Healing Power of Hard Conversations

Thanks to Jane and Pete's awesome discussion on the topic, I've been thinking about hard conversations all day.

We have had a lot of 'em lately.  It sometimes amazes me we're sitting there talking about these things -- the total truth of our situation.  I imagine being a fly on the wall, sitting there shocked at what's being discussed.  The truth of where we've been brought in terms of trust, intimacy, faith and heartache.  The horribleness of it all.  How it's made me feel.  What it's been like for him.  The things we've never brought up or told each other.  It's all so ugly -- and yet.  And yet, I've never felt so close to him.  I've never had, and he's never felt, such unconditional love. 

I don't always like the honesty.  The text message last night about how one of the presenters at his group therapy was wearing a really, really tight top and he was trying very hard to focus on other things (and how that seemed oddly inappropriate for someone presenting to a group of 30 sex addicts).  Sometimes I hate knowing what he sees, what he notices, what he's thinking.  I sometimes want to go back before I understood -- when I didn't know how much he noticed, how much he thought, how often his mind strayed far from me and our family.  But, I wouldn't trade where we are now for the pretend security of not understanding my husband's mind.  On a business trip recently, he'd done very well the whole time, but in the airport on the way home was caught up in a pretty big 'lust hit', where he kept turning back to check out the same woman over and over again.  He decided I didn't need to know about this.  He talked to someone else.  He brought it out into the light of day with his SA group.  He just didn't want to hurt me, so he brought it to someone else.  A couple other people, actually.  This may work great for some people, but for him he spent the next could days in a funk.  We could both feel it, I even asked if there was anything from the business trip I needed to know about.  He was worried he was getting closer to the porn as he felt himself disconnecting from me, so a few days after his trip he apologized for not bringing it up sooner and mentioned what had happened in the airport.  He felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.  I felt mildly like I'd been punched in the gut.  BUT, the next day we both felt so much better, and that intangible 'offness' in the air was gone and we were closer than ever.

By bringing me his 'stuff' -- whether be his frustrations, his problems, his temptations, his weaknesses, or even his joys and his successes, he is really feeling an intimacy that had long faded away without us even noticing.  He's feeling higher highs, lower lows, and for the most part, just enjoying really 'feeling' again.  His transparency (which is so the best word for what I'm seeing right now), honesty and humility have a healing power in our relationship second only to the healing power that comes from God.  It's amazing to me that we have spent a lot of the last month examining some horrible, icky, uncomfortable and painful things, and that we've never felt closer. We've talked about how as much as this trial truly, truly sucks, we honestly can't see anything else in this life that would bring us together and make us so thoroughly exam ourselves and our relationship to this extent -- we wouldn't trade what we're getting out of this process.

On Pete's blog post I commented, "My husband and I have had our most painful, intense conversations in the past month . . . and they are working wonders in our recoveries. And our relationship is growing closer than ever before. For him, taking these things, these long-hidden truths AND lies, outside of him and into the light has stripped them of their power. He constantly mentions that taking these things 'outward' (which is scary and unpredictable) is what makes all the difference, since leaving them inside allows them to fester and leads to acting out (which is easier, 'cause it's familiar and predictable). It's scary, new and risky-feeling to him -- but it's making all the difference. And he is loving our new found emotional intimacy. For me, each honest (even painful) conversation brings healing as it helps me feel like I can trust him to come to me with hard things, and because its his honesty and transparency that has shown me that he really is on the right path to recovery."

I think my husband felt for so long that if people 'knew' about him, about what went on inside him, about what he'd done, that they would reject him, look down on him, pity him, and they definitely wouldn't love him.  Each thing he brings to me, no matter how painful for both of us, is one more thing that withstands that test -- I still love him.  I still think he's one of the most incredible men I've ever met.  The power of his secrets crumbles in his hands as he holds them out in the light.  The power of him showing me these things softens my heart and is creating a real bond and closeness that I think only comes with true vulnerability.  

We are just starting down this road of recovery.  It is a long, never ending journey, and I know it's easy to get caught up in how things are going right at this second.  I know him not looking at porn today doesn't necessarily mean he won't look at it tomorrow.  But I feel like each day of sobriety gets him on surer ground.  Our relationship is soaking up each and every single good day so that if/when a bad day happens, we don't start over from scratch.  Each day I am getting stronger, feeling more peace, feeling more sure of myself, better able to trust myself and my instincts.  We may be very early on in our journey to recovery, but I cannot be more grateful that I feel like we're finally on the right path, we finally have the right tools.*


*There have been a lot of false starts on his path to recovery over the years as well, and I think those all built up and helped get him to where he is now.  At the time I remember just feeling like we were never going to make any progress, but looking back I realize even those steps in the journey that weren't on the right path were steps that got him to where this path started.  Each half truth, each half-hearted attempt, each stalled effort (which were all so horribly disappointing to me at the time) eventually built up to get him to where he is now.