My Infinite Journey

[clm]

This is my first post on this site. Ive been a member of another site for over a year. Ive been lurking on this site for quite awhile and decided to take the plunge. I have seen quite a few familiar names here. My name on that site is clm.

My husband is PA and our D Day was in October 2009. We have been to hell and back several times. The effect of his PA on me was both profound and everlasting. It has both brought me to my knees and strengthened me. I have learned many things about both of us that I didnt know before.

Right now we are going through a particularly bad time. Although he has been P-free since D Day (or we would not be together now), he is still having problems with honesty and secrecy relating to another addiction - smoking.

It turns out that although he had lead me to believe that he had quit smoking, it turns out that he has been hiding it for many months (if not longer). Although I hate smoking, the real problem is the dishonesty, the hiding, the sneaking around..the plotting and planning..and the outright lying that has me in a tailspin.

After D day, I told him how crucial totally honesty and transparency would be to try to rebuild my trust in him. I thought he understood how important this was. His PA devastated me and when I recently found out he has been lying to me AGAIN - i was ready to end it.

I cannot tolerate any more lies and deception. NO MORE!

We have a 13 year old son..and he is the reason I am still here..or rather my husband is still here.

My husband finally seems to grasp what he has done wrong. He seems remorseful and is trying to understand himself and how he allowed things to get to this point. Right now, I have no idea what the future holds for us.

Thanks for reading and feel free to say hi. (I can use all the friends I can get!)

swaay/clm

[Crisodian]

Swaay,
Welcome to TTF. I'm also the wife of a PA. NoMoreP-day for us was in September 2009. He's a member here as well - ArtGuy34.

Just wanted to say a quick Hi and welcome. :)

AG and I went through a time, early on in his recovery, where he didn't "get" that the lies and secrecy and coming clean about everything ...100% honesty, 100% transparency, 100% of the time...was NOT just about the P use. So I do understand your frustration. It's a theme that seems to be echoed by many of the SOs here.

I have no words of wisdom unfortunately. The honesty and transparency part of healing rest in the laps of the addicts themselves. They are the ones, who through action - or inaction - nurture our trust with honesty, or keep it from coming back through continued lies and deception.

Have you given your husband a list of your boundaries and expectations from him? That worked well for AG and I. Basically I put on paper what I would and wouldn't tolerate regarding his behavior and addiction and the consequences. One of those was the 100% transparency mantra.

Find a path to peace,
~C~

[JenMac]

Hi Swaay!
Welcome to TTF! I am glad you decided to join us!
I am also an SO here and have been here since April 2010. I had discovered my H's secret in March. My H, Mac, is also here.
I agree completely with you about the honesty that is necessary in our relationships Swaay, it is all important!
I hope you will find TTF to be everything you need it to be. I know it has been such a blessing to us over this time. Without it I am not sure where we would be at this time! It has given us not only much needed support and encouragement but friendships as well. It has assisted Mac and I in our communication with each other and enabled us to understand better what each was going through. It is exactly what we needed to put us on the road to healing.
All the best to you Swaay!
Jenn

[rosie]

Welcome :) Glad to have you here! I'm Rosie, and a SO of a PA/SA.

It turns out that although he had lead me to believe that he had quit smoking, it turns out that he has been hiding it for many months (if not longer). Although I hate smoking, the real problem is the dishonesty, the hiding, the sneaking around..the plotting and planning..and the outright lying that has me in a tailspin.

My husband did this for years. Pretended he didn't smoke. They just don't get it, do they. The lies are 1000000 times worse than the actual smoking. And do they understand that lying about the smoking shows us that they are LIARS who are not showing us respect, so when it comes to anything else (PA) we probably won't believe them either?

Argh, so sorry your husband is doing this.

I hope to read more of your journey and see you around the boards more. xxx

[clm]

Thanks to you all for taking the time to say hi and respond to my journal. I am realizing more and more how much I really need to be able to "talk" about what has been going on in my life. I have only told one person in my "real life" and that was a few weeks after D Day. Although she is a good friend, she has her own issues and I havent really confided in her about this recently.

As I mentioned in my first posting, I am not new to PA or this site. I have been lurking here on and off for quite sometime. I have a journal on another site, but the more I read here, the more I feel like this might be a better place for me in terms of support and friendship.

I have been reading through some journals to get to know some of you better. Its amazing how similar how stories can be. Oftentimes I feel like I could have written the same lines others have. The emotions are so intense and awful. Only someone who has gone through this can understand what its like.

Right now, I feel like our marriage is at a crossroads. It took a good 6-8 months after D day for me to begin to feel some kind of normalcy. A day never went by when I didnt think about it or feel some negative emotion related to it. But I was starting to feel okay and that maybe I would survive after all. I felt love for my husband and thought things might be okay. After all , he did seem to grasp the enormity of what his PA had done to me and our marriage.

So when this latest revelation about him smoking (again) and lying about it happened, it brought me back to almost square one. I was not even prepared for the feelings that I am not experiencing. Since the day I discovered that he was indeed smoking (almost a month ago) I have been feeling very betrayed.

