Sold Another Piece

Sold another piece of jewelry on ExBoyfriendJewelry.com!  OMG, so thrilled!  Loves it!

What The Matrix Feels Like (Re-Posted from Mama PJ's blog)

From http://aroomofmamasown.com/2008/03/what-the-matrix-is/
“Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is.
You have to see it for yourself.”
~Morpheus

I got a mere one paragraph (the final paragraph, oddly enough) into my promised post on Silda Spitzer and the nature of the universe (I know, that’s my problem, I think small) when I realized that I might want to use this concept of “The Matrix” yet again. And I found I’ve never adequately explained it (in spite of the fact that my friend Tigermom asked me to nearly a year ago). So, let me take a step back, pause and explain The Matrix. After all, even if I don’t end up using it in this particular upcoming post, I know I’ll refer to it again (and again and again) eventually.

Those of you who’ve been hanging around reading me for any substantial length of time already know that I find the movie The Matrix to be a brilliant metaphor for addiction (and codependency). And I know that many of you who have both seen the movie and lived with addiction (either as an addict or a family member) have told me you’ve experienced that same resonance. But many of you haven’t seen the movie (in spite of the fact that I assigned it to you as homework nearly a year ago) and/or haven’t lived with addiction. If so, this post’s for you.

First, a quick plot summary: Neo (played by the inimitable Keanu Reeves) is a humdrum cog in the corporate wheel by day and computer hacker by night. In his computer prowlings, he hears of something called “The Matrix.” After several tense and eerie scenes (with special effects to lend a nightmarish quality) Neo meets Morpheus, who knows there is something wrong with Neo’s world and offers to share his knowledge of The Matrix. However, Morpheus says he cannot tell Neo what The Matrix is, he must show him. (The first time I saw the movie, I thought, “For goodness sakes, just tell him!” But I was in The Matrix then myself.)

Morpheus offers Neo a choice between two pills: one red and one blue. “You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Neo takes the red pill, of course, and when he does, the world changes: a mirror melts and swallows him, he chokes for breath, and finds himself in an egg filled with goo, attached to it with wires connected to him through jacks in his skin. The wires are ripped from him, and he plunges down a chute into dark water, where he is scooped up and rescued by Morpheus and his crew in the real world.

Neo finds that everything he’s lived, everything he’s experienced, was a virtual reality dream fed to him by a computer. He (and the billions of other people in The Matrix) never actually walked or talked or breathed or touched another living being. He lived his life in a perpetual dream, in the womb of a machine, and has only now been born to the real world: a world that is cold, sunless and decimated by war (you know, the typical post-apocalyptic world of the future).

The movie goes on with guns and prophecies and romance and groundbreaking special effects, and while there are other parts of the movie that resonate, for the most part, that disconnect between realities, that violent birth, that birth as an adult, that birth of consciousness, that is what I’m talking about when I talk about The Matrix.

Addiction and codependency center, each in their own way, on fantasy. Addicts and codependents aren’t attempting to escape from reality, they’ve never in their lives experienced reality. And that sudden, brutal awakening in The Matrix, more than anything I’ve ever seen or read, captures what it felt like to have that fantasy ripped away and to wake to reality. It captures what it felt like to me to find out that my husband was a sex addict and what he tells me it felt like to realize he himself was an addict. And I never took a breath, never walked a step, never truly saw and touched my husband until I left The Matrix.

---

A clip, for your edification. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one that ended where I wanted: after Neo is in the ship, when Morpheus looks at him and says, “Welcome to the real world.” You’ll just have to imagine that yourself.) It made my chest tight just to watch this again…

-From Ruby:  This is exactly what it felt like.  Like everything familiar had been ripped away, and I was now in an ugly, new terrible place, and everything I had known had been just make-believe, a lie to keep me quiet and complacent.

The 3 or 5 Second Rule

Two monks were walking down the street after a heavy rain that left the streets quite muddy. They came upon a a lady of very easy virtue vainly attempting to find a dry path across the road without soiling her kimono.

One monk, more compassionate than the other, picked up the woman and carried her across the street, setting her down on the other side of the road. He returned to his companion and they continued down the road for some minutes until the second monk chided the first with the remark, “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

“Done what?”

“Why, you contaminated yourself by touching that impure woman.”

