A different perspective
Let me start by saying - I am not encouraging everyone to leave their relationships. I am merely sharing a different perspective on things, because I’m tired of lying to myself. I’m just wondering if anyone has ever thought of the same things..
I’ve seen so many posts here about how we keep finding out about our partners’ relapses and everyone is just trying to find comfort in each other here about our frustrations and anxiety. But none of us ever leave. We just continue to put ourselves in this misery in the hopes that they will change. Like d-day -> cry and confront -> therapy, recovery and empty promises, while we suffer the daily anxiety -> find out they relapsed -> cycle repeats. I know we all love our partners, and sometimes this is the only aspect of them that we can’t accept because they are perfect in other areas.
But when are we ever going to learn that they relapse KNOWING how much it impacts us. They consciously did that. Why are we not supporting each other to find our exit? It makes me so sad to read these posts. I’m even disappointed in myself because I’m still with him. I dont know when is going to be the next relapse. I’m just living life on auto pilot, wary for the next relapse if it ever resurfaces. I know some of you might say, every man is different, we cannot compare your man to my man, every recovery is different etc. but when will we ever face the music? They will just find better ways to find loopholes. This is just who they are. I’ve also seen the “positive” posts where their partners have seemingly “recovered” for months, years, etc. Trust me I’ve been there. I’ve been the hopeful one. I’ve been the proud one because I felt like my story was one of the successful cases, I thought my man was an outlier in this group. Boy was I wrong. An addict is an addict. They CANNOT just stop cold turkey. Just like drug addicts and alcoholics, they need help yes, because they are fucked up. But at least with them, we can physically see the difference. However porn addiction is hard because we will never know the truth. It’s not something we can see with our eyes that they have recovered. It’s hard because it’s in their brain. What they think, who they think of, how frequent, when they do it, where they do it. But how long do we have to put our lives in misery while we “help” them through their so called “recovery”.
I just think it would be more productive if we all just support each other to exit when relapses happen. Especially when the relapses happen because we are the ones finding it out on our own. These are the things we know of, what about the other relapses that we don’t know of? It’s already hard enough as it is. We can’t keep letting their addiction dictate our way of life. We can’t be naive forever. I hope we all find the strength to face the music together.