Addiction has its own agenda

This week in Tahoe has been both relaxing and emotionally excruciating. 

Tahoe is beauty, wherever you look. The lake, the snow covered mountains, the beautiful homes and little old cabins nestled into the pines. The weather has been perfect--just warm enough to spend the days outside hiking beaches and getting to know the California side from top to bottom.

But all week I've been struggling with gut wrenching anguish at the loss of my marriage and my relationship with my partner of 34 years. I feel a burning ,churning, pounding in my center, as if the heart has been ripped out of my body leaving a nerves raw and exposed.

I've realized that I have not fully let him go, and I can see better now where it has to happen. 

When he started dating so suddenly, I was put face to face with the fact that at any moment someone could become more important to him than me. That would be natural and appropriate, given that we're not working to get back together. But it's still painful to know that I'll be replaced in the heart of the person who has been the most important person in my life and who I felt so important to, the love of my life, for nearly 35 years. 

I've come to consider that we have both learned what we can and grown as much as we can grow while being together, and that maybe the only way we can continue to grow as people, as humans, is apart from each other. Maybe he needs to be with a different woman to have a chance to be the person he wants to be––someone who does not bear the scars he gave her. And maybe I need to learn that I have to have expectations, that I don't have to accept being treated badly, that I am worthy of better. That submitting to being alone is better than submitting to a partnership in which I'm not cherished and treated with love and respect. And maybe we can only take these next steps apart.

But I've also been thinking that this doesn't mean we cease to exist for each other. As I thought about it, I realized that because of what we experienced together, traveling from young adulthood to and beyond middle age, he will always be an important person in my life. Even if I fall in love with someone else who becomes my partner in life, the Addict can still be someone I love deeply and who I would always be honest and real with. And not just because he's the father of my son, but because he's a human being who was truly doing the best he could when we were together. I believe he wanted to do the best. But he was not up to the task, for whatever reason. He's been scarred a lot, too, and he's trying to work through all of that. So he could not see beyond his feelings of selfishness, self pity and entitlement to live up to his promises and commitments to me. But maybe that could be possible with someone else. 

Thinking of him loving another woman and treating her the way I wish he had treated me is crushing. But that doesn't matter. Letting him go so that it's not crushing is my work. Accepting that we gave and received as much as we could and that our relationship as a married couple has come to a natural end is my work. It's absolutely gut wrenching, but so many true spiritual growth opportunities are. 

Tonight, the three of us women have been a little bored, frankly. We've seen the sights, hiked the hikes, cooked and dined out, played games and had the conversations about this and that. And yet somehow I feel empty and hollow. Is this all there is to life after all? After the intensity of everything we did in our 20s and 30s, and of being parents, raising a boy, making big life decisions together, I'm separated from that closest most intimate bond I had and will spend my remaining days playing cards and watching streaming services and doing puzzles with the gals?

Losing my relationship with the Addict is an existential blow that I never planned for. Even after 2007, when I first found out about the betrayals and the lying. Even then, I believed we'd work things out together and spend our old age walking around holding hands and taking care of each other and enjoying every moment of life we had together. Because we were for each other. I didn't know how addiction would snap back with a vengeance. Addiction has its own agenda that is not influenced one bit by what I want in this situation.

As I sit here my insides are chaos––burning and churning and tearing and anguish right in the center of my body below my sternum. Part of me knows there is no going back, no road to repair. He has crossed so many fundamental lines with me, and he's shown that he can't or won't stop doing that. And he cannot yet set down the filters installed by the pain he's experienced in life and distinguish how they have affected the way he sees and experiences me. And part of me is still devastated and utterly grief-stricken by the loss. I cannot find words adequate to this pain, but it's an existential anguish that goes to my core. And part of me is angry with him for not having integrity and for not being able to get well enough to have a shot at spending our lives together. Part of me misses him profoundly and feels a vast emptiness without his presence in my life. It's an emptiness that hurts, right in that same center place in my body. 