“Oh, are you still carrying her? I put her down on the other side of the street.”

http://www.slaact.com/tools-for-recovery/the-three-or-five-second-rule-and-letting-it-go/

I think that's something we do, as codependents of sex addicts. We carry those other people around with us ALL THE TIME! I've obviously been carrying around that guy who made a pass at The Ex for probably a year. What's interesting about this is, it's a rule for addicts -- if you see a person or something that triggers you, look at that person or thing for three-seconds...and then let it go. Don't look back, don't obsess over it...

(Wow, now that I think about it...besides R., the last few guys I've dated have been the kind to fixate on a woman...A. would see a woman on campus and stare at her and try to devise some way to meet her. T (the Ex) fixated on M. (his ex-fiancee) at a party and pursued her for years before she finally gave in. T fixated on me when I was visiting R. on set one day. When I went to see R. at the wrap party for that show, T. came up and talked to me (which I barely remember, as I was three sheets to the wind on free apple martinis), and apparently followed me around all night, unbeknownst to me. I was paying attention to my friends...and to R.)

My friend E. calls this behavior "eye-fucking." Staring fixatedly at a person. Our friend TW, who is a playa, is really good at this. So is E., now that I think about it. And both E. and T.W. are hypersexual. T.W. always had a string of girls, but he was pretty open about not wanting a relationship and that he just wanted to play the field. E. is also a pretty sexual person, and propositioned me and a male friend, D. with a threesome when we were in college. I backed out red-faced and they went home together. E. always seemed to try to make me uncomfortable with some sexual comment. This is a female by the way. If we were hanging out and went to a party, I remember somebody saying, "Where have you guys been?" and she'd say, "Oh, me and Ruby just had CRAAAAZY sex, are you jealous?" Which was like, uhhhh...my other friends don't talk that way...

I've been distancing myself from hypersexual people in my life that make me feel weird like that. One of my best friends, C. is very sexual. At first I thought she was really funny and just in charge of her sexuality, and I thought that was pretty respectable. She seemed very responsible. Then she started doing a lot of stuff that looked like acting out, like trying to make going out on a date with someone other than her live-in boyfriend okay in her mind, saying inappropriate things at a reading like if people found her writing boring they could always look at her cleavage, sleeping with a co-worker that she knew was engaged, and the last, the kicker...being on the beach in Hawaii with one of the 3-5 guys she was sleeping with at the time, having him say, "I love you" to her, and her saying, "I love you too", and then flying out to see her next fuck buddy for a week. I asked her how she could do that. She said, "It was so romantic! We were on the beach! The sun was going down!" And I said, "But you don't love him." And she said, "I know! What do I do?" Now I don't trust her. I don't trust that she never tried to sleep with The Ex, or that he didn't try to sleep with her. I'm sure both of them would arrange it in their minds that they weren't really doing anything that would hurt me. I love her, she's awesome, she's got that wicked charm and charisma that addicts do, but I don't trust her anymore.

I'm choosing to be around people who are devoted to their spiritual growth. Otherwise I get sucked in, and inappropriate behavior gets normalized in my head, and then I go down the rabbit hole...

Here are some of the gifts of long term sobriety:

1. Living fully in the moment, being present.
2. Living a life free of shame and blame.
3. Greater self acceptance and being able to do amends
when we have hurt others with our behaviors.
4. Being able to set boundaries clearly and timely.
5. Communicating our thoughts and feelings effectively
with increased self-esteem and compassion.
6. Recognizing triggers that bring relapse behaviors
and how to learn healthier responses.
7. Sponsorship and service work to carry the message of hope and healing to newcomers.
8. Repairing our part in our relationships by using the sober behaviors we are learning

(from the Co-SLAA website)

Thinking The Ex Acted Out With Other Men

I've been reading Woman Anonymous' blog.  (http://womananonymous7.blogspot.com)  It's been REALLY helpful to me to watch someone go through her own recovery, and to watch how she deals with staying in a relationship with an SA who is in recovery.  Woman A often has intrusive thoughts (these are PTSD symptoms, actually, totally understandable) about the women her Husband has been with.  I've never had those.  I've even talked with the other women (who didn't know about me) about sex, and where sex got weird with The Ex.  But my mind never went to, what was it like, did he like them better than me, or visualizations.

Except in three instances.

