Timeline of my Addictions
Here I was, a new husband and father of two beautiful children, soon to be three, and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but I was ready to take it all head-on. I stayed home as my beautiful wife worked and attended graduate school. I had all day to ponder how I was going to manage the laundry, dishes, dinner, and a newborn. All the while, not taking care of my past. I was good at burning it and horrible at facing it. My new wife had zero clue what she was up against.
Although I had been clean with alcohol for five years, I was still active in pornography. My wife’s previous marriage ended because of her ex-husband’s involvement with it. I told myself I would not get caught. That didn’t last long. She caught me. Not much was said. I’m sure she was in shock and distraught. She swept it under the rug and said little. Under a year into our marriage, I picked up drinking again. It started with us going out and me having one at dinner. It picked up to having two or three every time we went out to eat. I cared little about how she felt about it. I wanted what I wanted, and I would stop at nothing to get it. She confronted me about it and put the drinking to a stop for a brief period.
A few years into our marriage, we moved back to our home state. The change felt good. It was a fresh start. However, my addictions still had the same plan. Shove the pain of the past down and don’t deal with it, nor let the wife in emotionally to help.
We had settled into our new rental. Life was going well. We had a baby on the way, and I was happy, on the outside. On the inside, however, I was a mess. Unconfronted emotional scars led me back into pornography, masturbation, and drug use. My PTSD was at an all-time high. I was an emotional wreck. Trying to maintain a day-to-day life was a struggle. I had become suicidal and only cared about burying the pain I was in. I ended up in a PTSD treatment program for 90 days. The program helped me for a brief period. It helped to confront military trauma to a great extent. I made another trip to the same treatment facility as a refresher course.
While inpatient, my wife single-parented our four children, getting them dressed and ready for school, maintaining the house, paying the bills, Dr. appointments, and everything else involved in single parenting. I can’t imagine how stressful it must have been. I never heard her complain once about it. She’s a strong woman, but even the strongest of people have their breaking point, and she was nearing hers.
Eventually, the pain and buried feelings would resurface. I started using fishing by myself to drink. At one point, I met a few people at the bank. They invited me back to their home for a party. Indulged in my fantasy world, with no disregard for how my family would feel without me coming home, I stayed the night. When I didn’t return home, my family became worried something drastic had happened. The local police were called in to look for me. Using my vehicle's GPS, I was located.
After some time, pornography and masturbation weren’t enough to bury my pain. I needed something more powerful, something I could control, to shut off mentally the wreckage in my mind. That’s when I started cruising adult dating sites and Craig's List. There I would solicit myself to anyone for a sexual encounter, something more powerful than pornography. Sex addiction is just like any other addiction. You will need more of it, whether it is a different form of pornography, to soliciting for sexual encounters. You eventually require more to reach the same high. Meeting up with a complete stranger gave me the same adrenaline rush that I encountered while in combat. It also numbed my feelings for a short period and let me be in a false sense of control of whom I would meet up with. I would plan my encounters around the times my wife would be out of town and while she worked. This way, I wouldn’t get caught. This type of acting endangered the lives of my children. I didn’t know who the person was or their intentions. I assumed every time that it was for a sexual encounter. Selfishness and blatant disregard for my family were what my addiction was costing me. God had his hand on my family and protected them when I wasn’t.
Things in my life were coming to a head quickly. It was going to be my addiction or my family, and I would have to choose. January 27, 2021, will be the toughest day in my life. On that day, I left my family for my addictions. I picked drugs, alcohol, and sex over a loving and forgiving family. Partially because of me thinking that I could no longer get forgiveness for another relapse.
I had just finished setting up my son’s laptop. I had also just finished soliciting on Craigslist and left that email open. Thinking that I closed down the email, I handed the computer to my wife, who found the open email and confronted me on it. When confronted, my initial actions were that of being apologetic, but they weren’t real. A few minutes later, my mind shifted. I wanted my addictions over my family. I became apathetic, shutting down every feeling and emotion I had. It was as if I had gone back on deployment and shut everything down to survive. I was surviving for my addictions and not my family. I eventually had to tell my seven-year-old daughter that daddy was leaving. The image of her sobbing on the floor, not fully understanding what was happening, will be etched in my mind for eternity. That was it. I turned and walked out of the door, leaving my wife and four children behind me for the next four months.
These are just a few examples of how sex addiction will destroy a family. It doesn’t take long for the addict to become overwhelmed with guilt, shame, depression, loneliness, and resentments. In order to cope, he turns back towards his drug(s) of choice to bury these feelings. The cycle of addiction continues until they are ready to heal those emotional, physical, and spiritual wounds from the past.
