Marriage, Breath and Deceit - A Reader's Poem

I always feel blessed when a PoSARC reader or a client sends in their story, their favorite song, or something else of significance that's helping move them through their experience as a POSA. Yesterday, a PoSARC reader in New Zealand sent me what I feel is an incredible poem.

In her words, she describes her journey as the partner of a sex addict using viscerally powerful and evocative metaphors.

After telling her how deeply I was able to connect to the emotion in her words, I asked if she would allow me to publish it here. Fortunately for us, she was honored to share it with all our PoSARC readers.

I hope it'll move you as much as it did me---Lili Bee

(Thank you for your generosity, E.C., and for your artful rendering of this passage in your life.)

Marriage, Breath and Deceit

The day my marriage turned upside down I tried to put it upright. It took me years to realize that the lopsidedness I felt in it was due to the fact that one of its feet had been amputated.

Trust is a puzzling thing. Hard to describe. Easy to take for granted. One of those essential elements of life that we know more by its absence. Like air---crowd it out and panic ensues.

That's how it was with my husband's pornography addiction. One day we were fine---or as fine as any couple with the usual share of issues can be. And then, in one moment, in one flash of digital nakedness, not fine.

What followed next was a string of good moments and bad---the yoyo of our lives inexorably changed in ways that neither of us wanted fully to admit.

I found ways to breathe again, short choppy breaths, pockets of air found in distractions that took me away, away from the pain of loss and sometimes actually away from him. But my lungs couldn't fill. The tension created by the lopsided stool of our relationship didn't allow for it.

A fundamental leg was at first just severely wounded. A violation of trust cut a gash in the fabric that wanted to be honesty. Love can grow with a vow of translucency and transparency. Secrecy steals the air from the room in which love tries to breathe.

The wound might have healed. Honesty and accountability could have allowed scar tissue to form. But that is not what happened. Denial and deceit filtered in, crowding out honesty and, with it, trust. The wound grew each time a lie was revealed.

Until one day I realized that I would bleed to death. One day I finally felt powerless to fix what only I perceived to be a problem.

One day I finally understood that breathing is impossible when choking on denial and deceit.

E.C., New Zealand

Image by BradOliphantPhotography.com