Addicts lie. Now what?

We went to a benefit for Son's school last weekend, and as soon as we got there Husband ordered a double scotch on the rocks.

Okay. It's Saturday, it's a party. You're not an alcoholic in recovery. Fine.

I think Husband drinks too much, and he knows that. The addict / narcissist in him feels justified on some level, and he is annoyed by my (in his words) judgment of his tendency.

A short while later, I decide to have a drink, too, and we head to the bar to get me something. Husband orders another double.

"You're getting another one?" I ask. "That's eight bucks a shot, you know."

"I know," he says with an annoyed look on his face.

"So we paid $150 at the door, and now we've spent $40 on alcohol." Even though we have two incomes now, the financial hole we dug still leaves us essentially paycheck to paycheck. I assumed maybe we'd each have one cocktail, hang out to be supportive of the cause, and get out the door early.

I should have been clear and stated my concern outright, instead of implying it. I should have said, "I don't think we have the budget to buy any more drinks." But I didn't. My bad for passing on direct communication. I don't want to be the parent or police in our relationship. And so often in the moment I'll make my displeasure known, but not make a direct request or set a boundary. I'm getting better at this, but there's still work for me to do.

About an hour later toward the end of the event, I saw Husband with another drink in hand.

"How many of those have you had?"

"Two." he replied.

"This is the same one you had before?" I asked, feeling bad for making the assumption that he'd continued to buy $16 doubles after I'd expressed my concern about it. (A common experience of partners of addicts - that feeling that you've done something wrong by questioning the addict's questionable behavior.)

"Yes," he said. I gave him a hug, and a "good job" for making it last.

But I had a sneaking suspicion just the same. So yesterday I checked the bank account and sure enough, the charge to our card was much more than it should have been had he been telling me the truth.

Last night I asked him about it. He tried to spin it, but finally admitted that he'd deliberately lied to me about how many drinks he'd bought.

"I didn't want to get in trouble," he explained.

He knew as well as I the flaw in that thinking. But I spelled out for him that trust is a large, critical piece of true intimacy, and that the options are that he get help for this fear of getting in trouble, because I won't accept the role of scary mommy in our marriage, or we figure out how to gracefully end our relationship.

I can fake it as part of the work toward making it, but don't want to fake it if the situation feels hopeless because I can't perpetuate that lie to my son. That would be as big a betrayal as my husband's lies to me. I've been willing to work hard while doing my best to keep our grown-up issues between me and Husband, so that Son can feel secure in our family unit. But that's been because I've been working toward authentic intimacy with the feeling that it's possible. If I pretend to my son that we have an Ozzie and Harriet relationship when I feel hopeless and firmly disconnected in the relationship, that's gone from keeping grown-up issues between grown-ups to lying to Son about what healthy relationships are, how they work, and what they look like. I'm not willing to do that.

This lie is a huge setback for the state of our relationship.

Lying about a cocktail is the same as lying about a prostitute. It is a firm indicator that Husband is an unsafe person to be vulnerable with. This does not do much for the intimacy quotient in our marriage.

In addition to the general numbness I'm experiencing, I know I have a lot of feelings.

I feel disrespected. He took the cowardly way out and lied to me because it was better for him. What about for me? What about the trust I've been trying with all my fucking might to develop? Ask me to trust you and then lie to me AGAIN? That's not what I want from a partner, nor will I continue to accept it.

For whatever reason (and I've met his mother so I'm sure he has good ones,) he gives me this power and won't man up and take responsibility for his actions, won't jump into conflict with me. I get that it's difficult because I'm a major conflict avoider, too. But I've been working hard at taking risks and communicating without knowing what the result will be, and without sacrificing saying what needs to be said to avoid negative outcomes.

I feel hurt. Aren't I worthy of basic respect and truthfulness? Don't you value me and our relationship enough to tell me the truth? Because, regardless of whether you lie out of malice or fear, the impact on me is THE SAME! I feel kicked in the stomach, I feel like you don't value me, I feel betrayed by someone I'm trying hard to trust, I feel like it's not safe to love you, I begin to wonder if trusting anyone at all is a joke.

I feel disconnected. Safety mechanism, and I know it. It's also a consequence. Trust is EARNED. So he has work to do if he wants that from me.

I feel sad. This is not what I want. I don't want a relationship that feels 75%. I want trust, intimacy, respect. I'm willing to go through hard stuff. I don't expect him to be perfect. But I do expect him to respect my boundaries. DON'T LIE TO ME is not an unreasonable boundary. If it feels too demanding to him, he's married to the wrong person.

