Dear B:
I can feel your feelings of desperation and how alone and lost you do feel. It is very hard to love someone that is hurting and betraying you. Most of your pain is coming from you B. First, it is that feeling I call the Santa Claus syndrome. When we want something so bad or love someone so much we truly want to believe they are what we think they are. Even when they have “proved” over and over that they are not what they say they are. When we feel this kind of betrayal and we know somewhere inside of our “hearts” that things are not going to change, yet we can’t bring ourselves to face the truth soooo just like believing in Santa Claus. We just keep on making excuses and staying in “childhood” saying please please be Santa Claus. Yet there is no Santa Claus is there B? Has there ever really been a Santa Claus? Didn’t you just “believe” in something because you were told it and wanted to believe it? B are you doing any different here with your husband???
Why is it your husband does not have to take any responsibility for his life, his marriage, his son or feel any responsibility in taking care of your home? No wonder he promises and then does nothing. You are not making him be responsible for his actions. I also image his mother or father did not make him responsible either.
B, the best thing for your husband would be “Outward Bound.” Which teaches men and women how to be accountable, responsible, keep their word, rely on self and also be a team player. Most of all how to find self respect and love of other people over love of self, which is different from self love.
B, you need to take a hard look at yourself. Why do you contribute to the way your husband is? He knows you are not going anywhere and that you are not going to stop him from anything that he wants to do. He knows he just has to promise, sweat talk or I imagine have a fit or pout and you will back off and leave him alone for a while. Then he can go back to the way he has been doing this life for longer than you have been in it.
You really want your marriage B?
Then you need to “let go” and make your husband grow up and become responsible and be a man, a husband and a father. You need to take care of you helping B be a woman, a mother and a wife. Face what is in you B that makes you feel the need to “shave” your husband in the mornings and to wait on him hand and foot? What are you afraid of? Is it being alone? Your sentence about crying yourself to sleep B it touched my heart so deep and I hurt for you. I am sure other people hurt for you too.
But what you are doing is what we call in Psychiatry “enabling” which means you are stopping your husband from doing what he needs to do and go through that will help him grow up and become a man. He needs to take the hard knocks that come with growing up. I don’t know what went wrong and how he missed out on this stage of life. BUT I can promise you this until he goes through the process of growing up, he will not change, and B why should he? He has it made.
But for him to do porn over and over bringing it into your home, I think this is the picture you were describing to me. If I am wrong, I apologize. Anyway, for him to do all this porn and bring it into your home is pretty brazen. But, he knows you are not going to do anything “major” about it. He just has to let you have your emotions and take them out on him and then he makes a few promises and shows some either puppy dog looks, angry ways or the little boy look that says please take care of me type needs. You are then off his back and he is back doing what he has always done and will continue to do, period. He does what we call BS people in addiction therapy “he talks the talk but he doesn’t walk the walk” and until he does there is nothing you can do about him. He has to want to and do it first and then prove to you so you two can build trust again which is a long and very difficult process.
I hope you are starting to“understand.”
Pornography is not just about sex in fact it like rape doesn’t have to have anything to do with sex. It can represent defiance and saying to you “look what I can do,” “what are you going to do about it, you can’t stop me.”
You have what is called a parent/child relationship and you can guess who is who. You have to get out of being his mother and make him stop being the son and grow up.
If this doesn’t happen there is only going to be destruction B and you will be the mother of two, the bread winner and the disciplinarian and it will be all around porn.
You have your work cut out for you. You have to work on yourself and how you are contributing to this problem. The good part of this situation won’t come until your husband has been able to stay off the porn and he finds out what it takes to be a man. Then just because he is a man and you treat him as a man he will start wanting to do more and more to show he is a man THEN is when the porn will go. You then will start feeling more like a woman and acting like a woman. Then you and your husband can finally start having an adult to adult relationship. Sure you will always have rough times and need to sit down and work things through but then there will be no confusion about who is who and what is what in your family. Take your life back, B and you become empowered as a woman and be proud of that. Get your husband to “get a life” and grow up then he will become empowered and be able to make mature choices. Let him be responsible for his own body, shaving himself, taking care of things around the house, helping with his son and helping you. Then he will be able to take himself seriously and when he can, then B he will take his life seriously, him marriage, his job and his son, then he will be able to let the porn go. He won’t need it anymore to give him that sense of control and defiance against.
It is going to take a lot of work on both your parts, and a long time. You should do it with a therapist and get your husband to agree and make a commitment. Both of you go together in the same car. But you both do need help and it is going to take both of you. This is also your issue B so you both have to work at it.
I hope you will get the help you need and this letter will give you some support to understand where you need to go with all of this. I want you to understand as you told me you wanted to do in your letter. I want you to understand the dynamics that are going on between you and your husband to make this all happen and perpetuates it all to keep happening.
Good luck get the help, make the commitment,
God Bless you both,
MaryAnne
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