I rashly went out Halloween costume shopping a few days ago. I'm not sure what I was thinking. Well, I know I needed to pick up a costume for my daughter — Yes, a few days shy of Halloween. I'm totally on top of it as a mom. — but for some reason I thought maybe I could find something cute for myself. You know, something suitable for a 40-year-old mother of two married to a recovering sex addict. There must be tons of costumes to fit the bill, right? At the very least there had to be a nice Hillary Clinton, complete with businesslike pants suit.

Instead, I prowled through the store grimacing, rolling my eyes and blowing exasperated puffs of breath like some kind of crazy person. I wasn't fussing, like most of the other customers, at the cost of the costumes (although, yeah, ouch! Shouldn't those things be marked down with just moments left to go?) but at the sexuality of nearly all the costumes for women and girls, with the exception of those for infants and toddlers. (Boys and men, I noticed, had a variety of different costumes available. Most of these were neutral in terms of sexual content, while even those with a sexual element (I'm thinking the orange "Department of Erections" jumpsuit with penis prosthetic) comfortably covered their bodies.)

The womens' and girls' costumes were a veritable Fredrick's of Halloween catalog.  There were tens of different variations on the same micro-mini barely covering the buttocks matched with the same plunging, cleavage baring neckline; I could choose to be any number of porn star characters: the cop porn star, the nurse porn star, the super-heroine porn star, this hippie porn star, the movie star porn star... It was like looking at Carvel ice cream cakes back in the day; Fudgie the Whale would look like a whale, while Santa would come out sporting a red cap topped by a suspiciously untraditional two tassels. (Apparently, Tom Carvel didn't get to the top of the ice cream game through extravagant purchases like molds that would be used only once a year.)

Needless to say, all those droopy eyes, pouting lips, fishnet clad legs and ample bosoms can be triggering for sex addicts and their partners alike. I can't dress up like that: not after the way it's been mixed up with feelings of trauma and degradation.  My husband can't look at anything like that: not after the way he's used it as a drug, an escape into fantasy.  I found myself wondering if there was a special Halloween store for Mormons and if they'd let me shop there. (You make the costumes yourselves, don't you? Sigh!)

Hanging out with my kids all day, going to their Halloween parties at school, watching them dress up with their friends, I sometimes forget (even having had experience with it in recovery) what a sexual (sexually objectifying?) holiday Halloween can be for adults. I think that I, married to a sex addict, with all of my complicated issues around sexuality, can just pop into a store and pick up a fun little costume for myself, not have it trigger the shit out of me. And I'd be wrong. Halloween is just too scary. Next year, I'll stick to eating cupcakes and shopping for modest pantsuits on the Internet.

Image credit: Photo by kchbrown on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a woman named Paula Saardchit. She told me she'd found my blog while doing research for an article she was writing on sex addiction for her website, and she wanted to write and tell me how moved she was by my story. Of course, I was curious to know more about her site, so I googled her. And I found out that she helps women plan lingerie and sex toy parties. (And I know what kind of party some of you have in mind. No, not that kind! You know, this is like a Tupperware party, only with vibrators.)

When I found out about my husband's sex addiction, one of the first things I did was get out my big, black garbage bags and start dumping in porn, lingerie and sex toys. The sight of them, of anything that made me think of sex or by extension of my husband's sexual acting out, made me want to vomit. So off in a landfill somewhere are all the artifacts of my subconscious attempts to control my husband and keep his sexual attention firmly fixed on constantly exciting, porn star me: the dildos and the vibrators, the bustiers and fishnet stockings and the crotchless panties and the wigs and the costumes, the X-rated board games and the porn DVDs. Yeah, I tried it all. Well, except a stripper pole. That hadn't occurred to me yet. And thank goodness because how would I have carted that out to the trash?

I had been as conventionally sexy and exciting and adventurous and engaged as can be, and my husband loved it. But it wasn't enough. That endless, aching need of his wanted more than I could give. More than all the women in all the lingerie with all the sex toys in the world could give. And still I wanted to give it. Which is how I ended up there, with the black Hefty bag in my hand, sick to my stomach with shame and disgust and rage.

And now, six years later, I was on a lingerie party website, full of pictures of that conventional sexy I dumped in the trash, wondering what kind of sex addiction article Paula intended to write. As I glanced at the site, I saw that there was plenty of the usual "hot" and "titillating" sex selling, but Paula also genuinely seemed to see these parties as a way of empowering women to learn about and appreciate their own bodies. Black and white thinking is common in the lives of addicts and those who live with them, and I've been slowly working toward a place where, after fully indulging in our culture's idea of "sexy" and then fully rejecting it (from lingerie to makeup to shaving my legs), I am exploring more shades of grey. So, just because I can't incorporate lingerie and sex toys into my relationship in a healthy way right now, doesn't mean they are evil in themselves. There are definitely aspects of lingerie and sex toys that I'm deeply uncomfortable with, and even perceive as dangerous to women, but there was enough that was positive about Paula's site that when she asked if she could interview me, I said, "Well, send me your questions and I'll see."

