So... just a bit of an update I guess. Life has been pretty good today. Sunny, warm... we had a lovely day going to chill out at markets and in the park. It was my choice of what to do because I was feeling bad this morning. I realised at about 11am that because we were both so distracted with all things 'recovery' yesterday that I totally spaced out and forgot that it was my best friend's birthday dinner last night. Didn't even cross my mind to connect the dots between it being Monday and it being that Monday. ARGH!!!!
Got a text from her this morning, worried about me and checking that we were both alright. Cannot POSSIBLY describe how guilty I felt. I called her almost in tears apologising... half of the tears because I couldn't tell her the real reason why we were so distracted... although the reason that she assumed of shared house stress and problems with his mum were actually true... crazy that she is so sympathetic about how stressed we must be with those things and she doesn't even know half of what has actually happened to us. Anyway, she wasn't angry at all because it was just so absolutely unlike me to ever miss out on a close friend's celebration (I'm usually the one arriving early with cupcakes and cocktails!), that she knew there must be something serious going on. I feel terrible about it, and slightly brought down to earth about the effect that this is obviously having on my life. I just wish I could have told her... but it's not my story to tell. And also there is such a stigma involved in anything sexual, particularly in Britain, that I'm not sure whether even my close friends would really understand.
Someone from S-Anon replied to my email with meeting times, but I can't go to the one this week because we are going to dinner with friends. Not going to miss out on 2 dinners this week! Kind of feel like connecting with friends and keeping that secure foundation in our life present is just as important.
Anyway, we decided yesterday that we are going to move house sooner rather than later and get into a place of our own. We thought we could stay a few more months here to save some more money, but our flatmate is also a sex addict (although he hasn't hit rock bottom yet) which is pretty difficult to be around when we are in recovery, and although we both love him to bits we really need our own space to move on and concentrate on ourselves. We will be a better friend to him that way as well... at the moment we are both distancing ourselves from him a bit because his behaviour feels quite stressful to be around.
I'm not saying that a new place will solve loads of problems, but it does feel like the stress of moving will actually be less than the stress of staying here for another 4 months. I was just worried about my bf having any more stress whilst he is recovering, but he is really craving our own space as well, so we have decided to go for it. My only boundary that I have laid down about it is that it needs to be something that we do together. I don't want him to feel like it's just another woman like his mother doing everything for him. I definitely don't want to enter that kind of dynamic in our relationship. I kind of feel that it will help his recovery to feel like he is being proactive about creating the kind of life he wants to have, and it will help me feel like the balance is healthy and what I want from life. So as much as I am restraining myself from spending all day looking up estate agents and getting onto it, I'm going to step back and not get into my usual organisational googling whirl. We are going to make times to look together, to sit down and make a list of what he wants from a place, what I want from a place, what we don't want (!), and formulate a plan together that either of us can then follow but feel that it's something we've done together. It's really hard for me to wait, but it's probably a very good thing that I do. I have a tendency to kind of sort stuff out for people all the time and be the one who organises stuff. I want to stop doing that and get a good balance there. We aren't in a massive rush, so the process of doing this is going to be as important as the end result.
He looks better these last few days. I can see into his eyes again. I know that sounds weird, but when he's feeling a lot of pain or guilt his eyes cloud over, and I can see the warning signs of a relapse days and days before. He relapsed with me the other night. During sex. It's amazing how now that he can actually be intimate again, when he switched over into 'acting out' mode the change was so apparent and so scary. He was really upset that he had put me through it, and also that he felt he couldn't call himself sober any more and had to start over. It sounds weird that he could have acted out with me there, but it's kind of like his bottom line behaviour was finding any way to medicate him and take the pain away. We talked a lot about it and have decided that if it starts feeling that way when we are being intimate we will stop straight away from now on.
God, it's all so complicated. Strange that my overwhelming feeling could be positive when this sounds so weird, but he is getting so self- aware and is so on top of things... this slip could have been much worse. Am I being weird for allowing this to have gone on and not stopped it whilst we were having sex though? I just wanted to be close to him and thought maybe it was just a moment... but it wasn't. Ah, we'll get there...
xx
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