Don't you Want Me, Baby?

Feeling Beautiful.  Is this something that comes from deep inside yourself?  Is it completely constructed from one's own place of self esteem?  Or is it a co-creation?  Made by oneself and intimate partners who help you build your sense of your own 'Sexiness' in the world?

If it's a joint responsibility, then Hubby and me did a terrible job of creating Sexy Me! And for years he maintained it was my own lack of self esteem that did it.  And I thought his judgement of me was the problem!

I have felt ugly.  Unattractive. Too fat. Undesired.  Hubby would tell me that I have beautiful breasts. And sexy sexy curves.  But he was never able to call me a sexy woman.  There are parts of me that he really doesn't like.  And he is man that believes in factual honesty.  So he will never say he finds ME beautiful. Because in his mind that would be a lie.

We've had a bedroom and bathroom that are in the same open plan area for years.  And every morning I would wake up to the sound of his shower.  I could languidly turn over in bed, and, while snuggling my precious boys, feast my eyes on his beautiful body.  I loved every inch of him. He is sculpted and lean, and handsome.  Almost every day I would tell him how much I enjoyed my eyefest, and how sexy I found him.  I had to stop that eventually, because it became more and more obvious to us both that he would never be able to respond in kind.  If I walked past him naked in the mornings to start my shower, he wouldn't even notice my passing.  I felt sexually invisible to him.  It was a source of deep deep pain for me. I felt like the only time he could 'see' me and desire me would be when he needed sex.  At night. In bed. That then his lust and desire would overcome any 'issues' he had with my body.  And in our last year of intimacy, he actually used to read an erotic story to arouse himself and THEN make sexual advances on me.  I felt more and more undesirable. Until one day I just couldn't go there any more.

And when I started to make love to my lover, I immediately felt like a goddess.  He showered love and affection on me.  Told me over and over how much he loved every inch of me.  Would lie spooning with me at night with his hands holding my belly, telling me how womanly it made me.  The smell of me. The taste of me. All so natural and attractive and DESIRABLE. The inhibitions I had felt over the 15 or so years that hubby and me were intimate miraculously melted away.  I made love with abandon.  I found my inner sex goddess. I felt loved and wanted and desired.  He painted beautiful paintings of me (the one in this blog is one of those). Took photos of me from every angle imaginable.  Just lavished me with desirability and love.

Thank goodness it's the one thing I have been able to take with me out of that lover relationship.  I think that now that the sex goddess has awakened, she will no longer sleep.  I feel her in me now, even though I have nobody to share her with right now.

But the devastating moment for me was when I found out he had been cheating on me that whole time.  That Debbie, one of his cheating partners, felt every bit as sexy and beautiful as me.  That he had created her inner goddess at the same time as he was creating mine.  I do have that voice inside me asking "Was it all just bullshit?" "Is everything he said to me just part of his 'get laid' repertoire?" "Am I really that desirable woman, or is hubby's assessment actually more accurate?"

I guess how I respond to that little voice of mine is up to me.  I don't want to lose touch with that woman who reveled in her sexuality.  Now that I have tasted the goddess, I want to have her as part of me always.  I guess I'll know 100% for sure if she's with me still once I connect with my next intimate relationship.  And I hear the feminist roar....you cannot allow yourself to be defined by a man: find your own definition of you and live that truth.  I get that.  But somehow, goddess may only really come out when she has a chance to dance with someone.

I hope that will be soon.  Apart from my paintings, I am afraid I may lose sight of her.  How will I recognize her again if I don't see her soon?

Feeding my Narcissist Addiction

Damn!  I got weak.  Really weak.  I called him and invited him to meet me for coffee.  An afternoon lunch with an old friend who kept telling me that I should play with my Narc if I feel like it was all it took.  If I miss the connection and magnificent sex and company, that I should just feed myself that stuff for a bit, she said.  But just think 'Lite', she said.  I knew in my heart it was a terrible idea.  But I just felt so lonely. So I met him.

Maybe it turned out for the better in the long run.  He was very remorseful.  Apologized over and over again for everything he had done to me. I felt loved and safe again for a few minutes. And then he started lying about how often he had met up with Debbie from the early stages of our relationship.  I already knew the facts because Debbie had confirmed them for me ages ago.  But he lied and denied and made up other stories to explain his absences - best one was 'I was going to see my ex-wife to argue about finances.  but I didn't want to tell you because you were so critical of her'. Ugh.

