A few days ago, a columnist I generally like wrote a satirical piece on sex addiction rehab (one I won't link to here, due to its triggering nature). He's a liberal columnist, so the comments were populated with lots of LOLs and virtual eye rolling at the concept of sex addiction as a creation of the religious right: people who are uptight about and don't know how to enjoy sex. There was lots of mocking of the "higher power" concept, lots of atheists sneering at the superstitious nonsense that is God.

Of course, the conservative flip side of the "sex addiction is a joke" coin is to sneer at therapists: people who are forever trying to write off weakness and lack of willpower as "diseases" in order to bilk people out of money.  Either way, treatment for sex addiction is seen as misguided and useless: so called "sex addicts" either "just" need to loosen up and learn to accept and enjoy their sexuality or "just" need to have more willpower and moral fortitude.

And either way, as someone married to a sex addict, it can be both hurtful and maddening to feel the world is ringed around us in a circle, pointing and laughing, saying that we've been duped when, for the first time, we feel we're seeing clearly. It's one of those things that is likely to draw me back into that crazy place I used to occupy: where, like a six-year-old, I yell "NO!" at someone else's "Yes!" only to have them yell "Yes!" back at me in an endless cycle; where I feel panicked and crazy, as if someone's telling me the sky is red when I see it's blue; where I spend my time and energy fruitlessly trying to convince someone else that they're wrong so that I can feel right again.

I wanted (desperately) to pull out my credentials and yell into the comments section, "Mark and I weren't some crazy, uptight religious fanatics who just couldn't embrace our sexuality!  And I'm not some uptight, frigid wife who can't please her man!  I was a really good atheist who really loves sex!"  As if the columnist, or any of the commenters, would read that and suddenly say, "Oh, some random stranger on the Internet says that wasn't her experience. Now I've totally changed my view on sex addiction!" rather than, "I bet she actually sucks in bed and her husband is an asshole."

Deep breath.  Step 1.  I am powerless over other people.  I am powerless to change their perceptions of me.  And trying to do so anyway makes my life unmanageable.  Followed by Step 2.  Help from that much maligned higher power.

I didn't leave the comment.  I stopped reading, made the column disappear in a flash of electrons with the click of my mouse and I did something I never used to do before.  I prayed.  "God, let me see the world through your eyes.  Let me not be threatened by people whose experiences are different.  When I mock others, I am usually scared and hurting.  In every place that this columnist and his readers are scared and hurting too, open their hearts to love and peace.  Help me on my journey, and help all of them follow the path they need to, so that we can find love and understanding for each other."

In the past, I wouldn't have prayed because my God is not a separate being who controls the world, but I've found that prayer isn't (as I used to think) some useless, crazy, superstitious ritual predicated on achieving results with the help of a supernatural power.  Prayer is a tool I use to ground myself, open my own heart and let go of my own pain, fear and anger.  Prayer is a way of connecting to my higher power, my better nature, my Buddha nature, the God part inside me.  Prayer is a way of feeling love and compassion and connection to others, rather than distance and anger and fear and resentment.  When I pray for someone who requests my prayers, it connects us, and lifts us both up.  When I pray (quietly, secretly) for someone who doesn't request it, it helps me love and forgive.  I've learned that even if prayer never produces any tangible results in the world, it's not useless -- not to me -- because the purpose isn't to change the world to get what I want, it's to help me be in line with and at peace with what is.

Most parents hear it at one time or another.  Some variation on the universal theme of parent awfulness: "I hate you. I wish you were dead. I don't like you.  I'm not going to be your child anymore.  I want a new Mommy/Daddy.  You're the worst parent ever."  These pronouncements are usually inspired by something truly terrible we've done, like forbid our child from diving head first off a playstructure onto concrete.  (Actually, a lot of people married to addicts (for whom the rest of this story may also resonate) hear that kind of thing too, and usually for the same reasons.)  And those words can hurt, even when we know they're just a passing storm of anger and frustration.

But yesterday, when Austen screamed, "I don't love you!" it made me feel, well, loved.

Austen is autistic, and it comforts him when the little details of his world are neatly in place.  One of these details is the need to have all words printed neatly in capital block letters; no lower case letters and no script allowed.  If one of us should write something using any lettering that is offensive to Austen's discriminating eye, he will not rest until he has fixed it for us.  Grocery lists can be found with each item crossed out and correctly rewritten above.  Signatures on birthday cards are blacked out and bear neatly printed versions of the name instead.  If you want to keep a document safe from Austen's pen, you should generally keep it out of his sight.

