Healing Body, Mind and Spirit

It was a God Thing - God doing for me what I could not do for myself.

The nature of my marriage was abusive - my wife consciously and unconsciously giving me the abuse that I consciously and unconsciously felt that I deserved.

For years, I made my wife my "higher power" and did everything I could to make her happy. It was a fool's game because I was never responsible for my wife's happiness. Forgive me as I do not have time right now to offer up the short course on co-dependency but that was the game we were playing, both of us hopelessly co-dependent, both of us hopelessly enmeshed.

2 1/2 years ago, I disclosed my sexual addiction to my wife and our marriage ended. Much of my addiction was about wanting to feel fully man, fully powerful, fully in control, when most days I felt powerless over my wife and my life was totally out of control. It was MY ISSUE, not hers, but we were both equally sick, equally having issues that we brought into the marriage. Looking back, I believe that my cancer diagnosis 5 months after my disclosure made my wife feel horribly guilty if she were to leave me. I was ready for the divorce even back then but she was horribly stuck - desperately wanting out but afraid for how the kids would perceive her should she leave me in sickness.

Regardless, for what ever reason, since then, she has chosen to live as a single woman and initially, I played my comfortable role of the doormat, feeling that if I groveled enough, she would come back to me. Ironically, the nicer I treated her, the more she dated. As they say, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

A funny thing happened in all this: I started to experience recovery and started to more fully realize the powerful, shiny man within that I am. I so love it when Marnia calls me shiny! I am discovering how incredibly loving, loveable and loved I am - a veritable goddess magnet if you will. 2 1/2 years with long stretches of celibacy and abstinence will do that to you, trust me! I no longer desire to allow my wife to manifest HER ISSUES with men in my life, plain and simple.

The final straw was God using recent events to show me that this so called open marriage was damaging and destructive to our kids. Our kids have always been influenced by our actions and while I cannot change my past, I can change how I act in this present moment. It was time to do something about it and stand up for my values and establish boundaries. I offered my wife a marriage in recovery with everything I have to offer her or a divorce to afford her the freedom to date "good" men, as the quality of the men she is hooking up with lack character as after all...she is still married. She wanted to think about it some more. In the moment, I felt God release me and I fully realized that I was free to move on, free to manifest my new life and free to choose that divorce was the best option for me, for both of us. Someone had to break the gridlock and I have clear divine guidance that I could trust - the same guidance that tells me I have a long life ahead of me and no time to waste living it.

I was told early on that my recovery would upset the apple cart of my marriage and now, as I heal body, mind and spirit - I am no longer afraid of dying, no longer afraid of being alone, no longer a slave to addiction and living in this present moment with intention to share love and healing in my life, every way I know how. I have a lot of passion for recovery and purpose to live my life as a "living sacrifice" to help others, attending up to 9 meetings a week. In God's economy, helping others really helps me the most - as Marnia once told me, "the teacher is the best student!" Most of all, I am in the business of living and offer up little or no time to the cancer that represents the business of dying.

Don Miquel Ruiz in his "must read" book, "The Mastery of Love" called this moment "leaving in love." My wife is free to manifest her life and I am free to manifest mine. I love her more than ever and fully realize how precious her future can be with the clarity that will come from having me out of the picture.

It was a moment of courage and reclaiming my power - it was always there, always mine but I knew it not. The tension is gone and peace has taken it's place - much like a rainbow follows a rainy day. Two different intuitive healers have told me that to stay in my marriage was to choose death and that is why the cancer was being manifest.

I CHOOSE LIFE!

I would never attempt to equate your path in your marriage with mine in any way, shape or form, please know that. Make no mistake - the pain and damage caused by my years of unfaithfulness were overwhelming and I was told early on that most marriages cannot survive such a crisis. In recovery, I have learned that marriages can survive anything with recovery but the short term pain of recovery is a very real price to pay for the long term gain of reconciliation.

Not sure I answered your question but it's been real fun writing!

Another famous recovery saying - take what you need and leave the rest.

The grand buffet of life!

Where IT IS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE to EMBRACE a raw/vegan, recovery crazed, non-orgasmic goddess!

Are these EXTRAVAGANT PROMISES...WE THINK NOT!!!

God is good, even when I am not!

Richard

"The children, the children, we can't forget the children" (from the Sound of Music.)

One of myriad "God Shots" I have been gifted with came through an AA CD that I listened to. In it, the speaker shared of his decision to leave his wife of the time, when his daughter was only 5 years old. God in his wisdom gave me this man's phone number and I found the courage to call him as his sharing touched me deeply. Our phone discussions facilitated God doing for me what I could not do for myself - one of many moments that has allowed me to experience God in ways I was unable to before.

