LONG POST WARNING
Hey all, it's been awhile. I really have been trying to do the work. I spoke to a SA therapist and see an SA group. I have come to realise I had a lot of poor values and boundaries; sprinkeled in with a lot of immaturity and selfishness. However, I am trying to address this and work on myself to become overall, a better man for myself and the people around me. Whether if I'm in a relationship or not. If my story is too long just skip down to the question of rug sweeping.
MY STORY
In my last post I admitted I had a problem with multiple one night stands. I was to embarrased to admit it, but I had a habit of seeing prostitutes. Here in Australia prostitution is legal, I actually lost my virginity to an escort when I turned 18 on my Infantry course in the Army that my mates had paid for.
I suffered from low self esteem most of my early adulthood and teenage years, so I started to associate this behaviour with acceptance and approval from my peers and friends. They encouraged my behaviour which made me think I was "cool" and accepted for doing it. I saw many escorts before my first partner, after we got together I didn't really have any maturity or understanding of what healthy masculine sexuality looked like. I tried to initiate a lot of sex for the first 6 months of our relationship, but she wasn't interested. It really affected my self esteem and ego; being really immature at the age of 19, I went to see an escort to feel better and not feel rejected. Later on I would return 3 months later to see another, as we only had sex once in that 9 months. I made myself a promise I wouldn't make this a habit because I knew it was not right, but being so young and naive I didn't think much about it further.
Fast forward a few years later, we bought a house together during the COVID property boom here in Australia. Houses in Perth were some of the last houses that you could still afford on just a single wage, 6 years later and its no longer the case. It's very unobtainable for most people. We had been looking at houses together for some time, she wanted something a bit more modern and flashy. But we couldn't find anything as we were being priced out by 100-200k of the asking prices because of the insane offers people were putting in during the boom. I found an older property that needed a lot of work and was very dated and run down. I convinced her it was a good purchase as an investment and we agreed to buy it, however after we bought it she had enormous buyers remorse and spiralled into anxiety calling it an awful purchase and cried uncontrollably about it almost everyday for almost half a year.
I was putting in a bigger deposit and was covering all the renovations. I was also under investigation at work for a major incident and I had never been more stressed in my life up to that point. I felt extremely undervalued and unappreciated because I had done so much work and been through so much to get us a home deposit and try my hardest to give us an opportunity to start on the property ladder. She kept saying the house was completely awful and was sobbing almost everyday about it which made me see white hot rage. I felt like my life was ending at 23;
1. I wanted to break up with her and even her parents said "We would understand because of how she has been acting."
2. The investigation was mostly politically motivated but none the less still posed a real threat to my career which was paying mostly for the house.
3. In a country where people my age at the time and even now more than ever would never dream of owning a home; I thought I was going to have to sell my new family sized 4 bedroom and 2 bathroom 600m2 block house because I was possibly going to get sacked; and or have to break up with my partner because I could not believe her reaction to being given the opportunity to escape her families severe poverty and own her own home.
The rage turned into dissociation, deep depression and a lack of empathy. I would start visiting the brothel after work on some nights and went in total 6 times within a month to try feel better because I didn't even care about my relationship anymore. I even was curious about my sexuality and hooked up online with another male in person. I just didn't care about anything, I just remember feeling strongly like I wanted to die. I would only look forward to sleeping because at that time I called it "A free trial of being dead." I had close call with a truck at a traffic light I had accidently ran red because the stress stopped me from sleeping, I wished it had hit me and killed me. There was so much pressure to suceed for myself and from my family who saw this house as my chance at a decent life financially.
I told my partner about hooking up with the male but nothing else so TT and false R. We rug swept that and didn't talk about it much ever again.
Fast forward years later and we have both moved in and things are a bit more normal. I kept my career but got moved to a location that made me completely miserable. My partner still would blame me for the house and it didn't matter how much money I threw at it, it never seemed to make anything better. The resentment still contuined to build because of the ongoing feelings of feeling unappreciated, it was years later but I acted out again while drunk and on a night out I hooked up with another escort.
