Dear 5770,
An incredible thing just happened. I read through all your posts over my lunch hour and copy/pasted all the relevant parts into a post to you....then I accidentally deleted it! Ahhhh!!!!
OK, so
you know what you wrote over the past year here on GYE...I will try not to play shrink. Some of my feedback is surely wrong. But here it is, if I may take the liberty of some loving butt-kicking:
You have been clean for nice chunks of time. I am not sure why you want to be clean, really. Not that I am against it, c"v, it's just that I wonder what your motivation is.
I am aware that sex with yourself (masturbation) is so much more exciting than sex with your wife is. So? I think we all know that there is no way that any sex can really give us what we want...and neither can masturbation, after a while, because sex with yourself really is sick (as your wife intuits) and we know it. We crave a connection that sex
symbolizes but is not
defined by.
Finally, I do not know what manner of program you are working, but I never got better alone, and
in-person is the only 'not alone' that I really know of. Anything virtual and on-the-phone is too rife with 'protection of my ego' and never touches the real me. I am
in-person with myself whether I like it or not, after all...
Your wife is so different than you in some ways. You must have chosen her - and she must have chosen
you - because of
some connection. Where the hell is it? It exists. Now, I admit that while I was not yet in recovery one of the most powerful feelings I had was that I married the wrong person. It drove me crazy. I see now that while my wife and I are in fact very different in deep ways, we do have a connection...and only sobriety made me able to accept that. And the reason that it took recovery for me to see that is precisely because our connection is not sex. That prospect was always terrifying to me. I saw the sex was not right, and blamed the dissonance on that, deep inside. All I saw was the darkness, cuz I wanted the lights on
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/wink.png)
.
Frankly, I cannot imagine recovery of sanity without sobriety. It is like breathing. It might not
be sanity, but gives it air, and hope so sanity can once again return. You do not really have the sanity you crave. It isn't your wife's issue. You seem to be aware of that. So, being that sobriety is so useful, I will not suggest dropping your sobriety-wish. I love my sobriety, too!
But it is clear to my little brain that this woman is as much 'your life's project' as Klal Yisroel is
Hashem's 'project'. Your
right connection with this woman - whether you remain married to her, or not - is a major job of this lifetime for you. And here you both are.
I have never read Rav Arush. But if he says that practicing love and giving, help open up a locked relationship, my life corroborates that. It sounds to me that you are going through gehinom. And so is she.
Just 'staying sober' will not solve these things by itself. That is why I ask what program you are working. You need help. To heck with
marriage counseling! You need
husband counseling! You need to stop pissing her off (excuse me) and to start doing what you think is right in a non-judgmental way. Read Chaim Ginnot's books on parenting and check out "Celebrate Calm" - a website (and email newsletter) that teaches parenting methods that I bet would slip under her radar completely. She sounds like your basic israeli liberal, to me, at least when it comes to chinuch and yiddishkeit. Mazel Tov
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/tongue.png)
. But you
can learn to react to your kids in an empathetic way that still stands up for what's right. You can learn to stand up to your wife for what you believe is right without offending her. She might not like it, but you can do it without being disagreeable, if you learn how.
What do you have to lose, anyway? She already wants you out. If you stop avoiding her vs. shoving your principles in her face, then at least she'll come to see that
she is the phillistine (caveman) here. She might just come around. But not if you are afraid of her. That weakness is yucky to women, I think.
If she truly sees over then next year(that starts with just today) that you are a man who has principles that he really tries to live by, she will respect that. Your acting out is a wound that enables her resentments about her life to be vented at you w/o guilt. If you love her and she sees it, then slowly and over time, she will love you again. Even if you are not a perfect shidduch. You might
not keep your marriage, but you will have a home where respect is functioning. And who knows? You and she may even get more. Who knows?
But you certainly will only get
worse doing things
your way, it seems. That is what the evidence is showing. A few changes are needed if you really want any difference in your daily life and in the outcome. And the changes are probably not all going to be comfortable ones for
either of you.
So if you are really an addict, then for G-d's sake, work a real program, get help for yourself from a shrink if you think it might help, go to real meetings if you think it'd help you, and instead of tiptoeing around her not to trigger her learn how to do what you think is right in a way that she can respect. Real love doesn't really conquer all, but it sure
changes everything.
Hatzlocha!