Us vs. Them

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

Back in the early days of my husband's recovery from sex addiction, the recovery world seemed to break down into two types of people: addicts and the rest of us who had been hurt by them. (And by the way, you couldn't call any of those hurt by them "codependent" or "enablers." I mean, you want to tell me I have a problem or that I'm part of the problem? Damn! Blame the victim, why don't you?)

The addicts, my husband and his ilk, were messed up. They were sick people. They did bad things. They were not normal. They sat at their own lunch table in the high school cafeteria of life, and believe me, that's where you wanted them. If you let them sit at your table, they'll steal your lunch, give it to the lunchroom dealer or pimp and tell you that they totally didn't and that you must be crazy because they watched you eat that lunch yourself already. Then they'd rip your heart out and eat that for lunch.

The non-addicts and I weren't like them. We were normal. We were nice (too nice). We were trusting (too trusting). We did good things. Well, ok, it was a little more complicated than that. The addicts were still (obviously) messed up, but some of their family members and partners were really messed up in their own right. They were just messed up in a way that was more likely to spy on you and passive-aggressively criticize you than to steal your lunch. (But not me, of course. Nope. I was normal and good.)

It took a while to let go of the idea that there is a normal and more time still to see that I was messed up in my own way too. I hadn't expressed it in the same way that my husband had, but my own problems had brought me to the place I was as surely as his problems had. I hadn't done anything to cause his actions. I hadn't deserved or brought on the treatment I'd received. But I'd seen the world in a warped way that led me not to recognize dysfunction. And the way I viewed the world and lived my life had caused me a huge amount of pain.

Last week, for the first time in over a year, I went to a 12 Step meeting for "men and women whose lives have been affected by another person's compulsive sexual behavior." A meeting for the non-addicts. It was held in a room where the addicts used to meet, so one of the addicts ended up in our room briefly at the beginning of the meeting and then left. She came back after the meeting to apologize for having alarmed anyone, and we got to talking. She's been in the program long enough to know my husband well. We had a nice chat and shared a big hug. Then my husband and I chatted with a few other folks and shared pictures of our kids. Although we were meeting in different rooms, it didn't feel like us vs. them to me anymore; it felt like we were all part of the recovery family, all working through our own issues, separately and together.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.