Help for the Partners of Sex Addicts
recovery.
Internal and external boundaries will be strengthened. Strong external boundaries will ensure that you will not again put yourself into a victim role. A sense of having internal boundaries will open up new avenues of healthy intimacy as you will know who you are and be able to hear who another is. At the heart of healthy intimacy is the ability to share your real self with another and be available when someone else shares his real self with you.
The sexual co-depenent may find she no longer needs to bend herself into a pretzel to accommodate others. Rejection or disapproval may be unpleasant, but not devastating. Compromising personal integrity in order to get external approval and validation will cease. With increased self-knowledge comes the ability to Self-validate while still being in a relationship. Self esteem will be generated by her behaviors rather than the approval or validation from others.
The choice to stay in or leave the relationship is an individual one. With therapy comes the knowledge that a fulfilling life can be crafted whether alone or in a partnership. People involved in a therapeutic process have the potential of reclaiming a sense of dignity and renewed sense of purpose even if the spouse remains active.
Finally, time and energy spent on preoccupation and control of the addict can be used to attend to emotional support for the children, to recommit to and obtain increased satisfaction from work, to meet new people, and to develop new recreational activities.
How can I possibly forgive him?
Despite the fact that it may seem impossible, forgiveness is a critical part of recovery for the partner of a sex addict. To forgive is not to forget. Forgiving means being able to remember the past without experiencing the pain all over again. It is remembering — but attaching different feelings about the events, and it is a willingness to allow the pain to have decreased relevance over time. Understanding the pain, compulsion and despair that the sex addict has undergone from sexual compulsion can open avenues to compassion.
To forgive is important primarily for oneself, not for the person one forgives. The opposite of forgiveness is resentment. When we resent, we experience the pain and anger all over again. Serenity and resentment cannot coexist.
The process of forgiveness begins with acknowledging that a wrong has been done to you. You have to recognize that you have strong feelings about what happened and you need to feel and process those feelings. You are entitled to be angry or hurt. Ideally, you can share those feelings with the person who has hurt you in couples counseling. If that is not possible, then you can share the feelings with your therapist or support group. After that, you can choose whether to stay in a relationship with that person. In either case, forgiveness does not imply permission to continue hurtful behaviors. As part of your own treatment, you need to decide which behaviors you can accept in your relationships and which you cannot.
The primary goal of forgiveness is to heal yourself. In a partnership affected by sexual addiction, forgiveness is aided by evidence of the partner’s changed behavior and commitment to treatment. These are also elements in rebuilding trust. For many couples, forgiving and learning to trust again go hand in hand. Both take time, making amends, continued treatment and steady, continual, trustworthy behavior on the part of the addict.
After the acting out has stopped, it’s critical to not use his past behavior as a “hook” to punish or manipulate him. When a desire for revenge exists, you have not forgiven, and you see him in one dimension (“Bastard”). The capacity to see him as a whole person (he’s not just a sex addict, he’s many things) will help you move forward. Couples therapy will help you move toward a sense of tolerance of his vulnerabilities, acceptance of the past and a renewed interest in him as a multidimensional person with on-going issues.
My partner refuses to go for treatment, or even to identify that he has problem. To stay in this relationship is to accept the unacceptable. Nevertheless, I’ve been unable to leave him. Why do I stay in a relationship that causes me such emotional anguish?
There may be realistic reasons why women stay in relationships despite repeated betrayals and lost of trust, mutual concern and physical compatibility. Children and finances have traditionally been two of them, although increasingly these reasons are becoming less relevant.
So, why do they stay? For some women, being in love is tantamount to being in pain. The two are indistinguishable. Obsessing about a man’s