I Don't Like Confrontations!

It's one of the greatest moments in Toy Story. When pressured to take sides in an argument, the T-Rex panics: "Well, I mean, uh...I don't like confrontations!”

This is what I feel: My dad, wonderful person that he is, doesn't do well with confrontations. He appears to have left a trail of messes – at churches, workplaces, family events. I don't know... it's really hard for me to talk about my parents' weaknesses. In each situation, it's hard to tell how much my dad is the problem and how much he's the victim. All I know is that I have a deep-seated fear of repeating his mistakes. So when I have to deal with confrontation at work, I get sick to my stomach.

This is what I've heard: When I think I've lost my temper, that I've shown anger that I'm really going to regret, most people didn't even know I was mad. When they do know, I hear that I didn't come across as a jerk – but as a guy who's showing frustration just like everybody else does. My fear that I'm repeating my dad's mistakes appears to be unfounded.

I guess what I hate the most is being vulnerable. I don't like looking out of control. I'm terrified of being the fool who made a stupid mistake, argued about it with the boss, and got fired. I'm afraid of finding out that I'm my dad.

The Last Surrender

Pictured: Not me

 
Every time I try to post about Sexual Anorexia I end up running. There's heartbreak there, shame and denial - but more than anything else - there's fear. A terror I've never felt before, about anything, ever.

This year I said goodbye to many things - hopefully for the last time. Surrendering drugs and porn meant saying goodbye to ecstasy. More recently, surrendering cookie binges and nicotine meant saying goodbye to comfort. As I begin to surrender my sexual anorexia, it's less "goodbye" and more "hello" - to everything I've been avoiding. Vulnerability. Risk. Need.

Sexual anorexia looks more like avoidance than indulgence. Somehow I broke through that avoidance in my last post. Maybe it was lots of quiet time that helped. Maybe spiritual courage. Maybe giving myself permission not to write in prose. (I wouldn't call it poetry.) The result was raw and black and obtuse. A prime example of "elegancelessness." (Finally an excuse to use that word.) But no matter...here's a commentary!

(If you'd like, you can open the original text in a new window and place them side by side. Like a Shakespeare commentary, except not in iambic pentameter and not, you know, good.)

Sexual Anorexia is starvation
My therapist is teaching me to focus on "non-sexual intimacy" - with my friends, my kids, my dogs. (Sounds weird I know.) But a loving relationship also includes sexual intimacy. When it's there, but I run, that makes no sense. I don't understand it either.

Sexual Anorexia is trembling as you type
I don't know why this particular fear lives in my stomach muscles. Talking about sexual anorexia as a thing, to be fixed, makes me spasm into a fetal position. I hate hate hate saying that. It sounds melodramatic. It kind of is.

Sexual Anorexia is never posting for months and months
In addiction, we try to look "fine." In sexual anorexia, I succeed. I don't show up intoxicated and I don't lie about missing work. Everybody's happy. It's interesting that my readers are sometimes the first to notice that I'm not okay.

Sexual Anorexia is an exposed molar nerve
When I'm giving in to my sexual addiction, short shorts arouse me and make me want to act out. When I'm giving in to my sexual anorexia, short shorts make me feel nauseous and I fantasize about killing myself. Seriously, I wish they'd just stop wearing short shorts.

Sexual Anorexia is another bullshit term
No one's ever said this to me, but I fear they're thinking it. Like when a senator gets caught cheating and blames "sex addiction" and the media start writing that it's a made-up disease. I imagine them hearing "sexual anorexia" and saying what'll they think of next? Sheesh.

Sexual Anorexia is a wicked shift
When I'm anorexic, I don't get in trouble for looking at porn. Yay. Instead I spend hours - days - looking for ways to make my sexuality go away. Banders and burdizzos are tools used to castrate livestock. Yes, I've thought about it. Yes, there are forums where guys talk about it. Yes, people have done it. There's also the (somewhat less insane) surgical option. It's all crazy.