Going through this is exhausting. I wish there were ways out that I liked. But this is a path I must walk even though I don't like the journey right now and I don't like where the path looks like it's going. I have the opportunity to not resist the pain and it's probably the best opportunity available to me. Only when I stop resisting and accept can I find new joys and purpose.

I need some rest. Maybe sleep will help me process some of this. It feels so overwhelming.

Wounds reopened

Sitting with this, with the reality of how fast he's moving on, I've become present again to all that the Addict has taken from me: my partner, the love of my life, the past I thought I had, the future I thought I had, the financial security I spent so much time trying to create for us, family holidays, probably our family house. And I'm afraid to trust again. I'm feeling a lot of pain about things I felt I had moved through.

This is what I texted to him last night:

I just have to tell you that I am overwhelmingly present again to how much you have taken from me and how much you have destroyed in my life and how much pain you have caused me. I have lost so much that it has taken my lifetime to build. And I lost all of this not because of something I did, but  because of what you did.

And I just cannot understand why you did it

And I don’t think that you’re telling me the truth about today because it doesn’t make any sense what you said. That you paid $81 to park your car at the hotel and then rent a car to go on a date with somebody you just met on a dating app. because you have dog hair in your car. It does not make sense.

Why did you do this to us? Why did you kill us?

The only logical answer is that what we had was not good enough.

You wanted and felt entitled to more.

All of us, Son included, have to live with the consequences of what you did to our family, the choices you made so you could have orgasms.

He wrote back: 

You’re right 

I have come to have some insights into why I did what I did. Ultimately it was all extreme selfishness. There is no excuse.

And he sent the "proof" in the form of screenshots of his chats with his date and his Google map record.

And he said:

Did a very stupid thing in renting a car because I didn’t want to make a terrible impression with my car.

It was dishonest and I am going to tell Jill that I did that. 

I am probably not going to see again. We were not intimate.

He asked if I needed anything more, but I didn't respond until this morning. I asked for the receipts he had said he'd provide that he didn't provide. And I said this:

Also, please think about how you will explain to Son that you assume full responsibility for the destruction of our marriage which I tried for 15 years in good faith, based on promises you made to me and ongoing lies you told, to repair, despite all of the pain and anguish I experienced in 2007 and the subsequent years.  We will need to explain when we tell him we are moving forward with divorce.

Based on a comment that he made to me, I think he hold me responsible for the fact that we are separated.

I want him to know that it was not a failing on my part to try as hard as humanly possible, and to give as much as I could possibly give. It was a failure on your part, to be honest and to treat me with love and respect.

He doesn’t need to have details that he doesn’t ask for. And I don’t want to ruin your relationship with him at all. But I want him to be clear so that the quality of my relationship with him and his regard for me is not another loss I have to contend with.

He's read it, but no response so far.

The Addict is already dating

I'm a little gut-punched. I talked with the Addict on Monday evening about wanting to move forward with divorce. Today at 5:25pm a charge came into our joint account from the Addict's credit card for $81 at a hotel near the airport. I immediately forwarded the notification to him and asked, "Getting a room at the airport hotel?"

He texted back right away. "No.

"Paid for parking for a day."

"Sorry about that!"

Definitely felt like a lie to me. Then he texted, "Rented a car for a day."

He ended up calling me a few minutes later because he said he thought I might feel activated by the charge—which I did. I thought of all the times he secretly met with prostitutes at hotels while we were married—lying to me about where he was going and what he was doing. It's so painful when I am present to it. He was the person I trusted most in the world, the person I was most vulnerable with, the person who know me more deeply than anyone else and still loved me.

He explained over the phone.

"I had a date. She wanted me to pick her up and my car was full of dog hair, so I rented a car."

Five days after I told him I wanted a divorce, he's dating. (As it turns out, the date was yesterday, so it was only four days turnaround time.)

None of my business, and I'll be happy for him if he enjoys dating and finds someone else, but it's jarring as hell that it's so soon. I feel discarded. Like I was easy to move past. 

I know all of this is emotion and hurt and activation around thinking about everything that happened in the past. I feel so angry about what he's taken from me—the life I loved that I thought we had. The trust I had with him, like a bond I had with no one else. I feel trivialized and I feel like our 34 years together have been trivialized by his ability to just go out and date. 

