Most wives and partners of men called sex addicts have heard it at some point in the wake of discovery and his panic to put Humpty Dumpty back together again quickly and quietly. Just when his secret life is screaming he doesn’t give a shit about you (or your children, for that matter) he gets all serious, puts on his best “sincere” face, and makes his dramatic confession of need, “Babe, I can’t do this without you.”
Meanwhile you sit there being destroyed from the inside out as you process each unimaginable truth that is taking shape.
We are women of integrity and caring. We think about the wellbeing of others, even when those others have hurt us. Our high level core values are real. They inspire us, guide us and constrain us. We may rant and cry and swear about the cruelty visited upon us by the person we loved and their treatment gang, but when push comes to shove it’s very hard for us to make a decision without asking “What is the right thing to do here?”
It’s ironic. This is the very question about which our men called sex addicts have no concerns and never ask as they overtly and covertly abuse us (and sometimes our children, too). The core values that would give this question voice are not values that hold their lives together and interpret what their lives mean.
When I asked Tania Rochelle to take this blog, neither of us could foresee the week’s events and the toll they would take on so many women. Today Tania opens her life to us, sharing what she lived through and her choice to honor her truth and save her life. Thank you, Tania.
My mantra for most days, weeks, months and years since d-day has been “Keep going.” When the worst would happen, I would tell myself “Keep going.” When I wasn’t sure where I was heading, I would tell myself “Keep going.” When I feel alone and invisible and useless in this world I would tell myself “Keep going.” I could not even imagine what was ahead, or whether it was good or bad. I only knew I had made a decision not to die, so I had to keep going—wherever that took me. That was and remains my mantra.
I pull into a gravel driveway after a long day at work. I have to maneuver my car between a 1989 SeaRay that leaks a little and a 1979 Scotty camper with a flat tire. Three mutts meet me at the screened door to my front porch, a Lab mix, a mainly Cattle Dog, and an equal-parts Pitbull and something else sweet and gentle. My home is made of four rooms and a kitchen cobbled around a pre-Civil War log cabin. The cabin serves as the living room. We have to duck under the doorways, because people were shorter way back. The house sits on 2.5 acres with a small pond that’s green with algae and bubbles with turtles and fish. The dogs run the property, in both senses of the word.