Sexual Anorexia is “fuck you”
It's what I mutter, to fight back against the adrenaline and the nausea, when I am triggered.

Sexual Anorexia is option #3
I've written before about living with a sexual abuse survivor. She's sometimes triggered by affection even when it's gentle and safe, and I have this raw wound that just won't heal - and I'm terrified of more rejection. Then I act out (porn) and I make it worse. I fantasize that if we could just get rid of sexuality it would make everything better. We could just play Scrabble and do puzzles.

Sexual Anorexia is my own religious order
I self injure. I know it's not okay. I'm working on it with my therapist. When I read about Silas in The Da Vinci Code, I began to include whipping myself with a belt. Again, crazy. I know.

Sexual Anorexia is a noxious searing flame in your gut
It constantly makes me physically sick, yet I hold on to it for dear life. Kind of like any other addiction. Drugs and porn and food and tobacco feel like the metaphorical onion layers. Sexual anorexia feels like the core. With this addiction, I'm on step #1. It's the best I can do right now.

P.S. Here's the book.

Staying Afloat

Kind of felt like throwing in the towel for the last few days. First off, let's get it out of the way - I used last week. Wife and kids were out of town for the day, and I had a "bright idea." Same old stuff - porn and DXM. An hour into the fog, I shut it down. Reemembered this isn't me anymore, I'm sick of feeling like a loser, and for the first time in years, I have dreams. Things that I care about and hope for. I should have blogged about the good stuff before the bad stuff happened, but oh well.

I'm encouraged that I made it more than four months - that's the longest in a while - but feel ashamed and stupid enough that my mind goes to dark places. I've been in dialogue with my psychiatrist and therapist for the past few months about how persistent my thoughts of suicide are. Having to face a relapse fires these up into a frenzy. I won't do it though, because I have kids. It's just discouraging to have it nagging at my brain all the time.

The other option that presents itself is to go out. For good. To just stop trying, get high all the time, live in the porn-bubble, and hide it well enough to fool someone into taking me in. Of course that wouldn't work, duh - but that doesn't stop my addict from bringing it up over and over. Bastard.

So when I land back on earth and realize that I need to keep trying, keep growing, asking for help, listening to others' wisdom, working a program, just basically doing what I'm supposed to do, I've felt kind of blah. It's interesting - usually after a relapse, I feel inspired and freed, ready to get back on the wagon and make something of my life.

This time is different, I think because I called and asked for help instead of getting caught. It's like my addict is sulking in the corner, resenting me because he could have slipped in a few more highs before the crash. I cheated him of that. Even worse, I gave him a taste of paradise instead of asking for help before I used. Now he remembers what it's like - still has the sound of ecstasy echoing in his ears.

I remember an addiction specialist telling me that for many chemical addicts a sexual addiction is hiding as the primary addiction. I'm understanding more and more that I'm that person. I don't start a relapse by craving the chemical high. I start it by slowly moving from perusing fashion sites to stockpiling porn images, and when that's not enough I augment the rush with chemicals.

I love the biblical story of the manna. The Israelites received just enough to sate their appetites, no more, no less. If they tried to save for later, it spoiled. There was no guarantee for tomorrow's food besides faith.
So like I said earlier, I have found myself ready to let this blog go. Ready to either abandon it or delete it. Recovery in real life is a mix of rewards and challenges, and I wasn't sure the ratio here was worth it - more challenges than rewards.

But some manna fell for me recently, in the form of a couple of comments. Patricia Singleton, from Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker, wrote, "Things can get better when and if you both want them too. [My husband's] patience and our combined love for each other has gotten us through the worst of times." How comforting to hear the wisdom of someone who has walked the difficult path of healing from the wounds of incest, and who continues to grow in her marriage. Sometimes I just need to know it's possible - that my efforts to stay sober and her efforts to heal are worth the pain.

And Invisigal wrote, "Your posts have been a great help not only to me but to several SA men that I know. One of those men came to the realization of his addiction after reading your blog when I sent him the link." And that pretty much says it all right there. That makes it all worth it.