Instance one:  The Ex would sometimes come with me to Hot Yoga.  One time, after yoga class, this gay guy came up and started chatting with The Ex.  I was like, "You're stupid.  I'm his girlfriend, idiot."  Then The Ex said, "Do you mind if I pop in the shower?  I feel so icky."  No.  Not at all.  So The Ex hopped to the men's room.  And the dude followed him in.  The Ex came out, freshly showered.  I felt weird, having watched the dude follow him in there.  On our way out, The Ex said, "Thanks, I just felt so gross and sweaty.  That guy followed me in there, and I was like, 'Hey.  You got the wrong idea.  My girlfriend is out there.  Thanks, but no thanks.'"  But that never sat right with me, even then.  And I didn't even know anything.  What my spidey sense said, and still does say, is that the dude went in there and they locked the door, and he gave The Ex a BJ.  Did he?  I don't know.  I asked The Ex, and he said what he said when I first confronted him about other women.  "I can understand why you would ask that question, given what it looked like, but no.  Thank you for feeling comfortable enough to come to me with your questions.  I will always try to answer them as openly and honestly as possible."  (Meaning:  He lied his ass off about other women, using the exact words he used to play off what happened with the dude.)  Will I ever know?  If I need to know, the truth will be handed to me on a silver platter.  I will say that throughout our whole relationship, I was fascinated by stories of men on the downlow, and about how men would meet for random sex at Druid Hill Park, and people would go there to walk there dog and someone once saw a dead hamster among all of the used condoms.  (True Story.)

Instance Two:  The Ex and I are with a female friend of his (a wife of a friend of his) at a concert.  Cut Copy.  The Ex starts joking about how he loves quote-unquote gay bands, and was always the only straight boy at the clubs in the 80s.  I didn't eve know Cut Copy was "gay man" music until I started looking around and saw a room full of gayboys.  The Ex goes on to say how he gets hit on all the time by men and tells them that they're barking up the wrong tree.  I started feeling really weird and insecure.   He went to go get us drinks at one point, and she and I started chatting.  He was gone for a really.  long.  time.  The story I make up in my mind about this?  He was doing some dude in the bathroom.

Instance Three:  The Ex works in the film industry.  The night I told him that I was nearly assaulted by one of my friends he shared with me that a male movie star with fuzzy sexuality (see: hamster urban legend) backed him into a corner on set once and creepily ran his hand up The Ex's back.  The Ex says he stormed out and said, "I'm not working on set anymore, or I'm going to beat the shit out of him, and there goes your movie."  So I was thinking, okay, we're sharing our "Someone was inappropriate with me" stories.  Sharing vulnerability.  Except as I got to know The Ex, I realized that he told EVERYONE this story.  At parties.  For no reason.  He told my mom this story.  "Famous-Guy inappropriately touched me."  Again and again.  It was like he liked the story.  He liked telling hit.  He liked that a famous movie star (and he professes to hate movie stars) came on to him in an inappropriate manner.  So the story that I made up in my head about that is, he stormed out of there for show, and later went back, and they had crazy sex, and he's so happy he landed this hot movie star.  What a notch for his belt.

These are the only times where the mind movies play out and I get crazy.  It's probably because, at least in the first two instances, I was there.  It wasn't like I was home, or I was out of town.  I was right there.  At least it's better than it used to be.  I used to want to throw up when I thought about it.  I mean, if he wants to be with a guy (or guys), then I want him to be with guys.  I want him to be happy.  I just don't want him to cheat and lie and do it right in front of me.

I guess I'm still being pretty intellectual and in my head about all of this.  Why does this make me angry?  Because I'm afraid that someone I loved very much would act out right in front of me, with men.  Because even though I've been tested for HIV and have been cleared, it still makes me angry that he MIGHT engage in very risky behavior right in front of me.  Because that could have been a life sentence for me.  Could have, but isn't.  Thank you, Higher Power, for giving me a different journey.  

Now I just feel a deep sadness about it.  A deep, deep welling sadness.

The Public Girlfriend (Wife, etc.etc.)

Someone said today in a meeting that The Public Girlfriend/Wife/Etc.Etc. of a Sex Addict, i.e., the one that all the friends know, the one that the family knows, she is like the display model.  She's usually smart, pretty, and somewhat above his station.  She's part of what I call the Look-Good that goes on with addicts.  This girlfriend looks good, in person and on paper, so this is the one that I'll show around.  Because sometimes what and who they're doing on the side ain't so pretty.  (See:  Hugh Grant.)  This person, at the meeting, J., finds out about her SO's affairs, and the women are all...basically, no one can understand it.  (See again:  Hugh Grant.)

