"I had sex with that woman."That statement, spoken nearly five years ago, was Mark's first act in recovery from sex addiction and brought the truth blazing upon us both at last. In seconds, I was on my feet, white hot with rage and pain. "I knew it!" I spat the words at him. "I knew it!"
Those words still seem strange to me, because to this day, I don't know exactly what I knew. But those furious shouts of "I knew it" were my mind's victory cry. Something had been wrong with my world and my mind had been struggling for answers for all the years I'd known Mark. Now at last, at long last, I could see that the answer to the puzzle that plagued me was within my grasp.
I burned in a fever of emotions. I wanted to run out the front door, to keep running and never look back, but the thought of my son sleeping in the next room stopped me, as surely as if I were bound to the floor. I thought about him waking the next morning to find Daddy or me gone. I would have had my limbs torn off before I left him. And as for kicking Mark out, what was my pain in the face what my son would experience if he found that I'd kicked his Daddy, the light of his little life, out of our lives? My body was straining to rush out the door into the night while my mind was pinning it ruthlessly in place. So I stood for a moment, screaming obscenities and shaking with impotent fury, before I ran into the bathroom, slamming doors along the way, and collapsed in hot tears.
I loved Mark and he loved me. We loved our son. We were happy together. We were so well matched. We were best friends. We were fabulous lovers. What the hell was going on? He had no reason to go off and fuck some other woman. He had every reason in the world not to. Why? Why would he do it? That question tortured me. Some things made so much more sense now, but so many more didn't. The thought of my son may have kept me from walking out of the house (and the marriage) in those first furious moments that night, but maybe that "why" would have kept me tethered anyway, unable to walk away without an answer.
Why? As soon as I was able to pick myself up off the bathroom floor, I rushed back into the living room and screamed it at Mark, still sitting on the sofa, "Why?! WHY?! Why would you do that?"
"I don't know," he replied, "I don't know."
What kind of an answer was that? He didn't know? I was insane with rage and pain like I'd never felt in my life, and that was it? He didn't know? I stood there seething, wanting to hurt him like I was hurting.
"I know you want to hit me." He took off his glasses and offered up his face. "Hit me. I deserve it."
I did something I've never done to anyone before or since: I smacked him as hard as I could in the face.
"Do it again," he said.
I hit him again: my hand stinging with the blows, my face stinging with tears.
"Again."
I hit him again and again and again: the ringing sound of my hand hitting his flesh punctuated by his tight, quiet refrain, "Again." As that first violent wave of pain and rage spent itself on him and started to dissipate, I could see that what was making me feel better was making him feel better too. He hated himself so much already, was so ashamed and horrified, that any horror I could conceive of to torture him was less than he felt he deserved. He was relieved. He wanted to be punished. And oh, how I was not going to give him what he wanted.
"Again," he said.
"No!" I hissed, "I'm done!" And I shouted again, "Why? Why would you do that? What were you thinking?" But the rage that had sustained me was ebbing; I felt weak and collapsed on the sofa in tears. "Why?"
"I don't know." There it was again, all the answer he had. "I don't know. I love you so much. I love our boy so much. You two are my life. I would rather die than lose you, and I knew that I would lose you if I did this. And I couldn't stop myself from doing it anyway. I don't understand why. I couldn't stop. I need help. We need help."
Recovery was upon us. Help was coming.
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