Relapse

How does someone's
relapse affect you?

It was my husband's relapse that made me decide I wanted to write down what was going on in my life. We have a program installed on my husband's computer called "XXX Watch." Every questionable site he visits is sent to my email and, in a sense, I became his accountability partner in the very beginning of his "recovery." (I put it into quotes because he hadn't started his real recovery when we installed the program a few years ago.) Almost every time he's looked at something questionable this is how I've found out. Over the years my reaction escalated until he finally went into a recovery program.

His relapse came in October of this year.

I received the email with the questionable sites listed. I didn't need to go to those sites. I just had to read the titles to know what he'd been doing. And I was more hurt than I'd ever been.

But why was this time so much more painful when there were fewer sites visited than many of his other jaunts into porn-land?

Because this time around I'd been there by his side, encouraging his recovery, saying I knew he could do this thing, going to recovery meetings with him, and respecting his need to tell others in his own time.

All along he'd been lying to me.

And I was tired of the lies. So tired.

Then the you-know-what hit the fan at work, because he'd done something very much against the rules and that landed him smack into a large pot of boiling water.

And now we wait to see what the results will be. A firing? Probation? Unpaid leave? Will we have to uproot our family and move elsewhere? I don't know, and the uncertainty is very rough on our family at the moment.

His relapse means my sadness, no matter how many times he apologizes.

What does relapse mean to you?

The Ten Percent

My husband is currently taking a men's Bible study course using Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker's book and workbook entitled Every Man's Battle. He's gone through the study once before a couple of years ago, but considering what we've been going through over this past year, I'm gonna guess that it didn't take.

Now, I'm sure many of you out there (especially those who are Christians) have heard of this series. Basically, it breaks down what ALL men go through when it comes to sexual impurity. This time around, I'm reading the book with my husband and it has offered me some insight. One section that caught my attention is where the authors discuss "The Ten Percent." From what I understand, this tends to be the standard norm among all addictions. Here's what it says in Every Man's Battle:

❝Another way of looking at the scope of the problem is to picture a bell curve. According to our experiences, we figure around 10 percent of men have no sexual-temptation problem with their eyes and their minds. At the other end of the curve, we figure there's another 10 percent of men who are sexual addicts and have a serious problem with lust. They've been so beaten and scarred by emotional events that they simply can't overcome that sin in their lives. They need more counseling and a transforming washing by the Word. The rest of us comprise the middle 80 percent, living in various shades of gray when it comes to sexual sin.❞ (Page 31)

I find this all very informative in a sterile, clinical sort of way, but I don't believe it. I believe more than 10 percent of men struggle with a stronger level of sexual addiction and not just "various shades of gray," otherwise, why would they be unable to shake this addiction on their own.

My husband does not frequent prostitutes or massage parlors, but he does have a very strong addiction to the images before him. He's tried to explain why he feels obsessed to look at those sexual images, but since I'm not an addict, I have a hard time understanding. I think, as a society, we need to look at addiction for what it is, and not continue to gloss over certain aspects of it by calling them "shades of gray." Those shades and shadows are very hard to shake, and sometimes the root of that addiction can be even harder to discover than the sexually scarred individual. Even after almost completing his twelve steps, all my husband can say is at the heart of his addiction is Lust and Obsession. But my question to him is, what in your past triggers the Lust and Obsession? He has no answer for that.

Do you believe in the statistics I quoted above? Do you believe it's only 10 percent of men who struggle with a deep sexual addiction, or should that number be higher?

When Does the Healing Begin?

I'm a pretty well-versed blogger, being the manager of two other moderately successful blogs, but this one is different for me. Like many other women out there, I have been left on the sidelines as my husband undergoes recovery for sexual addiction. It hurts like hell. I have no other way of explaining it. I'll start this thing off by directing you to another woman's post. Her description of what she was going through connected to me in a such a way that no other story has.

Please visit:  


http://www.awomanshealingjourney.com/jodis-blog/320-a-shattered-china-cup.html

If you are anything like me, then you understand how hard the healing process is.

So, my question for you is this -- When does the healing begin?