journal Entry: August 8, 2014
Things have been going pretty well since our anniversary. No real overly dramatic moments for me, although the PTSD still knocks me on my ass on a regular basis. Our older son visited for a few days last week and we all went out to our new beach property. My husband was able to set up a ritual with our sons that helped him connect with them in his new reality. He also made an apology to them for the years he chose his secret addictive life over them. He really loves his rituals, which include excerpts from his 12 step materials and other meditation sources, plus burning incense in a small fire on the beach, rock formations, water from the ocean, etc… All these things apparently help him feel grounded. This is certainly a different husband and father than we have grown accustomed to over the past few decades.
Earlier this week, however, I noticed my husband devolving. He started closing in on himself. He seemed angrier and more nervous. He was working diligently on his first step and I thought maybe that was what was causing all the stress. But that was not it.
Over the past few months, during some of the most disturbing disclosure conversations, I had threatened to pull his phone records for the past few years because I just could not make sense of his timelines and his cycle. I didn’t want to know what had been said between the two of them because I know it was all lies and sick fantasy talk. What I wanted to know was exactly how often he was communicating with Camilla. He had convinced himself that his addiction ran in cycles that were six months to even eighteen months apart and lasted for a couple weeks, both before and after trips or hookups. He promised me that he kept his two lives separate. That he texted and called her while he was at work or traveling. That our time was sacred. He would go for many months not speaking to her at all. I got the part about the cycles and him trying to manage it, I have read a lot about that, and I believe it, but when he was in his addictive cycle, I wanted to know just exactly how much his addiction invaded my life, our life together. I wanted to know how far he was willing to go, on my time, and in my presence in order to feed the addiction. He just could not remember details. but he said he would go for months, then he would feel the need to contact her again. Whether the business trip gave him the excuse to make contact, or whether he needed to make contact and that drove the business trip, who knows. He says he doesn’t remember. He would contact her about the trip, then obsessively fantasize about meeting up with her for sex. He said that he might contact her about a month before the trip or as soon as I had booked the plane flight for him. Then they would talk logistics prior to the trip and the week before, the texting would increase “a little,” in anticipation of seeing each other. Once they were done with the trip, she was so angry that he refused to give her more, that she knew she was going to be ignored for months, so the communication would end upon their return home. I figured if we pulled the phone records, he could better face his own reality (even though it was in the past, I still felt like he needed to OWN it) and I would know the truth, because I sure didn’t feel like I was getting it from him. I never did pull the phone records, but apparently he did.
As I was sitting in Chatty Kathy’s office yesterday, there was a knock on her door. I did give my therapist another chance and so far things have been progressing fine. I am too guarded with her now, and she is trying to be a better listener (so weird that she is a therapist and she still has to work on this) and I am not sure how long this is going to last, but I gave it another shot. Anyway, the knock on the door startled both of us. Apparently this just never happens. No one ever knocks on the door when she is in session. She got up and answered it. It was Blue Eyes, he handed her a bunch of paper and then left. On the top of the stack of papers was a note to me. It was the phone records my husband had requested and then printed out. He had to request the records from our Controller as the mobile phone he uses for all his communication is a business phone. Our Controller had to request the records from the service provider. Chatty Kathy asked if what Blue Eyes had delivered, what he thought was important enough to interrupt a private session, was something we should stop and address. I looked at the note, which basically said here are the phone records. I wanted to give them to you when you were with your therapist so you could discuss them with her in a “safe” environment. Using the “safe” environment excuse is becoming my husband’s newest and most pathetic way of deflecting the pressure off him. In other words, get your initial shock, anger, sadness, whatever out on someone else so I don’t have to deal with that. I told Chatty Kathy we didn’t need to discuss the phone records now, I would talk with her about it next week after Blue Eyes and I had gone over them.
I left my therapist’s office and went outside. Blue Eyes had actually dropped me off at Chatty Kathy’s and, of course, he was not there to pick me up on time. He is always late. I sat down on the stairs outside the big beautiful old victorian house and opened the phone records. My stomach immediately started to churn. My heart started to seize up and I felt that uncomfortable feeling that I was heading for a cliff with no way to stop myself from flying off the edge and into the abyss.
