live through the divorce and the tipping point is that he was just openly bringing women home to meet them and being abusive towards me. Me being around ramped him into levels of emotional and physical abuse he did not have if I was not there. It was safer for the kids.
But now I have no control at all over who he exposes them to or how he raises them in his 50% custody because my state just adores giving men 50% custody even when they say out loud they don't want to deal with the kids half the time.

So now they live part time with random women that he rents from Asia I guess? They are not fed properly and proper hygiene is not reinforced there. Divorce when you have kids is an absolute nightmare and a huge part of me wishes for them that I had just never had them. No matter how hard I try or how hard I work, I will never be able to undo the damage my ex husband is absolutely doing to them. And then to have married another PA on accident and gotten pregnant by him? Many times I would give anything to have the guts to just find the least painful way to end it. If I could go back and take myself out before any of this, I would.

 

I do wrestle with this. I feel he nullified the marriage when he broke the covenant of “ forsaking all others”. I really love him a lot. I would always choose him. I feel God chose him for me. However, he did not choose me. He chose addiction. It is a choice. If it were not a choice there would not be people in recovery. Even more so once you know it’s an addiction that’s hurting your partner, Do whatever the hell it takes to never be hurt them that way again. That one slip is not just a slip. It’s a death blow to your partner.