I've recently been reading over some old journals and letters while doing some 12 Step work, and my daughter Janie has enjoyed having me read to her about what I used to do when I was a child.  Yesterday, I was reading to Janie when (and you can see where this is going, I'm certain) Austen, mistakenly thought to be safely occupied with something else, noticed that (shockingly) I didn't not print every item in my childhood diary in capital block letters.  And this was an outrage.  A crime.  An atrocity.  Austen wanted to fix that journal for me right away.

Of course, the answer to that was no.  No, you cannot cross out every word in my precious junior high diary and rewrite it.  I took the journal and locked it up safely in my room.  At which point Austen told me to please walk away and not look at him.  Nothing to see here. Move along.  He'd just be over here trying to pick the lock.  Just ignore him.

So, being the sharp and totally onto-him mother that I am, rather than walking away, I stopped and said, "Buddy, I really can't let you have that diary.  I wrote it when I was very young and it's the only one I have.  It's a part of who I was and who I am, and it's very special and important to me.  If you cross out the words, you'll be damaging it, and I'll be sad and angry and hurt. I'll feel like you would feel if I wrecked up your electronics collection, which I know is really special and important to you."

And that's when the screaming started.  "No!  You must let me have it!  Promise?  You have to let me destroy it!"

"No, I can't do that, buddy."

"Yes, you can!"

Austen's anger usually comes from anxiety, so I took a guess as to what he might be anxious about and tried to reassure him.  "I love you no matter what.  I know I said I would be angry if you damaged something that is important to me, but I would still love you, always and always."

"Well, I don't love you!" he shouted.

"Do you feel that way because you're angry at me?" I asked, trying to help him label his emotions.

"No," he said, through tears of frustration, "Because I have to destroy your diary, and it will hurt you.  And if I love you, I don't want to hurt you.  But if I don't love you, it's ok.  And I really need to destroy it, because it's WRONG in lower case!  So, I don't love you!"

Oh.  Wow.  I'd really misunderstood and misjudged: the level of his need, the level of his empathy the level of his emotion.  But all I could think right then was that this was the best "I don't love you" I'd ever received.

One day, early in his recovery work around sex addiction, Mark and I were standing in line at the grocery store, when I commented on a headline on one of the news magazines.  "I can't look," Mark said.

"What?"

"It's not good for me.  Those magazine and tabloid covers are awful.  I hate the grocery store checkout.  There's no place I can safely look."

I hadn't thought about it before, at least not in terms of recovery.

Most of the magazines were insipid and pandered to the worst in people, but when I wasn't tuning them out, I was mocking them.  I never thought of them as particularly worrisome or hurtful, at least not to me, since I wasn't threatened by (or aspiring to be) anyone who might be on the cover.  But that changed as soon as the first sex scandal hit the shelves (which, of course, didn't take long).

There would be pictures on the tabloid covers of the injured spouse, shell shocked or shying away from cameras.  And it would remind me of that very first day after disclosure when Mark and I drove to a friend's house to drop our son Austen off while we went to meet with a therapist.  I stood next to the car, wearing sunglasses to hide eyes that were nearly swollen shut with crying, and waved to them while Mark walked Austen into the house because I knew I couldn't speak coherently to anyone right then.

There would be the insinuations that it was somehow partly her fault and the implication that she did something wrong: that she wasn't sexy enough or was too cold or too demanding.  (And of course, there would be Cosmo right on the next rack with sex and beauty tips to make sure you wouldn't make the same mistake.)  I'd stand in line wanting to scream, "I did EVERYTHING to make my husband happy, and he hurt me anyway.  It's not my fault that my husband lied rather than deal directly with his problems.  And it's not her fault that her husband lied either."  I suddenly became a huge fan and staunch defender of Jennifer Aniston, whom I'd never particularly cared for before.

There would be criticism for her anger or her lack of it.  And I'd think of how I'd hit Mark until the thought it was making him feel better made me stop.  And how I stumbled through the following days and weeks with no real thought, blindly and automatically following some formula that was set before me for what I needed to do, waiting for the hurt to stop.