I'm fucking angry. WHY is it easy to lie to me? WHY does he choose to do that? WHY did I end up with a self-righteous asshole with narcissistic tendencies? WHY is he so fucked up? WHY doesn't he treat me like like a valuable gift? WHY is he afraid of me? I have a lot of questions like this that I'm angry about. And I know the answers to many of them. But knowing the answers doesn't help right now. I'm pissed.

The hard thing is that I actually like Husband. There are lots of things I love and value about him. Maybe we should just be good friends. That way we'd have less at stake with each other, I'd have the distance to protect my mental and emotional health from his lying, and he'd probably have no reason to lie to me. I wouldn't have to worry about sex (because frankly, sex with Husband when I can't get to intimacy is fine at best, but often echoes with emptiness which is painful when compared to how I know sex with him used to be.)

So we did talk about all of this last night. And we're going back to therapy. He to his sex-addiction group, and us to couples therapy with a sex-addiction specialist. And he still goes to SA and OA meetings (although many by phone now.)

I'm willing to keep trying because at the bottom of this, Husband is a wonderful person - smart, funny, creative, gentle, compassionate, thoughtful, a fantastic, loving dad. He's fucked up by his fear, and I know it.

But I'm not willing to continue trying if I don't see progress. He needs to become willing to "get in trouble" with me and see where that goes, or I'm going to have to figure out a plan B.

Because this is my promise to myself: I will not stay in a relationship with someone who isn't capable of being truthful.

This is a hard one, since because of our history there is little room in my mind or tolerance in my heart for even little white lies that many couples use to smooth out the sometimes dangerous, frightening and rocky road of a long-term relationship. But complete integrity around truthfulness is what I need to feel safe in this relationship. I don't expect perfect, but expect him to have the courage to choose to respond to his fear differently, and to call himself out when he makes a mistake, rather than to feel relieved that he escaped his mother's wrath, and satisfied by that. Our willingness to have courage in the face of fear will create a path toward restored trust.

I still believe there's hope, because Husband's willing to dive in and work this issue head-on. And I have work to do, too, because right now I can feel that I'm very disengaged.

And I know we can only make progress if we're both willing.

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one's fear. The timid presume it is lack of fear that allows the brave to act when the timid do not. But to take action when one is not afraid is easy. To refrain when afraid is also easy. To take action regardless of fear is brave."
— Ambrose Hollingworth Redmoon, from No Peaceful Warriors!

Force fields up, phasers set to vaporize

I'm feeling more stable now that my walls are firmly in place.

I'm still connecting with my feelings, but I have decided to take off the wife and lover hats, as Sophie wrote to me explaining how she handles trust in her marriage to an addict.

I had to deliver something to a client today, and ended up parking right in front of the Oriental Massage place where Husband got his first taste of prostitution. Massage with happy ending.

We lived right around the corner from that place at the time he started visiting it. I always wondered when I passed it what kind of a place it was. I'd heard about "oriental massage" from a friend whose husband had experienced the happy ending at a posh hotel in Hong Kong.

I decided that it was time to face this head on. I'd been avoiding driving by the place, and getting anxious every time I knew I'd be near it. So I got out of the car, walked up and opened the door.

It opened right into a dingy, white space that was 3x8 with a counter running the length of it. A sign read "No one under 21 allowed." I glanced around the small space, wondering what Husband was thinking when he opened that same door for the first time. He knew why he was there...I'm sure of that now.

A bell had rung as I entered and Asian woman came out after a moment in response. She muttered something indecipherable.

"This is where my husband first got introduced to prostitution, so I just wanted to see it," I said. I glanced around, looked at her as she muttered something else, and then I shut the door.

My heart was pounding. I felt like I'd looked into the mouth of a beast. But I also felt strength, having faced something that had become such a symbol in my mind.

I continued to the next building to visit my client, heart still pounding as I rode the elevator up and waited in the lobby. Pounding as I talked to the cheerful woman who greeted me. But eventually my chest calmed, and my mind moved into the present moment.

When I returned to my car, a final glance at that door confirmed that I'd vanquished something. Although I could feel my heart pounding again. I took a deep breath, switched on NPR, and pulled into traffic repeating a favorite mantra under my breath. "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay..." In the present it's okay.

Our couples therapy session Tuesday night was good. I expressed a lot of the anger and pain I'd been keeping inside. Husband talked about what the experience of slipping was like for him, from the cigarette and shot to the stupid hair salon to the sneaking money. Our therapist suggested that he do whatever he can to demonstrate that he's trustworthy so I can begin to see over time again that he's actively in recovery and not lying about it.