The phone records were for 2013 only and they were pages and pages and pages and pages long. The records included a list of all the incoming and outgoing texts and phone calls between Blue Eyes and Camilla. He had separated out all calls to and from his mobile phone that were to or from her home phone or her mobile and also all no caller id calls since we knew they were her too, especially after he ended their affair. There were hundreds of texts and dozens of calls. My head was swimming in dates, and numbers, and times. Blue Eyes pulled up in front of me, jumped out of his car, and presented me with a huge bouquet of flowers. He seemed incredibly nervous and I think he thought this was it. This is what was going to send me away. I just looked up at him and down at the phone records and I felt lost and alone.
We drove home in silence. I went into my office and set all the sheets of paper out on my desk. I am an incredibly organized person. I needed to make sense of it all. I needed to organize it so I could understand it. The reality turned out to be much worse than even I had suspected. Blue Eyes sat next to me as we took a look at his reality. From the phone records, I could see that not only had my husband misrepresented the way his communications with her played out, but the two times he was in contact with her last year, seemed as obsessive as ever, and lasted for weeks. The communications for 2013 began in March. He had called both her home phone and her mobile phone numerous times before she eventually called him back. He asked her to join him on a trip to New York City. He was scheduled to speak at a 2-day conference the first week of April. I had entertained the idea of going with him, but he had talked me out of it. It did end up being a whirlwind trip with long flights and a schedule where the only time he possibly could have spent with her (or me) was at night, which is all he wanted anyway, but he wanted it with her and his addiction, not with me. Leading up to the trip, for approximately three weeks, they both texted each other hundreds of messages. There were texts even while they were in NYC. There were texts the night they returned home. There were texts the next day (a Saturday) and for days after. They texted each other during a trip we took to visit Blue Eyes’ sister. The texting and calling stopped the day we left for a family spring break trip to Hawaii. Miraculously, all communication stopped… for three months, just like that, which makes me believe he had full control over all the communication. But then, he started everything back up again the day we returned from our trip to the coast after his hospital visit. And they texted and called each other numerous times during the week leading up to the “quickie” at her house. The most disturbing revelation to me, however, was the fact that my husband and I went on a business trip/anniversary celebration trip to Los Angeles from August 1 through August 5, and during that trip, they texted each other dozens of times. He had texted with her while he was sitting next to me in our hotel room. He had texted her while we were shopping for gifts for his niece at a toy store in Beverly Hills. He had somehow managed to have a 69 minute phone call with her during “our” time in Los Angeles. He continued to text and have phone calls with her almost nonstop until August 23, 2013. At which point, all communication from his end stopped. We left for a trip ourselves to New York City that day. She continued calling and texting, but he did not respond. He had previously told me the last time they spoke was August 14, 2013. When I showed him the phone records proving the communication had gone on for an additional nine days, he just looked defeated. Obviously they had texted thousands of times over the past few years, why lie about nine days. He could not give me an answer. As it turns out, for quite some time, he was speechless. I think he was waiting for me to tell him I wanted a divorce, and I honestly did contemplate it. Things had not really changed all that much, I always knew he was a liar. And he had, after all, delivered the phone records to me, I think to help fill in his own story. But then, nothing. No ability to say he was sorry.
This is the note I wrote to my husband this morning, a full twenty four hours after receiving the phone records. I am still waiting for him to say anything of substance to me, at all, about anything:
I am saddened by your inability to communicate with me. After all these months, you are still unable to acknowledge how sick you are. Or even help me make sense of YOUR behavior.
I know what I would say:
I would say I am going to spend the rest of my life living in reality and trying to make it up to you. I’m going to try to never let you down. I realize I have hurt you terribly and I feel horrible. Thank you for being honest with me and giving me another chance to prove to you how much I care about you and your feelings and how much I love you. I truly appreciate the sacrifices you have made and continue to make on my behalf. I truly appreciate the depth of your love for me and I appreciate your belief in my goodness.
—
But he sits silent. He says nothing. He acts as if my words mean nothing and my feelings have no value. I feel completely betrayed by his silence.
