maybe i'll fry up an egg

Existential ennui. A problem we only have when life is luxurious enough for it, no? 

Lately I've found myself hoping that Roi would screw up in some major way again. Not yet, not now because I still couldn't handle it. But maybe a year from now when the economy is moving again (will it ever move again as it used to?) and when Lexie has moved on to college so I can go for my masters, and when I'm strong again like I continually will myself to be on the daily. Because then I'll be ready to leave I tell myself, and the leaving will be good. 

In this vein I've made a couple of meebly surveillance sweeps. Checked the caller ID, browsed his internet history, nosed into his usual hiding spots for alcohol and painkillers. Blessedly I find my heart's not in it. In part because I've found nothing to raise my hackles, and what's more his behavior has been consistent. No signs of trouble. Nothing on the radar. 

Unless you count his unusual spike in sexual interest after coming home from a physical therapy appointment where I learned she had worked on his hip, and had him change into a flimsy set of shorts to do so. Or how when he left he saw his physical therapist and another woman talking and he was sure they were chatting about his physique. All of which plays into the fantasies that drove his particular flavor of sex addiction.

I suggested that his sudden libido surge (after six months of sexual anorexia) might have been triggered by these events, but he looked me in the face and said rather sincerely that, no, in fact he was just a "regular guy for once". 

Because regular guys are always convinced that two women talking must be fawning over his build. Because when Roi looks me in the face and says something sincerely it must be true. 

I walk into the kitchen, stare into the refrigerator and have a thought about the nature of sexual fantasy in "normal" relationships. Maybe's and what ifs float around lightly in my head without taking any kind of root. Maybe he got triggered. Maybe bringing that home to me is progress. Maybe I don't know shit about what healthy sexuality looks like anymore. Maybe I'll fry up an egg. 

suffocating mud

Lately I've taken to hostility with Roi. It has a different flavor than anger or resentment, though one could see how the latter could manifest as the former. This is less about, "you hurt me", or "why can't you just be well?", or "I want my amends dammit", and more about, "get the fuck out of my way or I will hurt you". 

Roi sober is better than Roi not sober, but not by much. He's oblivious of his own feelings, completely disconnected between what he's feeling and what comes out of it. He exhausts me. Every conversation is loaded, and even if I let go of 99 out of 100, it takes work to let go. 

Whatever "recovery" I have under my belt so far is still not enough to stop the relentless draining throughout the day, so I walk into another room when he comes in, take long baths to avoid conversations, and cut him short on just about everything. At this point I have to wonder why he would even want to try. 

This on Facebook: "You will NEVER leave where you are - until you decide where you would rather be."  Rocked me off-center and I thought, yes. I've known this is my big obstacle. Having let this relationship, this work take me so far off course of myself that I don't know at all anymore where or what is next, having no plan except, "out". Of course there's the quaint notion of putting one foot in front of the other - hardly comforting considering where that's led me. I'm aching for, needing a plan and the lack of one leaves me feeling stuck in a suffocating mud. 

Shift

I have been seized with anxiety since yesterday afternoon's email from Roi, and the more I try to calm it, ignore it, distract myself from it, move away from it, the tighter it's grip on my intestines. Once in this mode everything begins to get attached to it. If I email someone and they don't email back I start spinning into anxious explanations for why they aren't emailing me back. If I do manage to talk to anyone, I berate myself after for not asking about their day or otherwise acknowledging that they have a life of their own. Or I pace (if standing) or toss (if prone) for hours going over what I said. Was it crazy? Too much? The more I feel anxious, the more I feel desperate, and the more I feel desperate, the more I feel anxious. 

This mode is probably what led Barbara Steffens to consider PTSD as a more viable explanation for the behavior and response of partners of sex addicts. It is what I call, "having my brain hijacked" and I cannot begin to help anyone understand how torturous it is. 

Before sex addiction, I had anxiety over things, but it was manageable. Big events like my divorce, or the first time Kyd ran away from home so he could be free to party, certainly would send me into a tail-spin but it seemed normal. Normal as in these are the types of major events that are understood to throw a person way off their center. And I bounced back on a predictable and normative timeline. Especially considering the utter lack of outside support. 

So when I can't get a grip on myself, can't steady myself, can't stop the waves of anxiety and panic that come up when my partner says something so seemingly innocent, I know there is something very different about what being in relationship with a sex addict has done to my well-being. Yes, trauma and various abuses stretch back from the present in a nearly uninterrupted line to my childhood, and clearly that primed me for the current state. But nothing unravels me so quickly as the complex set of behaviors of sex addiction. 

Let me just pause and say, "Motherfucker". 