I immediately the next day questioned myself and all of my past behaviour.
Things had dramatically improved at that stage with everything else like my job and the state of the relationship, however we were still disagreeing constantly over the house. But I had still managed to cheat again, it made me feel suicidal and I had plans if anybody found out what I had done.
Fast forward again a few years and I keep getting horrible guilt knowing everything about the past, but I didn't want to traumatise her or admit to myself and everybody else that I had acted out like a complete jackass.
At the start of this year I caved and everything came out eventually through TT. Trying to reconcille but now I'm not even sure if this is the right thing to do, I just keep going one day at a time and try to look myself in the mirror with a little bit of love and compassion.
CURRENT SITUATION
So I was pretty emotionally unhinged and disregulated at the start of this year when everything came out slowly. I'm feeling 10x better now it's all out and I feel like I can make more informed and intelligent decisions. I remember my whole body feeling like it was on fire and I felt like I was mentally manic. After weeks of that and no sleep I remember taking a beta blocker to stop the adrenaline going into my body and it was like the first proper sleep I had in 10 weeks. I can only describe it as like it was smoking a joint. Now I'm on anti depressants and its much better.
The first real therapist I saw said I should have not been still going to work and should have gone to hospital because of the stress. I could not stop moving on some days, and one day I walked 50,000 steps because I thought I was so screwed and now completely over my own head emotionally. Are human beings even supposed to go through this amount of stress/crap? I got written up for bad preformance and monitored for awhile.
THE WORK
I have now been seeing an SA therapist and doing group therapy which has been helpful. I have done a lot of reading and studying human behaviour and reflecting on my own. This site was an amazing asset. I read a lot of daddydoms posts and all the material in the healing library. I also studied attachment styles and I believe she has anxious attachment and me an avoidant, the classic blunder.
I am trying everyday to be a good partner who isn't shame spiralling and owning his shit. I make dinner everyday, clean the house and do more chores and some. We spend most of our free time still together and go out on dates. Shes happy most of the time and still really appreciates me being still here.
RUG SWEEPING?
I get very worried though because she says that for her the worst of it is over at 9 months dday 2 plus 3/4. She doesn't see a therapist or study anything. She said she wants to forgive me for what I did, and move on because we have an amazing life right now and a good future together. She said she still wants to hold me accountable though by seeing me go through these courses and do this studying. Overall she said she is happy with what I'm doing at the moment to repair the relationship, we've even been recently having more sex again and much nicer days together. But I still get the nagging feeling that this is going to backfire and explode because I'm not sure how somebody can forgive their suedo husband for physically cheating 10 times with sex workers and a man over a 10.5 year relationship? When I was deep in TT and admitted to the last acting out incident she still wanted to elope this year and get married which made me think she was being crazy. We argued about it a lot and decided to cancel because mentally I was losing my mind with stress and thought it was an awful idea. After everything got revealed she realised that more had to be done and said eloping now wasn't the best idea either.
I'm trying my best to be all in on this but I just keep thinking all of this is completely nuts. I hear some people have gotten through SA or some form of it but I think mabye steppping away might be better for my own peace and hers in the long run. When I suggested breaking up she went into a full panic and cried saying how we can fix this. We have made a great team financially in the last couple of years and been best friends at times for a majority of our relationship. We have paid off almost all of our debts and morgage which at 29/30 is unheard of here unless you are a FIFO on the mines or a high earner. But now I don't know how to come back from so much trauma and betrayal I've caused, I feel anxious everyday and like all the saftey of the relationship is built on a matchstick in a hurricane. She wants to continue and "Get back to where we left off before all this started." Which to me is classic denial and rug sweep. I can't even beguin to explain the weird experience of arguing with your own spouse over your sexuality which she thinks was entirely me watching porn, I strongly disagreed and said not to erase my bisexuality.
I feel some days things are okay and people have done this but then others I feel like I should just get an apartment and not bother anybody ever again at this point.
What I'm trying to ask here is it rug sweep and what can I do from here? Let it run its course?
[This message edited by Sonora at 7:55 AM, Sunday, November 8th]
