Sex / Pornography Addiction Support Group

I've thought about this question a lot. I wish I had an answer to it. My situation in my marriage sounds a lot like yours. We actually did an In-house separation for about two weeks a year ago...only two weeks, so I'm not sure that really counts. Mostly he slept on the couch or I slept in the guest room. It did provide me enough mental and physical space to help me find my center again. He felt i was insisting on it in order to punish him. I don't know...maybe that was a small part of it. But really I was just so hurt that I needed time to myself more than anything...time to make clear decisions.

In 2007 my h and i lived in the same house, and yet co-existed for the sake of the kids. We run a business and all our money is tied up, so him getting his own place was going to make things tough. Things had got to breaking point for me, and at that stage i couldn't understand why he just couldn't stop looking, and i was sick of his unavailablility. (this being before i got educated on SA).
He slept in the spare room, unknowingly to the kids. We had no sexual relationship in that time. I was more and more emotionally detaching from him, and found myself getting stronger emotionally and self confident, thanks to therapy. After about 6 months i realised i could do just fine on my own, didn't need him, and did not care about the finances. Nor the kids finding out at that point, so told him, thats it for me, i want more and i don't see you in my life. It was not till then that he realised i was serious. The 6 months of co-existing was like nothing different to him (hellish for me), he still had his family, it wasn't till he realised that he was actually PHYSICALLY losing them, that he finally realised his reality, and not very long (a week maybe) after did he finally hit rock bottom.

I have since had full disclosure and a successful commitment to recovery and our marriage, since May 2008. And we are no longer co-existing, we are living.

Well thats just our situation. Everyone is different.

Hey Rainidaze - I'm not sure if you've found the spouse's site.

http://www.dailystrength.org/group...

I bring that up because I know at least two women there have done an in-house separation (husband lives in the basement, etc).

Given your situation, I'm not quite sure if an in-house separation would produce any fruit. What you're actually asking for is permission is issue boundaries, which by all means you should. Separation is generally that - you separate. Since that's not feasible, you're next objective is to create healthy boundaries within your home to make life livable for you. So, yes, if he chooses to continue in this behavior, he loses access to shared sleeping quarters, family meal times, etc. These are benefits of a healthy family lifestyle - benefits he's chosen to forfeit.

I really hope things improve for you.

Hey Raini: I agree with Trina. I;ve heard some say that if they caught their mate doing something that was agreed not to do, to give them a week out of the bedroom. My feeling on that was that if my H doesn't care enough about the relationship to stop doing what's ruining it, how can leaving him to do what he already wanted to do, and was already doing, improve it? Never made much sense to me. I suspected that maybe my H would have been very willing to do what he wanted and then sleep alone for a week....or a month...who knows? Maybe a fair trade to him? I suspected that to be true.

Because is wasn't practical, and his psych said that we needed to stay in the same house and either make it or break it, I did, sleep in our guest room....quit a lot. Not because I thought it would help him at all...only me! I could hardly stand to be in a room with him, much less the bed. So I did that for me. Any affect it might have on him had nothing to do with it all.

The time sleeping away from the trauma, was for me not for him. Even if I didn't sleep well, and I didn't for a realllly long time, I at least felt safer in a bed alone. I was far too angry to be near him.

I could rarely think of a good thing to say or do, so I figured I'd do better left alone at least at night for a while. Better for me...and my control...so better for him?

And, it helped a lot to keep the conflict as low as it could be. Also, my tossing and turning and emotional upheaval wouldn't have made it very easy for him to go to work the next day. I slept very little at all for a long, long time.

I think that Trina and I agree on this too: " I was more and more emotionally detaching from him." I think that was part of what was comforting to me too. I was breaking the habits we had together, and separting myself from those routines. The more I stayed out of his presence, the less affect he had on me. I needed to do that to gain objectivity far from the emotions I was struggling with. I had to have time to really think about the repercussions and what was going to happen to me in the relationship from there forward.

It depends, I think on how you feel. Do you want to sleep with him? There's the answer you need to seek. If you still want to, then? But if not, then?