Trying to get out

T2 has offered me sliding scale before but his baby has leukemia and he owes half a million dollars in medical bills. I don't think I could pay him a reduced fee.

T3 sounds competent and experienced. I think she can help you. Maybe, since she's far away, you can see her for a double session less often, or have phone sessions. Is there a group available now? Does she still lead them? I hope you get some relief soon. You've suffered enough!

Second that.

Does T3 offer sliding scale at all?

No more group. It was 30 years ago!

I don't have the balls to ask.

I just keep thinking of T3's words. "He's a psychopath. He tortured you without remorse."

I brought my baby to sessions with this guy for like 5 months.

I'm so stunned still.

This is so similar to withdrawal from drugs. It hurts, your ill, it's all you think and dream about.
Some days are more bearable than others, then you hit a rough spot and you cave. Bad days always feel worse after a good day, it's like having slammed in your face just when you think your reaching daylight.
So you run back to your dealer and give him the last of your money,and you have your hit.
And for an hour you feel ok, guilty as FK, worthless,pathetic and weak but it hurts a little less.
Until you get home and turn on FB to see your dealer has just booked his third holiday to the continent this year...a surprise for girlfriends birthday.

And I paid for it....BLAM!!!!! B.s. k to feeling like shyt.

So sure, go see him, give him your money and enjoy the holiday snaps of their next trip....that you probably paid for.

I am sorry R, I really am.

I didn't cave. I've had no contact with him for five weeks.

And you should be very proud of yourself for this!!!

(I'm sorry for randomly popping in -- I've been following all your topics, I just don't post on any forums often, but I'm always wishing you the best and rooting for you. When I read about how you finally left T1, I remembered that I once read about someone on the internet telling someone else that they'd never been so proud of someone that they only knew online, and that's how I felt about you! You've been very strong & brave, Ramona.)

Awesome Ro, !,
Wish I had the same strength.

Thanks so much for this message. It has been so brutal. Honestly, SO awful. Well...I guess you guys know that more than anyone else in my life!

please consider asking. it is not an uncommon question

Strangest thing just happened. I took a bath because I am so wiped out and tired and all of the longing washed over me like a wave and pulled me under. I thought: "Who cares if he's a psychopath? He gave me the greatest sexual experience of my life. He's the reason I have a child. I should be eternally grateful to him."

If he called me at this moment I would drop everything and run to wherever he is and do whatever he wanted. I just in this moment think: what is life for if not to be able to feel the level of passion I felt with him?

Hey, this is (still) America. You have the freedom to decide what your values and goals are. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - whatever that means to you.

But i would be curious about why i was so enthralled by this situation, if it were me (and it kinda was, for a while back there). And yeah, the fear and pain of (life-threatening) abandonment is a very strong drive. I think that drive is equivalent to the strength of the sexual passion and attachment that counterbalances it. Solve the abandonment, and you solve the attachment. Thats why romance with ts is illegal.

You credit this abuser with the birth of your child? Seriously. Do see how that's rather twisted thinking? Your child is the result of your relationship with your husband. Your husband is your child's father. They are your family -- forever. You really need to get that abuser out of your relationship with your husband and your child. All I can think is "How dare he interfere with your family!"

ETA: Please don't take that as scolding you. That isn't my intent. It's my anger with T1 and how he's permeated your thinking to the point that you can't see straight that gets me riled up.

I here you say you feel dead inside,empty,joyless,numb?

I promise you you don't.As ****ed up as this is it's the strength if your passions and love of life that has made this so excruciating.

Dead would mean you cared for nothing, not even the feelings you have for T1.

But your so desperate for life you keep hanging on.

It Doesn't feel like Good thing right now, but once again Ro I remind you, this passion this force of nature all this comes from YOU.

Not him, psychopaths,don't feel that shyt. They play games to excite their ego nothing more,nothing less.

Your fear is that without him there is no passion or fire in your life. Thing is it isn't him it came from. The fuel came from you not him.
It's yours to do with as you please.
People like him get drawn into his situation, because they are devoid of these sensations. It amuses them.

It's no surprise he has fkt up before, psychopaths can cold read but they miss the subtleties. Becoming so engrossed in what the situation provides for them, they don't care what it might do to someone else.

None of this will change how you feel, but hopefully it's worth remembering.
This feelings were always yours, his interaction was accidental, and he has been clueless ever since.

He wasn't all powerful or magic, he was a klutz who landed him something he couldn't possibly understand, not did he desire to.
He happily mindlessly went along until he realized he was balls deep in the shyt.
Then like all good psycopaths/manipulators he turned it all on the crazy lady.