Then there would also be the picture of the mistress, always looking sultry, scantily clad and completely unrepentant (in fact often stating that she was unrepentant).  And I'd think of the women who had contributed to my pain and the near destruction of my marriage with white hot rage and hatred in my heart.  I'd feel betrayed by them as much as by my husband, and I'd spin into fantasies about how to inflict the kind of pain upon them that they'd inflicted on me.  Sometimes I'd skim the news magazines looking hopefully for their names among the victims of terrorist attacks.

And of course, there would be the husbands, sometimes with wicked grins as they left their wives for the other woman and sometimes sorrowfully begging forgiveness in an attempt to save their images, their careers, their marriages.  And I'd feel the same mix of anger and confusion and pity that my own husband inspired in me at the time.

And even when there were no sex scandals, it was still all about how I ought to do my makeup or wear my clothes or eat or cook or weigh or act in bed to ensure that what had happened to me wouldn't happen to me.  And I could only stand there knowing I'd done it all and it hadn't protected me from the same pain that periodically splashed across the tabloid covers.

The supermarket checkout line became a gamut I had to run rather than a fun distraction from the boredom of waiting in line.  I started averting my eyes just the way Mark did.  I ordered more food deliveries and spent more time shopping at specialty stores that didn't stock the usual mix of gossip rags and "women's" magazines.

Six years in to recovery, the magazines aren't the same trigger for me that they used to be and I see the players in the drama a little differently, with less (but not always no) anger and more sympathy all around.  I don't avoid the grocery store and I don't generally avert my eyes from the news magazines just because Cosmo or the Enquirer are up there being all awful.  But I still don't seek them out when there is a sex scandal, because, especially if I'm tired or hungry or stressed, I know I'm prone to fall back into old thought patterns and I may not be above the temptation to take up a Sharpie and ink out some of the teeth on Tiger Woods' mistresses.

I'm pretty certain that everyone who passed my daughter Janie's elementary school at dismissal time a few weeks ago now knows me by sight. Yep, I'm that woman whose daughter threw a tantrum so gigantic and so spectacular that it took us over a quarter of an hour just to move to the front of the school and strangers felt moved to ask if she needed medical attention. I'm the woman who stood there for more than a half an hour next to a six-year-old girl who was sprawled on the sidewalk, as people passed by with nervous glances asking if everything was ok.

Yes, everything is ok. First grade is just hard, and tiring, and this has caused our mother/daughter relationship to devolve into a hostage situation. The hostage being me. Her demands are: 1) a juice box right now, 2) that I carry her backpack, 3) that I carry her, 4) ice cream upon arrival home. Otherwise she is not moving, nuh-uh, no way; she's going to sit here and cry until it gets dark and then sleep on the sidewalk. (This is her actual plan.) My position is that I do not negotiate with terrorists, I do not have a juice box anyway, I have neither the desire nor the ability to carry a six-year-old anymore, and I'm not rewarding a hissy fit with ice cream. As you can imagine, this produced a standoff.

Now I know that some of you are thinking, "Well, make her move! You're the mom! You're the boss! Demand it!" And believe me, that's what I was telling myself. I'm the mom! I'm the boss! She ought to do what I say! She ought to be enticed with the (non-ice cream) snack that awaits her at home, and she ought to be mortally fearful of the consequences of her behavior. Yet she didn't care at all. Have you ever seen a donkey just refuse to move? You can yell at it and beat it and push it and drag it and still it stands there stubbornly. I had a little donkey and had neither a stick big enough nor a carrot tasty enough to induce movement.

So there we stood, until we were each able to bend just enough to reach a mutually agreeable settlement: I would not carry her but would let her lean on me, and I would carry her backpack, but in return she would have to downgrade for a week to her preschool backpack which was smaller, lighter and much less cool looking. So, an hour later than usual, we staggered through the front door looking precisely as if we'd just fought a war: me, sweaty and disheveled and Janie with debris clinging to her hair and her grimy face streaked with tears.

As expected, a snack and a rest on the sofa greatly improved the matters, but the ceasefire ended at bedtime, when Janie refused to get into bed.

"Time for bed."

"No."

"Janie, get in bed now."

"Or else what?"

Or else what? Who did she think she was talking to? Or else this!