I've sleuthed for the source of my most recent anxiety and realize that it isn't being triggered by the library. It's being triggered by a shift I'm sensing from Roi. A shift I predicted and told therapist I was anxious about right when we started. 

Roi's core issue is not really sex addiction. It is a steady state of flux that he doesn't know how to manage. He has no inner compass, no set of values, he changes his mind easily and given whatever the context of the moment. He doesn't know how to be, he doesn't know what to be, so he follows an arbitrary code based mostly on attraction and repulsion. His sense of a person's value is determined by hard, material measures that he can understand like wealth or education level or physical attractiveness or what club someone belongs to.  He cannot understand values he cannot see such as integrity or love.

This means he is easily swayed. The addictions only add to his floating morality.

So when he left for these three weeks and I began treatment, I said to the therapist that I was a little terrified that I would find myself in the vulnerable place between broken and whole when Roi had a change of heart for the umpteenth time, that he would turn cold and try to force me out.

And that's what's triggering me. Not the library so much as feeling a shift in his attention. I have no idea what is prompting it, I just know I feel it.

Well Hello Uncomfortable Feelings

Awesome therapy today calmed me down considerably, gave me a bubble of peace from which to draw air. Yay for therapy. 

Then I got an email from Roi. 

Mundane niceties ended with "I'm attending an archeology lecture at the local library at 7:00". 

And then I remembered why depression can be considered a coping mechanism. I'm not comfortable with the feelings this innocent statement brings up and I'd prefer not to be having them. I'd prefer not to be scrambling for healthier coping like taking a bubble bath or doing the dishes and just doing the dishes, no thought. 

I got through the, "don't worry, there's no real beach where I'm going", followed a few days into his trip by, "I went to the beach today. Oh yeah, I forgot there was a beach here." I shrugged it off and went about my day. 

I got through seeing the stunningly beautiful black woman at the local Trader Joe's and the thoughts that she was exactly Roi's type and everything I'm not. I leaned over the freezer and grabbed three packages of my favorite green chili chicken burritos, took a deep breath and kept on shopping. 

I got through my trip to the local swimming hole the other day with Lexie and seeing the guy who had positioned himself behind a group of college girls, who was clearly alone, who was not sunning or napping or swimming or reading or doing anything really except staring at the girls. I got through wanting to ask him what he was doing. I got through convincing myself he was a creep, and projecting Roi's behavior onto him. I got through wanting to confront him or to tell the girls there were being subjected to his leering gaze and didn't they want to kick sand in his eyes? I got through seeing Roi in his place, and it didn't help that the man was about the same age, height, build, and coloring of Roi. I took Lexie to the other side of the beach and we played fetch with the adorably muscled pup that frequents that side of the swimming hole. 

So perhaps it's because I solved one problem, at least in my own mind, and that simply made room for other unresolved stuff to make an appearance. Or perhaps I'm addicted to pain and seized on the first opportunity to wallow in it. Or perhaps I don't have the black void to float in to avoid the sharp edges. Or perhaps my instincts are dead on. 

But that one little statement set my mind to spinning cogitation. Round and round. All the memories of innocent statements that were carefully crafted fronts to seedier motives. He's been frequenting this library for two and a half weeks now, and for a sex addict who can get a phone number at a local dive pizza parlor in less than 20 minutes, twice, and who has a history of acting out in libraries and bookstores and at beaches, "I'm going to an archeology lecture at the library at 7:00" holds too many other possible meanings. 

Additionally, he's been talking a lot about how much he loves the library, and how he's starting to get a glimpse of the "that small town community peace you so often speak of". It so happens that this library was transitioning while Roi was there. The original library had burned to the ground 20 years ago and the new building was just unveiled last week. There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony and Roi attended. He also helped drive boxes of books from the temporary library to the new building. 

None of this sounds remotely like anything Roi has ever done or would ever do. 

He loathes helping to move things. He has never expressed an interest in our local happenings. He has never expressed an interest in archeology. In fact, I imagine it to be just the type of topic that would bore him to death. 

And the really, awful, shitty truth of all of this is that it could be exactly what he is saying it is. Or it could be just like so many other seemingly innocent cover stories that mask an opportunity to act out in some way. A myriad of ways. An emotional affair. A seduction. A fantasy. Other forms of acting out I'd prefer not to say out loud.

Either way, I'm pissed to be in this place again. I do. not. want. to. be. in. this. place. I am angry that his actions in the last 5 years have stripped so much innocence and groundedness from my experience with him, or in the world generally. I am livid that I can't shop or swim or hear about his attending a lecture without having to employ deep breathing to keep my head from exploding.