She had become someone else seemingly overnight.  I looked in her eyes from across the room; it was just me and her.  The kids were asleep in their beds.  In her eyes where I would usually recognize some sort of affinity for me, I saw nothing.  There was no love there. How could this thing be over so soon?  I mean, 4 years seemed like a long time to be married to someone.  I could never understand how it was that people got divorced, how they seemed to lose all the love that they once had for each other.  For me it was a sure sign that love was anything but a real permanent thing.  Love was a feeling after all, and like all feelings it went away. I hated her.  How could she just not love me anymore?  How could she?  Sure I was not the model husband; well I was even worse than that.  I was in the midst of a seemingly incurable sex addiction.  This was the worst time I had ever had in my life controlling my urges and my issues.  She went through all of that with me, but ultimately I never wanted to lose her.  I never wanted to choose the addiction over her.  I always figured I would just stop if it got too much for her to handle, but it was too late. I did not get the chance to stop, because she stopped.  Although I was the one who betrayed her I felt like the one who was betrayed.  It was not supposed to end this way, it really wasn’t. “I will take the boys to my Mother’s.” I found it difficult to talk.  I was to stay here in this cheap dirty apartment with my daughter while she went away with the boys.  I was never afraid that she would just take off with them or anything like that.  She knew how much I loved the kids and there was never a question about my faithfulness to them – just to her.   I knew deep down that all of this stuff was because of me – because of the things I had done to her in the last 4+ years or so.  I knew that it was all my fault. “Okay.” I finally managed. “We can stay with her for awhile until I figure out how to be more independent.” “I will do what I can financially to help.” “Yes.  Yes you will.” I kept trying to catch her looking at me with that old spark in her eye, that glimmer that there might still be something there for me – anything.  But it was gone. She then got up and began packing her things, while I just sat there.  My life was to be forever different after this night.  I could do nothing.  I had not ability to change, no energy to fight for my marriage, nothing. A few minutes later her bags were in the center of the living room and she made the phone call.  Afterwards her plan was to wake the boys and take them in the night to her Mom’s. It was 2:00 AM. “Mom?” “I’m okay, really but I am done trying to make this work.”  Sobbing. “Yes, it is over.  Will you please come over here and pick me and the boys up?” Silence “What?” More silence. “Oh” She hung up the phone. Afterwards she came and plopped down in the chair she left to pack prior to making the call.  It was on the other side of the room and facing me, like a true adversarial position.  She looked angry, dejected and defeated all at the same time. “What’s wrong?” “She won’t come.”  Her face was red and her eyes began to tear up. “What do you mean?” “I mean SHE-WON’T-COME”  Each word emphasized seemed to staccato from her lips as if she were whipping me with them. “She won’t come and get you?  Why not?” She slowly shook her head and tears began to fall.  “I don’t know.”  She managed between sobs. I had an inkling of sympathy for her.  Poor woman could not escape me.  You would think that with all I had put her through, the very least she could expect was escape, and she could not even do that.  I deserved to be escaped from.  I was a terrible person.  I did not deserve her or anyone else for that matter. Then it hit me.  Like some weird idea completely out of left field.  I mean there was nothing in her eyes – nothing.  She hated me, and I did not like her to say the least.  It’s just that I had this crazy idea.  The word “Time” popped into my head.  TIME. That is when I said it.  “I know you don’t care for me anymore.  I don’t like you so much either.  But maybe we should just give this some time.  Maybe we should just drop everything right now and try.  Can we just do that?”  I felt the tears rolling down my cheeks.  The plea was as impassioned as I could muster.  It was straight from the heart.  I completely ignored everything my head was telling me. I never wanted to be without her.  Sure you could say my actions and behavior showed otherwise, but I was in a sense being controlled by something larger than myself – something I would have to unravel a bit at a time over the next few years in order to fully understand it.  The addiction that is. She just sat there. “Well?”  I was so impatient. She looked down at her shoes. I began to sink deeper into the depression that had recently possessed me so well. “Okay.” Just one word.  No terms, no discussion, nothing.  Just ,“Okay.”  I was afraid of exploring the issue any further that evening – afraid she would change her mind.  I just stood up then and took the first bag I saw off the living room floor and walked it back to the room.  She slept in there that night and I slept on the couch.  The next few days, weeks and months were a time that the two of us sought God together in ways that were different than at other times in our past. It took us six months of “trying,” to get to a point where we could once again say “I love you” to each other and mean it.  Does that mean that my sex addiction was all of the sudden cured and everything turned out super-duper?  Of course not.  I had no idea what sex-addiction was back then, I just knew that I had an obsession with pornography, and that I needed to always have some other woman tell me what a great guy I was. It wasn’t until about 7 years ago that I finally learned about my addiction and how to manage it and be free from it.  There was really no good explainable reason why she should have stuck with me that long.  Any reasonable person would applaud her for giving up on me.  Hell, I would have.  Instead, she stepped through every blunder with me and continued to have faith in me and in God that this sickness would one day pass.  She gave a new meaning to "for better or WORSE."  Sometimes it seemed as if she had given up on me, but through the years, she never gave up on US. On the 16^th of June, 2011 we will have been married for 25 years.  I know that is not a huge feat in comparison to those that have made it longer, but for us – especially considering all that we have been through – this is monumental. She is my hero.  She is the one person in my life that believes in me in so many crazy ways.  She is my special.  She is my best friend.  Thank you, Tammy.  Thanks for saying “Okay.”  Those three words, I've said too much, they're not enough.