Invasive Thoughts

Last night as Husband and I were making love, I began to have those "invasive thoughts" again. Images running through my head, not of what I was afraid he'd do, but what I imagined him having done with other women. How did he touch them, what did they feel like to him? What did it feel like for him to be inside them?

It really interfered with things. And it left me pretty unsettled. We talked about it a little, but we were both tired and sleep seemed to be a good choice - especially as we've been getting up and meditating.

Today I had a client meeting near the massage parlor in Santa Monica where all the infidelity began. Realizing that triggered anxiety for me (even though I go to Santa Monica regularly for therapy.) On top of that, I tried to call husband and couldn't reach him at work or via cell phone. Before that wouldn't have bothered me. I've never needed constant contact. But today it triggered thoughts of times before when I called and couldn't reach him because he was holding another woman in his arms and doing some of the most physically intimate thing he could possibly be doing with another human being with someone else while I was thinking about him and trying to reach him.

I wondered if he'd ever finished with sex with a prostitute only to turn his phone back on and get a message that I'd left for him while he was with her. I think his response to that would be that if he did, the two things were so unrelated in his mind that he didn't think twice about it. And I understand that kind of denial is how the illness of sexual addiction can manifest itself, and I don't doubt that he really didn't connect the two.

But the question that comes up for me is how could you do something so horrible and then make it possible for yourself to be so disconnected from the impact on me and from the incomprehensible nature of the betrayal that was gong on?

And if this happened before how do I know or have some assurance that it won't happen again?