Thanks to all of you who wrote me during this, my darkest hour. I had so many notes of encouragement and surprisingly most all of the replies were from men. I can honestly say that I am in a good space now. I see the light at the end of tunnel and it is not a fright train. In fact I am the happiest I have been in years, I have gotten help from a counselor, friends, and joined a support group. I am so optimist about my life, as the marriage counselor said the last meeting I had with her, "he is a very, very sick person and he was making the marriage sick, and he was starting to make you sick too".
My desire for answers and to get to the bottom of what had happened lead me to a very strange place. The world of addiction, not mine, but his I was very blown away when the counselor suggested that my husband had a sexual/porn addiction. This could not be a real thing, right? In the past few months I have been to groups talked to counselors and recovering addicts and it is a very real addiction. Just like drugs or alcohol the sex addicts brain becomes "rewired" and the addiction can (and did in my husband's case) cause the loss of jobs, family, and devastation to family and loved ones.
Now, before you all get up in arms about someone writing about sexual or porn addiction on an erotic site, I want to point out that just like alcohol, prescription drugs, and gambling not everyone who takes or enjoys these things is an addict or become one, not everyone who enjoys porn or sex is going to become an addict. There are so many elements that go into someone becoming addicted to anything, but being in this world for a few months one reoccurring theme was insecurities. This is a real and growing addiction, and just like any other addiction the addict is usually the last one to know that they have a real problem.
I have forgiven my husband and can honestly say that I hope and pray with all of my heart that he will be OK. I am thankful for the 30+ good years we had, the family we made, and the good times and there where many. I am thankful for the love we did have and I am thankful that I have a heart big enough to still love him, but that is still open for new love. I pray that at some point he can come back into his daughter's lives and heal those relationships' that has been one of the things that I hurt most of all for him and the one thing that even other addicts have not been able to help me really understand.
Once again I just wanted to let everyone know that I did appreciate your kind words of support and to give everyone an update on how I was doing. My life is good and full and I even have some new ideas for Emma that I will be sharing with you shortly. I am even going back to school in the fall to start the long trek toward my PhD in Psychology.
Enjoy your life and be happy,
Ellen
Would love to hear from other women out there that have been in or are in unsatisfying sexual relationships or that are just tired of being treated like a piece of trash.
My husband of 38 years walked out one me leaving me with 6.00 dollars in the joint checking account (of course he had an account that was just in his name that I knew nothing about). Took my van (he had let his car go back to the bank) and if it were not for the grace of my children I would be on the street. He threw me to the side like a bad of trash without a trace of remorse or guilt. When you have invested an adult lifetime in a person and a relationship giving them your heart and soul believing in them when no one else would standing by them through illness, failed businesses, and pathological lying just saying that I am hurt is a huge understatement. My heart is beyond broken it is shattered. Naomi's story is the other side of a story and is true. It is written as my cathartic journal of a lifetime spent loving someone who in the end was not the person I believed them to be or to try to understand the mental break they had that would turn them into someone that those who loved them most could recognize or understand.
I keep thinking there has to be a story in here I just have to get to the other side of this to be able to write it.