Now, we must pause for a moment to allow you to imagine "this." I find that whenever I divulge my specific parenting methods, it distracts from the story I am trying to tell. People get caught up in the details. So at this point, don't think about what I did, imagine what a good parent (whatever your definition of that is) would do. Imagine what you would have done. If you would have spanked her, spank her in your mind. If you would have told her "no story tonight," then no story. If you would have made a sticker chart for nice talk, go make a sticker chart. If you would have lifted her firmly into bed and left the room, go do it.

I did what you would do. I did what I thought was going to have the effect I wanted.  I called on the examples of parents I knew and admired and did what I thought a "good" parent (whose children do what they are supposed to do) would do. Furthermore, I did it calmly and firmly. I even used what Janie calls my "stun voice" (which I think is a variation on "stern voice").

But here's what you have to imagine now (and this is the hard part): imagine it didn't work. You spanked, she cried louder and refused harder. You told her no story, and she screamed, "I don't care! I'm not going to bed!" You offered ice cream or stickers, and she told you she wanted that plus fifty thousand dollars right now. You put her in bed and and she jumped back out and tried to run out of the room. Whatever you did, the situation escalated, she got more adamant and more upset and still was not in bed.  And if you tried again, she escalated the situation still further.

That was where I was.  We were getting nowhere, and I was in despair.  Here I am doing what everyone I admire says a good parent is supposed to do and my child is acting like a complete nightmare, thus proving that I am a bad parent.  I don't get it.  Why am I so bad at this?  What the hell am I supposed to do?  What have I done already to make things this bad?  I can't even ask anyone for help, because then I'd have to admit to how much I've clearly somehow screwed up already.

That's when the answer came.  Beyond the point where Janie was kicking and screaming on the floor, a book on her bookshelf caught my eye. Actually, a single word in the title caught my eye: God.  Cheesy, huh?  The old me would want to punch me for something like this, but I thought "No, wait.  That's it!  God's will, not my will!" I knew what my will was: I wanted to be a good parent by bossing Janie into bed. (She's tired! She needs to be in bed!) But what was God's will?

So I took a deep breath and said, "Janie, this isn't working.  I'm going to try something different.  Right now I'm worried because we're fighting over bedtime.  Bedtime isn't something I'm trying to make you do to be mean.  We all need enough sleep so our bodies can be healthy, and it's my job as your mama to protect you and help take care of you and help you learn to take care of yourself.  I don't want to fight about this, but I don't know what else to do right now.  I'm stuck.  So, do you know what I believe?  I believe there is a God part inside each one of us and if we are quiet and still we can hear that part of us tell us the right thing to do.  So I'm going to be quiet and still now and see if that God part can help me figure out what I need to do now.  And maybe you can be quiet and still and think — not about what you want me to do — but what you should do for you right now."

Janie stopped crying.  She turned away from me and scooched across the floor to where her beloved stuffed animal Gigi lay, and she sat there for a bit, hugging her knees.  Then she turned to me and said, "Mama, I think I can go to bed if I show you something."  So I joined her, and she showed me a bead she'd found on the floor: "It's pretty, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said.

"Can I make something with it in the morning?"

"Yes."

"Ok.  I'm ready for bed now."

"Sweetie, can I give you a hug?  I think we've both had a rough day."

"Yes."

So, I gave Janie a hug that felt like melting, like walls dissolving, like peace.  Then she climbed into bed.  I smoothed her hair, and she smoothed mine, and she was asleep in minutes, holding my hand.

During the first year after I discovered my husband's sex addiction, I attended S-Anon, 12 Step meetings for friends and family members of sex addicts. At the beginning of each meeting we would read "The S-Anon Problem." I hated "The S-Anon Problem." I hated it so passionately that I used to skip the beginning of meetings, coming in late each week to avoid hearing it. And when I did have to hear it I would seethe and writhe. I wanted to get up and punch someone. I wanted to tear out the hair of the people who wrote it. I wanted to yell, "This is a bunch of bullshit that has nothing to do with me! I'm not like these other people and I'm not codependent!" Yes, you could say that I was experiencing some resistance.

Of course, I thought this was totally reasonable. The problem was that damn document. Me? Nothing to see here. I was pissed because I had a right to be pissed at people who try to invalidate me and deny my experiences and tell me I don't know who I am. Because Someone was saying that these words about this "problem" must describe me, just because I happened to be married to a sex addict. And Someone was saying I was not allowed to refute any part of it or say it didn't apply to me because then I would be "in denial." Wouldn't anyone be angry? Isn't it normal? I mean nameless, faceless Someones out there are accusing perfectly normal wife-of-a-sex-addict me that I have some kind of problem that I don't feel I have. What an outrage! How dare they!