But watching myself being lied to, and observing my inner turmoil and confusion was so interesting.  I started believing him.  Even though I knew the facts.  He was slowly but surely beating down my rational logic and persuading me.  He was doing it in an abusive and punishing way, and I soon began to feel my heart rate speeding up and my soul diminishing.

I've been reading a blog called Chumplady which is a support site for people who are recovering from people who are multiple cheaters.  She has a piece called "Stupid Shit Cheaters Say"  which I highly recommend if you need a good, wry laugh!  but I really did get one of those remarkable lines from John today:  "I told her I love you". Said with pride.  Like somehow telling the woman you're fucking behind my back on my couch, in my lounge that you love me is something to make me feel better and cherished?  Like loving someone and fucking someone else is even possible in the real world??!!!

I was challenging him about timelines to rationally challenge the facts he was presenting me with - timelines that did just not add up.  When I asked him about the chlamydia I caught, his response was to challenge ME - he couldn't have possibly have caught it from Debbie because he wasn't doing anything with her that would transfer a STD!  So it must have been ME who was fucking someone too.  SO WHO WAS IT...??!!!

I am proud to say this is the moment I got up and left.  Shaking.  With my heart racing.  Walking away and heading straight home to my bed.  Measured my heart rate once I had been lying down for 15 minutes: was 135!  No doubt in my mind that this man is responsible for the crazy stuff my body is doing.  I know in my grownup head that I must flee!

I'm still not fleeing.  Just waiting.  It's embarrassing - everyone in my life would be horrified if they knew: they've seen me almost die over the past few weeks. Fuck!  It's hard, people!

Invisible Neglect

My Husband is not an unkind man. He's good and honest.  Works hard.  Loves and cares for his children. Has a strong sense of integrity. People like and trust him.  So do I.  And for years people have seen the two of us as the perfect couple.  Our business is a training company that helps corporate people manage their interpersonal relationships better - we train and facilitate stuff that helps them learn that.  So we have been exposed to many models of human interaction and personality and interpersonal relationships.  We know a lot of the theory.  And have most definitely applied a lot of this theory in our family and in our own relationship.  Maybe that's what has allowed us to survive so long through our tough times.

So I struggle to find words that can explain what happened to us.  And today in my therapy session my shrink gave me two words to help me think about it more: 'Invisible neglect'.

In my previous blog I alluded to my husband's Peter Pan-ness.  It's not an entirely fair label, and doesn't apply to all of him.  But if I think about how he and I created our particular dance, it has a lot of Peter Pan and Wendy in it: Peter Pan the boy who doesn't want to grow up, and Wendy, too old for her years, trying to care for all the 'Lost Boys'.

Being the oldest daughter of a Narcissistic mother, like Wendy, I've always been the one who picks up and cares for everyone around me. I grew up with the belief that the world isn't safe and you can't rely on the people who love you to catch you and care for you.  And my response to that belief has always been to be the one who brings the care.  I have done that to almost pathological levels in the past - for example, I feel very responsible for every staff member's financial wellbeing and have spent a lot of money over time rescuing people financially whenever they  ask, with very little regard as to my own financial ability to do that. And I pander to my husband's needs always too - you want a new motorbike?  Sure. I'll find the money. New tyres for your mountain bike?  No problem (even though my business is crashing and I'm facing bankruptcy).  You want to go away for an extended cycling weekend with your new girlfriend that costs a fortune?  Don't worry - I'll make a plan.

Peter Pan entices Wendy into a more playful world.  She dares to imagine.  But in the end she is left mostly waiting and longing for him.

You know that place between sleep and awake?  That place where you can still remember dreaming?  That's where I will always Love you.  That's where I will be waiting 

and also

I wanna be your lost boy

Where is NeverNeverland?  It sounds so lovely - free of responsibility and grownupness.  You can fly. And Play. And fight - danger lurks even there...but there Peter Pan fights for you.  Here in the real world he is just a shadow: he comes and goes as he pleases and its up to Wendy to believe in him, and wait for him.  But he won't be with her when she needs him.  Only when he needs her - to feel held and loved and safe. He cruises in for the stories she reads to her little brothers, the mother approximation time. He asks her to believe in him and wait for him for the rest of the time while he goes off to play in Neverneverland.

So what does Wendy really get out of the deal?  She tends to her lost boys, but who cares for her? Wendy must grow up in the real world and fix everything for everyone.

