First of all thank you all for catching up on my posts. Much of it is me venting and perhaps getting some perspective for you wise DBers.
25, yesterday's visit with my wife was her response (even though she says it isn't) to my initial custody plea. In that plea, I set up my own conditions.
I went to openly hear her part and considering how little we've been communicating, perhaps catch a bit more of her perspective on the case itself as well as specifics of her legal strategy.
25, when you say why delay the proceedings, are you referring to the custody or divorce? I also appreciate the Tender Years Doctrine article; I'm not sure how or why my wife (and perhaps her legal team) would have this mindset considering it's CA law we're dealing with here.
Originally Posted By: labug
I'm amazed at this thread. I remember an email your wife sent you back in Mar very clearly listing her issues with you and the marriage. These included violence and addiction neither of which Alamo really refuted. In fact you admitted, in a back-handed way to some of it and minimized the rest.
This is what I did during the marriage: I was a porn addict struggling to get out of it; I became an angry person because of the porn, mostly confined to when my wife brought up/confronted me with the slightest accusation of porn (true or imagined); during SOME of those confrontations, I would grab her and on two occasions push her against the wall. I never hit her. Towards the end of our marriage, she would slapped/hit me. I think the only violence, in my mind, would be me finding her hiding in the room or closet cutting her thighs (she's done that since she was young), and at later stages, attempting to cut her wrists.
I didn't minimize the rest, I just flat out don't agree with it, because for example, in her attempt to bring up how my addiction is related to my family upbringing/psychology, she confused my sister's pre-teen life with mine (in her letter she explained how my work ethic till this day was affected by how my parents protected me from finding work outside).
Now I'm not saying that I don't see the underlying feelings and emotions that permeate the letter. At the end of the day, I got a revealing and honest insight into her anger, suffering and perception of "our" marriage.
Originally Posted By: labug
In reading since, I see that you are not using porn-are you in a program? in counseling?
What about your anger issues? the violence?
Throughout our marriage, I met with therapists and counselors, so I had the tools, but what didn't happen (and what damaged our marriage) was I didn't take that LAST step to say: "Enough! This is greater than me, it's hurting my relationship with God, my wife, my family, my friends...I have to stop now."
I immediately sought help when she left a year and half ago. Her leaving was the last straw for me and the last push in the right direction in my addiction.
For those familiar with any kind of addiction, anger, lies and pride are CLOSELY linked together. I may be an occasional grump sometimes, but this new me has been great for my health, mind. Indirectly (or maybe directly) it has also helped our son, my friends, my career, my family, my walk with my Father and my life as a DBer.
So to answer your question, labug -- I've been off porn for 1.5 years and it'll be precisely 365.25 days on Friday since I last stopped masturbating.
Now what upsets and saddens me is the fact that my wife swears up and down that she knows about porn addiction and that she has always worked the hardest to understand my addiction and save the marriage. At the beginning of it, a dear therapist gave us a book about dealing with porn. She has always asked me to read that book (as well as others, of course) to help with my recovery/awareness. There was three things that should've (but didn't) happened:
1. I shouldn't have been so prideful that I felt like I could deal with it alone. I should've read the book in its entirety.
2. Our therapist gave US the book (not just to me), because there was a whole section about spouses of addicts. She had the book in her library the entire time, but she never knew that chapter was there. My wife, too, went on with our "life" thinking that she was well-equipped to understand and work as a team.
3. If she and I read the book (or books), (a) she would've realized that w/o the addiction, the anger and lying would disappear. Instead, she categorized them and today believes that I am a bad person/father because I'm a porn addict AND have bad temper AND am a liar. (b) I wouldn't gone through our marriage thinking I was unforgivable by God and man, because I began doubting myself as a human being, that I was an addict AND an angry person AND a liar.
Originally Posted By: labug
And now your wife has been demonized as some kind of crazy woman when all I see is a woman with very real concerns about her child's safety who is still trying to allow the father to play a role.
She's more generous than I would be.
Her real concerns for our child's safety only started after she left the house. I want to point out two facts:
1. Our son was born 2 year prior to her leaving. 2. In 2005, she found child porn on one of my massive download folders. She has often said that her belief that I might be a child porn addict began during that time. (For the record, I am not addicted to child porn; also every of my wife's porn confrontation/discovery since 2005 has never been about child porn.)
If I sound like I'm putting my wife in a negative light, I apologize. Y'all know and read enough of my entries to know that I hate doing that or even calling her a name or anything. In light of this conversation and labug's comment, I felt like I needed to clarify certain questions. As a spouse of an addict, she is not crazed. However, she is like this today due to the lack of awareness of the true problem.
I'm not putting the fall our marriage due to porn on her, let's get it straight. I had the biggest part to play in it, BUT we forgot we were in it as a couple. The tools that we thought we had helped us to an extend to deal with it as separate individuals. If either of us had read those books and truly heed the advice of the therapists, we would've learned that we could and should have set aside our differences and worked as a TEAM.
