I confess: My husband and I don't have sex

My husband and I haven't had sex in over a month. I read this complaint from women a lot, but my husband is in his late 20's and I'm 32. We have only been married a little over a year. When he's clean, we have sex at least every other day.

Yesterday, I whined to my husband about us never having sex. He said, "well, you're on your period." Yes, dummy but I've only been on my period for a day. What about the other weeks? And the sexless months between the times before that? I feel ugly. Undesirable.

When he first started binging, we went three months without sex. Three months!! After feeling rejected and hurt and unloved, even conned into marriage for many months, I cheated on him with an ex who I'll call Andrew. I wanted to remember what it felt like to be groped, bitten, discovered.

"Do you feel guilty yet?" Andrew asked, while he was inside of me. I wish I could say that I said Yes, and was overwhelmed with guilt and shame, but I wasn't. It felt good to know that I was finally getting laid, and laid good, after all the nights that my husband ignored my phone calls and walked away from the house, and picked fights only to leave and blame me for his drug urges. Andrew was deep inside of me loving it... and I loved it.

"No. I feel good."

That was the only time I cheated on him. Later, when my husband was in jail, the guilt hit. See he's the best husband when he's in jail. Jailhouse religion, jailhouse regret, etc. We're happy when he's in jail. I didn't tell him then, though, because I thought it would be too much stress for him: all that pain can get pretty overwhelming when you're trapped in a 6x9. But when he got out and got back on drugs after less than a week clean, I told him. I didn't tell him out of confession, I told him out of spite. I was angry. I wanted to hurt him. All those weeks of lies and broken promises... and a week clean, so I thought, "he could do it if he really wanted to!"

Now, I regret it. Now I know that my husband's addiction is bigger than anything else, and it's not a moral problem. He has an addiction, and that addiction is stronger than anything else. I saw a YouTube video of a man who used to be on crack and he said (paraphrased), "Crack consumed me. It was the only thing on my mind... there wasn't any room for anything else."

I hurt my husband on purpose. I'm not sure he hurt me on purpose. It doesn't justify what he's done, or his resistance to getting help, but it means a lot to me that he hasn't intentionally hurt me. I have intentionally hurt him. Crack addicts aren't bad people... mine is a really great one. He's just on crack.

So now it's been over a month since we've had sex, but I won't cheat on him again. I figure when I'm ready to step outside of the relationship, I need to end the relationship. I've drawn up divorce papers more than once, but I've never filed them. I'm just not ready yet, but I think I'm getting there. I figure there are only two ways our marriage will turn out. One, he'll get help and get clean. Or two, we'll get a divorce. I hope it's One.


-J