Working Through the Shame

Part of my personal recovery process from being a "codependent" to a sex addict has been looking at patterns in my life.  Early in my recovery, I was astounded to see how many men in my life had characteristics of a sex addict.  For instance and probably most notably, the guy I was head over heels with in my early 20s is now considered a leader in the BDSM scene and has recently come out as bisexual.

What alerted me to this pattern was not so much the overt behaviors of these individuals, but instead the "toxic tango" in which they engaged with others, specifically me.  There was an overriding element of "come here/go away" that undoubtedly keyed off something within me since both my parents tended to be either emotionally unavailable or quite needy.

But I digress from the real point of this post.

Early this year I lost my job.  It had been a good job in terms of income, responsibility, autonomy and prestige.  But the truth was the office was nothing but chaos.  I could function within it because of many of the coping skills I had learned in recovery, and I remained lovingly detached from the insanity about 95% of the time. To make matters worse, it was a small business owned by a man who figured his daughter was his heir apparent.  But in that dynamic was the real insanity, because she didn't want to wear that mantle, at least on his terms.

When I took the job, I knew it was God's provision for me in the midst of my divorce and financial devastation.  And, indeed it was.  The marital debt is now paid off.  My credit rating is decent and I own my own place.  I was able to buy a car on my own.  It afforded me independence.

But, the dirty little secret is this: when I took the job, I had, only the year before, learned that the boss was also a married gay man living life on the "down low."  I learned this because a potential client took me out to lunch and at the end of the lunch, blurted out that the boss had propositioned him.  I was astounded and surprised and grossed out and devastated for the boss's wife, who I have great respect for.

That night, I told my then husband the news.  He seemed very nervous and tense.  He didn't want to talk about it and tried to change the subject very quickly.   (In retrospect, it's kind of ironically humorous ... and, also in retrospect, it was only a few weeks later that I caught him in the act of looking at some really nasty gay porn.)

So.  I took the job knowing the boss -- who I had then known for about a decade and done work for off and on all that time -- was probably living a lie.  Now, I didn't know for certain, but I couldn't imagine why this client, who I trusted, would lie to me about such a thing.  I tried to put it out of my mind.  One day, the boss's daughter and I were in the car on the way to a client and started talking about my divorce.  I decided to come clean and tell her why I had filed.  She seemed blown away.  She told me later that the entire year I was going through the divorce, she had finally gotten enough financial evidence to confront her father about his extra-curriculars and then told her mother.  At that time, she also started confiding in me -- without telling me her concerns about her dad's sexuality -- and asking about how to deal with his crazy-making behaviors.  Whenever I'd come back from counseling, if there was a particular nugget of wisdom I'd learned, I'd share it when appropriate.  So maybe all things work together for good, as St. Paul assures us in Romans 8:28. Maybe instead of parsing through the whys and wherefores of this particular situation, I should simply look at the fact that she and I were of support to one another during a very difficult time.

I should add that by the end of 2008, I was pretty sure that the boss really was on the DL.  Needless to say, that was uncomfortable at best, but I was able to work around it using my recovery tools.  I titled this post "Working Through the Shame" intentionally, because one of the biggest things for me when I learned my ex was gay was shame.  I appropriated his shame and put it on myself.  I was ashamed I had been married to a gay man.  I beat myself up about all the red flags I'd seen and ignored. I was ashamed to go to my first COSA meeting; scared silly I'd see someone I knew. But, by working my own recovery and working day by day, side by side, with another gay or bisexual man who was living a marriage of (his) convenience, I began to work through that shame and see that my ex's sexual orientation (and addictions!) wasn't about me at all.  It wasn't because I wasn't pretty enough, or young anymore, or skinny enough or whatever.  It is what it is, and it took all this time and pain to get there.

I think that for men who are over 45 or 50, it's much harder for them to be out or come out.  If they've been raised in the church, or otherwise deeply involved in it (as was my husband) it is likely that much more difficult.  (I have a gay cousin, by the way, who was raised a Baptist ... we've had some interesting talks.)  For many of them, I think they got married because they did love their wife and they thought being married would "cure" them of their attraction to men.  Guess what???  The issue I have is when the man knows what he's attracted to and can't have enough integrity to own up to it.  Is that an easy thing to do?  I cannot begin to imagine that it is.