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Shame has been a big road block for me over the years of trying to R. It has kept me stuck in an ugly pattern of not being able to see BW and only see myself. Over the past several months I've been working with my therapist on self compassion and healing old wounds. It felt selfish at first but I'm realizing it is the only way to get unstuck.

One of the biggest things that has helped me not get sucked into shame is the reality that my A played out during a time of a severe mental health crisis. I was undiagnosed bipolar 2 and put on a medication for depression that can trigger hypomania and mania. It was mere months after we lost a second pregnancy and I was avoiding the overwhelming grief by withdrawing from my life. Then I got hyopmanic (or possibly full blown manic - we've not figured that out) and hypersexual and reached out to a stranger online and had a 6 month overtly sexual online A.

I can now look at this and know the perfect storm of circumstances that led to my A will never happen again. I am medicated properly now. I have coping tools and an awareness of when I am not doing well mentally. I have a therapist that I feel good about who holds me accountable and always has a suggestion or tool I can use to not fall down the spiral.

Having compassion for my circumstances then helps me to not look at myself like a monster, even though I behaved as one. It keeps me from getting stuck in shame.

The same goes with looking at my porn use and obsessions with other women that were frequent before we got married. There was a period of time where I thought I was a sex and love addict. That I was inherently flawed as a person and a slave to my compulsions. I can now look at it as I was addicted to the brain chemical wash those things gave my chemically unbalanced brain.

I haven't watched porn since my A ended. I had one obsession after my A after diagnosis but it was before I started meds. And I had the awareness that it was related to me not being in a stable place and I stopped. If I were truly a sex and love addict I don't think I'd have been able to stop those things. But I can have compassion with myself knowing that OCD tendencies and hypersexuality are a part of bipolar disorder, and I can manage them now with medication.

However there is still a part of me that worries I am making excuses or trying to justify my behavior. "It wasn't my fault" is something I don't ever want to feel or communicate. It feels like a thin line to be walking. The truth is that my disorder didn't create things out of nothing. It took underlying character flaws and exploded them. Which is why I am still looking at myself and acknowledging where I can do better. I still struggle with doing better in my actions, even if my internal processes are better. Things are not great in my marriage right now. I'm learning not getting sucked into shame shouldn't be my base line. But I guess it is a starting point.

All of this being said none of this lessens the pain and trauma my A caused BW. And it doesn't undo the self inflicted trauma from the things I consented to during my A. Looking at things for what they actually are doesn't fix anything. My overtly sexual A was especially hurtful to BW because our sex life had been nonexistent for years prior. I gave AP something I was withholding from BW. Same with porn and obsessions. I was using sexual things and the high of the chase as distraction, keeping it all a secret. BW married me not having any idea those things were going on. She signed up for a life with a liar. We are still working through all of that on top of my A.

Has anybody gone through this experience with self compassion? How do you keep the voice away that you aren't just evading responsibility? And how do you maintain that compassion when there is so much shit to dissect that spans the length of a 14 year relationship?

There's no stop sign on this, so I'll comment.

As the betrayed spouse of a sex addict, it appears to me you check off a lot of boxes for sexual addiction/ sexual compulsion.

That's not to say that your BP didn't play a role in it, but only a CSAT can evaluate you to learn if there are other underlying core wounds that have led you in this direction. Compassion is healthy, but so is having your eyes wide open and not using it to avoid doing hard work addressing underlying behaviors.

If you have been evaluated by a CSAT and were completely honest, then good job working on your recovery

[This message edited by BlackRaven at 11:18 PM, June 5th (Saturday)]

I think self-compassion is very important when healing, particularly if you are addressing mental health issues. If you are trying to reconcile with your BW, the #1 thing I will recommend for her sake is that you do not ever treat her or speak to her like she was just collateral damage. Regardless of the reasons you cheated, she is a real person who you betrayed and lied to and whether it was mental illness or addiction or anything else that led to it, these things were still done to her and she has suffered tremendously. She is not collateral damage. If she's anything like me, that will make her feel like she doesn't matter and that her pain isn't important. That she's a mere side-character. Look out for any thinking on your part that puts her in such a role. That will show you where you might need to work on empathy.

BlackRaven - I've not been evaluated by a CSAT but when I was going to SLAA meetings I was in a small group led by one. She said I was addicted to fantasy. Which makes sense. Outwardly and in my relationships I identified more with sexual anorexia once the high of the beginning wears off. But in my head there was a highly sexual creature that used porn and obsessive fantasy to cope. Quite opposite ends of the spectrum running parallel. I definitely have addict qualities. But I think if I was certified SA it wouldn't have taken a mental break for me to have an affair. Maybe it is that I don't want to label myself as such. I dunno. I found meetings to be enabling and made me focus more on myself than on BW, which wasn't helping anybody heal.

DevastatedDee - thank you for this reminder. I think this was a major block in my path to self compassion. I didn't want to minimize my actions or her pain.

We were just talking yesterday that I sometimes don't see her as a full person. When she is struggling I don't see her little girl self or the teenager that went through hell. I see her as a character in my story through my lens of the past 14 years. Sometimes all I see is the woman I traumatized and lied to.

But I don't see her as collateral damage. I did at the start of us trying to heal, like it would somehow hurt less if I made the A about me and left her out of it. That from the wreckage I was able to see clearly and be a better person and it was unfortunate that she got hurt in the process. I don't look at it like than anymore.

She is a human being that I hurt beyond words. Everything she understood about our relationship and about me was destroyed. She has been trying to build something new with me and I am still clinging to the creature comforts I had in our old marriage. Everyday I see that more and how I am still hurting her by my clinging to the past. For me to truly see her as a whole person I need to let go.

