DoneWrong's Journal

[DoneWrong]

Having read some of the journals here I think it might do me some good to start my own. Somewhere I can jot things down a bit, try and work out what has been going on throughout my life that kept P there, and keep a record how I’m traveling along now. There were other things that I turned to in the past but they're gone too now. I think I use these things to run from other things that I should actually confront and deal with.

One thing that I needed was to be complete honesty with my SO. It was hard and scary (made me feel sick!) but I can’t have secrets anymore, I need to be open and talk more and she needs this in order to understand what I’m dealing with and if there's any chance of getting her help and support. I finally understand that the most important thing in life is my relationship with my wife and that nothing else really matters.

The internet was where I was getting my fix and we now have K9 filter/monitor on all computers (1 file server, 3 desktops, 2 laptops, HTPC and a test machine. Yes I like technology!) and only my SO has the password. If you use a computer you should give a program like this some thought. I don’t want P in my life ever again and with this barrier and accountability in place it will stop me going there in a moment of weakness and make me do a sanity check.

If I am feeling weak and the thought enters my head (hasn’t yet) my aim is to go through the reasons not to, my mental check list of what I gain by being strong and all the reasons P is so evil. I plan to go to my SO with any problems I have and work through them together. I have a history of not talking to anyone and withdrawing and just dealing with things on my own, hence my problem with P. I don’t want to be like this anymore. I need to go to my SO, even if it’s just for a hug. I'm finally getting that she is there for me, to trust and to go to in my times of need. I'm not lonely anymore, for the first time in my life I actually don't feel alone. Not having the burden of P, keeping the secret and the lying, has allowed me to talk and feel emotions like I never have before. This is something that I'm still getting used to.

Anyway, for now I’m 26 days P free today and feeling very positive and looking forward. I’ll post here when I can and when I need to.

I like the TTF site and the people here and hope to be able to help others with their battle with this addiction over time too.

Be Strong!

See ya soon.

[DoneWrong]

I've written my mental checklist down as a reminder to myself and for somewhere I can come and re-read it when I need to. These are the things that I run through if I need to refresh my reasons to be P free.

Reasons to quit:
If I continue to use I will lose everything, it will destroy me as a person.
It is cheating on my wife.
They are real people who are victims, being used and abused.
I can be a better person, I am a better person.
I can feel emotions again; I’m not shutdown, withdrawn from those around me.
I want to be able to fully give myself to my wife, to not hold anything back.
I don’t have to carry the burden of keeping a dark secret.
I’m stopping because I want to, for me, for my wife and for our relationship.
I want to live my life with Love, Honor and Dignity.
I want to be free of this, to be the best I can.
I’m done sticking my head in the ground, running from things. I will face my problems and talk about them.
I will have respect for all the women around me and that I meet.
I want to be able to stand tall and be proud of the man I am.


If I continue to use:
I will lose my wife, my best friend in this world.
I will lose my home.
I will become more isolated from others and fail at all future relationships.
I won’t learn how to deal with my problems or stresses.
My usage will probably escalate, and I will sink lower.
It takes everything and gives me nothing but loneliness, shame and indignity.
It will destroy me.

[JenMac]

HI DW!
Welcome to your journal!
I like your thinking, your lists and your resolve! I think you are setting yourself on a good path!
I also like that you are being open with your wife and that you are seeing that you can work together to get past this once and for all. That is what works best, in my opinion. Yes you are doing this for both yourself and your relationship, as you will discover many benefits of quitting to both.
Not sure if I have asked this before DW, but if so I will risk asking again. Perhaps your wife would be interested in joining us here at TTF. She would also benefit from great support and caring here. She will be needing that in her life right now as well. I know she would be welcomed with open arms if she were to choose to do so!
Stay on the path that you are setting DW! It is leading you in the right direction!
Take care!
Jenn

[DoneWrong]

Hi Jenn
Thanks for your encouragement. We both look forward to a future where this isn't so in our faces. I also understand that I will always be a Recovering PA. Not a badge I'm happy to wear, but I'd rather that than just PA. (Ideally I'd like to change the past, but that ain't going to happen).
My wife has done a lot of reading here and has gained a wealth of information, understanding and support. At the moment she is managing to cope with what is happening and is comfortable to just read for now. She may join in the future but feels that participating here is something for me, at the moment, as I come to grips with all this.
Stay Safe
DW

[DoneWrong]

I’m still on the road to a better place. The euphoria of being p free is over and I’m back with both feet on the ground.

