Turn the Page

“There comes a time when you realize turning the page is the best feeling in the world, because you realize there is so much more to the book than the page you were on.”
 -Zayn Malik

I find that I want to stay on pages that feel safe, even though the reality of where I am is on the pages that follow.  Not turning the pages doesn't change the truth of what is on them.  Trying to re-live the same page over and over is keeping me from moving forward and progressing in my own recovery.  

I want to quickly turn the pages for my husband in his book, get him through the hard times and on to better things that I think he has within himself.  I want him to turn the pages to see the same thing that I do and I hope they are written there.  But that is me trying to manage his recovery.  

There is a song from "My Turn On Earth" that goes like this:

I'm the one that writes my own story.
I decide the person I'll be.
What goes in the plot and what will not
Is pretty much up to me.

And just in case I need to erase
It was figured out before.
A thing called Repentance, can wipe out a sentence
A page or a chapter or more.

Everyone who writes his own story
Now and then will make some mistakes
But given some care, they needn't stay there
And this is all that it takes,

You must know you've done wrong and so
You feel very bad and then
Don't try to hide it, do try to write it
And vow you won't do it again.

This book of mine is very important
And so someone is waiting right there
To help with my story, He's been there before me
And always as close as a prayer,

We will write each day and night
And do it well and faithfully
A wonderful story, of sadness and glory
It's written by Jesus and Me.

Of course this is a simplified version of repentance and forgiveness.  Otherwise it would have been a really, really long song! ;)  But a comforting and beautiful message testifying of the reality of forgiveness (which I remember more when Jeff is in good recovery than when he is relapsing).

"In this rigorous process, so much clearly depends upon meekness. Pride keeps repentance from even starting or continuing. Some fail because they are more concerned with the preservation of their public image than with having Christ’s image in their countenances! (Alma 5:14.) Pride prefers cheap repentance, paid for with shallow sorrow. Unsurprisingly, seekers after cheap repentance also search for superficial forgiveness instead of real reconciliation. Thus, real repentance goes far beyond simply saying, 'I’m sorry.'
Nov. 1991 Ensign, Repentance, Neal A. Maxwell

"Basically our loved ones took something from us and have incurred a debt. Often we want the debtor to repay the debt before we forgive. Forgiveness is not really about whether the loan is repaid or not. Forgiveness is really not about two human beings. It's about us. It's about our peace. We really only need one party to act in order to achieve forgiveness and that is us. We do not need the other party who offended us to do anything. Yes, it would be nice if they made amends and repaid the debt, but many will not and may even be arrogant. By not choosing forgiveness, we are allowing our loved ones to continue to hold us captive. We are allowing our loved ones to control us if we choose not to forgive. Forgiveness is releasing our loved ones from the debt they incurred. The slate is wiped clean. We are no longer the creditor and they are no longer the debtor. We have forgiven the debtor; however, we are the ones who are free."
Rod Jeppsen - Lord I Believe, Help Thou Mine Unbelief - page 367

A very important part of our Savior's Atonement is the healing portion for all of the hurts and injuries that we have.  Also the realization that forgiveness is more for us than for the person that wronged us.  When we learn this, we learn to forgive ourselves more freely too.

Do I hear better in the darkness?

I just want to share an "ah ha" moment that I had today and preserve it here so that I can refer to it again.  Not sure if anyone actually reads this blog, which is fine.  It is just very therapeutic for me to write here.  AND my memory is so horrible that it is nice to be able to come here and remember thoughts that I had.  BUT...if you are reading this...thank you!  It is nice not to be alone in this journey. ;)

I took on the challenge of President Ballard to read 3 Nephi with the intent of looking for all forms of "ministering" and to find the times "one by one" is used.  I found a sermon to myself here that I have overlooked for years.  

In chapter 9 of 3 Nephi Christ has died, there was great destruction and the 3 days of darkness.  Now, in the 3 days of darkness Christ talks to the people 2 times.  Interestingly, they heard and understood Him both times.  BUT after the darkness, when they are back in the light, when they are going about returning to their lives and some time has passed they could not understand His voice.  We don't know if it was a day, a week, a month or several months after the darkness, but we do know it was within the same 34th year.  My assumption is that it wasn't too long.  The point is that when they were in the very depths of despair, in the deep darkness, they heard and understood His voice.  They were humbled beyond what they had ever been before and they heard Him.  Once they started back into recovery in the light it took more for them to hear Him.  They knew there was a voice, but did not understand it.  In fact, it wasn't until the third time that they understood the voice.  