Six years in, I can read that document and say, "I do have codependent behaviors and experiences, some of which are documented here, others of which are not. Some of what is described here doesn't apply to me, and a lot of it still doesn't resonate. I still think it could be written in a way that is more inclusive of the wide variety of emotions and experiences people have when coming in to recovery." But it the resistance and the outrage are gone. I know what I know and where I am right now, and I don't need to get angry of feel threatened because someone who authored "The S-Anon Problem" may disagree with me, even if those who have strong opinions about what codependency "should" look like would disagree with me about me.

I've learned that when I feel secure and a perception of me seems way off, I can let go and laugh about it. When I'm not sure of myself or when a perception hits close to things that may or may not be true about me, but that I worry about, I still feel the anger rising up; I feel the impulse to argue and convince people that they are wrong for having a different view of me than I have of myself. But now I can usually recognize that resistance as a familiar signal. I try to remind myself that my off-the-charts reaction to someone (or some document) as a sign that it has hit a sore spot. If it hadn't, I'd be able to laugh and move on. And I need to take a look at that sore spot rather than stewing in anger and expending all of my energy rattling my sword at someone else.

Somewhere, gathering dust on a dark, forgotten shelf in my house is a video that helped greatly in my recovery. It's not one that you can buy on Amazon.com and it's not one that will help any of you. It's a video of me. Pre-recovery. Being angry and upset. Being really pissy. Being just a total screaming hellion. Or at least that's what I thought. Until I watched the video.

The video is of me, and the rest of my extended family, getting ready for a big family event. We're trying to get dressed and figure out where we're going and get there on time. There are going to be people there that some of us have never met and people we haven't seen for a very long time, and we want to look good and be sociable. Some of us are running late (as always), some of us are ready on time (as always). Those who are on time are badgering or sighing in exasperation at those running late, and those who are running late are snapping at those who are on time. We're losing things and banging into each other and getting all kinds of frustrated and frazzled. And one of us has a video camera and is walking around filming the whole thing.

I remember so well how angry I was that day. How I stated my needs with razor sharp precision and clarity and how no one listened until I blew up and snapped at everyone. And how no one seemed to notice that either, as they all went blithely on their way without acknowledging it. I went out to that event so resentful, grumbling about how people didn't consider my needs and wishes. Grumble, grumble, grumble. If they loved me they would...

And then, months later, I saw the video. Of me, speaking Codependent. When I was sure I'd said, "I really need to use the bathroom. Would you mind if I went next?" what I'd actually said (before walking quietly away) was, "Oh, there's someone in the bathroom. I guess I'll find something else to do." When I thought I'd said, "Turn that f-ing camera off so I can get dressed in private!" what I'd actually said was "Wow, you really are taking a lot of video." I wasn't making requests. I wasn't setting boundaries. I wasn't being open and honest about my feelings. I was making casual observations that those around me were supposed to magically interpret as statements of my wants and needs. And I was getting pissed off when they failed to read my mind and obey my secret wishes.

But I wasn't expressing any of that anger either, although I thought I was. I was certain that there was a point at which I exploded in rage and snapped at people. In my mind, I could see it so clearly. And then I saw it approaching on the video. Here, surely, was where we'd see some drama. Instead, it was one of those things that you'd have to play over and over again in slow motion to catch. "And... Wait for it... Wait for it... There! Did you see my eye twitch a little? Did you see it? That was it!" That moment, where I thought I was really angry and supremely rude was actually the one moment where I even seemed to approach a statement of my needs. I intone in a sing-song, with a smile, something like, "Give me just one moment to get my shoes on, please!" And we fade to black...

That's right, Jack told everyone on the island where they could stick the Hippocratic Oath, because apparently, when we're talking about Ben, "do no harm" means the greater harm would actually be letting him live. What's more, Jack held firm in the face of several different people begging and bullying him to change. My husband and I speculated that Jack must have attended some of those fast acting TV 12 Step meetings around the time he shaved off the alcoholic-Jack beard and went back to clean shaven control-freak-Jack. Yeah, TV isn't always so realistic. But what was realistic was the way other people reacted to his sudden ability to say no (and mean it): they were pissed. And they pushed back.

