Shattered

 For years, I've been posting about what I consider to be "core values" in a healthy relationship:  mutual respect, honesty, truthfulness, etc., ad nauseum.  This past Monday, I had my whole perception of my own relationship shattered and I am unable to process what I've experienced.

While ransacking my home for items that I wanted/needed to sell, I came across a curious gym bag that was sitting in the closet that I share with my spouse.  I opened it up and my world imploded.  In the bag were 8 DVD's of hard-core BDSM videos, several books of BDSM imagery, several BDSM "outfits" that included duplicates, and an opened box of condoms with a couple that were missing.

I have been feeling, for quite some time (about 4 years), that something just wasn't "right" about our relationship.  I had ceased to feel that my husband had an interest in sex with me, and when he did, it was frantic and not what I felt to be "lovemaking," at all.  My own personal issues have created obstacles that I had recently begun to unravel, and the renewed interest in the physical contact with my spouse was blossoming until I found this.

When I confronted him with his "stash," he was stone-cold and blamed me for his addiction.  Mind you, I'd spent 2 years living apart from him in a vain endeavor to "pave the way" for us to both live the life of artists - me by developing an art-based business, and him by settling into writing as a career.  I would see him, sometimes, once per month for a weekend, and every other week towards the end of my stay in the mountains.  He excused his "interests" as "blowing off steam" because I had been frigid and that he had to "do something" to entertain himself.  I was shocked - "Playboy," I might have been able to accept; "Hustler," not likely because it's so rauncy, but the materials and evidence that I found were over the top.  The jackets of these movies depicted women who were being gang-raped, genitalia that was being damaged, and many, many painful and perverted (literally) acts that are 100% parapheliac in nature.  Nothing could excuse or explain the types of materials and accoutrements that he had been hiding.

Without going into a long, drawn out discussion of my personal issues during those 2 years, suffice it to say that I had never been more frightened, alone, lonely, sick, injured, and defeated, and it took extensive counseling and a lot of work for me to face down my own personal demons and move beyond my experiences - most of which were as a result of my own failures to maintain my boundaries.

The other night, after watching my husband excuse himself from life and hide in our bedroom night after night, I confronted him with what his choices had caused for me.  He kept saying that he had never intended to "cause....(me) pain...." and I flew off my proverbial rails.  I had never been so close to murder in my entire life, even with the first abusive husband.  This was something that could not be blamed on me - it was a choice to entertain abnormal p 0 r n o g r a p h y and to feed a sick addiction.  I ranted and raved for the better part of an hour while he just cowered under the covers and made a great show of crying and acting "sorry."  I can clearly understand how a person could fly into a red rage and kill someone that they loved, I really can.  

Now.....to the present.  My husband has known, all of this time, of my experiences of having been in an abusive relationship and the many things that I Survived.  From the outset, I made it very clear how I felt about p 0 r n o g r a p h y and how it had factored into the abusive ex's behaviors and perversions.  My husband insisted that he understood and would never do anything to harm me in that way.

So......I am feeling completely numb.  I feel as if I've witnessed a mass murder and have no proper way to process what I've seen.  I have moments of incredible rage that stems from my feelings of utter betrayal.  I just cannot process what's happened to me.  My spouse has promised to engage in counseling and to work on earning my trust, again.  Quite honestly, I don't know whether or not I care.  I feel that I'm stuck for the present because of my age, medical conditions, and financial woes, but I am strongly entertaining a process of divorce.

I cannot say that I love my husband, anymore.....or, at present.  Whatever I loved about him seems to have been a complete lie.  The images that were a source of sexua| stimulus to him are burned into my brain with a repulsion that's strong enough to make me physically nauseous.  I will not touch him - who knows who he's been with?  I don't want him to tell me that he loves me - anyone who "loves" another person would make such abominable choices, especially knowing their loved one's past history of victimization.

Right.  I've ranted enough.  I'm shattered.  And, I don't feel that I am qualified, under any circumstances, to make suggestions to another human being on any level.  What is really odd about this is that I don't really feel like crying - I'm not sad.  I am furious.  I have never been as furious as I am, right now.  And, I can't process this fury - it's white-hot and I just need one catalyst to set me off on some sort of horrible rampage.

Ugh.  No bright blessings, here.