Email bombs

Many partners (or co-addicts) have a formal or informal "disclosure", where their partner/addict tells them what behaviors they have been engaging in secretly. For me, there was very little disclosure from my partner. Most of it was "discovery" in the form of an affair partner, or their spouse, contacting me. This happened with two people. One contacted me on Facebook, the other on Myspace. They both looked me up and told me information that I was not expecting, which set off other events here at home.

Today I had another email bomb waiting in my Myspace account. I almost never check that account, maybe every few months. The first discovery happened in this account; a woman found me there in 2007 and told me what she had done with my husband. At the time I thought it was an isolated thing; my husband worked very hard to convince me of the same. I didn't learn that it actually had continued until about 2 weeks ago. This was the last (I hope) bit of "disclosure" that my husband had hoped not to have to reveal to me, because he knew how hurtful it would be for me to know that after everything we went through over that "one-time" Craigslist hookup, a month or so later he went back to her and carried out an affair for almost 2 years.

Just when I was starting to incorporate this new information into my reality, I checked my Myspace account this morning and there was a note from her again. It doesn't really matter what it said; it wasn't mean, she wanted me to know that she was hurting too, and why she did what she did. But it was definitely upsetting.

First, I knew I should have just deleted it without reading it, but I couldn't. I knew it would get my pulse and my brain racing, but I still read it. It shook me up just having contact from her and having to relive the trauma of discovery all over again. Hearing another woman talk about your husband with so much familiarity, talking as if she knows your husband better than you do, is very upsetting. (Hearing more than one woman do this is staggering.) I have to wonder if she DID know him better than me; after all, she was part of the secret life. And having a woman who has knowingly had an affair with your husband try to convince you of how SHE has been hurt is not an experience I would wish upon anyone else. (Both women did that, too.)

In the future, I will try to avoid such contacts from these people. They only retraumatize me, and I don't gain anything useful from it anymore. There was a time when the only straight information I was getting was from the husband of one affair partner. My husband was not answering any of my questions--he was drinking and trying to escape this situation that was bound to happen at some point. Now, more details only hurt me. I don't need to hear from any other women who have slept with my husband. It prolongs the pain for both me and my husband, and doesn't help us in our recoveries. I know there are potentially many people who could repeat this experience for me, and I pray that they don't, that if they have the urge, they will also have the compassion to not relieve their consciences or whatever the motivation is to contact the wife of one's secret lover.

I wanted most to be comforted by my husband this morning, but he isn't at a point in his recovery where he has much comfort to offer. I know he has compassion for what I am going through, but I also know he has to get further along in his own recovery before he can start to focus on anyone other than himself and his process. This is hard to accept, but I know in my mind that it is true. It is one of the many things that makes living as a spouse of a SA such a lonely experience. There is so much isolation and secrecy, and when everything is out in the open, it still isn't. There are just a couple of my friends who know anything about this part of our marriage, and they aren't really familiar with sex addiction. Perhaps I will call one of my S-Anon ladies today. I'm not very good about using my phone, but I should start getting better at it.