I told her that I really had no idea what he was doing - going to meetings or lying about it, going to his therapist or lying about it. I had no idea any more about the validity of anything coming out of his mouth. She said that if he was lying on such a massive scale, if he was pulling away from the recovery community like that, he'd demonstrate in other areas of life behavior that would be clearly addict or narcissist behavior, and he'd be oblivious to it. In other words, I'd get some trustworthy flags. That made sense to me. That helped. I may not be able to tell when he's lying to my face, but I know I'd be able to pick up on other addict / narcissist behaviors.

So now, I'm giving it time. Time, time, time. Weeks? Months? Years? I don't know. My priority is me and my son. Right now Husband is my partner in raising our son, managing our finances and the logistics of life. I have the parent hat on. I don't know when the other hats will feel right. The friend, the wife, the lover...

I feel resentment about the fact that I feel alone in the world, without an intimate relationship to trust, without a partner I can feel safe to trust and love freely. I'm pissed about that. But I breathe. I read. I do step work. I work on my relationship with higher power. I try to remember not to do it alone, to reach out to others.

Something that's odd for me is that while I don't want to reach out to Husband, I don't want him to stop reaching out to me. I need to be able to remain detatched, but I also need to feel Husband's love for me. I feel like an animal that's been hit, craving touch but freezing in my tracks so I can detect whether it's going to be a blow or a caress and respond to save my life if I have to. So dramatic, huh?

I don't feel like a victim. But I am disappointed. Disappointed and sad. And angry. But I'm also stronger, more grounded, more in touch with myself, and grateful for the progress I've made with my own issues.

Feeling a lot of fear

Today the overwhelming thing I'm feeling is fear.

I'm afraid to trust Husband. When I can't reach him on the phone, where is he?
I'm afraid that my pulling back is making him so sacred that he's going to slip back into old behaviors and resentment.
I'm afraid that he'll start to pull away from me, and from trying to work things out because of his fear
I'm afraid of losing him
I'm afraid of wanting him
I don't know what I want
I'm afraid of him, afraid to trust anything he says
I'm afraid because I don't know how this will all turn out

He says he wants to keep fighting for our marriage, that he wants to do whatever he can to work things out. I want to believe him, but I just don't know if that's crazy or not anymore.

He had a slip. He lied. He started sneaking money to do...who knows what. He said it wasn't for strip clubs or prostitutes, but I can never know for sure. He didn't tell me about a cigarette he had, about a drink he had (he's not abstaining as part of a program, but he had said he wouldn't drink for a year.) In the context of everything else he's done, these things are minor. But lies, omissions and hiding are the problem.

I feel like I don't know what to trust. My defenses are way up, and I'm pulling away to protect myself. But is that motivated by intuition or fear? I started to feel that trust was possible, and then this happened. So is it just hopeless? If I pull away out of fear, will I lose a real chance at healing and recovery in our marriage?

I guess if Husband is really back on the path of recovery, he will be on that path no matter where I am. Maybe that's where I can look. What does he do when he gets no reassurance from me? Does he continue to use his new tools, or does he give up and fall into the abyss of resentment and self-pity, and swiftly return to old ways of being? How sincere is his recovery? Is this how I can get an idea of that?

Everything looks frightening right now. I want some solid ground.

I know I can continue on my own path of recovery. But I wish I could know what is possible for our relationship. Either way, with him or without him, I can move forward in a healthy way. I'm confident of that. But this not-knowing...that is where all the fear is. Fear of the unknown. Fear of being hurt again, betrayed again.

I think the person I loved and married is there somewhere, and I don't want to give up on that. But neither do I want to sacrifice my self and self-respect if the addict is going to dominate our relationship. I don't know who I'm talking to right now...Husband the-man-I-knew or Husband the Addict. They are different, but they look the same to me.

Love without truth?

Having little opportunity to deal with Husband's recent lies and omissions has left me sitting with anger and pain and confusion that only seem to increase with time.

I did an outreach call today, and the woman I talked with suggested I write down some of my feelings as a way of releasing them.

I feel so disrespected. How could he lie to me again? After seeing the pain and agony it caused before? He said he couldn't promise me that he'd never slip, but he said he'd never lie about it.

On the list of boundaries I drew up and talked about with Husband, I'd specified that one of the things that wouldn't work for me was lying, hiding or omitting anything he thought I might want to know as his partner. I also drew up a list of consequences as part of that exercise. Those we agreed I didn't need to share with him. I referred back to that list the other day to see what I'd thought, in more rational moments, was the appropriate consequence for lying, hiding or omitting.

