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“Hi JoAnn,

I wrote you a few weeks ago, and have attached the email below. Can you post for me or let me know how. Turns out it is worse, so far admission of seeing to prostitutes, swears hand job only but he also swore he never met up with anyone.

I’m really tired of all of this! And happy to have the site for support
Thanks so much,
MySoCalledLife

Hi Joann
It was a breath of fresh air to find your site, and read through so many stories I could relate to. I was recently blindsided by my husbands sex addiction, am about 3 weeks post confrontation……….

For background, I am a recovering alcoholic, have been sober almost 2 years. To say I was a good wife prior to my sobriety would be a lie, I was not in so many ways.

My husband and I had much more of a parent child relationship for many years, it certainly was not a healthy relationship. I married my husband because I thought he was safe. I knew he loved me more than I loved him, and knew he would never leave me. Apparently this is common for those of us with daddy abandonment issues and a history of sexual abuse.

Because I needed to feel in control of the relationship to feel safe, it did not allow for my husband to grow and didn’t allow me to have respect for him. We have never had a healthy sex life, until my sobriety.

Fast forward to 2 years ago, I stopped drinking, began therapy, became more in touch with me and living my life in the present and commenced on a road of gratitude and appreciation for the blessings in my life. I tried extremely hard to right so many wrongs I’d been responsible for in my relationship with my husband.

The first year of my recovery did not see many changes in our relationship as I suspect he did not think the changes in me would stick but the last year had been good, and I believed we had a good shot of making a happy life together.

And then he did two things that sent red flags up for me.
1.) he opened the phone bill and gave me the summary page only, i.e. no phone detail red flag raised, but moved on with my day
2.) he stopped the mail when we went on an annual beach vacation, pro-activity not his strong suit.

So when the following month’s phone bill came and he again pulled the detail, I put on my private investigators hat and began digging.

I pulled cell phone bills for the prior year and found a large amount of phone calls to 1.800 sex/chat lines. The disturbing parts were the amount of time spent on the calls, and the fact that they went to local call lines. i.e. meet singles in your area.

I then found web history of looking at ads on craigs list as well as various phone calls and text to random cell numbers.

When I confronted my husband I did so with love for him as I understand addiction and did not want to make him feel ashamed or judged. He was shocked that I had found him out, but offered only a little remorse.

I believe he did so because he did not realize I had the phone records for the year because I did not go into a lot of detail about what I found.

It took a couple days for him to realize I was very serious about my discoveries, and he has since been extremely remorseful, has gone to see a sex therapist and is going to his first 12 step meeting tomorrow night.

He is doing and saying all the right things with respect to his recovery, but I do not trust him. Something in my gut is telling me it is worse than what he has admitted to so far.

He swears he has not slept with anyone else, but who looks up craigslist ads without acting on them. As far as I can tell craigslist is not a chat site, it is for random and anonymous hook ups. And I go from feeling sorry for him, and wanting to help, to not being able to stand being anywhere near him, angry and then to feeling completely numb.

I feel isolated because I don’t have anyone to talk to about all of this. I still see my therapist, but need to talk to women who have been through this and find out how they cope.

With my past sexual abuse, and his sex addiction (i’ve always known he masturbates a lot) our sex life has never been healthy, and with the baggage of that, my drinking and the new revelations I don’t think I have the energy, the want, the desire to try and work this out.

Is this a normal reaction????? I have no idea…..feel very lost, and hopeless at times.

The hardest part for me is giving up on the fantasy life I thought we had, all the while knowing deep down we didn’t. Maybe we will end up stronger with better communication, a deeper relationship, but after reading your site and others, it seems recovery is not very prevalent, and I truly don’t know if I can get past this. I’d rather he be addicted to anything other than sex, I think I could get past anything else.

Anyway, any insight, opinions or direction you could give would be very much appreciated!

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