I haven’t been drawn back to anything yet and I can’t imagine that I will. This is probably naive of me as I’ve read how it affects the chemistry of the brain and I know a thing or two about other addictions. I will fight it though and I will win.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking with my wife about my whole life and am remembering things and telling her things that have happened throughout it. It’s strange to talk to her about myself. I’ve never talked to anyone before; I’ve always been a very private person, very guarded. She says she doesn’t know me and she’s right. I never talk about me, yet I know a huge amount about her life. It feels good to talk. I’m having feelings, learning to deal with them and finding it’s a bit of a roller coaster ride but that’s life I suppose, full of ups and downs. I can now start to feel these with her and neither of us are alone anymore.

When we were having trouble with our relationship in the past and she was pressing me for information about what was going on, whilst I was trying to talk I would stutter because I had my guard up, I had my secret to protect and I couldn’t let it out, it wouldn’t let me let it go, even when there were times when I just wanted to blurt it out. To say it fast and get it out there. The battle within was so conflicting and fierce that I would eventually lose my cool and explode. I could never physically hurt her but turned this rage on myself and have hit myself and wanted to hurt myself because of this battle I was losing. It hurt more than any physical pain I could inflict on myself. I couldn’t deal with my emotions and feelings and I would be so level, so flat and then wham. It was all or nothing. Now that I’m free of this burden I can talk freely and openly. It feels good. I also feel vulnerable now too, I’m not used to not having walls up but I’d rather be like this. To be learning to be alive in the real world and to share this life with someone, someone who is very special to me.

Looking back and doing some research it looks like I may have had a bad parenting environment whilst growing up. When I look at how my sister has turned out I can take some comfort in the fact that I’m not the only one that is messed up. P was only part of the story that is my life. A lot of risky choices and behavior, drug and alcohol abuse, bad or destined to fail relationship choices to start with. As a child I was doing things that should have been frowned upon in order to get noticed by my parents and things just increased as I got older. I think I was wanting to be loved and cared for, to be noticed and I wasn’t getting that.

When I look at the pain and distress that I’ve caused my wife over what I’ve been doing it still makes me feel sick to the stomach with shame and guilt. I just want her to feel safe and for us to be in the future, knowing that everything is OK, that we made it. What I’ve done has made her feel less of a woman but she’s not, not by a long shot, I’m less of a man. I’m not the man, the husband that I should have been. I just want to be that person now and I’m giving this everything I have. We, all of us, only get one life, one chance, to get it right. I’m probably half way through my life (hopefully not quite though....) and want to make from now on the best that it can be. I owe that to myself and to my wife.

(All my love to my HB)

[maggie]

Hey Done Wrong..

That was a moving post. Revealing your thoughts and fears. You are on the road to healing and you have a solid start.

What I’ve done has made her feel less of a woman but she’s not, not by a long shot, I’m less of a man. I’m not the man, the husband that I should have been. I just want to be that person now and I’m giving this everything I have. We, all of us, only get one life, one chance, to get it right. I’m probably half way through my life (hopefully not quite though....) and want to make from now on the best that it can be. I owe that to myself and to my wife.

What an amazing commitment to improve your life and your future with those you love... You will succeed.
I hope that she gets to read what you have written here.

[DoneWrong]

A question was asked ‘Are things still good between you two?’ so here’s where we are at the moment. (it’s been 40+ days now) For me, things are better, much better. I’m talking so much more, spending more time, more quality time with my wife. I’m finding that I am enjoying the time I spend with her much more than the time we used to spend together. I think this is due to the fact that I am no longer being guarded when I talk, not trying to make sure the conversation doesn’t head to what is wrong with me, or that anything might slip out. I feel more open and I want to talk. We are having a lot of good times together, most of the time. I am being more affectionate, more emotional. Our physical relationship is like it has never been before, in a good way! I’m actually there now, my emotions are there, it’s not awkward or uncomfortable. It’s great to feel love flow. For my wife though, every morning she wakes up, and then remembers what I’ve done and it hurts. It hurts her a lot. It’s worse during the week when I go to work. But we talk, we talk a lot. I find that by talking I can reinforce to her how much I want to be this new person that I am becoming, how much I don’t want to go back to what I was doing before and how much and in what ways I love her and she and our relationship now means to me. She has a lot of hurt, which comes out as anger sometimes and a lot of sadness for the time that was wasted. When she’s angry I just take it, take it as my punishment for the pain I’ve caused her, but we talk about it so I can understand how she’s hurting. She doesn’t hate me, just hates what I’ve done. She sometimes has a hard time seeing a future with us as she has had the trust of our whole marriage destroyed. I understand that trust is earned and not easily given, and I’m doing whatever I can to earn this trust back, one day at a time. I know that it will take years to get this back, if I can ever get it back to the level it once was or what it should have been. She fears that it’s all up to me and at anytime I can just throw it all out the window and go back to p and keep it a secret again. I don’t want to go back, I can’t go back. Life is too short for that rubbish. What I am seeing that we have now and how this can grow from here means too much to risk it for a few moments of p. There are so many reasons to be a better person, and I married the most important one It’s not a smooth road, I don’t expect it to be, but the destination will be worth it and I want the journey to be memorable one also, for all the right reasons. Thanks for everyone’s support and encouragement. DW

[DoneWrong]

What I got from it.