As I said, its not about the fact that he is smoking again, its about all that it entails for him to be doing it behind my back. The fact that he has somehow made it okay to be dishonest with me AGAIN after everything we have been through! The fact that he hides it, lies about it, plots and plans how to hide it and then can look me right in the face and LIE. WTF!!! In fact, when I started to realize that he might be smoking again, I confronted him about it (with no real proof this time) and he wrote in an email to me "I swear that I am not smoking". A week later I found the proof (a pack of matches with some missing) in his car. I showed them to him and said "Go ahead and lie to me again" and this time he couldnt.

So back to square one with the trust issue. There is no trust. None. If he can lie about something as stupid as that...then of course he will lie about anything. All of this has really taken its toll on me and my feelings towards him. Honestly, right now, I do not feel love for him. This both scares me and calms me. It scares me because I fear it means the end of our marriage and it calms because I feel like no matter what, he can never hurt me to that level again. As ironic as it sounds, only someone whom you really love and care about has the power to hurt us to the depth that my husband has hurt me.

Im not sure if this is a sign of me detaching from him as a self defense mechanism or if my love for him is really dying. I really dont want that to happen, but I need to protect myself. The feelings I feel towards him right now are anger, resentment, disillusionment and contempt. (btw, i am not feeling these feelings as acutely as a few weeks ago, but they are there, without a doubt).

Good building blocks for a marriage, huh?!?

Anyway, thanks to anyone who has read this far. As I said, I can use all the friends I can get, so if anyone wants to add me to their friend list, I would be honored. Sometimes I really feel the need to reach out and talk to someone who understands.

carol

[JenMac]

Im not sure if this is a sign of me detaching from him as a self defense mechanism or if my love for him is really dying. I really dont want that to happen, but I need to protect myself. The feelings I feel towards him right now are anger, resentment, disillusionment and contempt. (btw, i am not feeling these feelings as acutely as a few weeks ago, but they are there, without a doubt).

Swaay,
I do think we feel the need to protect our heart! I think that is very real at times of betrayal! We need to feel that we are safe. When we have had this trauma in our lives, we need to learn ways to keep ourselves safe. We have actually been knocked off balance in so many ways through this and then to have it happen a 2nd time, I can only imagine how that must feel. Everything must come flooding back immediately!
I am sorry this has happened! I am sorry this has put you into a spin again!
But you are strong and you will get through this!
I am glad you are here! You will gain much from being here!
Keep coming back!
Hugs for you!
Jenn

[Hopeful]

Welcome Swaay!
I'm so glad you found TTF. This site has been such a wonderful experience for me and my H (Hopefuls Rock).

I am so sorry to see what you are going through again. The trust is the hardest part of healing from this and I really do hope that your H gets that. No matter how big or small a lie is...it's a lie. Sometimes they need a Gibbs slap to the back of the head to remember that.

Take care Swaay...
I hope today is a little better for you.

[TooSensitive]

Hi Carol! I did not know it was you, clm, until I decided to read your journal here today. It is so good to see you over here! Everything happens for a reason. NP being down all that time was what first made me come here. But I found in a very short time that I actually preferred it here. I still occasionally read or even post on NP but not too much. I found I felt much more comfortable here. I feel more accepted and understood here.

I understand how you feel about h’s smoking. It’s not so much the smoking itself as it is the lying and the principle behind that. I also understand about feeling as if you are back at square one again. That’s what the discovery of another lie can do to us. It can make us feel like the lies will never stop and that they will never end. If they don’t, what hope do we have left that trust could ever possibly be rebuilt?

And then it becomes a matter of if they lie to us about something non-p related, then why would we think they were being honest about the p? A liar is a liar, no matter what they happen to be lying about in any given moment. And if they lie about one thing, more than likely they’re going to lie about another. I’ve told my h, “You’re not being honest if you are only honest about some things”.

I have been in this same place as you, off and on over the past several weeks:

“Im not sure if this is a sign of me detaching from him as a self defense mechanism or if my love for him is really dying.”

I have come to the conclusion that I just need to detach at times to protect myself, but there have definitely been times I’ve done this when I’ve questioned my feelings for him. I do have those days too where I feel he and I are at a crossroads. Sometimes the feeling is intense, depending on what’s been going on; other times it seems to fade away and is not so much in the forefront of my mind. It seems I am the only one who experiences this – he never seems to. It is only me who questions the future of our marriage.

I just do my best to find those things which help me along and then pursue those. I’ve been getting very frustrated with my h again. Sounds like you are with your h too. Pretty understandable, given the circumstances. I hope he starts learning the value of honesty, esp. within your marriage, and how much more damage is inflicted on your marriage with each new lie.

Anyway, welcome to TTF land, and I hope you keep coming back! I feel like there is a fresh perspective being offered here. And it is definitely more couples-friendly, which I prefer (not that my h comes here, but it is so nice to see all the couples on here).