When I saw the questions, I found that not only was I comfortable with answering them all, this would be a good opportunity to reach out to women who may not realize (yet) that their partners are sex addicts. (I mean, what better place to find a sex addict's partner in denial than out buying lingerie?) So, while many women may be using Paula's parties as a healthy expression of their sexuality, I (taking to heart that 12 Step message of reaching out to those still suffering) couldn't pass up the opportunity to plant some seeds among those who might be indulging in sexy, not as an act of empowerment, but as one of desperation and degradation.

Then had to take that last leap of faith that Paula would put it up as I expressed it before I clicked send. (Not that I have trust issues or anything!) And she did. The interview is up, and after having thought long and hard about linking out to such a potentially triggering site, I thought I would share it with you all, especially since many of you don't have sex addiction as part of your lives at all and may find it interesting. There is nothing in the content of my interview that I wouldn't post here, but images and links in the header and sidebar are related to lingerie and sex toys. So, one last time before the link...

Warning: Sex addicts and their partners may find images and language in the linked site triggering!

(If the thought of clicking through raises any concerns about your sobriety or serenity, please feel free to e-mail me for a copy of the information contained in the interview instead.)

And here's the link (isn't it cute that I'm an expert?): Interview with Mary P Jones at Lingerie Party and Adult Toys.

When Mark and I were at the very beginning of our relationship, moving from a flirtatious friendship into love, he signed off some early little love note "a thousand ships for my beautiful." Now who was I to resist a suave Helen of Troy reference to my powerful, intoxicating, doomed and dangerous, mythical beauty? (If I were that woman, I would have married a different kind of man.) But the name stuck and for years that was what he called me: "Beautiful... My Beautiful..."

It meant so much to me that he saw me that way: that whatever I saw myself as, or other people saw me as, I was his Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman who ever lived. So, at some still early stage in our relationship, when we were making silly promises to one another (we seem so young when I think of this), I asked him, if he ever were to be with someone else, to find her some different pet name and keep mine sacred. Of course, he promised (so seriously and sincerely), I would always be his one and only Beautiful.

The years went by, we got married, and I assumed "Beautiful" was safe, mine forever. And more than that, I thought other words were safe: words like "you're so special" and "I love you." But five years after our wedding, knowing something was wrong but not knowing what, and desperate to track down the source of my discomfort, I installed keystroke tracking software on our computer and saw some of those sacred words (along with our credit card numbers) given easily and freely to women who were known only by their suggestive screen names. And when the precarious towers of addict lies came tumbling down, I learned of other words, left casually for other women.

That old life of mine, in the fantasy of the Matrix, had been consumed with the quest for knowledge, for proof, of some objective factual truth. I sought to know by installing tracking software, by checking phone records, by holding an ear to Mark's lips to catch the words he mumbled in his sleep. But the answers I found only left me wondering all the more what was real. How could I know "I love you" was real if he could say it to a woman he met on the street as easily as his partner of over a decade and the mother of his children? How could I know "special" was real if the barista at Starbucks was hearing the same? How could I know "beautiful" was real if it applied equally to me and a tiny, pixelated video image in a chat box? If the man I trusted more than anyone I'd ever met could deceive me, how could I know anything that anyone says is real?

The truth is I don't. I can't. Not really. I can't see into Mark's mind and heart (or anyone else's but my own). I can't ever really know that his current words (or anyone else's) aren't another vast charade about to come crashing down on me. So my journey now plumbs the next question, the one that came when the answer to that old question broke me: How do I live with not knowing?

I know I can try to take back the words, like so many roses, petal by petal, over time. I can learn to look at Mark's actions — at the fact that, nearly six years after disclosing his sex addiction, he has grown and changed dramatically and that he's still here working — and I can take a leap of faith from there. I can trust in his commitment to his recovery program and through my own I can learn to see myself as beautiful, special, loved and wanted, always, and regardless of what happens. All those things I have done and am doing, but it only takes me so far. Not all the way to a new Beautiful.

But sometimes I glimpse it. Sometimes I can see it resting serenely in the unknowable: in a deeper, grander reality, something that goes beyond facts. Sometimes, when I'm able to see every individual moment of my life — the joyous and the painful ones — as just the way they ought to be, rather than as good or bad, sometimes then I see how my life can become my own Helen of Troy. My own Beautiful.

As I was brushing my hair recently, I noticed a few strands of gray. My mother's hair seemed to turn white nearly overnight in her late forties. She said it was the grief of losing two close family members within less than a year that stole its color and I always believed her. My father didn't even begin to go gray until he was in his seventies. So, being myself at the age where forty is flirting with thirty, it feels early (as far as my own family is concerned) to see silver starting to streak my hair. Yet I am oddly pleased. It's been three years since the tips of the strands at my shoulder peeked out from my scalp, so the gray tells the story of the last few years, just like the rings of a tree will tell when the weather was wet or when there was a fire. The story is one of trauma, with grief bleaching away what used to be, but it's also a story of change and wisdom.