Just last night, in anticipation of my healing journey Friday, I found myself discussing the divorce I experienced as a young child with my father. The trauma I experienced was severe as my mother and father both used me as a pawn in their game, leaving me with deep seated issues of trust, abandonment, low self esteem, and neglect. My father had the support of his new dysfunctional wife and my mother became a raging alcoholic, spun into an abusive, degrading relationship with a sadistic, abusive boyfriend. My early years were full of constant cries for help: trouble in school, abuse of drugs and alcohol, sexual acting out, running away every chance I got and yet, I was not able to fully escape until I finally left home for college. When my mother died in 2004, I found the divorce papers and it stunned me to realize that they continued to fight against each other with me in the middle for 8 years! The discussion was strangely calm - to hate my father is to hate myself and I purpose to manifest love in all interactions as much as possible.

Needless to say, I ended up with a predisposition to be loyal to my kids at all costs but sadly, it also meant that I had a predisposition to be loyal to an abusive wife at all costs - trauma does some weird things to a kid - as adults, our addictions reflect these lessons learned. These traits meant survival when young - as adults, they hinder our relationship with God and ultimately, handicap our ability to be open, honest and intimate with our partners.

My kids, my oldest son in particular, were "lightning rods" to me and my initial steps out of addiction and into recovery began with my realizations of the harm I was causing. With enough therapy, recovery, abstinence and sobriety to see clearly now, I see the damaging patterns manifested by my wife and finally have the courage to stand up to my wife and insist that enough is enough.

It is 13 years later for the gentleman on the AA CD and his relationship with his daughter is thriving.

In December 2006, my 16 1/2 year old daughter told me that, "I hope you die a long, painful death from cancer!" In the moment, I had just enough recovery and more than enough grace from God to respond in compassion and prayer towards her as I discerned how anger is often another form of "acting out". I had similar moments with the other two kids - each one contained the seeds of healing as I stood in the gap, took responsibility for putting my addiction in the past and learned how to manifest love and compassion.

2 1/2 years later, my relationships with my children are thriving.

Again, I don't know your situation relative to Zoe - the absence of infidelity is a good thing, a very good thing. Your uncompromising choice to love her unconditionally may help her heal, given enough time CF, so I applaud your courage.

The challenge in my recovery from co-dependency has been in how I discern what is unconditional love and what is being a doormat. It is tough love to stand up to personal abuse and/or abuse of children. It is all about the normal boundaries that were totally lacking in my childhood and just now being established in my adult life.

Like you, I felt that God brought me here to learn how to love my wife into healing. I became celibate, stopped orgasm, offered the exchanges, practicing random acts of love and kindness. It all seemed so noble. Looking back, I also realize that there is a perverse way I can martyr myself and as I recover, I no longer seek out such self-abuse in my life. It seemed akin to attempting to put out a campfire with a 5 gallon tank of gasoline and it never works.

Are you in therapy? Recovery? Another God Shot was sent to me this way: When you are on the plane and the cabin decompresses, the masks drop down and you are instructed to "put your mask on first before helping others."

The efforts that I have made over time to put on my mask and thrive have given me the strength and clarity to do the right things for myself and ultimately my children. Their lives are still young enough to resonate with the changes they see in their father, even in those moments when I feel that I must be stark, raving mad to go where recovery takes me.

Places like Reuniting!

[bigsmile]

Richard

when he designed the neurochemicals that drive our roller coaster rides?

It can make for a wild ride when we let it!

And whoever said that God does not have a sense of humor?

Richard

in even the most mundane of matters these days and I like to think that my neurochemicals are doing better these days, thanks!

The ubiquitous Victoria Secrets catalog shows up in the mail - my wife is on their mailing list - and I glance at the model and say, "yes, very pretty, but give me reality with a loving goddess, thank you and goodbye!" The catalog is then deposited in the recycling bin. That as opposed to squirreling away the pictures for a ritual romp doing the dopamine two step when nobody is looking.

I'm lonely and go in a chat room in a fit of temporary insanity and wonder where all the real people have gone. There are bots everywhere and before I even offer up one keystroke, I have 4 invitations to cam sites. I quietly close the windows and sigh, realizing that I can call any number of people from my recovery meetings 24/7 and they will listen and talk with compassion and concern. I can choose to do SLAA meetings on line or on the phone so there is not reason to feel lonely, not even if I choose to stay home.

My life is becoming increasingly real and the counterfeit cannot take it's place anymore - not now, hopefully never again.

All in all, this seems to be telling me that the cravings are mostly gone and that the good things in my life bring enough oxytocin my way that the good choices are the ones I gravitate to, the ones my heart desires.

Life and sobriety seem so much easier these days. The difficult feelings are still there to deal with at times, but feelings do pass. More than ever, the need to medicate the feelings away is diminishing more and more each day.

Not exactly an overnight success at the 2 1/2 year mark but nobody ever promised me an instant miracle!

As we chant to end meetings, "keep coming back, it works if you work it....and you're worth it."

Richard