"For crying out loud, Kate," I mock-yelled at the TV, "It's hard to say no! Respect Jack's boundaries!" Because that part is still the part that trips me up. I'm getting better at the saying no part, at the "this is as far as I'm willing to go and as much as I'm willing to do" part. I'm just not so good at holding to that path as others get angrier and push harder and harder for me to change, to go back to the old me, the one with the friendly and free flowing boundaries. So I was inwardly gleeful that this character on TV (having gone to the imaginary 12 Step meetings my husband and I invented for him) held his ground in the face of angry attempts to get him to change. And I loved what happened after he did. People took care of themselves and figured out other solutions without him. What a beautiful thing!

With the story of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's week-long disappearance to visit his mistress in Argentina buzzing about, we're faced yet again with a barrage of images of a public figure tearfully apologizing for his infidelity, while his job hangs in jeopardy.* And in the wake of this story, the same discussions will repeat themselves that have echoed down from all the scandals past. Why did he do it? What does it say about our society? Should he keep his job? And, my perennial favorite, was he justified in cheating?

Yes, rest assured, people will whisper about the cause being his bitchy wife (she must be or he wouldn't have done it, right?) and someone, somewhere out there, will use this as an opportunity to bemoan our culture's moralistic attitude toward sex. It's a charge that is sometimes leveled at partners of sex addicts (at times by the addict or even by ourselves): that the problem with infidelity lies in our own uptight attitudes about sex and if we'd just lighten up and not get so upset about sex outside of marriage, everything would be fine. Which completely misses what every partner of a sex addict knows: the pain of infidelity doesn't have nearly as much to do with the sex as it does with being lied to.

Ask nearly anyone in a relationship with a sex addict what the worst thing about active addiction is and they will almost universally tell you that it's not the sex, but the lying and the horrible breach of trust that comes with it.  Sure, the sex part of it matters; it's not like I would have fallen down on the bathroom floor sobbing and hugging the toilet in sickness if my husband had lied to me about his secret life helping poverty stricken orphans.  The lies hurt because they were about something as intimate and personal and hurtful as a breech of sexual trust. And yes, I wanted the sexual acting out gone, but I know wanted the lies gone still more.

When my husband disclosed his activities to me, I laid into him, "If you wanted to have sex with other people, why didn't you tell me? If you want an open marriage, I need to know that. Hiding your actions and covering things up and lying shows a total lack of respect for me. I didn't have what I needed to make an informed decision about this relationship. You didn't give me the option to decide for myself, like an adult, you decided for me based on what you wanted. If multiple partners is what you want, let's talk about it. If that's what you're going to do, then tell me. I can deal with the sex, but I can't deal with the lying and the hiding and the deception." (See, it was early in recovery, I still "youed" at him a lot then. Also I bargained and tried to control him. Please do not try this at home.)

And in my husband's most major relapse since starting recovery for sex addiction, it wasn't the details of his acting out that hurt me (I wasn't even interested in them), but the fact that he would lie about going to a 12 Step meeting (a sacred meeting) and then cover it up for a year before coming clean.  I know he's an addict, I knew chances were slim that he would enter recovery and go the rest of his life without another slip ever, but I didn't care what he had done with this other woman so much as I cared that he had deceived me about it.  Even knowing that lying goes with the territory in addiction, the lying undid me.

What are my attitudes toward and beliefs about sex and relationships? To be honest, I'm still working that out; they're ever changing as I grow. But I do know that I didn't (and couldn't) begin to explore them until my husband and I both started talking honestly and openly about our wants and needs, our hopes and fears, our goals and values.

A version of this post was originally published at The Second Road. Additional comments can be found there.

When I found out about my husband's sexual addiction, it felt like my emotional landscape faded from bright vivid color to monochrome shades of black and grey. I had three primary emotional settings: fear, anger (shading into full on rage) and heartbreaking sadness. And I'd display these by alternating between screaming, crying and sitting mute and paralyzed. My early experiences with 12 Step meetings were with partners of sex addicts who were in much the same state I was. There was a lot of anger and hurt in that musty little church room, and it was hard, as I slowly shed my own anger and hurt to see other people still hurting.