WOW!  This was completely eye opening for me!  I have totally been here!  In the depths of hurt and pain, I can hear Him and completely rely on Him.  But when I get going in my "natural man" life, no matter how small, I am not "relying wholly on the merits of him who is mighty to save".  2 Nephi 31:19  I let myself get distracted by other things that are out in the light.  Even if I am going to church every Sunday, even if I am doing my calling, even if I am going to the temple, but as I do those things more "wholly" and rely on Him more "wholly" I can hear His voice in the light just as I did in the darkness.

When He first spoke to the Nephites as they were in the darkness, He told them about all of the destruction that was done and the reason.  Then he told these people that they were spared because they were the "more righteous" part of the people.  He didn't say they were perfect or that they had to stop trying.  He said they were better than the ones that stoned the prophets.  Then he said to them,

"will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you? 14 Yea, verily I say unto you, if ye will come unto me ye shall have eternal life. Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you, and whosoever will come, him will I receive; and blessed are those who come unto me.” 3 Nephi 9:13-14

He is not calling the perfect to Him.  He is calling me.  The sinner who is trying and who desires to be healed. He is reaching out to us and He will not exclude one, not one who will come.  No matter what we have done.  The job is for us to reach out to that extended hand, grab it, and come unto our Savior in every word we speak, in every action we do, in every thought we process, in every feeling we have.  We will not make it to that perfected level in this life, but that is ok.  Our job is to keep trying, no matter if our world has just been destroyed, just like these Nephites. 

End of sermon ;)  Now I have to get busy living it. :)

C.S. Lewis views on Masturbation

Thank you to a member of the Women's Group on Facebook for finding this article.  It was absolutely fascinating and I wanted to share it.  I very much respect C.S. Lewis and have a new appreciation for him. We all have trials, challenges, temptations and hardships.  We are humans.  But we can learn, heal and overcome. 

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https://redeeminggod.com/c-s-lewis-on-masturbation/

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C. S. Lewis speaks out on Masturbation

By Jeremy Myers 
67 Comments

A while back someone submitted a question to me about masturbation and whether it was sinful or not.

There is also a thread in the forum about masturbation, through only one person has attempted an answer on it…

It is a very … touchy … subject to deal with.

So as I was recently reading through the Letters of C. S. Lewis, I was surprised to learned that

(1) C. S. Lewis struggled with the temptation of masturbation, and
(2) he had a pretty good theological answer for it.

Here is What C. S. Lewis said about Masturbation

I agree that that the stuff about ‘wastage of vital fluids’ is rubbish. For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sending the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.

And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifice or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival.

Among these shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification is ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.

Do read Charles Williams’ Descent into Hell, and study the character of Mr. Wentworth. And it is not only the faculty of love which is thus sterilized, forced back on itself, but also the faculty of imagination.

The true exercise of imagination, in my view, is (a) To help us to understand other people (b) To respond to, and, some of us, to produce art. But it has also a bad use: to provide for us, in shadowy form, a substitute for virtues, successes, distinctions, et cetera which ought to be sought outside in the real world — e.g., picturing all I’d do if I were rich instead of earning and saving.

Masturbation involves this abuse of imagination in erotic matters (which I think bad in itself) and thereby encourages a similar abuse of it in all spheres.

After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little, dark prison we are all born in. Masturbation is be avoided as all things are to be avoided which retard this process. The danger is that of coming to love the prison (Lewis, Yours, Jack, 292-293).

In a later letter to a different man, C. S. Lewis wrote this about masturbation:

The evidence seems to be that God sometimes works such a complete metamorphosis and sometimes not. We don’t know why: God forbid we should presume it went my merit.

He never in my unmarried days did it for me. He gave me–at least and after many ups and down, the power to resist the temptation so far as the act was concerned. He never stopped the recurrent temptations, nor was I guarded from the sin of mental consent. I don’t mean I wasn’t given sufficient grace. I mean that I sometimes fell into it, grace or no.

One may, I suppose, regard this as partly penal. One is paying for the physical (and still more the imaginative) sins of one’s earlier life. One my also regard it as a tribulation, like any other. The great discovery for me was that the attack does not last forever. It is the devil’s lie that the only escape from the tension is through yielding.

