I feel like a prisoner.
Even though I have older children, I can't leave them alone... not with Knave.
Not only do I fear that he will find a way to access pornography in our home {regardless of having every filtering software known to man} but Knave has OCD and it seems to get more severe the older he gets.
He can often {very often} get stuck in his thought process and stuck in his ways. If anyone upsets his expectations of how things are suppose to go {according to him} he can lose his temper and rage. Recently he has shown aggression when he has these rages so I worry about leaving my other kids alone with him.
I feel like a prisoner in my own life.
I suppose I remember feeling like this when Mr. Wonderful was acting out in his addiction. When he was lying and sneaking and minimizing and gaslighting. I felt like a prisoner in my marriage and therefore in my life.
But with Mr. Wonderful it felt like an emotional prison.
With Knave it feels like a physical prison.
Both of them are awful.
I am working on solutions to remedy this situation because I don't want to resent my son.
Any suggestions?
I am so sorry you're going through this, it sounds incredibly hard. I'm trying to think how I would handle it if my son developed this addiction too. How old is he?
ReplyDeleteI think I would have to consider what boundaries and consequences need to be set to keep myself and my other children safe (& my husband - if he's in recovery do I really want our son potentially exposing him to triggery things?)
He is choosing to harm himself; there's very little that can be done about that. Your responsibility is therefore to keep the others in your home safe (hopefully with your husband's support).
Then I'd sit down with him and lay them out, reminding him that I love him, but that this is my home and as his parent I have the responsibility to keep it - and those within it - safe. Therefore if (x) happens, consequence (y) will happen.
Ideally I'd discuss these with my husband, and we'd sit down together with him to have a conversation about them and explain our reasoning. I think at this point we'd also make him aware of my husband's addiction, if he didn't already know about it.
Would it be possible to get him counselling? If he is willing/it's possible to get him there, I would also be looking into that, as both OCD and pornography are issues of the brain, and the more he acts out in one, the more likely he is to act out in another. It sounds like he could be trapped in a vicious cycle and need professional help to break it.