I had to take the day off work today due to a very bad headache (as in simply moving my noggin is very painful).
I suppose this means I should pop some pills, smoke some dope, and bang my neighbour.
If only life were so simple.
I can’t imagine that therapists in California don’t have sliding scales for pay rates like all other therapists. Find the will to get to a therapist regularly, RSSchen, and you will find a way.
You said very clearly that you want to be happy - that happiness will come from YOU, not anything or anybody else. A good therapist can help you find your own path to that happiness. I can guarantee you that your lover and all your substances you take is not that path. You’ll have to stop lying to yourself and everybody else and take a good, hard look at yourself and learn to accept what you see when you do, but that’s where your happiness is.
Well, that was exhausting.
RSSchen, you seem to have started the original thread while you were in The Zone. The combination of the euphoria of a new sex partner is exacerbated by the fact that you can’t tell anyone else what you’re doing, so you have no external reality check. Anything is possible right now. Maybe you will run off to Phoenix and open that Harley shop. In a week or so, though, you’ll be cranky and frustrated because you can’t see how anything you’ve planned is actually going to happen. In a month you’ll know that you won’t be seeing this guy for three or thirty years, or probably ever again. Then you can decide what you want to do about your marriage, which will suck. Also your mental health and your drug use, hopefully, which can only suck more. Anyway, the longer you carry on with Officer Friendly, the worse it will be.
If you want to be anonymous here, you have to work at it, and you’re not working at it. I definitely make more of an effort at anonymity than you are doing, and I still fully accept that I’m still not THAT hard to trace.
No, I don’t know exactly who you are and I can’t be bothered going to the effort, and it wouldn’t surprise me if nobody else on the board knows who you are AT THE MOMENT. However, before assuming you will stay anonymous for the next three years I’d strongly suggest playing snoop against yourself just for fun. You appear to be fairly computer-literate; you should be able to come up with ideas without anyone else providing help that the mods would frown on.
I have thought about this post all night. RSSchen, I"m not going to call you names or anything like that, but there are a few fundamental truths that you appear to be over looking.
You are playing Russian Roulette.
Not just with your own life, but the life of 4 others in the immediate present, and who knows how many others down the track.
No one is saying that you should remain unhappy, but you need to be aware of the possible consequences before you make that leap, because contrary to what you might think, the possibilities of being able to revert your situation to at least back to what it is now, should this leap be a terrible mistake may be very slim or nonexistent.
I also really think that you need to ask yourself will this happiness last? Is this just pheromones, or adrenaline, or anything that comes with something new and exciting? And will it die down and leave you discontented, the way that you appear to feel currently.
Because that’s what it appears you are feeling more than anything right now to me: discontented with your current life. Discontent often starts from within. It sounds likes your husband is doing the right and honourable thing and that he does love you. What would make you happy? Can you organise a romantic weekend away together - it might strike sparks again. Can you suggest doing things together. Part of a successful relationship is compromise - maybe you could watch a game with him and he could do something with you that interests you.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that it sounds to me embarking on an illicit affair isn’t the answer to what you feel that you are lacking within your life, and that you stand to hurt so many people and lose so much for a few weeks of happiness.
To employ a tired cliche: happiness comes within.
We are generally all in control of our own environments and able to make changes to improve them.
And to quote one more cautionary tired old cliche to you - if something seems to good to be true, it most likely is.
I think it’s her boyfriend who does that.
Heeee! Touche!
Well, but it’s all that unauthorized touching that’s the problem here, innit?
Great that someone has good info on this. And perhaps, if you ask, they can refer you to someone who you can afford for counselling. Maybe other Dopers here can suggest places near you where you can find a good counsellor who will work with your psychiatrist.
Really, RSSchen, when you look back at your story, as folks have pointed out by linking to your posts, you’ve had a fairly long history of doing things with the potential to harm you. Something is up with that. So please do follow up with counselling however you can for the sake of all who love you as well as for your own sake. I think your ‘Help’ in your original post may have come from the bit of you that realizes that you’re in trouble.