"He moves out" it said.

But while this incident has crossed that boundary, I feel like I just can't make that move yet because of my son. I'm not sure yet that I want to take this to that next level, and I need to be sure before I disrupt my son's life in that way.

I'm so angry that I caught him. Why didn't he come to me and tell me about the cigarette and the shot? How could he make the choice to sneak that money knowing how fragile my ability to trust is, and how I felt that I was actually beginning to make progress in that area? He may be an addict, but doesn't he have a memory or a brain? Can't he think? Is he so overcome by narcissism when he's anxious that I just cease to exist?

I feel like this is happening all over again. The betrayal feels almost as big as the first time I found out, even though it didn't involve sex with other women. I wonder what else he's been doing in the inner circle.

I don't trust him anymore. And I don't know if love is possible without trust. I don't know if I love him anymore. But I'm not sure. I can't tell if I'm just too afraid to be alone, too afraid to give up on what I thought I could have. Or if I'm too afraid of him to feel feeling that are still there.

I've been so afraid of his resentment, and it's that resentment that's taken us down this path again. It's that resentment that's allowed him to justify lying and hiding and not telling me things.

Sometimes I hate him.

He tells me he's afraid of my anger, yet he does the one thing that is most likely to make me angry. So now that I've discovered his deceit I'm mad and I'm imagining that he's slipping into that place of self loathing and self pity that turn to resentment. But my only other choice is to put his experience before mine, and show him that he doesn't have to fear my anger, that he can make mistakes and be flawed and he won't be abandoned. But that doesn't work for me anymore. If he feels like telling the truth and not hiding qualifies as walking on eggshells around me then I guess we should come to terms with our differences sooner than later.

How do you demand truth from an addict?

How do you stay in a loving committed partnership without truth?

I hate him for taking away the person I thought I married, the person who would never lie to me.

How does he feel about me that I'm not worth telling the truth to, not worth having the courage to be honest with?

Someone wrote to me from the perspective of the-other-woman saying that sometime she was jealous that the man she was having an affair with loved his wife enough to want to lie to her and keep their affair secret. But being lied to feels so shitty. He may lie because he is afraid, but it doesn't feel at all like love to me.

The addict slips in

Not only did Husband go to "the Hooters of mens' hair salons" to quote Margaux Mead, he also took $170 in cash out in small amounts over the weekend, most disguised as cash back on debit card purchases.

I found out about all this when I went to do some online banking in our joint account last night.

So I asked.

Is THAT where you went to get your hair cut?
Yes. But it's not like that.
(Yeah, whatever.)
And why did you take out $170 in cash over the last 2 days?
I did? Are you sure? I don't know, blah, blah, blah, lies, blah, blah, blah...I didn't do anything wrong. (RED FLAG!)
So what did you do...then. Because that's what you told me before, those exact same words. So now I don't know what to believe.

I asked to see the cash, and he was unable to produce it. (He told me it was in the car, but after "searching" (buying time) he came back empty handed.)

It's at work. I left it at work.

I've learned not to accept anything that doesn't make sense...like taking out $170 and then forgetting it at work.

Long story short, he finally confessed that he left the $$ at work because he was secretly taking out money to buy himself something.

Like WHAT?

Well, actually I was going to buy you an iPod. (sounds fishy)

If you're going to take out money to buy me a surprise, TELL ME! Don't SNEAK and LIE about taking out money! So you were sneaking around to buy me an iPod? Why?

Because I resented that you didn't get one.

Then it came out that he's under all sorts of stress at work, also in pain from a medical condition for which he's about to have a minor operation, which is also causing stress, and feeling resentful when I told him I was feeling upset about him working late when he used to give me such a hard time about not prioritizing my family when I used to work late. So lots of stress, building up resentment, and not talking to anybody about it.

Hello Addict!

So I still couldn't figure out the bit about the iPod.

I resented you for not getting one, because I felt like you weren't valuing my input. (He think I need it for work and he's right, but we're also on thin financial ice.)

So now I'm all confused about what to ask, what boundaries to draw (my own bank account?), what is codependency and what is healthy. My instinct is to protect myself by cutting him out of things (like my income) but that feels like a form of trying to control what he does, which I don't want to do (because...I can't.)

I'm going to call my sponsor, and thank god we have couples therapy Saturday.

I've wondered what a slip might look like, so now I know. At least he didn't go to a strip club or fuck someone.

But I really hate the lies. They scare me, and...does he think I'm stupid?