When my son was an infant and I was home with him all day, staring and staring at his perfect and tiny face, I would be shocked to when my husband came home and shocked when I looked in the mirror: shocked by how huge and ugly and rough we looked. I suppose it's taken me all these eight years to get used to it, but I'm pleased these days by the tiny lines on my face too. I was looking at my daughter's forehead the other day and it struck me again how smooth it is. I don't know when the furrows on my brow became permanent -- I thought they had always been there, like the creases on my hands that a palm reader interprets -- but looking at my daughter I know that this must not have been the case. At some point those lines were created on my face, worn in by repeated use, and from the look of them, that use was a lot of furious thinking.

When I was in college, one of the administration buildings (which was many things before it was filled with offices) had a set of ancient stone steps leading to the door. Each one was worn down so much, that they looked almost like a series of bowls, and water would pool in them when it rained. Whenever I walked slowly up and down those steps (since deliberation was necessary on the uneven surfaces), I would think of all the hundreds of feet that had gone before me, each one wearing away the stone a little more. It didn't seem a sad thing to me that the stone was disappearing or that it was no longer flat; instead, it seemed beautiful to think of all that had gone into making them worn and imperfect.

I've seen my body
a lure to gain attention,
love and approval.

I've seen my body
a useless shell for my mind,
worthy of neglect.

I've rushed in eager
to devour my soft heart
and cast off the rind.

An old friend whispers:
You can tend the inside by
tending the outside.

Yoga teaches me:
Body can calm the mind and
the mind, the body.

Before bed, I pause,
take down the scented lotion,
rub my legs, for me.

Scrumptious bites tempt me.
Shall I gorge on them all or
savor them slowly?

I'll pick one today.
The rest I'll save and savor
as the weeks go on.

The Maven, newly
vegetarian, suggests
a tofu haiku.

(Maven delights me.
If you haven't read her blog,
your life is empty.)

This is exactly the reaction I had to my husband’s sex addiction. Well, maybe not exactly. I didn’t want to stop having sex (although some people do react that way), but I felt deeply violated. I had always been (so I thought) comfortable with my body and confident in my sexuality, but now I found I wanted to scrape myself down to the foundation. Along with reexamining my marriage and my relationship, I wanted to reexamine my body image and my sexuality. How much had I really been doing for me and how much had I been doing because society expected it of me or men complimented me on it or I thought it would keep my husband’s eyes from straying? I wanted to decide what made me feel good about me, not what made other people feel good about me.

In those first weeks after finding out about my husband’s addiction, I got a big heavy duty trash bag out, and I combed the house for anything that could be considered sexy, or even feminine and attractive. I purged it all. I got rid of every last sex toy, every bit of porn, every fantasy game, everything that seemed now to be a barrier between me and real intimacy. And I rid myself of anything that could turn me into a body to be objectified. So, gone too was every scrap of lingerie, all the sexy panties, all the lacy bras, all the makeup, the miniskirts, every last bit of it. (It must have been a sight at the dump!) I was very much like the wife of an alcoholic pouring every bottle of booze down the sink in a screaming rage at the drinks she felt poisoned her life and figuring she’d decide later whether on not she could ever stand to have a beer at a barbecue or a glass of wine over dinner again.

Slowly, over the past five years of recovery, I’ve experimented, exploring the edges of my comfort zone. The thought of porn or sex toys still makes me queasy, so most of my explorations have centered on my appearance. What makes me feel beautiful and comfortable in my body? What do I do just to please and attract others? What can I wear that makes me feel good about myself, body and soul?

So, I’ll buy a short skirt and find it doesn’t work for me. I’ll add in shaving my body hair and take it back out again. I’ll wear makeup and then put it aside. I’ll walk through Victoria’s Secret and decide I’m just not ready to go there and try some colorful panties from Target instead. I’ve learned what I do like (clothes that have soft textures and colors that please my eyes, but that are not conventionally sexy) and what I’m not comfortable with (Fredrick’s of Hollywood lingerie) and what I’m still ambivalent about (shaving).

And I’ve learned that there is no “healthy” that fits everyone; just as peanut butter and apples are a healthy snack for most people, but a life threatening one for those with peanut allergies, some “normal,” “healthy” expressions of my sexuality are just too painful and triggering for me personally to venture into anymore. But then again, there’s really no reason for me to try to add it all back in again, any more than it’s necessary for the partner of an alcoholic work on taking up drinking again. Those things I have decided to give up may not ultimately be unhealthy, even for me, but they also are not necessary components of a full and happy life for me. I’m finally reaching the point where I’m satisfied with who and where I am right now. And that’s all that really matters.