I love you guys.
But not in that way. 
Love sucks
True Love Swallows.
Jeebus-I was in therapy for 3 years to deal with my marriage (and some childhood stuff), and I don’t have an addiction to anything! You’ve been clean since November? Good on you–but clean from what? Sounds to me like you’ve traded one addiction for something else (“love”).
I don’t like the whole minimizing thing–just a few blow jobs (how is that the best sex you’ve ever had? I like giving head, but it’s not the best sex for ME). Just a few blow jobs is still cheating, still dishonest, still dangerous re disease and emotional consequences.
Get thee to a therapist, pronto–and stay in therapy. It’s time to work on you–that’s the ONLY sure way to a better place. No short cuts, no pay offs, no highs.
On finding a better therapist
I’ve been in and out of therapy since I was 19. It wasn’t until I met my fifth therapist that I found the right one for me. I’m not saying the others were lousy, just that the fifth guy - we clicked right away. He knew just when and what to say that I needed to hear. He was a cognitive behaviorist and that approach was exactly right for me. With his help, I completely turned my life around.
So RSSchen, finding the right therapist for you is worth fighting for. Don’t be afraid to shop around. Don’t worry about hurting their feelings if you drop them. Don’t waste your time with someone who isn’t helping. You might need more than twenty minutes. Don’t be shy asking for it.
Finding the right therapist can make all the difference. It’s worth putting your energy into finding him or her. Fight for something positive in your life with the same strength you’re fighting for something negative.
Oh fuck off. Two of my aunts were alcoholics-one, my favorite aunt and godmother, died when I was eleven. She had just gotten sober, was finally enjoying life and we were all so happy for her-but then she got sick, and because her body was so weak from so many years of abuse, it killed her off. Her four-year old daughter spent the day trying to wake up her mother’s corpse.
Another of my aunts, my great aunt, has been sober for years, and still councils people in AA. SHE would probably tear a person like you five new ones. How DARE you claim that you’re trying. You’re not. Excuses, excuses.
As for enjoying my posts, I don’t really give a shit what the likes of you think of me. If refusing to buy your bullshit makes me mean and hateful, so be it.
I would be surprised if nobody else on the board knows. I’m not one of the smart ones here, but even I have her name, address and phone number, and her hubby’s initial. If I have it, I expect that others have it. It’s really just a question of whether someone who has her addy sends a print of the thread to her hubby, rather than a question of whether someone has her addy.
It’s an interesting moral question – send an anonymous letter to the hubby enclosing her posts so as to alert him to her intent to have an affair for three years and then dump him and take his children, or don’t send the letter in hopes that she comes to her senses, or don’t send the letter so as to keep message board life separate from off-message board life. If it were a matter of imminent death or serious physical harm, I expect that many or most would sent the letter. If it were something trivial, I expect that few if any would send the letter. Is the degree of probability and degree of harm that can reasonably be expected to be caused by her to the husband and children sufficient to justify sending the letter?
In any event, I expect that she will be opening his mail from now on, just in case one person of the twenty-one or so thousand (and rapidly growing) views to this thread decides to send a print of her posts to her hubby.
Or pop some dope, bang some pills, and smoke your neighbor. It really depends on the intensity of your headache.
Only if you’re Keith Richards.
You are evil, making a person with a bad migrane laugh.
This is totally random, but am I the only one who, upon seeing your username, imagines a way too tightly wrapped condom hugging a bright-red schlong?
I hope not, because it cracks me up.
I’m firmly convinced that Keith Richards is a creature who exists in multiple dimensions of which we mere mortals can only recognise but a few. And even Keith Richards, with all his mny famous vices, eventually discovered the joy which comes from being faithful and monogomous. To be fair of course, he was a very naughty boy in his day! 