That place between sleep and awake is for me the place we made love.  Dark places where fantasy can change reality. Where he didn't have to see my body in the stark reality of daylight, but often his perception of it with gentle lighting, sleepiness and lust.  That place is where his desire lived.  And that place where I could close off my pain of his daytime lack of desire for me, and instead lose myself in my fantasy of being desired.  A magical make-believe place.

But in the real world that magic was missing, replaced by critical "not good enough" stark reality.  There my belly looks wrong. My weight too much. I smelled wrong.

I have been lonely for a long time too.  Not just now, that my lover and I have split up, but probably more like 10years. Because he needs to play, and I don't do that easily, we have slipped in to a place where I am home, and he leaves.  And I'm such a loner and introvert, that it took me a long time to realise that it was loneliness I felt.

That years and years of Invisible Neglect got me to this point.  Where I couldn't be Wendy anymore.

Falling out of Love

My shrink has challenged me to think a bit more about what I'm feeling about my husband.  So many things are squeezing their way through my emotional bandwidth pipe that she thinks that this issue isn't getting the airtime it deserves.

Husband and I have been together for close on 20 years.  I began my relationship with him very quickly after I left my abusive first husband and after that horrible relationship, my new man felt like rain in the desert!  He's gentle and thoughtful.  Became a wonderfully attentive and supportive father to my 3-year old son, and felt to me like a complete grownup after my Borderline Personality disordered Ex.  I didn't get any alarm bells about the fact that he was living with his mom at 30 years old, and when he and I moved in together, I just felt compassion for him for the sadness he was feeling in leaving her to move in with me.  I'll tell that story properly here one day.

What I didn't really see properly early on in the relationship was the Peter Pan-ness of him.  I'm a very competent and decisive human being, so I more than made up for his shortcomings - pick up what needs doing, and do it.  We've always had a strong partnership - he has managed the household stuff - grocery shopping, paying the help, kids school stuff, sports days and so on.  My role has been the emotional 'container' of the family, financial provider, strategic head, and money manager.  We've had another 2 boys together and I have put my heart and soul into loving and holding and mothering those boys, even while growing my business and providing for the family.  I breastfed the two little boys exclusively for 6 months each and then well into their second year.  It took a huge toll on me physically, and I ended up with a severe case of chronic fatigue during my last pregnancy.

So hubby and I have had it rough.  A lot of nasty life issues have hit us over the years and we've found various ways of coping with that: I started my business in the same month that my divorce was finalised - left my job and bought a townhouse.  Huge financial pressure, especially when my car was stolen exctly a month later.  A year later I had a severe car accident which took me 6 months to recover from physically - that sent my earning power and new business into huge distress. Then a couple of babies and the onset of my chronic fatigue syndrome. Debilitating as it was, I got out of bed every single day and breastfed my baby and kept my growing business running.  Later, my husband was hit with a dangerous and potentially life-threatening rare disease called Pheochromocytoma: he eventually had surgery to fix it, but we spent months contemplating the fact that his life was potentially ending very soon.  Then I got diagnosed with 2 autoimmune diseases - Hashimotos (a thyroid disease), and Rheumatoid Arthritis.  Both of these produce flares of fatigue, pain and restricted movement at times.  I am taking chemotherapy now to treat the RA.  Interspersed into this health place are good years and tough years with our company.  Owning and growing your own business is never a sleep-easy thing, and can get really scary at times.  Like now.  We did also take on a couple of foster kids through this time too, who had their own tough issues.

Through all of this we battled along.  It took a lot out of us both to carry and stabilise our family, but we pulled it off.  We have strong, confident and happy boys, and our business, though struggling at the moment, has created employment for hundreds of people over the past 2 decades.

But now.  In our 40's. It has just become too hard.  Issues that were little and invisible in the first 15 years have suddenly emerged as too much to deal and we have decided to part ways.  There's more to that, but I'll blog about that more later.  I felt that we have such a strong functional partnership that it would be too much for us both to get divorced and go our separate ways.  We're great parents, strong economic partners, we still like and respect each other: surely we can continue the marriage and just step out of the partnership to create intimate connections with other people?  Meet our needs for care, emotional support and sex in other ways?

Well that's what we've been working with for a while now.  It's tough!  I'll tell you more about it in future blogs.

Betrayal

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Like Moths to a Flame

Today John and I chose the same coffee shop to work at. And we found each other in a kind space.