Diving Into Memories During My Fourth Step

The first year Linsey taught second grade, she made friends with several new teachers. We got close enough to Karen and Lynne that they came with us for vacation to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. Linsey and I had been married six years. Ashley was a year old, and stayed home with my parents. Why would we bring a one-year-old on a vacation that involved walking around underground for hours looking at dimly lit mineral formations? I just don't get families who would do that voluntarily.

Since it was New Mexico in August, we spent a lot of time at the pool. One afternoon I was feeling frisky and wanted to spend time alone with my hot wife. I invited her to come back to the hotel room and take a “nap” with me. She wouldn't go – she said she felt rude leaving Karen and Lynne at the hotel pool. They knew what was going on and started pushing her playfully in my direction. Go take a “nap” with your husband, they said. We'll stay and read our magazines and swim – you don't have to babysit us. Lynne said “If I had him for a husband, I'd be all over that.” Lynne had poor boundaries, and kind of lost it a few years later. But that's a different story.

Linsey wouldn't budge. She stayed out at the pool with her friends. I went back to the room and masturbated.

Me and Linsey have played out this scenario many times over the years. Too many times to count, unfortunately. You'd think there'd be a limit to how many times I would let myself get excited to sleep with her again. You'd be wrong. No matter how many times she found ways to avoid sex, after the most romantic dates, in the most romantic hotel rooms, we'd “talk it out” and I'd find another way to let myself get aroused by her.

What stands out about the New Mexico day is that it was witnessed by other people. Obviously, not that many people really heard about our sex life. I thought I was imagining our problems but this made the rejection more real, and more humiliating. And I think most importantly, my feelings began to be colored by anger in addition to the familiar shame and disappointment. Because, what was that thing coming out of Lynne's mouth? I'd made sense of me and Linsey's sexual desert by reasoning that I was unlovable. If Linsey responded to my caresses as if my fingers were sand paper, there had to be something wrong with my “caressing technique.” But Lynne's inappropriate comment just hung in the air, “I'd be all over that” juxtaposed against Linsey acting disgusted about the prospect of spending time with me.

Whatever. I feel really fucked up inside when I write that stuff because it dislodges all kinds of searing pain from the dark places I've carefully buried it. But stuff's coming up lately, whether I like it or not. Like when I saw Karen at a dinner party recently. I had completely forgotten about the trip we'd taken ten years ago. Strangely enough, we were talking about taking Ashley to the caves this summer. I think now that she's eleven she would enjoy it.

Then boom. Karen. Carlsbad Caverns. Hotel. It all fell on top of me, like a sequence in a movie with black and white flashback photography and lots of echo-y sounds. Karen started telling old stories about our trip. It didn't matter because I didn't hear much after that.

I took Karen aside during all the goodbyes later. I asked “Do you remember that day” and she interrupted with “Yes” before I finished the question. Karen has been a sweet friend over the years. She's close enough to talk to so we traded a few memories. I told her that trip had been a beginning of sorts. Of many things.

Of marriage counselors and therapists. Of drinking some, then drinking more, then using, and doing whatever it took to turn off the pain. Of figuring out that Linsey had been sexually abused as a child. Of figuring out that I was an addict, no matter what was going on around me or who I was married to.

As we started unwrapping all the shit and looked for healing in therapy and books and in recovery I thought it was the beginning of the end. That we would get better, and that next time Linsey would come back to the room with me and we'd make love. But it's just never that simple. It's just not.

[Photo by Al_HikesAZ under C.C.License]

Ninety Days

It's late and I'm tired. But I'm going to try something that I've not really tried before: Structure.

Since it "works if you work it" and I used again yesterday, I think it's time to work it.

To the four or five people who read this blog and know me personally, I haven't told everyone yet that I'm starting over, again. Tonight I told my Friday night group and my sponsor. And now I'm telling you. That's all I can handle for today.

