Why doesn't he get it?

[DesperateHousewife]

Why doesn't he understand that this isn't just about HIM? I've tried telling him that we have to work on US, that it's not simply just a matter of him not looking at porn anymore, but that it is about US working TOGETHER to HEAL OUR MARRIAGE. It's about him making a consistant, deliberate effort to repair the breach and build my trust, not just by not looking at porn anymore, but by INVESTING IN ME, IN US, nurturing our realationship! It's about me walking alongside him as he makes strides INTO our marriage. It's NOT just about HIM! Why doesn't he GET THAT? And why doesn't he get that I am HURTING and NEED him to comfort me and reassure me, and not with empty, worthless talk, but with real ACTIONS? Don't say it, DO IT!

Why doesn't he get that?

WHY DON'T YOU GET THAT?

[Disillusioned]

Boy, DHW, this is a hard one to answer, and I have asked myself that same question many, many times. Part of it is the denial they tell themselves in the 14 methods of rationalization of the use of p (general discussion), so they tell themselves it just isn't as bad as she thinks, and she should get over it. Part of it is the numbing they have done to themselves from when they were a child. P users often come from dysfunctional families where as children their needs just weren't met, so they lost trust in other people and knew they had to look to themselves for soothing. So, they turned off their emotions as a way to cope, and they didn't trust others and want to be close or intimate, as it is too risky for them....no one will come and make it feel better. In this regard, they are crippled to have a truly intimate relationship. They are still thinking if I feel, it will hurt too much, and they don't realize that as adults they are much more able to cope with the pain and disappointment of everyday life. They are remembering what it felt like to be a child, living in a home that was in too much turmoil to offer solace to a child. Can't feel, won't hurt, but in doing so, they also insulate themselves from the rewards of true intimacy.
My h brings up something relatively minor, compared to the betrayal of p and other adult activities, as the proof that I am untrustworthy. I listen with absolute awe to his description of how he defines me as untrustworthy in comparison to what he is done! Is it really reasonable that any adult would think like that? No, but he does. You hear this and you think there is no hope, and I believe there is no hope, because what they are really trying to do is create emotional distance by hurting you, so that you will back off and think they are incapable of feeling or reasoning.
P is useful to them as another tool to numb themselves of feeling bad, disappointed in their work performance, loneliness, anger, etc.
They just do not trust themselves to put themselves out there in the real world and leave themselves vulnerable to more hurt that cannot be relieved. You might want to read a bit about intimacy disorders to understand more.
I have knocked at my h's emotional door and tried to connect thousands of times in our 42 year old marriage. If you take two steps forward, you can bet he will make you back off 2 or 3 steps. He just cannot allow himself to risk emotional intimacy, and yet he is the one who used the adult activities of p and others, and he is the one who really betrayed me. If he were able to be emotionally intimate, he would see the damage this has caused and the pain. As it is now, I think he believes well, women see this as a form of infidelity, but he thinks because these women were not real to him, only fantasy, he didn't do anything that was so wrong (this thing is called compartmentalization). He claims I am the only real woman in his life. But I am not....no one can get in there to the real him.
Hope it helps. I've about worn out the door knocker to his heart and self. I really don't know where to go or if I should even bother.
Without that intimate connection between a former P user and his spouse, without that understanding by the P user of how his hurt inner child still cannot risk true intimacy, there is a much higher rate of relapse to p addiction. That's just sadly the truth.
Hope your fellow wakes up, but some of them still will not invest in their real lives, as the cost to them is too great.

*** I think I need to add that the culture our men grew up in also contributes to the P. Men are taught all men need diversity by the p promoters. This is not true. All men are biologically compelled to note a woman of reproductive proportions and in good health, beyond that, it is mere lust, and you can feed lust or control it. The "wink-wink" attitude of men that "we all do it" or might someday weaken and do it, as experienced in that sharing of not telling Mom or Dad that we looked at a PB or another mag/rag...keeping it "between us guys" also plays a role in justifying all men do it and are entitled. Only as adults, it's keep it from our old lady.