Yesterday I sent him my blog about the crazy abuse moment in the car and he was in a reflective mood about it.  He apologised gently for hurting me so much then.  He had taken it to his shrink session yesterday, and his shrink had told him that this is how I need to survive this.  Every time I remember one of these abusive events, it hurts me again, but it also strengthens my resolve to not go back into that relationship. It's a self protection mechanism.  And John says that he knows he needs to own the pain he caused me and not resent me bringing it up all the time.

Of course, in the ideal world I shouldn't be communicating with him at all.  And I do wish I was that strong that I could completely honour the No Contact rule. But in moments of weakness I just cannot help reaching out to him just a little bit. Ugh. This addiction stuff is SO hard.

And then he started telling me about his therapy process with his shrink.  And I know my therapist says I need to beware of this - it's the way I get sucked in - I find the brokenness SO compelling.  The more I learn about the pain and hardness he endures, the more I want to be the one to help him heal that.  He knows that too, and shrink is worried that he emphasizes that to try to manipulate me.

He told me a lot about what he's learned about his Madonna-Whore issue.  It's common to Narcissists: they idealise their loved ones and project them onto pedestals.  He sees me as perfect, immaculate, goddess-like, and so cannot imagine 'debasing' me with his sexual fetishes.  And so seeks out other women to do his bidding.  He gets a short term self-esteem burst if he succeeds in persuading one of those women to act out his sexual fetish fantasy- perform an act that she had not even previously considered.  He gets a temporary omnipotent control high. And then as soon as she has done that, he is dashed into a pit of debasement and self loathing that punishes him.  It's fucked up stuff - all based in deep-rooted early childhood abuse and abandonment stuff.  And he admits to being addicted to that.

Of course, that's no excuse for cheating - he is 53 years old and made a conscious choice every time he did that.  I'm now too afraid to ask how many times that happened in our relationship - I'm just not wanting to give myself even more horrible movies to play out in my head.  He says he is now working with his therapist to overcome this compulsion/addiction.  He sees it as an alcoholic-like issue: the more days he resists his urges, the better he will get at staying 'clean'.  He says it would take him 1000 days.

I know that my attraction to him is also about addiction.  I am addicted to the intensity of our connection: when he projects his idealistic pictures onto me, I bask in the way it makes me feel - desired, sexy, beautiful, intelligent... I must not forget that it is my own brokenness that is attracted to his.  My own dance with my narcissistic mother that formed this attraction as much as his brokenness caused his.  It makes for extreme highs and lows and he has called it 'the perfect storm'.  So as much as I would like to make him the monster and me the innocent victim, I would be kidding myself if I didn't also own my attraction.  My comfort with being that victim because it so resembles my own primary relationship.

I have tried to meet and date the 'nice' guys.  But I feel absolutely no attraction whatsoever.  The lack of broken dysfunction bores me.  I wonder if that will get better the more I heal?  Will I eventually really love and cherish a man who loves me in a healthy and wholehearted way?  Or will I consciously choose broken men but get better at protecting my heart when I'm with them?

When he left the coffee shop he kissed me goodbye.  He lingered.  Breathed me in.  The electricity was extreme.  Whew. I had forgotten how very strong that deep attraction chemistry is with him.

Remembering the bad stuff as protection against charm

John is being so kind.  He is in that headspace that just wants me back in his life.  I really really believe that it's a genuine one - he's not playing me right now. BUT, I must remember that he also has the capacity for great destruction.  And the only way I can protect myself from being sucked in to the the loving charming place is to keep a record of the really damaging and breaking things that have happened.

Sometimes I only remember the cheating and the lying.  I put it all under the heading of 'infidelity' and then I tell myself that relationships can recover from that.  But it's not just that.  It's abuse. And the abuse is there almost all the time - sometimes vicious and malevolent, sometimes subtle and manipulating.  But never far from the surface.

So today's piece is about remembering a viciously abusive moment, and capturing it for me to re-read when the 'lovebombing' gets so intense I'm tempted to go back.

We're driving to a game lodge in the bush.  It's the last weekend before I'm due to start my chemo regime and I have no idea when I'll be able to have another break like this. It also turns out to be the weekend I discover his cheating: D-Day as a lot of people call it.  But that is not the subject of this piece. I've been looking forward to this time so much - I want skintime with him. Close, loving, life affirming lovemaking in a beautiful place that feeds my soul. We've been driving for almost 4 hours - just happily settling in to a comfortable and relaxed place.  We arrive at the gate of the Game Reserve and are now just a few km away from the lodge.  A 10 minute drive at most.