… Disgust, self-contempt, self-hatred–rhetoric against the sin and (still more) vilification of sexuality or the body in themselves–are emphatically not the weapons for this warfare. We must be relieved, not horrified, by the fact that the whole thing is humiliating, undignified, ridiculous; the lofty vices would be far worse.

Nor must we exaggerate our suffering. We talk of ‘torture’: five minutes of really acute toothache would restore our sense of proportion! In a word, no melodrama. The sin, if we fall into it, must be repented, like all our others. God will forgive. The temptation is a darn nuisance, to be born with patience as long as God wills.

On the purely physical side (but people no doubt differ) I’ve always found that tea and bodily weariness are the two great disposing factors, and therefore the great dangers. Sadness is also a danger: lust in my experience follows disgruntlement nearly always. Love of every sort is a guard against lust, by a divine paradox, sexual love is a guard against lust. No woman is more easily and painlessly abstained from from, if need be, than the woman one loves. And I’m pretty sure purely male society is an enemy to chastity. I don’t mean a temptation to homosexuality: I mean that the absence of ordinary female society provokes the normal appetite (Lewis, Yours, Jack, 307-308).

Resource - From long ago

When I started in my own recovery, I did not live in a place where there was an LDS ARP group for spouses of addicts.  I attended S-Anon, which was a great help to be in a room with other women experiencing the same pain.  As helpful as the material was, I wished that it would have been more specific in turning to Jesus Christ instead of a "higher power".  I do not mean that as a criticism at all.  The materials in S-Anon are incredibly useful!  I still have mine and have since given some away to others in need and then ordered more for myself.

However, once I found the LDS ARP for spouses I started using the 12 Step Guide.  Even though it speaks to the addict, it turned me directly to my Savior.  The wisdom and guidance also spoke healing to my soul.  Still, I wanted something that spoke to me, the spouse.

I "ran away" to Utah so I could attend spouse support groups for myself.  The group was currently using the 12 Step Guide and told us that a new guide was in production just for the spouses and family members.  It gave me hope and I continued to use the 12 Step Guide.

In attending one meeting a sweet sister saw that I was drowning.  She handed me a paper copy of the Family Manual.  This is not the manual that is currently used in the Spouse and Family Support meetings.

It was a "bootleg" copy of what had been given to the spouses as a guide, but for whatever reason the copyright was not issued, so the groups had to stop using it.  It is not an official resource endorsed or used in the groups, however it is a valuable resource with powerful guides to healing.

If you feel stuck, as I was, and still find myself, give this one a try.  I wish you great progress and hope along this bumpy road.  Hard, hard, hard, hard, hard.  One step at a time my friends!  We can do this!

A Powerful Example of Recovery

I stumbled across this link today.  I tried to retrace my steps to find it again and could not, so I decided to put it here so I could easily find it, and as a beautiful and powerful example of recovery.

Meet Sherrie

I hope to one day meet this amazing and courageous woman!  It gives me hope as I continue the struggle with my addict. 

Recovery is real.  Thank you Sherrie!!!

Navigating Disclosure

Well...my goal to post often was a total fail!  So, here I am starting...again.  Thank HEAVENS we all have that opportunity!

I recently went to a 12 Step Support Group.  I love the women that are there!  I am so grateful for their courage and strength.  Something that we discussed after the meeting was the right way to go about getting disclosure.  Mine happened with Jeff telling me with just the two of us.  It was hard.  I don't know if there is an easy way...well, there is never an easy way...but maybe there is a somewhat more painless way to navigate it.  If anyone knows what that is, PLEASE SHARE!

In trying to educate myself about this I found the article below.  I am still processing through it.  As with any other resource, there are things that stand out and are helpful and others that are not.  So, please don't take this as "the gospel truth" but please do glean from it the things that speak to your soul:

Rethinking Disclosure . . . Working With Infidelity and Betrayal Trauma

https://drbarbarawinter.com/2018/01/25/rethinking-disclosure-working-betrayal-trauma/

In recovery at an upscale in-patient sex addiction treatment program, Don is encouraged to face his demons and come clean with the egregious behaviors which have led him fast and furious down the rabbit hole. As part of this process, both he and his spouse, Beth, are being coached as to what to share and what to hear with regards the long list of betrayals to which Don has named his time during the last four years of their 10-year marriage. He has been fastidiously making lists of his dalliances with sex workers, massages with happy endings and the occasional interactive video-chat. Both he and Beth are encouraged to craft a narrative of his experience within the context of his life, relationship, stress etc. however Beth is tenacious to find out each and every detail of his other life, his life of infidelity. Despite knowing that this is unhealthy, as visuals exacerbate betrayal trauma, she is unyielding, insisting that he has to accept his powerless and admit to someone his wrongdoings and catapult into honesty, a strong and most powerful tenant of recovery and the 12-steps.