Looking back over my life from the early age of about 5 maybe 4, I’ve been thinking about my behavior. What I did and the possible reasons that I did these things. Where’s this coming from and where’s this going you ask? With my wife asking so many questions I’m trying to find out why I was viewing p in order to help stop. (I prefer a cure to constant medication). It will be easier for me to stop and easier for her to understand why I was doing it, because right now she is having a hard time understanding.

I think the family unit wasn’t perfect by a long shot and somehow I discovered that if I did something wrong I would get some attention. It wouldn’t have been good attention but any attention is better than none to a small, lonely child. I think I also found that by doing something wrong and not getting caught was a bit exciting too. I used to play with fire a lot as a youngster and I think a lot of my friends were a bit older for some reason, might not have been many kids my exact age in the area? This may have caused me to grow up a bit too fast maybe? I don’t remember ever stealing things, which is good as that’s a path I’m glad I didn’t go down.

When I mention some of the things that I got up to as a kid she is horrified that I was allowed to do so much stuff unsupervised and that I’m lucky to be alive now. I think that as I got older I would do risky things and the reward became the high of not getting caught. Some of the things would have definitely ended in standing before a judge in court or death if they had gone wrong, but they didn’t and I continued to get away with stuff. I remember going camping with a friend in our early teens, we’d catch the bus and train to a country town and with backpacks on go out into the bush for 2 or 3 nights. If one of us had have gotten bitten by a snake, only the other would have made it back. There were no mobile phones or GPS in those days. There are other things as well, some of which include alcohol abuse, drug(s) use and abuse, sky diving, abseiling, firearms, high speed motorcycle riding and more. Some sound fun but all have a high risk and reward attached to them. I think p got included in with this list as I knew it was wrong (I’ve always felt guilt and shame about p) again the risk of getting caught and the high of getting away with it. Once in my current relationship my p use was minimal, but still continued. MB wasn’t a problem as I’ve always had guilt and shame attached to that for some reason too, probably society and family views/values and such. But I could look and not get caught = risk and reward. I believe a small amount of my p viewing (5 to 10%) was the attraction to what I was viewing but the vast majority of it was that it was wrong and I was getting away with it, that I had a secret! (I honestly believe this as it seems to be easy to stop p cold turkey and to stay away [day 44 p free today] and there was definitely a buzz from not getting caught, I've stopped other addictions [drugs, 13 years] cold and never gone back too).

Even though I would consider my p usage minimal, especially by what some people here have with their hours spent every day, it was still influencing my behaviour and my personality. It was also starting to escalate as I was thinking about it more and thinking about looking at riskier times and places. What you think isn’t much is already too much!

As soon as p came out and we were dealing with it I quickly turned my focus to a “project”, something to build that would take a lot of research, concentration and time. Something I got excited about. My wife saw that this was an addictive behaviour pattern, not dealing with things and running and finding distractions. This was when we started to talk about my life and patterns and decisions that I’d made and would make. To try and find out what I was chasing or what I was running from.

There was a price to pay for this though. A very high price. Keeping my secret meant keeping my guard up and maintaining a certain distance from everybody, especially those who loved me and those I loved.

So was the high I got from viewing p and getting away with it, the thrill of it, worth it? Absolutely not! Do I wish I could undo it all? Yes. But I can’t. I have to live with what I’ve done and the pain I’ve caused and try to be a better man and move forward and just be there for my wife, not just when she needs me but always.

I feel that the fact it was the thrill of what I was doing and getting away with more so that what I was actually doing is making it easier to walk away from p. That MB wasn’t a part of it too I think helps for me. I’m looking at continuing to make a lifestyle change with my life and to focus on positive activities that actually mean something to me and my SO and help make for a better future together.

On a side note: If your reading peoples journals here on TTF, just try and think about the damage to yourself and to those who love you, or will love you in the future, just try a little harder everyday to be strong, to be the best you can. For yourself. We can all do it and we can help each other.

DW

[Bluebird]

DW, I know you are working hard and doing everything you can to make things right.

I love the new man you are becoming. You talk more than me now!

I believe that if you continue on this path we will be better than ever. I want that for us as much as you do.

52 days free, way to go.!


Bluebird

[DoneWrong]

I'm still here and still free. We had a really good Christmas break and our relationship is the best it's ever been. I'm becoming the man I always wanted to be and have the relationship with my wife that I've always wanted.

Thanks HB & TTF

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