Blame

I mentioned that I'm just starting to see that not everything bad in my life is because of my husband's addiction. I know it sounds unreasonable, but I have honestly felt that it was.

We were so happy and so in love before this (which just happened to be the first year of our marriage) that it seemed logical to me that every unhappy moment came back to the addiction.

Don't get me wrong, this addiction has wreaked havoc on our lives and on our marriage, but I was taking it to the VERY extreme.

I'm sitting here scrubbing dishes in the middle of the night because my idiot husband is addicted to porn. I'd think. If he wasn't addicted he would be much less lazy, much more giving, and less selfish. He would be willing to help out around here. He'd have time to do things and he'd care aobut me enough to wash his own dishes.

If Husband didn't have an addiction we'd be able to spend our Sunday evenings enjoying each other as a family instead of going to PASG meetings. Just one more night away.

I wouldn't be so worried about my boys if I knew they had a decent human being for a father.

Writing it makes me feel a bit foolish and a lot childish, but the truth is I could not see any bad thing in life that wasn't his fault. Every fight, every chore, every thing I did not love was caused by the addiction in my mind.

I was venting to Therapist about how much I had grown to hate Husband one day because "He's good for nothing. He continually hurts me and I don't trust him. We don't have the connection we used to have and quite frankly he grosses me out."
Therapist asked me why I do the things I do at home. Why do I change diapers, wash clothes, run errands and work. My (sad) answer was this. "Because Husband certainly won't. So I have to." And what causes the negativity between Husband and I? "The addiction. Before the addiction he was perfect, we talked and laughed and enjoyed each other, but this addiction has made him mean and selfish and ornery."

Here is the truth. I do dishes, run errands and change diapers because I love my family. We'd eat and wear clothes no matter what Husband was doing in his spare time. Husband is in school full time and working full time, so he'd be largely unavailable to me no matter what he looked at on the internet. While isolation, selfishness and retreat are signs of a problem, they are not caused by the problem, nor cured by the lack of the addiction. Husband wasn't perfect before and I'm not perfect now. Our lives are different now in a million different ways. (2 kids, more school, more jobs, more responsibilities and less time for fun.)

So while there are plenty of negative side-effects I can legitimately blame on this addiction, my day-to-day life being overwhelming and exhausting is MY problem. Not his. He is capable of being an addict AND nice at the same time. And most importantly he is still the man I chose to marry. And I chose to marry him for a million reasons.

The totally awesome side-effect of this realization in my life is that I don't hate my husband anymore. I don't curse his name with every swipe of the dust cloth. I don't wonder if I should have married him every time I log in to work. When we disagree about something, I can let it be about the thing we are discussing instead about the addiction and how he "ruined our lives!"

I am learning to separate the addiction problem from all of the other problems (of which there are many).