I also believe that many PAs, when faced with a possible loss of their marriage partners, realize
that they are in danger of losing their best friend or the closest thing they have to an intimate relationship. They often feel loved, even if they don't return the love. Sadly, in not allowing themselves to love and invest in that marriage to the point of controlling the lust and protecting what should be an intimate relationship between the two partners, but is really lop-sided, with only the wife investing, the need to protect the marriage as the most important relationship in life is not experienced. The PA is often described as selfish,remote, controlling, distant, hard to reach, manipulative, stubborn. You might read about narcissists for further understanding. We are all somewhere on the narcissist scale, but our PAs are usually much further toward the end that signifies some pathology.
To all here at TTF, I hope you do the self-examination necessary to cope with the PA and the greater issue of intimacy disorder, and I pray for healing in each PA and So.

[ocja0201]

Shame and guilt separate us from each other as they separate us from Gods grace. P is all about self indulgence thus it is logical for those addicted to believe that a simple reversal is all that is necessary to heal the wound. Have you tried telling him what you just wrote? I know it's probably a stupid suggestion, but it might help to pry his eyelids open.

God bless,

~J

[Disillusioned]

You are so right on J. Thanks for sharing this insight. I have tried to share my feelings with my h, but get a slammed door each time.
It was DHW that posed the question as she can't get her h to see that just getting rid of the p is not enough. That's pretty much where my h has slid back to as far as recovery. Thanks again.

2/2/12 After two nights of discussions, I think we are okay and further along than I realized. H is not a good communicator, but he was clear last night and he heard me as well, so I think we are going to be just fine.

[DesperateHousewife]

I am so sorry Di :0( This is such a enormously painful thing that we are burdened with. I've been on a roller coaster for the last 7 days, with extreme lows and shallow highs... It's exhausting.

There's a movie, "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", and in it is 'the point of view gun'. I wish we had one of those........

[no_excuses]

Hi DesperateHousewife,

I am a PA finishing up his first week clean, which sounds like a similar boat to the one your H is in. First, let me say to you that my heart goes out to you. This is not a problem you caused, yet you are being hurt by it, as is your H, and it can be shattering on many levels. I don't know your H, so I can't speak definitively to what he's going through, even if we do have some similar backgrounds, but hopefully if I take a few shots in the dark, one of them will hit for you.

First, I cannot emphasize enough that your H is probably maxed out emotionally, even if, like most guys, he stays fairly calm on the surface. Disillusioned had a number of brilliant points, and one of the first is that we PAs learn from an early age that no one is coming to make us feel better, so we need to do it for ourselves. Part of that is keeping an emotional distance even in emotional conversations. You might as well ask an Italian to speak quietly in a disagreement, it's just not in the lifelong training, and it's not going to change in one week. Your H is probably having all sorts of uncomfortable, depressing and stressful thoughts, and is having a hell of a time making sense of them, much less communicating them. You can talk about the things he's able to talk about, but also give him the room to privately sort out the things he doesn't have a handle on yet, and revisit it later. I'm going through my recovery alone, my wife doesn't know about my PA. Frankly, it's quite peaceful this way. I feel good, I can focus on controlling my thoughts and constantly check myself, which is what I need to do to recover. If I had the added stress of knowing my wife was heart-broken and having to help her with her pain, recovery could be much harder and more painful. My point is that everyone has a maximum of what they can handle/do emotionally, and he may be at his max just getting a real recovery underway. Where does that leave you? It leaves you in the difficult position of being patient and at peace with the fact that recovery for both his PA and your marriage will happen piece by piece over months and years.

Second, you were extremely anxious and angry in your post here. Great, this is the place to express all that! I just want to make sure you're not acting that way toward him. We're human, when people come at us with strong emotion, even if we're in the wrong, our first reaction is to be defensive. Often even when people come at us calmly we get defensive! So while it's totally understandable that you're hurt and angry, to get the connection you want with him, you will have to be open in your approach. Disillusioned pointed out how her H brought up some trivial thing in comparing untrustworthiness. This shows both defensiveness and a trivializing of the P issue by the PA. Many SOs at that point might pick their jaw off the floor and walk out the door, and no one could criticize that decision. But if you make the choice to stay, then you're making the choice to patiently and GENTLY weed your way through truly a lifetime of issues. Perhaps the best way of bringing someone to finally understand how you feel is to show them that YOU understand how HE feels. Most people naturally have some sense of fairness, so when a person shows that they understand how we got from point A to point Z, and they still love us, then our defenses relax and we're more open to making an effort to understand them, and even admit the pain we've caused.