try not to cry on my rainbow 
They just don’t get it do they… I went thru my husbands email yesterday on his laptop, which was connected to his work PC desktop. First time I’ve done this, because in the first days after Dday I told him to delete everything. That I didn’t want to see all the words they exchanged. I asked him to do it before I could change my mind. Anyways, I found a dozen or so emails that were of meeting up oft coffee or lunch, and a long walk around the boulevard… From 2011. More things he hadn’t told me about. Their sexual affair didn’t begin until January 2014, but way back in those emails from 2011 there were sexual undertones… And friendship or professional boundaries crossed… She heard a song and thought of him, “pretty lady,” “xoxo” …. Makes me want to puke…
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No, they don’t get it. My husband never kept anything. He erased every text message and phone call record off his phone immediately. After I accidentally found that one email in 2005, he religiously erased every email from the email account I had been completely unaware of… and his browser was always on “private.” He also immediately set up a new email account, just to make sure. I did not even know there was such a thing as “private browsing.” I never checked any of his stuff, I believed him and I believed in him. He DID have everything in his mind though and even when I begged him to get it all out, purge it. Purge it from his system and also give me much wanted/needed details, he still wouldn’t do it. Months and months of not telling the truth, “forgetting” the truth, whatever. It’s a game and a sickness. They did the crime, but they don’t want to do the time. I honestly cannot believe the lies that came out of my husband’s mouth when he was communicating with her (from his own admission, I didn’t actually have to see them, that must be incredibly painful). Some days, the lies about me and our life, just floor me. I mean literally bring me to my knees. How can they do it…
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They do that compartmentalize thing that they do so well. It’s almost like a split personality or as I call his life on the otherside of the hill. Yep that wonderful job he has I think was the factor in escalation of his sex addict behavior. He can do whatever he likes and I have no way of knowing. DSuch a sweet and loving husband -eh? Yeah I’m really looking forward to Christmas this year-NOT! I wonder what she will get (or them)? I’m probably getting a lump of coal -lol. Hang in there!!
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Thanks Chely. Did you ever hire the PI? Are you sure he is still cheating? The only thing that keeps me moderately sane on most days is knowing my husband is done with all that. Unfortunately, he is around me all the time, and still not working regularly, which brings it’s own set of challenges. Hang in there, baby, and do what you gotta do. Hugs!
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Yes i finally did hire him just yesterday-the holidays kinda slowed things down. So hopefully will be getting answers by the holidays. Wouldn’t that be a christmas surprise that i’ve been wrong all along – i doubt it but…. thanks for your nice thoughts.
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I just want to say to you that I am so so very sorry for what you have been through and continue to endure 😦 I too was married to a sex addict. When dating I had tried to break up with him multiple times, but his manipulation and “I’m sorry” games were very believable. He raped me several times, but I just became numb and didn’t tell a soul for over a decade since he would apologize afterward. He would demand sex, complained about me for not wanting sex 24/7 when I was pregnant and working full time and taking care of our two preschoolers. I later learned, that was when things got dark. I never knew he even viewed pornography! He was such a good liar. 5 years ago right before Christmas, he told me everything (well, I will never know what everything was as he is still a liar). He’d been sleeping with many men, women, prostitutes, many many years of pornography, he sexually abused our dogs and worst of all, our daughter when she was a toddler.
I was so angry, hurt, humiliated. If he hadn’t abused our daughter, believe it or not, I would have stayed at the time. I had no self worth, but loved my children enough to say, “Enough!”. Like you, certain calender days are horrendous. The admission day, the day I went to children’s services to turn him in, the day I went to get tested for every STD possible. The day I took my precious daughter into the ER for inspection for sexual abuse. the day of the actual divorce, the day of (fill in the blank)! My family wounded me more by telling me to get over it and that they felt “sorry” for him that he was obviously so messed up. I moved thousands of miles away to start over with my kids as a single mom. I’m now 36 years old. Alone with my kids. I have done well until this year. Before his annual supervised visit, I started having flashbacks. He had grabbed a knife when drunk, stumbling around yelling that he was going to stab himself a week after I told authorities of the abuse. I wrestled the knife from him. This happened in January 2010, yet January 2014 all of the sudden, I woke with the memory, heart pounding at 2:30 am I could not fall asleep again. Then this PTSD nightmare began.
I did not sow this life. How is it that I reap what he sowed? I was faithful, honest, loving. I am alone probably mostly because being with a man scares me to death. My son is now a teenager and doesn’t know a father’s love. My youngest daughter talks about “daddies” often, my middle girl seems indifferent. My heart growing up was to marry and have a family. I wish that my children had a father. My youngest was 3 years old at the time I became her only parent. She doesn’t even know what it is to be held in the strong arms of a man. My other two were 6 and 8 and their memories are vague. Now, I am finding it difficult even to go to work. Anxiety and depression follow me like a dark cloud.
