Just the Facts, Ma'am

I am a codependent. Some would call me a coaddict of sex addiction. My husband is a sex addict. He is also an alcoholic.

I started to type out the story of my husband's addictions and their place in our marriage. As I typed, I noticed that the posting was very long. I started a second post to continue the story, and it began to occur to me that I was focussing on my husband rather than on my own recovery. This is an error in thought that Al-Anon and S Anon both try to change in the codependent partner. I also realized that I really needed to get this story out, to type it all out as I remembered it.

The posts were not meant for this blog. So, let me start again.

I married a sex addict and an alcoholic. There were signs along the way that could have warned me of trouble ahead, but I proceeded. This was because I loved him, and because something in me responded to the addict in him. We found each other for a reason.

I have only been aware of the problem of sex addiction in our marriage for 2 months now. They have been exhausting, painful, and eye-opening months. I am starting to see the reason that we, as spouses, need our own recovery.

It is easy for me to see how I was deluding myself that my husband really wasn't an alcoholic. My denial allowed his addiction to progress and worsen over time. My attempts to soften the consequences of his actions removed the opportunities for him to realize what his addiction was doing to him.

I am learning not to blame myself for this. My actions were normal and natural for someone living with an alcoholic. The fact is that I wouldn't be in this position at all, married to an addict and alcoholic, if I didn't have a part of myself that recognized and related to addicts. I was raised a codependent.

Sex addiction is a secretive disease, and my husband kept the secret very, very well. I learned of one affair, which until very recently I thought was a 2-time encounter, two years ago. I didn't have any further inkling of a problem until last November when I discovered a text message from a "friend". My doubts were confirmed two months ago when I discovered my husband had had a long affair with her. In the time since this discovery, my husband and I have been through hell and back. Terrible, traumatic things have happened, and we lived in the crisis for a month. The good news is that we are both now deeply committed to our recovery, and if it is the right thing, to our marriage. We are not making that decision yet, but we do love each other very much.

The blow-by-blow account that I was spending so much time--over two hours--typing is therapeutic for me in some sense, but it also perpetuates the trauma of the discovery. It is not the post to make today, or probably ever.

Here, I will point out that I still have a river of anger and resentment to the west of me, and a river of desire for things to be different than they are to the east of me. I am trying to stay on the path. Some good things are happening, but I can see just in this exercise that I have a long, long way to go to reach the other side. And the other side is really the same as in the original parable: it is enlightenment. Buddhism and recovery are part of the same path.