Valentine's Day 2008 Journal Entry

Valentines Day was fun and special for the kids. In the morning, Max surprised me with a dozen red roses. It really was a sweet thing to do. I appreciate him. After the kids went to bed, I thought we could watch a romantic movie together. He went in the office and checked his email for a while then came out and turned on the local news station. He said he didn’t want to watch a love story. I said “Do you really want to watch this?”
He said, “Well, yeah, I wouldn’t have it on if I didn’t.”
I said, “Well, this is depressing.” After all, it was Valentine’s Day! It was supposed to be the most romantic day of the year!
He said, “Then, be depressed.”
I was appalled. I was disgusted and saddened. All I could do was walk into our bedroom and lie in bed and fall asleep. It was one of my worst Valentine’s Day Nights ever. It was like Max didn’t even care it was Valentine’s Day nor did he care about a woman’s feelings on that day – his wife’s. That is what I do not like and have never liked about flowers, or really any tangible gifts for that matter, is that they are expected to take the place of actual romance.
Today, when we talked about how we felt, I told him I have been feeling sorry for myself because he is not romantic. He said, “What? I surprised you with roses!” As if that was supposed to take care of the whole day!
I really am trying to just deal with him. I can tolerate him. He can be sweet, but it doesn’t seem to come naturally. And romance just isn’t in his book. It really is depressing and doesn’t do well for a marriage. After all, marriage and romance go hand in hand and keep a marriage alive and strong. I have always been cheesy, sappy and romantic, but I’ve let it slip away slowly over the past years we’ve been married. It’s as if I’ve given up hope and accepted him for who he is. It is sad, but what else am I to do? The only thing I do not understand is why Heavenly Father gave a girl who dreamed about romance her whole childhood and growing up life, someone who isn’t romantic. Why? There are many times I would crawl in bed and sleep for 3 days feeling depressed if it wasn’t for the kids. I can’t let them down. I have to be strong, happy and confident for them. -No matter what I live with.

This journal entry is how I felt many times over about my husband. At the time, I did not know he was addicted to pornography. Now, reading this, after I copied and pasted it to the blog, I can see an example how pornography addicts become more and more insensitive the deeper they get into the addiction. They do not feel deeply passionate or even emotional about anything, because their addiction is overtaking their life. I learned of my husbands addiction at the end of February 2008 and more and more details emerged about what he did over the next few months. We have both been in counseling for over five months now and I have learned so much about the sex addictions and what it does to distort the addicts brains.

I have so much planned to share with you in this blog: my experiences, my journal entries, information from my counseling sessions, my psychotherapy groups, and how I have come to find peace. So much more to come...

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