Healing steps

Over these many years of being aware of my husband's problem addiction, I never felt able to talk to anyone about it. It was my private, shameful struggle. How could I explain it to someone without them pitying me, criticizing me, blaming me, or telling me to leave him? None of those things helped. I was on my own.

There were times I wanted to talk to my bishop about it, since I felt like that was the one person obligated to listen to me. My addict husband wouldn't hear of it. He didn't want me advertising his secret. Probably even more, he couldn't accept that porn was not ok for me or our relationship. He wanted me to just get over it and be ok with it. If I pursued help, that meant I was serious about things not being ok.

This week I took ownership of my story and my recovery, finally. I had been feeling prompted to meet with my bishop, so I did. It was scary. I've never really done that before. Even worse, I had never even met my bishop! We moved into our ward a few months ago, and due to our church time and the size of our ward I've never spoken a word to our bishop. This totally wasn't how I wanted to get to know him, but hey, what can ya do?

The husband knew I was meeting with him and was supportive (yay for recovery). I've heard horror stories about meetings with bishops not going well - being blamed, chastised, or blown off. I was prepared for things to not go well. Thankfully, they went fine. It wasn't earth-shattering necessarily. My bishop seems to be a man of few words generally. But he listened and tried to empathize. He encouraged us to get some counseling and offered to have the ward help pay. He gave me a blessing. He asked us to meet with him together the next week. It was good. I felt good, because I felt brave.

Last night the husband and I met with him together. It was another brief meeting, but it was good because we went together. It was good because my husband had a good attitude. He was open and willing to do this as a team. At one point, he even volunteered the info of when he last acted out and what the bishop would like him to do in terms of sacrament and temple attendance. That was a surprise for me! We're going to get some counseling. We're going to have the bishop to be accountable to and to help us.

Keeping secrets is the worst. Keeping a secret that isn't even your secret but somehow becomes your secret is especially painful. Letting a secret both drag you down and tear you apart as a couple is ridiculous and heartbreaking. It doesn't have to be that way. Now that we've finally started TALKING, to each other and to other people, it feels like this secret isn't as powerful and shameful as we thought it was. Still, we have a long way to go, but I feel proud myself -- and of us.

The magic of self-care

You know what the easiest and most difficult thing in the world is?

Self-care.

This concept was completely foreign to me for years. I am the master accommodator. If somebody asks me what I want, my first response is always, "I don't care, what do you think?". Your needs first, my needs last. Always.

I can't tell you how many times I maybe did have an opinion, but someone else had a different one, so I just dismissed mine. This happened so frequently that after a while, I really didn't have an opinion anymore. My mantra became that whatever made so-and-so happy made me happy. And a lot of the time, it really did. If the person I was close to was happy, that meant I did a good job. That meant that I had value. 

Codependent much?

I've been an accommodater my entire life, and I'm not really sure why. I remember when I was 10 years old, I got sick. Like, REALLY sick. I spent a good month or two incredibly ill, until I finally was admitted to the hospital where I stayed for a week. After getting released from the hospital, it still took another two months to fully recover. I had contracted an intestinal bacteria that nearly killed me. It was a terrible ordeal.

The thing was, a few weeks before I was admitted to the hospital my mom had surgery. She couldn't drive for over a week and had to spend some significant time recovery. I didn't want her to worry about me, even though I was seriously ill. I'd put on a happy face so I would go to school, and then I'd spend almost the entire day sleeping on my desk (NOT normal for a straight-A student like I was). During recess I'd go to the library and lie on the couch there, trying not to die. I didn't want to call my mom, because she couldn't drive to pick me up. She'd have to find a neighbor to help out. I didn't want to be an inconvenience. Pretty soon I got too sick to keep up the charade anymore and I spent a week at home and then a week in the hospital. Years later I told my mom about how I tried to pretend everything was ok so no one would worry. She burst into tears. She felt just awful that I had suffered so much.

Seriously, what 10 year old does something like that?

So imagine what happens when a natural accommodator marries an addict. Addiction is self-centered, arrogant, inconsiderate, controlling. Selfish. An addiction will take everything.

After 7 years of living with an addict, I completely lost my sense of self. I lost the ability to make myself happy and to find value in myself. I felt that what I wanted and needed and who I was was secondary to making my addict happy. If I could make him happy, maybe he would finally see me for who I really was and would love me. I felt that self-depravation would make me a better person somehow, when really, it only made me miserable.

On my road to recovery, one of the most important things has been to find ME again. What I like, what I need, what I love about myself. I've felt promptings from the Spirit that God didn't send me here to be a doormat. He sent me here to be ME. It's time to find that person again.

Reconnecting with myself hasn't been easy, but it has been so rewarding. One of the keys to doing this is self-care. Taking a step back and reflecting on how I'm really feeling, and then DOING it! Things like resting instead of doing the dishes because my back hurts and one of the kids was up in the night, leaving me exhausted. Stopping to grab a sugar cookie because I had a craving that just wouldn't quit. Inviting friends out to lunch. Taking a few minutes to stretch and meditate instead of mopping the floor.

Simple, right?? But SO hard at first! The feelings of guilt that I was being selfish were almost too much. But as I actually went through with taking my feelings into account in addition to others, I became happier, and I became more able to devote myself to others without resentment.

As I've begun to consider my own needs and feelings, I've made a magical discovery... I am a person of worth! I matter! And it's ok to ask for the things that I need once in a while. I still like to make other people happy, but I no longer feel that depriving myself of my own happiness is worthy of praise or makes me a better person.

And that has been the starting point for my own recovery.