A tearful night here as I told the man I was with last night that I cannot see him anymore, just as he was trying to tell me that he had met someone else for whom he had strong emotional feelings and had agreed with her not to see anyone else.
I'm too tired to recap it all ... and it doesn't matter. It's just the reassurance that God is working in my life, helping me to close this door that I've been trying to close for several months.
I wrote this today ... it's sort of an extension of what I wrote here earlier:
I shared with a recovery friend today that I think that Valentine's Day is a time when most love addicts at some level feel a sense of dis-ease. I certainly am feeling that today.
Waxing philosophical -- It is hard to give up that deep down magical thinking that is reinforced by the media, books, movies and fairy tales that every day should be Valentine's Day and that this powerful, intoxicating, all encompassing thing called "love" should trump everything and that it should be ours.
After recovery, it's easier to see why we were never able to get enough love -- mainly because the love we were looking for doesn't exist at a core level. Love is a part of life, an important life, and something that most addicts didn't get enough of during their formative years. Then they spend the rest of their lives trying to find something they can't recognize because they've never seen in or realized it properly.
Speaking from the heart -- My disease doesn't work for me any more. What was once a refuge, a place to escape into countless hours of searching out anonymous sex partners, plotting to meet them, and spending the short time it took to act out -- or lost in the obessions of the mind over someone "who swept me off my feet" and made me feel "love" more deeply than I ever realized it -- it's all gone. All that is left is the pain and the wreckage and I am grieving the loss.
Don't get me wrong... Yes, this is what I wanted, for the temptations, the ever present desires, the constant obsessions to be lifted. I am thankful for the answered prayers. But as part of my recovery, I must also acknowledge that I feel a deep and grieving sense of loss. This too shall pass.
Still here …
5 years ago
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This is the most true, touching piece I've read on Valentine's Day ever. I feel uneasy myself with the day and have stopped celebrating it.
And I think this is so well put -- and so true of codependents, as well as sex/love addicts: "Then they spend the rest of their lives trying to find something they can't recognize because they've never seen in or realized it properly."
Thanks, Rae.
I think you're right; we have difficulty recognizing love. I'm learning to recognize it in my wife's actions more and more.
The grieving is so incredibly hard. Those intense longings for my old acting out behaviors made recovery very difficult for me. For months. I was always thinking, "I'll act out just one more time. This is it, make it big."
I don't even remember my last acting out. But I remember the next day, the first day I can count my sobriety back to!
I still feel grief for my old behaviors, for the way I used to escape life and real relationships. But the grief is going away and being replaced by joy and a sense of freedom.
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