I lean over to him and kiss him on the mouth - I'm so happy we're together.  As I do, I detect a smell of cigarettes.  I pull back. Frown. Think.  We have a pact about him smoking.  I have serious trauma memories from earlier in my life about the smell of cigarettes.  I cannot lose myself and make love to anyone who smokes.  He didn't smoke when we got together, then started again secretly, and then told me he had stopped because he knew how traumatic it was for me.  He knew 100% that we would not make love if he smoked.  I can smell it in his lungs for DAYS after even just one cigarette.

I say in a small voice: "I just smelled cigarettes on you.  Have you been smoking?"
He explodes.  Tells me there is no ways I can smell cigarettes because he hasn't been smoking for weeks. Accuses me of lying about it just so I can avoid sex with him.  Shouts and screams about how much this game weekend was costing, and telling me how I was just sabotaging it.  Threatens to turn the car around and go home. Yells. Shouts. Pounds.

I cannot for the life of me remember what I said to him.  I know I was shouting too. Sobbing. Maybe even hitting my hands on myself.  Or the car. Or him.  I don't remember.  All I can remember is sobbing and weeping and trying desperately to defend myself against those accusations.  Prove that I wasn't trying to avoid sex.  I knew that I wanted that sexual and intimate connection more than anything and I was feeling devastated that we may not be able to do that because of his smoking.  Had I got it wrong?  Was I just imagining the smell?  Was I really just trying to get out of intimacy with him?  How could I? I wanted him so so much.  I was aching for his body. Yearning deeply for his touch.

I do remember one line from him: suddenly in the silence of my car: "Maybe we should break up now. While it's easy.  While we're both sick of each other's shit".

I could feel the world opening up underneath me and my heart breaking into a million tears with those words.  "What Shit was he sick of?  What had I actually done here that deserved being called 'Shit' and deserved a breaking up?"  I remember being so distraught that I tried to get out of the car and walk to the Lodge.  In the middle of  Game Reserve. Where the Big 5 roam freely.  Somehow, in my decimated state, I felt safer on foot with the Big 5 than I did in a small car with him.

He kept on threatening to turn the car around.  I eventually gave up and asked him to drive me to the Lodge:  he could choose for himself if he wanted to leave, but that I needed to stay.  I needed the peace. And the bush.  He eventually decided to stay too after an embarrassing and awkward moment with the Lodge welcoming staff.

I felt completely annihilated.  Broken. Bereft. Beaten up. I couldn't understand how so much could have gone so wrong in that short period of time.  After having such high hopes for the weekend, we were instead reduced to sullen, devastating silence.  I went on the evening game drive alone and deeply sad, trying to recover from the shock and violence of his attack on me.  He sat on the balcony of our chalet.  He was still there, in exactly the same place when I returned.  We went to bed without saying a word to each other.

Of course I was soon to discover that he had been lying completely about the smoking.  He had been smoking all along.  And just hiding it from me and sneaking around.  He kept telling me that I may have some sort of psychosomatic issue when I 'imagined' him smelling of it.  Feigned incredulity whenever I smelled it. Lied. Lied. Lied. I am still amazed at how cruelly he turned that on me in the car.  How viciously he attacked me and accused me of all sorts of things that were just not true.  These are typical elements of Narcissistic abuse:  and I think this piece sits under the term ''Gaslighting'.  It involves presenting alternative realities to their victim until the victim (and her friends) begin to doubt her judgement and sanity.  I don't understand how someone could make up all that and use it as a such a devastating weapon with SUCH conviction.  But he can.  And does.

He has never apologized for that attack.  Often he says 'I have done some terrible things to you and I'm deeply sorry'.  But he has never called up that one and acknowledged the complete lie.  The concocted defense to distract me from HIS choice to smoke before a weekend that was supposed to be so very loving and connecting.  How HE was possibly trying to avoid sex with me (because of the fact he had just finished having sex with another woman.  Guilt??).  He was in full projection mode (another Narcissistic trait), and I became the unwitting victim.  His roadkill.

I couldn't sleep that night.  I lay there in the silence of our chalet, listening to the night sounds and feeling my broken heart beat in my chest.  It was at about midnight that I suddenly felt a gentle voice whisper in my heart: "check his phone".  It became louder and more insistent.  I have heard that voice of intuition before and I eventually heeded it.

And that's when I found the evidence of his affair.

Nothing has been the same since that moment.

I have been taking my chemo each weekend alone since then.  Everything alone.  The aloneness is devastatingly hard for me.