We're talking extremely difficult conversations here, so I would have to recommend that you guys look into a marriage counselor. My wife and I went to one for an unrelated issue the other year, and it was very helpful in creating that neutral ground where thoughts and feelings could be shared with minimal anger and defensiveness. We had gotten into a situation where there was literally no middle ground: I saw things one way, she saw them another, and for the life of us, we could not find a middle solution. So while we hated the idea of bringing our problems to a stranger, we realized it was simply necessary. We needed someone to control the conversation for us, create some safe room, and help each of us truly accept the other person's position. We went for a few weeks, it really helped us get past that issue, and it hasn't been an issue since then. I really recommend it.

Last point, has your H been on this forum? It could be very eye-opening and reassuring to him to realize there are other people out there going through exactly what he's going through. And reading the posts of all the SOs will inevitably help him understand you better. Best wishes to you both.

[DesperateHousewife]

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I wish you victory in your decision to eradicte pornography from your life.

Dealing with the effects this has on me is one of the consequences he signed up for when he decided to pick it up, again. Hurricanes have rain in them. Fire pops and sparks fly out, sometimes starting other fires if the conditions are right.

I do not think that his recovery could possibly be more painful than mine, but it could be equal to it, when he gets it. This is NOT just about him, period. Isn't that mentality part of porn addiction?

This isn't a picnic in the park wearing your sunday best and holding hands. It's a walk through a landfill sorting through mountains of putrid trash searching for treasure and burning the rubbish. You get dirty.

[no_excuses]

Addiction is a baffling thing. For years I couldn't understand why my uncle smoked when he knew it would probably kill him and leave his wife a young widow. Certainly smoking wasn't affecting just him. Neither does drinking affect just the alcoholic. So why don't they see that and just quit?!

I now understand that it is possible to sincerely want to quit, to absolutely hate yourself for what you are doing to yourself, your family, and even the world in general, and yet still continue the addictive behavior. The simple reason is that wanting to quit is not enough. It takes an arsenal of techniques and dedication to make it through the storm that rises in the addict's mind and literally makes it extremely difficult to think clearly. So while everything is so simple and crystal clear to the SO and the rest of the world, in those over-whelmingly powerful temptation moments, an addict's chemistry is not the same as everyone else's, his reasoning ability is not the same as everyone else's, and it can become a torture just trying to stay on track through another day. So in my case at least, I would say that I was absolutely aware that PA is not just about me. I did get that. But it doesn't make quitting any easier. It just makes you feel guiltier when you fail.

But this is general information. I feel this forum could be more help to you if we knew more specifics about your situation. For instance, does your H admit he is addicted? Is he currently trying to quit? Do you have open discussions about how to defeat the addiction? When you tell him how this is affected you, what is his response? Does he seem to have an understanding of why this addiction grew in him?

Info like that would give us a better sense of where he is and what he may be thinking.

[Deelmo]

Handshakes to Disillusioned and No Excuses. You guys should have Ph.d's. Dear Desperate HouseWife. I feel your pain. I saw this pain and anger in my own dear wife. A couple of points I'd like to make. I now realize that it's NOT s*x addiction but SELF addiction. It was all about me. Only me and my feelings counted. I wanted what I wanted, when I wanted it, where I wanted it. Me, me, me. That's the bottom line. As long as I bought home the bacon, everything else was her job. I never went to bars, never went out with the boys. I was always home. I was the perfect husband I would tell myself as I sat in my chair in front of my TV. I would watch her work (clean the kitchen, bathe the children, cook dinner) as I sat in my chair and watched my TV. I never knew that by my own lack of communication, I was actually putting her in "solitary". "isolation", I was killing her spirit. When Dday happened in my house and saw my wife crumple to the floor in tears, I knew I had failed as a man. A real man does not "kill" his wife. A real man protects his wife. Both physically and emotionally. How could have not understood. How could I have so destroyed the person I claimed loved. The answer is pure SELFISHNESS. Love is about servitude, pleasing, and wanting the person you love to have more and be more than yourself. Is P adultary - YES. It is adultary of the heart - s*x is only a part love and love is to share with only one person and that is NOT self. It is adultary of the mind - YES, I made the decision to exclude my wife from the most intimate part of love, I loved MYSELF more than her. It is adultary of the body - I don't have to explain this. Once I realized this - I also crumpled to knees and ask my wife to forgive me. Now I am working on her recovery. On trying to heal her from the heartbreak I brought on. Will she ever forgive me. I don't know. But now it needs to be ALL about her. I am a true man now at 58 years old. I hope you can get your husband "to get it" and be a man.

[DesperateHousewife]

Yes, Deelmo! Thank you!

YOU GET IT!