I don't know about The Ex's ex-fiancee.  She sounds like she's pretty.  No one knew about her...except her husband.  (That is ONE stoic man!)  It was kept a secret from all of their friends, because they wanted to avoid a scandal.  Even though it was the Ex's fantasy that her husband would give her away at their wedding.  Weird.  Talk about scandal.  The Ex-Fiancee put up with A LOT of emotional abuse and sexual abuse in the form of giving in to sex that was painful or acts that she was uncomfortable with.  (I'm not good at putting up with abuse, I usually burst into tears at the first sign and say, "Why are you being mean to me?"  It's not a planned thing, or a show, it's just something that I've done since I was a small child, and has led abusive types -- i.e. my emotionally and physically abusive grandpa -- to handle me very gingerly and gently...which often means that I don't know they're abusive.  I'm pretty sensitive.  I cry easily.) 

So if the Ex was feeling like he needed to get his angerbear on and abuse someone, the Ex-Fiancee put up with a lot, and she took him back even after he ditched her on Christmas.  (I suggested Al-Anon and COSA...dunno if she ever went.)  Anyway, I doubt I would ever be put up with being kept a secret.  I'd be like, PEACE, I'ma find somebody who's proud to show me around!

Girl A, who is one of the at least two known women from work, is lovely, sweet, and nice.  So she doesn't really fall under the Secret Troll banner.  And she dumped him so fast when she found out about me.  She just didn't have the courtesy to tell me.  For another year and a half.  Until I asked her.  So I was thinking about Girl A, and how pretty she is, and how much I like her, and try not to blame her for what she didn't know.  I guess it seems like The Ex was looking for a replacement for me from day one, in case I didn't pan out.  And even though I thought I loved him very, very much, I guess just by my nature, if a Sex Addict is trying to get the lockdown on a lifelong Public Partner, I am not a good choice.  I'm too much of a nomad.

And it wasn't like we were married or had kids.  So I didn't have that to keep me around.  And he came on so strong that I told him I never wanted to get married (which is true) right off the bat.  We didn't have a house together, just an apartment.  The times I broke up with him (about 4 times), I didn't kick him out, I left.  I didn't know about the sex addiction, I just knew I was tired about the passive-aggressive jealous and controlling behavior.  And he had set up a perfect little nest for me with just about everything I could want, and I still left.  And I had big dreams that I refused to give up.  I'd put posters about these big dreams up around our apartment.  He started paying all the bills (wouldn't show me them when I asked) so I was financially dependent.  (Seems awesome, ladies.  It's not.)  And even being financially dependent, with a freelance job that sometimes made money and sometimes didn't, I still left.  With nowhere to go, and no cushion.  But it was like, this man tried to control a lot of things, but he had picked a person who was basically uncontrollable.    He could understand that I might leave for another guy, but not because I was unhappy or that I just wanted to live in New York City more than where we lived.  So I, as a smart, pretty, well-educated Public Girlfriend, with many options, I was not a safe bet.  I could always leave.  I had proven that I could and would leave.  I'd come back, given the right manipulation, but I was not afraid to walk out the door into the unknown.  So better line the next one up quick.

And I think, for his thinking, he felt he overreached a little in the Public Girlfriend area.  He would sometimes ask me if I thought I had settled.  (No.  I thought I had the sweetest boyfriend ever!)  But I was too much, and I was a time bomb.  It was really weird, as I think the Ex is pretty cute and fun, but people used to say ALL THE TIME right in front of me, "How did you get her?"  "No one can understand how you got this too-hot girlfriend."  "Don't fuck up."  "Wow, you guys are still together?"  I used to find that stuff kind of hurtful.  But now it's like, okay.  Maybe the Ex was cute, but he wasn't bracingly hot.  The Ex was really, really smart, but he never went to college, and I went to a college on par with the Ivy League.  I'm 10 years younger than the Ex.  I was traveling up and down the East Coast to see my friends.  I'm getting more and more awesome work in my freelance career.  So it was too much.  I'm too smart, too pretty, too ambitious.  And I would not be swayed by a $40,000 diamond ring the way the put-upon ex-Fiancee was.  (Although it would have been nice to have that $40,000 diamond right now.)  This Public Girlfriend always had it in her to fly the coop, especially given all of the secrets just waiting to come out.  I just wasn't a safe bet.

Poets

I went to a University with an excellent graduate writing program, one of the best in the country.  I dated one of the Fiction writers, and became friends with two of his Poet friends.  After a while it became pretty clear that they viewed love and romance from...about the lens of a very eloquent and gifted 14-year old girl.  They talked about love all the time.  They were constantly "falling in love."  And by constantly, I mean 4 or 5 times a day.  I told them that falling in love with four female tourists they saw walking by in DC is something only a 14-year old would say, that it was more likely that they just saw four women they wanted to screw really badly.