Of course, it would be nice to say that I felt for them and my sympathy for their pain tore at me. But that's not true at all. Everyone seemed to piss me off, and I was just oozing resentments. I went from being angry and frustrated at my husband to wanting to fix everyone else in the room. Why couldn't they just get over it already? It was so infuriating to listen to them go on about their awful partners without ever seeing how awful they were being. Clearly, they were doing recovery wrong.

So I stopped going. For about four years.

In the six months since I've returned to meetings, I've noticed that there's been a change: that triggered feeling I used to have has slipped away. Now, maybe these new meetings are healthier than my old ones — the format and philosophy of this group are certainly a much better fit for me — but I know that's not the whole story. After all, the newcomers who walk in almost always present that same bleak emotional landscape that I did: fear, anger, crushing sadness — they cry, they rage at the addict in their lives, they live in terror of the next blow the future may bring — but instead of feeling frustrated, I feel present, able to sympathize and empathize without getting swept away by my emotions. I'm able to remember those bleak days, without fearing that rich colors of my own world will fade away again.

I'm recognizing that the break I took, while I did it for a lot of negative reasons, did turn out to be a healthy one. When my own raw places were just starting to heal, going to meetings full of so much hurt and rage felt like ripping the scab off my wounds. I was too close to those hurts myself to be able to look back on them with anything approaching serenity. Now that those wounds have had time to heal, I find I'm much better able to accept others where they are rather than needing everyone else to feel better so that I can escape my own pain.

It was raining the night I first kissed my husband. The wind was hissing and howling through the bare branches of the trees, rattling the last of the dead leaves still clinging to their posts. Before we kissed, we twined our hands together and watched our arms weave against each other like snakes, mahogany and golden. And when at last, softly, lip met lip, I wanted to rush out into the wind and rain and throw my arms out and laugh wildly or scream at the sky, like Ophelia drowning or Lear going mad in the storm. I couldn't resist him, nor he me, and the intensity of the pleasure in that kiss rode the edge of being blinding pain. It was the kind of high that addicts seek to return to and sustain forever, that I, in my own issues around love and romance and sex, have always wanted to return to again and again with Mark.

Last night, the kids were asleep and after a long busy week, Mark and I finally had a moment alone together. We were lying in bed and he twined his hand into mine, a sweet prelude, just like that night we first kissed. Only this time the contrast -- between what magic I thought we had back then and all the craziness of addiction and fantasy and delusion and denial that overlaid it and everything else since -- was too much for me. I burst into tears and Mark said, "Whoa, you're sad. What's the matter?"

I fumbled to explain where that gesture, so reminiscent of an earlier time, had taken me and said, "You know, people who are just starting recovery sometimes ask me if it ever stops hurting. And I tell them it does, mostly. But I say that sometimes it comes back, just not as strong. This is one of those times. It's better, but the pain's still there. Sometimes I just miss that fantasy, that irresistible passion. I miss the person I used to be, when sex didn't seem so complicated."

I put my head on Mark's chest and he stroked my hair and shoulder while I lay there feeling angry and disgusted at myself for being so caught up in the past and in the unknown that I couldn't enjoy an intimate moment right here in the present. I worried that Mark would be angry at me and level the charges at me that I'd heard others had leveled at them (and that I'd even leveled at others myself): that I was "freaking out," being "neurotic" and "overly emotional," being a stereotypical woman "too uptight" to have sex. I mean, geez, why didn't I just say I had a headache while I was at it? I imagined he wanted me to "get over it" so that he could get his needs met without having to deal with my troublesome and annoying emotions. And I thought about a conversation I had with a friend who said healing from the violation and trauma of being in a relationship with a sex addict has similarities to healing from the violation and trauma of rape, and I tried (without much success) to be forgiving of myself for still struggling sometimes, even six years after disclosure.

Then Mark interrupted my thoughts as he ran his hand over my shoulder, sighed happily and said, "I love you, and I'm so glad to be here with you!" I looked up at his face, and he was beaming. "God is good!" he said, almost laughing with happiness. What? No sex and he, the sex addict, was still happy? To be here with me? Wow. I snuggled in close and kissed him, and then I started laughing. "You know," I said, "just a minute ago, I was missing that irresistible passion and addictive inability to say no. I was thinking it was the sexiest thing in the world and I was never going to be able to get moments like that back. Now, a minute later, I'm seeing the ability to say no as such a gift, and I don't have to get back there, because recovery is looking pretty darn sexy on you..."