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Replies to '08/29 Internet Dramas'
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August 27, 2008, 5:49 pm PDT
 Quote From: phantom2007 I rarely post to these message boards but I couldn't let this go unanswered. You should have taken the computer out of the house and gone through therapists until you found one who gets it. If you had physically taken the computer out of the house and gotten him to someone who can see this for what it actually is, an addiction which is even more dangerous than alcohol or illegal drugs because the PC or Mac is so essential to modern life and that you should have taken it out of the house and focused on the serious fallout from your husband's addictionn and the underlying reasons WHY he went online in the first place. Before you rip my head off for not knowing what I am talking about, I , when I got seriously stressed, I crawled into my laptop and would spend most of my day after my work was done for the day on my laptop either surfing the blogs or leave my iChat on and talk to people on my list for most of the given night. My recent new thing is Second Life and it nearly consumed me but my sitiation here pulled me out of it ( A trip to the hospital and a med change seemed to have fixed that) I still use my laptop for work and some surfing, but I do not live online and have no intention of living online ever again. I feel that your ex can still be saved and that your divorce was ill considered because you and your husband did not get to the bottom of why he turned to the net and unplugged himself from the marriage to begin with. You have correctly said that he is the one that has to admit that he has a problem but with all the enablers that he has, he probably won't. You need to remind him of the reality(Your two kids) and that he cannot hide from them forever. I will be watching the boards for your reply. Phantom I had tried in 1997 to take the computer out of the home. This caused him to drive over to an internet cafe to get online or go to his parents house. Eventually his therapist and his family stated that he was so stressed and that the computer was his only release. I was mocked that it was "just the computer" and why was I jealous of a few games.
I was made to feel guilty that I had a "good man" because at least he was not an alcoholic like so many others we knew. But his behavior was just as destructive.
It still makes me sick thinking of all the times I was laughed at that how could I be jealous of the computer. This took the focus off of his behavior of every waking minute online, and placed the blame on me.
In 1997 I had trouble finding a therapist in Portland, Oregon who even had email, not to mention someone who had seen chat or understood its addictive properties.
Kimberly Young published her first paper about the additction in 1996 but I could not get a therapist to read it. When you are getting help through an HMO with overbooked therapists they just are not going to take that extra step. I worked as hard as I could to support my family, raise two children, and get this man who believed there was nothing wrong some help.
My ex had a lot of issues. Many that he thought he should have been bigger or more important than what he turned out to be. He got through college, got married, did all the things a person is "supposed" to do but he was not wildly sucessful and expected much more to be handed to him than he was willing to work toward. In person he is quite a shy person, but in chat he can be the life of the party.
He suffered from clinical depression which he would never continue his meds on. Once he started reading conspiracy theories about medications he never went back on them and got even worse. He won't go back to a therapist which in part I blame on that the doctors he has seen spend 30 minutes with him, write a script, and that is it. He believes that the advice he gets online from people who have "listened" to him is better than professionals.
He has a severe inferiority complex where he is very jealous of what others have and what he believes he cannot accomplish for himself. He believes that everyone has it easier than him. He is insanely jealous that after the divorce I finished my degree and remarried to a man who is better off financially, but does not see that we work very hard at our family business and do not owe him a thing.
Online you can find a group of folks who will agree with whatever nutcase opinion you may have at that moment. He had friends online who agreed with his decisions, whose opinions were louder to him than my own.
There is a lot of comfort for him in crawling into the net to be the attractive, sucessful, charming, witty person that he is incapable of being in person. He can't sincerely admit that he has a problem because life is working out for him so far. He has arranged his life to have no financial responsibilities and works a menial job that does not interfere with pursuing this interest. |
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