Of Padlocks And Porn

I've written before about how I don't like to be alone at night.
Being alone at night is when I am most tempted
to throw my abstinence
from sexual addiction away.
I was alone this past weekend
and did exactly that.

I read this post this morning and identified immediately with the thoughts within it except last weekend I went from feeling pin pricked beyond bearable right into chucking my abstinence out the window.
I tried my damndest to numb the pin pricks away.
It. didn't. work.
Of course not.
The committee in my head can never deliver what it tells me it can.

Yesterday as I sat hashing this out with my therapist I said
I felt disappointed
that the high I was looking for didn't materialize.
The addiction doesn't have the same power it used to.
After the second night it lost its charm.
And although this time around
the bungee jump ride to the bottom
was much higher than it's been in the past,
what is making red flags scream at me
is that I felt relieved that I relapsed.
It was as if it jolted me awake.
There's something so sick to that thinking
that it still's freaking me out.
Why did it take relapse to make me go back to doing those things on a daily basis that I need to do so that relapse isn't even on my radar screen?
Why didn't I do them when I first realized
(weeks and weeks ago) that I was playing with fire?

Last night dearest one and I went out
for a belated anniversary dinner.
I knew I needed to fess up about my slip.
I didn't want to.
Earlier in the day my therapist and I had talked
about how hard taking emotional risks is for me.
We talked about my reasons for
telling dearest one of my slip.
That it felt like keeping secrets if I didn't.
And how secrets are the slipperiest of slopes.

After I'd fessed up, dearest one
said it had nothing to do with him.
I'd just made myself vulnerable to the core
and he had no feelings about it.
None.
I replied that if he had himself
a little porn addiction
then I think I'd have some feelings about it.
Phrasing it that way helped him see that maybe
there are some feelings buried deep inside him.
He looked at me and said, "Do we really want to go there?"
I thought he was saying it as in "ever?"
It took me a few moments to clue in that
he meant "right now, right here in Denny's?"

Sometimes this journey feels like a strip tease.
A dance of 'this is part of who I am'
'this is how much of me I'll let you see'
'the rest I'm keeping close to my chest for safekeeping'.
We've both played it well.
And while it feels like a long, winding road
to expose ourselves to one another,
both of us are committed to going forward.
For that I am extremely grateful.
He assures me that the conversation
will happen, just not yet.
I said that I will be both scared and relieved
when that day comes.
Scared because his pain is not mine to fix.
What's done is done.
And saying sorry seems so lame.
Relieved because when he bears this part of his soul
he will be relating to me out of his core being,
the place we store our pain for safekeeping.
Our core beings are beautiful.
Weird how that works.
This man is never more beautiful to me than when he
takes the padlock off his heart
and lets me in.

I've let this post sit here for several hours
torn between delete and publish.
I rarely talk about my recovery journey
when it comes to sexual addiction
on here anymore.
It's humbling to let you in.