That upset their poetic temperaments.

I used to think that they were just funny, and slightly ridiculous.  But I do remember running across one of them, who was pained and frantic about the women he was "falling in love with."  Now it seems more like they were love or romance addicts.

The Ex could quote poetry, and he had a vast poetry collection.  I've always like poetry, but I don't run out and buy it all the time.  I was suspicious of poets before him, and even more so now...

The Ex texted me 2 nights ago

I haven't heard from The Ex in about a month.  He emailed me late May, when my father died, to offer his condolences.  And he emailed me again in early June, for my birthday.

I didn't email or call for his birthday.  Made for a much more peaceful week afterwards.

Two nights ago he texted me at 1:30am my time (3:30am his time) to tell me a band we both liked was playing in my town this weekend.

A) Why are you texting me at 3:30 in the morning?

I now see much of his attempts to connect as manipulation.  I've learned that most sex addicts are absolutely not innocent when they contact their exes.  I'm pretty damned sure he left me for someone who wears vanilla perfume, so I doubt she knows that he's texting me in the middle of the night.  Plus he always made me feel like my music taste was inferior, and I knew about this band 5 years before he did, but didn't share music with him because he never listened when *I* played it for him.  Only when someone else did.  So I emailed him.  Don't write to me about music.  I'm angry about it, and here's why.

He emails or texts me about once a month.  We used to have small chats.  He would say that he was working on an amends.  Tell me he had quit smoking again.  Yadda Yadda.

I just don't want to deal with him anymore.

Catharsis is...

Selling the jewelry your ex-boyfriend gave you on ExboyfriendJewelry.com.

Oh.  Yes.

Sold the first piece to a lady in Australia.  Cha-ching!  Vindication.  I get a dumb reminder of how guilty he felt out of my life, some lady gets a beautiful piece of jewelry, and I get $$$.

Satisfaction.

Triggers and the 4th Step (Al-Anon)

I get triggered by political sexual scandals.  All these guys recently, John Edwards, John Ensign, Mark Sanford.  I wanted to read every gory detail, every word their wives said about them.  I think I'm pretty much done with that now, which is great.  I don't obsess about them.  They do frighten me, however.

I start my 4th Step on Thursday, and I'm really looking forward to it.  In our community, we do the Steps in a really rigorous way, following the Big Book of AA.  We have to write out a sheet on our Sexual Ideal, like a blueprint for our ideal partner, along with all of the other guck-cleaning parts of Step 4.  My Sponsor said that she has seen people who were basically hopeless, work very rigorous programs, and begin to flower after a time, and to start relationships from a point of health.  She started sharing example after example, and I just broke down crying.  She asked me why I was crying, and I said that I had just given up all hope of finding a trustworthy man and ever having a relationship again, and the idea that there could be hope was just downright overwhelming to me.

COSA

I've started writing here again after coming across some blogs of sex addicts (http://mysexdrug.blogspot.com) and the spouses of sex addicts (http://womananonymous7.blogspot.com/).  These blogs have been immensely helpful to me just sort out my mind and to feel less alone in the past few days, so I'm jumping into this community too.

I started attending COSA meetings about three weeks ago, and my next one is tomorrow night.  My friend C. and I went to the beach the other day, and she told me about her last ex...who was addicted to pornography.  She and I met in Al-Anon, and I adore her.  She has wonderful calm healing energy, and has great recovery in Al-Anon.  She said she'd thought about COSA before, but knew that the AA and Al-Anon programs around here were really good, and she wanted to focus on programs that had really good recovery.  The Al-Anon community here is healthier and more energized than where I used to live, but COSA provides me with something Al-Anon doesn't -- people who share my story.  So C. said she'd like to go with me.  She said she didn't think the COSA meetings were well-attended.  I said most of the women in my meeting were still partnered, and that when couples broke up the women generally stopped going.  I've been getting hit on by married men and men with girlfriends for the past 10 years, and I hate it.  I hate having to ask around, I hate having to check for a wedding ring, or the impression a wedding ring leaves when someone isn't wearing, I hate asking if a guy is married if he hasn't mentioned it, and finding out that he is.  I hate when a guy implies that he has an open relationship, because there's no way to verify that without asking his wife.  I want to know what is in me, what tools am I lacking, that I do not see a sex addict coming?  How do I protect myself?  The X came on with such intensity and sweetness and persistence.  Now I know that sex addicts are masters of manipulation.