So without fanfare or drama or swearing or crying, this is my plan, based on the suggestions of those wiser than me:

Ninety meetings in ninety days.
A phone call a day, to my sponsor or another friend in recovery.
Continued service in my Tuesday and Friday meetings.
Daily quiet time that includes each of these things: reading from my recovery bible, reading from recovery literature, written step-work, prayer, and my daily inventory.

These are the things I am going to do whether I feel like it or not. (What a concept!) I must do them because I can't stay sober without them, and if I don't learn to stay sober, I am going to lose my family and my job. I am going to lose Linsey, and I adore Linsey. She is the joy of my life.

Of course, there are many other pieces that I need to fit into my life. It helps me to be here in blogland most days, either posting or reading your blogs. I am overwhelmed at your kind and helpful comments and your encouragement. So I'd like to try to post most days for the next few months. (To do this, I probably need to post slightly shorter, less cerebral posts.) I want to spend more time with my kids. I need to eat better and get off the couch more. These are all important, but not as important as the non-negotiables listed above.

I'm not just an addict. I know there's something here worth saving.

Nothing More Than Feelings

Day 105

Early in my crazy-person career, I visited my college's medical center because I was so depressed I wanted to kill myself. This was a problem.

I was grabbing life by the throat. I got out of bed most days at sunrise and jogged. Then came the black vinyl planner, filled with lists. Lists of things to do and people to call, lists of goals and mission statements, lists of errands, lists of lists. I had been ad-libbing for too long, and was determined to eradicate every piece of procrastination from my life. If it could be organized and prioritized I filed it neatly into my white rectangular Ikea shelves. Everything else was put on a list. After sitting at a white rectangular Ikea desk, I sat at a piano, by myself, for hours. Then I set my alarm clock and napped. The second part of my day was filled with rehearsals and classes and work. Piano students paraded in and out my door.

My first therapist was prematurely balding, gentle, and had a self-deprecating sense of humor. In a particularly illuminating session, he told me this: I was trying to put all my ducks in a row so that I could avoid emotions. He was right. I had a list of approved emotions: sadness (in proper amounts), excitement (on Christmas morning), and compassion (for poor people.) Everything else was to be avoided, if at all possible. At that point, I believed that if I were organized enough, I could avoid the shame and embarrassment of ever being unprepared. With enough work, anger, disappointment, regret, anxiety - all of these were avoidable.

As you may know, this is not how life works. So I radically altered my approach and began to experience real life. I'm proud of me, and the progress I've made. But old habits die hard, and to my surprise I recently found myself sitting in the same therapy session with a different counselor, more than fifteen years after the first. This time I'm an addict. And instead of working a black vinyl notebook planner, I'm working a program of recovery based on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And somehow, I got the idea in my brain that if I work hard enough I can avoid certain emotions. Not the normal ones – I've accepted those of course – but the messy and unsightly ones, like despair and rage. So I cried as told of a night when I had crashed emotionally, tears of frustration and shame at my lack of progress. Shouldn't I be past this by now? I wanted to know. Does feeling this bad mean I'm not working hard enough?

I learned that this is what matters: When I was feeling shitty I didn't act out sexually. No porn. No illicit conversations or emotional affairs. I didn't put chemicals into my body to numb the pain. Instead I went to sleep. We talked about other options: call a program friend, read something helpful, journal, pray, take a walk. Even the lazy stuff is better than relapsing: sleep, eat, watch TV. None of these is harmful in moderation. What's important for me to remember is that I don't have to solve the problem immediately. I don't have to fix the emotion. And let's face it, when all I can think about is suicide, I'm probably not in a real constructive place anyway.

In review:
1) seemingly unsolvable situation leads to outrageous emotion
2) feel emotion = OK
3) relapse because of emotion = not OK
4) immediately analyze and solve problem = not necessary
5) immediately purge and eliminate emotion = not necessary (or possible)
6) bide time in constructive (or possibly not so constructive) manner
7) revisit situation when thinking clearly
8) gratefully continue sober life

Works for me.

[Photo by Cayusa under C.C.License]