Trust

It’s been on my mind this week.  Building trust, giving trust, earning trust, and losing it.  Relationship advice is loaded with thoughts on it.  To love is to trust, a strong relationship is built on trust, if you love me then trust me... etc. etc.

Addiction has changed this for me.  Now trust is complicated.  “The belief that someone is reliable, honest, good, effective".  Do I believe these things about my husband?  Yes.  Yes, I do.  Do I trust him to never look at porn again?  Absolutely not. That would be naive and.. well.. setting myself up for some serious heartache.  He is an addict and although I believe he can, and will someday, live symptom free (code for no longer seeking out porn), I also know he’ll always have a weakness for it.  In mortality anyway.

So don’t ask me to trust in this area.  I will love, support, and assist in every way I can in his fight against porn addiction.  But I won’t trust.  And he is wise enough not to ask for it.  I can’t give what I don’t have.  Instead he asks for help.  He gives me the freedom to check in at any time.   I remain aware that this is a weakness.  Help when I can.  Ask when the Spirit prompts or when I’m feeling insecure and needy.

We’ll build our relationship on Faith instead of trust.  Faith in a perfect, loving God.  Faith in the Atonement and Repentance.  In our ability to pick ourselves up and try again.  To heal, progress, and learn.  That is something I can trust.

Because of Him

This is so beautiful I wanted to share it.

All my love,
Elisabeth

Back in the saddle

I needed to set this aside for the holidays.  Take a much needed vacation from the energy sucking world of addiction.  And I’m not gonna lie.   It was awesome!   I focused on the holidays and a few old hobbies.  Read some good books and spent time with the kids.  Now the end of January is here and I need to pick this up again.  I still feel like there’s work to do.  For both of us.

Quick update - things are good.  We started couple therapy a few months ago and I think it was helpful?  Our therapist was great and I tried to be honest and kind in all that I said.   There were two running dialogs going on.  One in my head and the other out loud.  The out loud one was exercising great restraint and the inside one was, well.. not so much.  But we worked a few things out.  I’m glad we went.  Funny thing is, there wasn’t a lot to work out.  Our problem is pretty cut and dry.  He has an addiction that still rears it’s ugly head occasionally and I hate it with a fiery hate and wish it would die a quick, ugly, and painful death.  I actually smiled and felt a little giddy as I wrote that.  Like I said, we both still have some work to do.