That is not an uncommon occurrence and, in fact, the crisis brings this sort of desperation and despair, as ‘desperate people do desperate things’. And in earlier times in treatment rooms, honesty was encouraged at the sacrifice of trauma repetition; perpetrators were supported to tell all to practice honesty with little or no sense as to the effect on the receiver.

Disclosure, that of sharing your narrative within the context of one’s life is what is desirable and the end goal of the process, however, new into treatment one typically has little insight into their own behaviors and is nowhere near prepared to construct such a historical archived record of one’s life with oneself as the backdrop.

Let’s understand a little about attachment and betrayal, or betrayal trauma to which it has been recently referred. Firstly, the intensity of betrayal is directly related to the nature of the relationship. In these cases, we are typically identifying someone in our ‘inner circle’ (partner work) or close-by (friends, relatives, close connections). With someone with which we have a close safe attachment, a breach of any of the obvious factors (trust, safety, consistency, honesty, predictability and so on), can be traumatic, in fact sufficiently inconceivable to shatter the connection once known as secure. This damage needs repair, and the larger process, bigger than the ‘disclosure’ takes time and moves in stages.

So what does need to be shared, when and how when working with betrayal trauma?

When I work on parenting plans with people I tell them something they need to remember, something most attorneys don’t share . . that they change, they are fluid. They are essentially dynamic with the needs of the children and family. Well it’s the same thing with the questions, the sharing the healing.

During affair recovery, the questions change. Answers demanded immediately are not typically asked as the process takes it course, if it takes its course. Initially of a factual or a detective nature, questions are consistently the Who, what, where, when, how? That’s where the numbers come in. But that’s where the visuals do as well. It important to craft the method with which to share the transgressions without creating more damage. What is shared is a function of both parties, the giver and the receiver, but also should be heavily coached by a qualified psychotherapist. The crisis phase is exactly that . . chaotic and disorganized. Organization has to be brought into the storm so that clarity has a space to find itself.

It is also during the crisis that sleuthing occurs and many spouses become proficient. This too is ineffective and must come to a halt when the reality of the betrayal becomes real. Searching is for validation, often superimposed on denial. Some harbor. . “ I don’t believe what is happening but if I keep searching it can become real”. It can take some time for this to become real and not simply a blip in the radar.

With sleuthing by the ‘victim’ and ‘staggered disclosure’ by the perpetrator, hence is the origin of the traumatic remembrance. And with visuals, this is only heightened.

Coming to terms with the reality of betrayal and infidelity is one reason a disclosure should take place. But there are greater pertinent reasons this process is effective. Essentially, the perpetrator making sense out of his/her behavior and grievances, which can take some time, is critical as a prerequisite to this process. When a partner tells me that they need to understand the ‘why’ instead of the other pieces, it is because if we can make sense out of our behavior, even change it, we lessen the probability of a future occurrence.

What is pertinent, even paramount, is the meaning making of the behaviors. Questions raised in infidelity treatment such as . . “What did this affair mean to you?”, “What was it like to be with someone else and not with me?”, “How did you feel when you left me to go act out?”, “Why did it happen at this point in our lives?”, “What did you discover about yourself?”, “Did you want me to know and were you wanting me to find out?”, “Now important was the sex?”, “Do you think it will happen again?”, and many many more.

As betrayal (or betrayal trauma) or infidelity is not limited to the bedroom, this process is not limited to sexual offenses. Perfidies appear not only with love and sex addiction, but with money, substance addictions and any secrecy because secrecy has as its defining piece the negative consequences should the information be shared. So when Dan had longstanding complete control and solitary access to the credit card statement and checking account, it was part of the secret. But when Sandra, who manages the bills for their household, fails to share with her husband their debt, that is betrayal as well. Financial infidelities occur as well.

At the end of the day making meaning over our experiences and integrating that into our existence is the best we can do. This process can help.

To learn more about infidelity therapy and healing from an affair in Boca Raton, check out my web page.