Clarifications

I spoke to Panthea on the telephone last night for the first time in 4 weeks. God, I've missed her voice. Half the time that she was speaking I could see her face, in my minds eye, and the way her mouth looks when she pronounces words. She melts me.

The conversation was fine. We cried sometimes, but I think that was to be expected. We spoke about my last blog post and I needed to clarify a few things:

1. I don't agree with my sponsor that Panthea fell in love with the sick part of me. In her words, she fell in love with the sweet, funny, loving guy. I know I hid the sick part of me from her. My sponsor doesn't know me very well yet and he doesn't know Panthea at all.

2. My statement, "While all this sounds real good" relates to how his statement could play out in theory:
A - If I'm losing the love of my life there isn't anything that I can do about it. I took this to mean that, as an addict, I need to let go of things that are beyond your control. I cheated on her. I fucked up bad and now the repercussions are going to come. Deal with the repercussions, don't run from them. Whether you want to deal with it or not the fire is already burning my house down.
B- I cheated and betrayed the love of my life because I'm fucked up aka "sick." The secrets that I'm holding on to are making me sick. Let go of these things. They're in the past. The amends is not to act that way in the future.
C- We attract what we are. Panthea took this to mean that my sponsor must think that she had to also be "sick" in some way to love someone like me. I spoke to him about this today. He meant a few things, but he wasn't condemning her. He was condemning people like his sponsee's ex-wife who was a caretaker sort of person. She liked that he was living dirty because it made her feel better about herself by comparison. We spoke about his sponsee's situation after we'd wrapped up for the night and were smoking cigarettes. I didn't link the 2 together because it didn't relate to me, but it's important and it makes clear the context. After he shared about his other sponsee, I told him that my relationship with Panthea wasn't that way at all. I think we each stood on equal footing. We propped each other up when necessary, called each other out when required, and encouraged each other to succeed.
D- Getting all my secrets out in the open doesn't mean that I'm over them. As he said, "I'm still sick." I have a chance to get better if I complete the work that the steps require.
E- When I'm better, then I'll be different and attract someone different. I took this to mean that he thinks I'm scared of being outside of a relationship because of how long I've been with Panthea. I'm not scared of being with out Panthea, I'm in love with her. I'd like a chance to heal the pain that I've caused her. I adore her and have felt this way for years. I don't want to be with out her because of those reasons. 

3. Panthea isn't a direct reflection of me. She doesn't lie to me, she didn't cheat on me, and she's never betrayed me. We're similar in many ways, but very different in others.

I told Panthea most of these things last night. I don't know how much it helped, but I tried. I was nervous when we spoke because I wanted to make it clear that I was sorry for hurting her and our families by cheating and that I would never do it again. She asked me to take down the post containing her text messages, but she didn't even mention that her responses might have hurt me. She didn't go so far as justifying the text messages (and e-mails with more of the same), but she didn't seem to care if they hurt me either. I wanted to speak to her yesterday because the post had obviously flared up some painful emotions in her. I tried to sooth her to the best of my ability. I didn't mean to hurt her and I'm sorry if what I said last night wasn't enough.

Pon, you completely discounted that you went out of your way to hurt me last night. I love you, but I'm not made of stone. Neither of us are indestructible. We acknowledged that we care about each other. We both need to act like it. I will do everything in my ability to make you feel loved and safe. It is my greatest desire to make your heart whole again. I understand that there are tons of tiny broken pieces that will take a long time for me to put back together again. I understand that your emotions will be on overdrive and that there will be storms which I will gladly navigate through to bring you back home. You need to understand that I need to feel loved after a storm... that I need a safe harbor as well... that I need to know that you want me to be the one to love you. You went out of your way to hurt me yesterday. Your e-mails went from annoyed / surprised to blatantly hurtful and the texts were just out and out mean. That's not right so if you don't care that they hurt me then I'm not going to take down the texts.