Probably the only positive in this is that I will recognize a sex addict should my girls ever date one. I regularly discuss pornography with my children and the dangers of it. I have explained to my son that pornography can ruin one’s life as easily (or perhaps more so) than drugs and harm his future wife and kids.
I grieve for any spouse who has been a victim of a sexual addict. I grieve for their children and the fact that their lives are irrevocably changed forever. Tiger Woods came out just weeks before my husband did and I remember feeling like I was going through this with his wife, and cannot imagine being in the public eye going through the pain. She is a brave, strong woman. Last but not least, as my grandmother told a family member who chose to judge me during this time, “You have no right to judge someone unless you have walked a day in their shoes.” Just remember that should you encounter those people who have no heart.
Take care my dear…you are brave and very strong to have endured all of this.
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Oh my, your story gives me chills. Some sex addicts are offenders and some offenders are sex addicts. They are all amazing liars and have elaborate secret lives. I am so so sorry for your pain and the pain of your children. I do not have the words to describe how deeply I feel for you. May you continue to have the strength to endure the words of people who will NEVER understand. You are brave and strong. I hope from here forward life brings you the happiness you deserve. My hope here, with this blog, is that if someone happens to recognize any of the behavior my husband exhibited, in their own spouse, that they get the proper care for themselves. Sex addiction is not a joke. Just because people don’t understand it, does not mean it is not real. I have read blogs by men (on wordpress) claiming there is absolutely nothing wrong with pornography and any woman that thinks otherwise has got something wrong with HER. So sad. Taking care of you, and your PTSD, and loving on your precious children is what is important now. You are amazing!
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Thank you CrazyKat. I deeply appreciate your kind words. Thank you for having this blog:) In 2009 when he admitted, it was articles/blogs like yours that helped me to recognize that he likely would not change even though he “promised” he was done with it all. I really didn’t have a choice to stay and while he should have gone to prison, he got off on a technicality. He’s living with a single mom now. Chillingly, the social worker who called me to tell me what she and the detective feared (that he would get off) happened and she said, “I am so sorry. He will not be a registered sex offender and someday he could date a woman with kids.” She was right! I am thankful to be away from him. To be safe. People who joke about sex addiction drive me crazy. Men say it’d be so great to be a sex addict or ask what is so bad about it? It’s sickening. I am taking steps to take care of me as I’m all my kiddos have, so I know how important it is!
Thank you for the strength is takes to be so transparent in this blog. I think all of us who have been through it can feel your pain so easily. You are SURELY helping other women who may not yet know what is going on with their husband, and while sex addiction is damaging emotionally, it can also be damaging physically (through STD’s). You may very well be saving someone from getting HIV from their husband.
Keep up this important work, God bless you!!!
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Oh no. I cannot believe he got off and is now with a woman with children. It breaks my heart, for you, for your children, and for her children. Sex addicts make a lot of promises that they are unable to keep because they never truly acknowledge their full culpability and they do not get to the heart of the addiction. It is impossible to “white knuckle” any addiction, especially sex addiction. Your ex-husband is an offender. He should be in prison, that would be a huge wake up call, and also keep other children (and women) safe and should afford him some help. Our system is incredibly messed up. I am so sorry. Thank you for validating my blog. It makes me feel less lost and alone.
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Wow, that communication is REALLY recent. You’re right – the phone bill doesn’t lie. When I went through my husband’s bills, I highlighted a number of curious numbers (calls that were made at odd hours, unusually long calls etc) and demanded I know whose numbers they were, or I’d dial them all myself. I had answers pretty quick. I felt like a lunatic at the time. SWxo
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It’s a sick game they are playing, and it makes us feel like the crazy ones. Stop the merry-go-round, I want to get off!
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It was the phone bills that gave me the worst d- day of all (my 2nd). The day I discovered just how long they had been in contact with each other. How you c9uld see the patterns of him trying to reach her, checking his voicemail constantly waiting for a reply. Seeing my unanswered call even though het checked his voicemail no return calls. Yet all others seem to get a fairly quick response. It makes you realize where you are on their list.
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Yes, Chely. Sadly enough, I knew where I stood on his list when he was in Sweden with her for seven days in 2011 and I emailed him about a half dozen times about various things (some really important, some me just saying how much I loved and missed him) and he never emailed me back. The entire trip. I just figured he was really really busy working. I always knew I came second to his career, but to come second to an old whore. Sad. At least now I know I was second after his addiction, and then his career. It was not really about her. Gee I wish I could tell HER that.
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