He was never the one with the power...you were.

Take care Hon.

I truly believe and know from my own experience that you would very likely feel a million times worse about yourself if you agreed to let him coerce, use, and take advantage of you in a sexual fashion

It's true--he's IN our relationship! He's been symbolically keeping residence with us in our tiny ****** apartment for more than three years! I think, "Oh, I had the revelation that I wanted a baby after I saw him with his," so I think to myself that I never would have had a baby if not for him.

A couple of my well meaning friends have tried to put a positive spin on this nightmare by saying "Well, at least you got a baby out of it." That makes me think I owe him.

I tell myself, without him, I wouldn't have had a baby, I would never have tried yoga (which is one of my favorite things to do now), and I would never have known what it was like to be sexually awakened. Granted, that third part has been taken away now, but I guess it's part of the inclination to try to take something "good" away from this utter nightmare. But yes, you're right, it's not a healthy way to think about it at all.

EVERYONE keeps telling me this--that the amazing wonderful exciting feelings that I felt with him came from me and not him, but no one seems to be able to give me any advice on how to access them again.

When I was lying in bed this morning after my baby had fallen asleep on me again after having his morning bottle, I started remembering some of his cruelties--the amusement that he took in my pain--especially during that Thanksgiving week when, I now know, he was on a luxury vacation with his family in Japan.

I was in such terror over not getting to speak to him or even email him for a week. I wrote him and told him this--that I didn't know how I'd get through it--that I was terrified. He wrote me a cold message just saying he hoped I had a nice holiday.

I wrote him back "I feel like I'm dying. See you in 7 ****ing days."

The panic and darkness that week were all consuming.

Then when I saw him again he smiled and said "Seems like you got in touch with your anger--'see you in 7 ****ING days'!" I told him that for me the week had felt like being thrown down the stairs into a cold basement with no lights and having the door locked on me for a week.

He dismissed this and said that I just wasn't focusing on all the positive things I had, as usual, because part of me just didn't want to be happy.

He was amused by my pain.

this , to me, really demonstrates your complete and total dependency on this man... which is unhealthy in any relationship

That may be true, but does saying this sound like someone who KNOWS HOW and IS TRYING to help you? Bad therapist!

The worst.

My advice, though you might not like it (and maybe this is why it didn't register) is to address your lack of desire for your husband, make a plan to either work on that or a plan to try seeing other people. You will keep thinking you can't feel the same aliveness with anyone else until you try it. I'm not saying you should do the following without thinking through the consequences, but go online to a dating site and check out the men there. Do any of them attract you? Examine your feelings. Do you feel any awakening? It's not going to happen in a day, and unfortunately, the way is probably not easy as you need to address some difficult issues.

Your husband is your husband, but for several years now, you've essentially had an emotional "affair" with another man. No blame there; it is what it is. It makes complete sense that your desire for your husband is gone since you invested all of that desire in this other person for so long. It isn't going to automatically switch off for T1, nor is it going to automatically switch back on for your husband.

You need to invest emotional time in your marriage if you want to find that relationship with your husband again. You have essentially forgotten your feelings for your husband because you put him on the back burner through all of this. That takes work (anyone who says these things happen naturally in a marriage hasn't been married very long).

My husband and I are in a place of rediscovering our relationship right now. We have been married 30 years, 28 of which have involved rearing our three sons. Our relationship, quite frankly, was secondary through those decades of child rearing. We didn't mean for it to happen; it was just the way it was. But our youngest is about to turn 18 and head off to college, and in the last months we've finally started focusing on us again instead of the kids. We're going out on dates again. We're doing what WE want to do instead of thinking of what the kids would enjoy first. We are rediscovering the relationship we had (albeit much more mature) way back sans children and we're having a blast doing it.

You have a small child, so that effort will have to be a very concerted one. You need to find a trusted babysitter and make time just for each other so that you can rediscover the relationship (and you the man) that you cherished enough at one point to commit to. You've been emotionally invested in someone else for a long time, and now it is time to put that investment in your marriage (if that is important to you).

Give it time. Give it attention. Give yourself a lot of patience. Hopefully it will come back to you. Marriage counseling might be important at this point. Coming clean with your husband so you don't have that "secret" between you probably really needs to happen at some point because, your fault or not (it wasn't, by the way), you probably carry a certain amount of guilt/shame about the situation. That will continue to be a barrier in your marriage until it is processed through together.