WW, My Addiction, Patience is HARD

[trumpet]

Interesting, how you refer to her as an adulterer and yourself as the survivor. Let me ask you a few questions. Do you see your years of porn on the same level as her adultery? Is one worse than the other? If the church knew about your use of porn, would you feel as though you had a great big "P" branded on your chest?

Sandi,

Interesting, good, or interesting, bad?
On the spectrum of sins, in regards to marriage, my heart has always felt that the actual affairs did more damage to the M, as her heart was involved. I understand, from a Christian perspective, that all sins are the same. And we have all been forgiven through the blood of Christ.
From a clergy perspective, my addiction was something I kept hidden, and when confronted with the sin in previous years, it went away, only to reoccur, but was repentant of every time I went to church. For clergy, an adultery takes things to where you're in willing disobedience, and have no desire to change. I guess I'm in that camp.

Do I want to be a survivor of a wife who had 2 affairs? Yes. I think of myself as a survivor. Am I an adulterer? That is something that I've seen people write about, and I hear yes and no, depending on how you want to interpret it. I feel in the technical term, yes. But I have absolutely no emotional attachment to any one woman besides my wife, I haven't given myself over to one-on-one contact. I've only been to a strip club twice in my life, and didn't really enjoy myself. It's on my 'no go' list from now to the end of time, which I'm fine with. So, has porn been a way to escape and to fill a need? Yes. With a wife who has 0 sex drive, and thinks of sex as 'icky' due to her being raped in college, as well as me being high sex drive, it drove me almost insane, and that's how I got hooked. I was looking at porn before the marriage, though, and it was a stress reliever. It came and went with the beginning of our marriage, since she was of the opinion that she could hold sex over me for anything I did - one slip up, and sex was off the table, sometimes for months at a time. My needs weren't met, and thus, I felt I had to do something. She used the same logic for her affairs.

When we first went to counseling together, we were both told that we BOTH cheated on each other. To my wife, it's the same, or equal, and since she put up with it for 15 years, it holds more weight to her. Of course, that's WW spin, as she recognizes that she's had or is having an EA, but typically says 'but I dealt with 15 years of porn and crap from you!' as a trailing statement.

Are we both in the wrong? Yes.
Have we both been hurt? Yes.
Are we both working through the hurt to repair the damage? Right now, no.

The pain of the PA from 2 years ago was connected to the EA that started happening in June/July, as I never dealt with the PA when it happened - it was brushed under the rug so I had an excuse for the porn habit. The wound is very deep, and very fresh, which puts my hurt and anger on the surface.

I think my words to my wife come off as 'I'm MORE hurt than you', now that I write this. She knows that she hurt me, but doesn't know what to do, since she's dealing with hurt herself.

During the time in the last month where we did have R talk, I have brought up that therapy has helped me a ton, and my wife thinks that it did as well. However, she doesn't think therapy will help her. She's always had a strong opinion that I should be a mind reader, and has been called out on it during the sessions we had. She still can't come to grips with expressing her emotions, and working on communicating with me directly. She says 'that's just not me, and I don't want to work on it, so you'll just have to accept that'. Her comments in the last week support her opinion, saying that 'I just can't give you what you need, and I don't think I ever will'.

I think that's WW speak, and I do think we can learn better communication skills than being disrespectful with passive/aggressiveness, sarcasm, and eyerolls. It's up to her to want to work on it. I want to work on it, and have the books to prove it. Working my way through my porn addiction, and divorce remedy first, as that seemed like would help the dumpster fire of a marriage I have right now. After reading divorce remedy chapters again last night, my DB'ing needs to have the patience of Christ, which the hurt I have makes really hard. It's something I'm working on every day.

I've dealt with plenty in my life, not as much as some others on here, but I never prepared for myself without my wife. It does scare me, as well it should, but it's how I move forward. I'm not a sobbing mess, or sit and listen to sappy songs all day. There is no pleading right now with her, I'm giving her the space she's asking for. From what I read to her mom, the checks are being cut, and the call is already made to the lawyer. That scares me. It makes me want to plead and beg, to promise unreasonable things, to beg God to help me. All the pleading and begging, though, won't make her stop how she feels. The ones that I trust to tell her the truth - that divorce is not the answer - are about 25% of the voices talking with her right now. The other 75%, like her mother, are telling her to kick me out of the house, and get moving on with her life to someone who will treat her right.