Fight To Forgive

Post Steps Journey

There came a point where I started to believe I no longer needed the self-help group. I felt that I had outgrown it. The main problem was that the group was shrinking and the leader of our group was getting tired of the responsibility of guiding our group. A lot of the depth of emotions that worked so well together for the good of us all was waning.

I started to miss the odd meeting while exploring further the thoughts of writing this book. I thought through the basic structure of what I wanted to say, but I lacked the belief and confidence in myself. I was not ready to tell my partner what I wanted to do. Everything was still too raw, so this project ended up being put on one side.

Our group had one last meeting and we disbanded. There were two other groups, but the closest one was over two hours' drive away, further than I was willing to travel. Besides, as I had not acted out for some period of time, well to be honest, acted out badly, I felt prepared to set about my recovery on my own. Afterall, I understood my issues now, I recognised the signs of the hidden beginnings of acting out. Everything would be ok now?

Things remained on the 'straight and narrow' for some time. But in my gut, I knew it was not over, just buried in a hole in the ground with a dodgy cover. Things hadn't changed really once you scratched the surface. I was having difficulties talking with my partner and daughter, I had no friends that I could talk to about me and my demons. You could hear those demons laughing in the background. They were biding their time, they knew that it was just a matter of time.

Although I had been doing very well for quite a wh, it was still a headache tablet and sticking plaster holding me together. Pride told me I was fine, reality was still looking for a way to communicate with me.

What I had learned to do in this time was to control my use of porn and the associated 'doctors' of mine. This in itself brought about huge changes to my life at home. We started to develop a certain level of living together, but this should not be misread as a relationship. This was a long way away at this time.

We had a conversation that ran along the lines of my partner did not care what I did on the computer or my 'funny' things as long as I never hurt or brought any pain or suffering because of me to our daughter. If this ever happened, she would expect me to leave. The pain in her eyes as we had this conversation read slightly differently. If we had had these levels of issues, she would have left me years ago. I felt what was happening was more like, I am not comfortable with you at this time. I accept that you do what you do, but I don't want to know and I don't want to talk about it. We can live like this for now, but never hurt or damage our daughter if you want to stay in this house with me as we see what happens. Because I couldn't talk and my partner was not prepared to listen, she never knew the progress both 'we and I' had made at this time.

At work it was difficult to ultimately control myself as I was the only person in the office, and my boss only came into the office maybe half a dozen times a week. He is an outdoors man, when he does come to the office, his feet are leaving before he says his first words to me. There are certain stresses in the business that happen, but there is no point talking to the boss because 'that's why I am there'. We went through the last big recession, sometimes on a day to day basis with keeping the business afloat. A lot of big business decisions fell on my shoulders. He was open to talk, when I had answer that just needed a yes or no from him. To be fair, he had his own issues to work out, find work to cover our costs plus extra work to cover the guys who won't pay at the end. My unwritten role was to reduce our break even so what work he finds I credit control to get the monies in, juggle with our suppliers and make promises that I keep and juggle with the banks to get crazy deals to pay off loans to stay afloat.

Why do I tell you this? So that you have an idea that this was an amazingly stressful time that lasted nearly three years. And what happens under extreme stress? Yep, my demons have a whale of a time. So, as well as work stress, I have the stress of trying to keep myself afloat, my home life afloat and my sanity afloat. There were inevitable cracks and break downs. I no longer had anybody to talk to.

I slowly went back to cyclic behaviour!

What helped tremendously was that although she did not want to 'talk' with me, my partner was happy to let me become aware if was starting to act oddly at home.

What this meant was at work I slipped into say soft porn when I was low. I completely avoided chat/dating sites, and to this day that avoidance has remained. I still read erotic stories, but avoided the very strong stories, which is still true. It sounds silly, but I was not aware of having slipped, I just suddenly found myself where I was. I would get the hint from my partner and next day at work would clean up my act and force myself back to normal. I only scratched my demons surfaces now and was in reasonable control. I never saw the depths again that I had drilled down to.

At home, we started to create projects around the house. There were a number of reasons for this. They were for some of the tasks, routine works, but really these were to keep me busy and not have time for 'thoughts. It also got my partner and myself down the road of working together again. Hopefully bridge building would follow. At first it was just the planning that we shared some of the time, but now we work together on all stages of the projects. Things are and will get there eventually.

Although my demons were not fully put to bed after the end of the self-help group, I have, up to towards the end of this story, just about kept them under control. But, this is like the alcoholic who thinks he can drink if he doesn't get drunk. It's not true. His act of 'just one' drink is as bad as my 'just one' look.\

The last enemy of mine during this period was my mind. Because I was having long periods of time now of being normal, false confidence decided to join the party. On a number of occasions, I started to convince myself that I had gotten better. Then, with a giggle, my demon whispered in my ear, if you think you are ok – test yourself.

Now, I should have known better. In the past I have had my willpower tested by my demon and came second. I had given up smoking for a number of years but my partner smoked. It was tremendously romantic to light her cigarette, that turned into a single drag before I handed the smoke to her and so on and so on until I was smoking again. A number of years later we both gave up together. That was over twenty years ago now, so things can be beaten.

So this was the same with my sexaholicism. Just one look at something soft...then two looks....then a slightly stronger site....and then and then and then the slip is a fall.Thank god my breaks were there, my partners warning phrase.

In this section, my final new obsession was the smart phone. Strangely not porn, but an obsession with phone games. I got hooked on certain games, addictive games, then I discovered work games and puzzles. In itself this could be a 'so what; moment, but then I discovered they were interactive and then I discovered you could chat. Then the final discovery that not all people played the word game and chatted about the game. It became clear to some people the game was a gateway to the chat button. I realised just in time that I had just discovered a backdoor to a chat site where people wanted nothing more than cybersex. My eyes were on stalks, my demons were dancing, singing and partying...but for once they were being a bit 'previous'. I don't know how, but I stopped myself on the very brink. I deleted all these games and have never gone near them again. I miss the games as I enjoyed taking on the computer, but 'just one' has stopped me from re-loading the game again.

This is the end of my post steps journey. We are nearly at the final acts of this story.