He asked me about it on Monday, though. "Does this mean I can date? I don't think anything will happen, but I'll know that I don't have to stop it," or something like that. 

I don't blame him. It's been 16 months since he moved out. I've been lonely. I'm sure he's been lonely. And I know there's that part of him that feels entitled to sex. 

I feel angry that he's going to one day meet someone and treat her the way he should have treated me. I think that's it. I think that's what is taking my breath away right now.

Something more important than fear

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

I told the Addict today that I want to move forward with divorce. 

It's something I have been resisting, because parts of me don't want to do it. It's so hard to let go of everything—the past and the future I thought I had and that I wanted. It's terrifying, but it's the next rational step, and all I've been doing is putting it off. The Addict has shown so much disregard for me, my health, my emotional and psychological well-being, my explicitly stated boundaries and my anguished pleas to him to just not lie to me again. There's no universe in which it makes sense for me to give him ANOTHER chance. The avenue of repair has been exhausted. Nothing can change what he has done to our relationship. I pray often for the serenity to accept what I cannot change and courage to change what I can. This is that. This is both of those things, no matter how painful it is. 

People treat you the way you let them treat you. He has crossed so many boundaries so many times that there is just no going back, no matter how many parts of me want it not to be true. I have to take responsibility for finding myself where I am. I don't regret the choices I made, but I also cannot make the same choices again, because I don't want the same result.

I'm also terrified that Son will never forgive me. He doesn't know the details, which I've kept from him on purpose. I don't want to damage his relationship with his father by giving him intimate information that really doesn't involve him. (Mental health experts have also advised this.) The Addict is still a good father, and I believe he'll continue to be a good father, no matter how short he has fallen as a husband, partner and friend. But I think Son will see this outcome as a result of me not being willing to work on making things better. He said as much when I admitted to him—after he asked—that I was dating. "I guess Dad has more faith than you," he said, or something like that. I hope someday he'll understand that I did everything I could and more. But I can't give up my self and my self-respect by giving the Addict yet another chance when he's shown willing disregard for me on so many levels over decades. I know this is the better way for both me and Son, but I don't know if or when he'll see it that way.

My gut is churning and my heart is breaking. This is not what I wanted for my life. Not what I wanted for my son. Not what I wanted for my family. I didn't choose this and I didn't cause this. But I have to deal with the fallout.

But I guess this kind of unexpected turn of events is part of life. My situation is not unique. Finding out you have a terminal illness, getting killed or paralyzed in a car accident, losing your child: so many things one cannot control can and do happen. Our opportunity is to face them head-on with a calm, open heart, being present to life as it is—including the pain, sadness and anguish—and finding peace, serenity and happiness in the fleeting and groundless reality of human existence.

What is important? That is the question it forces. 

I have this moment. I can face each moment and sit in any discomfort and choose to be and to feel and to experience and to love instead of reacting to escape the discomfort, retreating into whatever will numb, dull or deflect the pain that is part of my whole human experience. 

Why do that? 

I'm not entirely sure. But I think it has something to do with the profound experience of being present. Being present in the fullness of the moment, with all the pain and joy and confusion and fear that can be there, feels like the best gift I can give. It's the most vulnerable I can be, and also the most powerful at the same time. Submitting to the reality of what it means to be alive means I can more fully experience life. I think.

I guess I'll find out. 

I am strong. I am grateful for so many things. I'm grateful to be alive, grateful for Son, for my family and friends, and even for the Addict, who provided so much that was good for so long, in spite of whatever else he was doing. I'm grateful for my life experiences, for the ability to support myself, for my house, for my job, for my electric car, for my health, for being born in this country and this moment in history. The list of things I can feel gratitude for is long. I am lucky. I am alive and I am loved. I'm a human being in this moment in time in the fleeting instant that humanity represents against the billions of years that is the lifetime of the universe. Maybe the "reward" for being present to it all is the experience of grasping for a moment how precious it all is.