I found meetings to be enabling and made me focus more on myself than on BW, which wasn't helping anybody heal.

Can you explain what you mean by enabling? Do you think recovery and sobriety might, in the long run, provide additional perspective that might foster an environment more conducive to healing? How many meetings did you attend?

Everyday I see that more and how I am still hurting her by my clinging to the past. For me to truly see her as a whole person I need to let go.

Another compelling endorsement for healing yourself might be in your acknowledgment here that your problems are your own, and your inability to meet them furthers damage rather than fosters shared healing.

I was going to SLAA meetings I was in a small group led by one

.

I don't understand this. Are these 12 step meetings? All the 12 steps I know of are run by participants not a professional facilitator. It's my experience (personal and from speaking with CSATS) that's 12 step meetings are what SAs (and their spouses) need. I attend SALifeline for betrayed women. My SAWH does SA, but some do SAA or the SALifeline meetings for SAs (which are for men only). I haven't heard any complaints about the men being too inward focused. So much of it is about making amends to the people we've hurt, that it seems counter intuitive. Yes, it takes time and energy, which is time and energy not spent directly on the relationship, but if you were going for physical therapy for a physical problem, it would be the same. Healing takes hard work.

Sexual anorexia is common with SAs. At it's root, SA is an intimacy disorder, and that's where the sexual anorexia fits in.

I still think a formal evaluation with a CSAT is a good idea. I can't imagine that it would be easy to be as honest in a group as it would be one on one. What have you got to lose but a few hours and some money. You're not happy now. Maybe the CSAT can help you find the right path to achieve it.

Fearful Avoidance,

I too was having a mental health crisis at the time of my affair. I can understand what you mean that there is a fine line between accountability, reasons, excuses, etc.

Self compassion is scary at first. I felt the same way you are describing. It's almost like we want to carry the guilt and shame as a punishment. But a punishment is not a cure. Growth is the cure. And, when you work hard on your growth you will never be a completely different person but you will be a person who is much wiser with more humility and understanding than before. You know better and you do better. As you grow into that wiser person who is doing what they are supposed to be doing, then you can look back at that person behind you and see how you got yourself into all of it.

You can always hate what you did. I do. I will always be remorseful towards my H even if we divorce in the future. But, healing means that you have to learn to love yourself and protect your happiness. When we do that, we show up differently to our life and we are better for ourselves and those around us. We can make so much more room for them, their feelings, staying open with each other, etc.

I am happy to read of your progress. It is progress, and like you I questioned it. I don't question it any more. I hope that helps.

There is no one, and nothing in this world that is not going through a process of constant change. Some of it is imposed on us, and some of it is ours to accept, reject, or create.

Like you and HO, I too was going through some rather extreme mental and emotional trauma just prior to my affair. And like you, it took a lot of work to understand that what happened during that time did not exist in a vacuum. Yes, I wasn't in my right mind, but then again, that's kind of the point. My mind wasn't right because there was too much broken shit in there that had never been addressed or dealt with. The person I "became" at that time, was still built from parts of me, the ugly parts, the unloved and broken parts, the parts I didn't even really know existed. Once you accept that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are just two sides of the same person, it starts to become easier to accept that both bear full and equal responsibility.

The shame spiral is a terrible trap. It is self-feeding, as being stuck in shame is in itself a shameful act, and like quicksand, the more you struggle and fight it, the faster it pulls you in. For me, in order to resolve it and escape it, I had to go back and understand the original source of my shame, which had nothing to do with the A. No, my original source of shame happened in pre-school, and it helped to set the tone of how I valued myself (or lack thereof) and why I have felt ashamed of who I am my entire life really. Not outwardly, but deep inside, I have never felt a sense of self-value. It has always been buried under fear, sadness, and shame.

I worked with my IC and we tried both EMDR and hynosis in order to help me go back and remember details of my original shame. The thing is, as an adult, I was able to "rewrite the story". I was able to see what had taken place in my life as something that was not my fault at all, that was normal, and that the people in my life who should have been there for me, to protect me, to teach me, to love and comfort me, failed me instead. My narc mother could not see me or care about my needs, but I had always felt that it was my fault that she didn't love me or protect me. That I wasn't good enough, wasn't smart enough, wasn't special enough to be worthy of love. Those feeling became my personal identity. They formed who I became.

Anyway, my point in writing this is that, for me, getting out of that shame spiral meant going back, identifying why so much shame existed in my life, and I learned to develop new tools and coping skills to deal with it.

The really magical thing however, is that, when you remove the mask of shame from your eyes, you will find it possible to "see" and "hear" your spouse again. In fact, you can see "you" again too. With the shame removed, all those messages in my head telling me that I was a bad person, a worthless person, a monster of no value, stopped. And in their place was clarity, and simplicity. The messages became one of understanding, ownership and urgency. I could see what I had done without a need to define myself or my worth by it. Instead, I defined my worth by what I did ABOUT IT. It became about who I am and who I want to be, and became a determination to become that person, no matter what it takes. Instead of waking up every day and being defined by shame, I decide who I will be each day. And the person I choose to try and be every day is someone of integrity, and empathy, and love, and courage. Because I'm tired of being a shitty person, being a person I love is so much more fun and so much easier to be. And it makes life easy. It also is kind of the first step if R is to be possible as well. You can't connect with someone who can't see you, right?

Keep doing what you are doing FA because you are doing great. You and your BS have one thing in common. Both of you will find it easier to forgive you when you become someone worthy of forgiveness. And that takes hard work. But on its worst day, doing the hard work is still better than being stuck in shame, by a mile.

((hugs)) you'll be alright