Will
looking at thwe membership numbers we came here about the same time, and Cement a bit before us, so we've been around the block with our healing, we know that it's always going to be with us.
As for our being completely honest with our partners, well I try to be. But I'm like so many other survivors that I know and I do keep some things to myself.
It's mainly detail stuff that I don't think my wife needs to know, and I'd argue that with her if she asked for more details. I don't believe that details of what happened sexually are important to her understanding of my situation for example.
And then there's stuff that I disclose when I'm ready to do it.
I'm a very open sort of person with no hang ups about talking to her, whatever the subject. I 'could' give her the sexual details, but I don't see the advantage.
My feelings and thoughts about how I am now are something that I like to process slowly, I often change my viewpoint as I reason things out.
So I tend to drip feed that kind of information to her as I feel ready to do so, when I've got it straight in my head.
Sometimes she does outwit me, being the brains of the outfit, and she gently challenges me and gets me talking. And I often surprise myself by telling her things I thought I wasn't actually ready to tell.
I don't have secrets as such, but I do feel that I need to be in control of the flow of information, even after years of therapy and getting to a decent stage of healing. I suppose the truth is, there's actually very little left to tell.
But I needed that control over what I said and when I said it, after all, the abuse was an 'out of control' situation for me ( us ) and I felt that in order for me to deal with it I had to regain some kind of control.
And the same applies to my feelings towards my wife, I often had feelings of great frustration or of not being fully understood ( still do I suppose
) that for the sake of keeping the peace I didn't always share with her, but how many times do we hear guys we work with, or share a beer in a bar with, moan about their wives?
Not in a real nasty way, just a kinda 'pissed off' way when everyday shit like their wife remembering to get cat food from the supermarket, but forgetting their beer, happens. And men aren't the only ones who have a bit of a bitch, everyone does it.
So we say "Don't worry, I'll drink coke tonight" and move on, but to our work mate the next morning we'll say "how come she remembers cat food but forgets my f******g beer?"
I think we need to say these things somewhere, we might not be 100% serious about it, but it's a part of clearing our minds, and we do it with the serious stuff as well, it's thinking out loud.
And if we're thinking like that, we're processing our thoughts and placing a kind of value to them.
I feel that when I say to my friend "my wife just hasn't got a f******g clue about ......." then I'm finding MY way of processing my thoughts and ideas so I can better explain my thoughts and feelings to her, and enable her to understand me easier.
That might not make a lot of sense, I'm finding it difficult to explain properly how I use my 'bitching' as a part of my thought process', but it's something I do and although it might seem hard on my wife, it actually isn't.
And I 'bitch' about my friends to her in a similar manner as well.
It's nothing personal.
James, ( Cement )
I'd forgotten just how much we have in common, because like you my wife found out about my acting out with other men after I had disclosed my abuse and started therapy.
My wife found out I had acted out sexually. I wrote about it here. Although the act could not have been less about her, she was devastated, and I understand why. Her frame of reference is "healthy" sexual interaction. To her, I was disrespecting her. Nothing could be farther fdrom the truth. I was disrespecting MYSELF.
Would I have eventually told her about my acting out?
I don't know for certain, but I'm maybe 90% sure that I would have said something sometime, almost certainly by now.
But admitting to something like acting out sexually, when we're married, is something that is well outside anyone's 'normal' admissions.
Losing 20 on a three legged horse is difficult enough, saying "honey, I have sex with strange men in toilets" is completely alien, and so full of uncertainties, that it's damn near impossible.
There's a school of thought that people like us act out with a kind of 'death wish' mentality sometimes, and I'm certain that I did.
I felt that if I got discovered acting out, then 'maybe' someone would ask "why?" and I could tell them, and we'd all live happily ever after. But reality creeps in, and we also think that the police will drag us off and charge us with 'Gross indeceny' we'll go to court and be found guilty. Then our wives, family and friends desert us, our workmates shun us and eventually we end up as bums on the street.
So we're in the classic Catch 22 situation, do we tell everything at once, or do we control it and tell things as we feel safe enough to do so.
In my view there's only one possible answer, control the flow of information. And that's a very different thing to keeping secrets.
Dave
