We arranged for a three-day couple’s intensive with a sex addiction therapist who requires complete disclosure plus a lie detector test as part of his program. My husband worked hard to make sure he disclosed everything prior to that test. And in those final disclosures, I learned he had participated in group sex, he’d had sex with co-workers and he’d had sex with a woman he met at the mall! And on top of everything else, he had told my supposed best friend that she was the one he truly loved, not me. Of everything I’ve lost, that piece of information has been the most painful and damaging.
All of us who’ve lived through the discovery of sexual betrayal remember in razor-sharp detail the agony, shock and overwhelming loss that ripped through our lives in that one earth-shattering moment in time. From that moment on we instinctively knew nothing would ever be the same again.
There are many reasons why sex addiction’s impact on a partner severs the past from the future. And many reasons it cannot be compared to the impact other addictions have on a partner’s life. In this chapter we discuss those reasons and in that discussion lies the answer to the question: Why does your partner’s sex addiction hurt so much?
Our Deepest Attachment Bond and Trauma Attachment Bonds: What They Are and Their Meaning in Our Lives
When we develop relationships, we establish what psychologists call attachment bonds. We form expectations of how we will be treated in the relationship, and the connections grow as we share experiences. As they do, we begin to look to the relationship for a sense of safety, security and fulfillment. Brook Feeney and Nancy Collins, respected researchers on attachment, tell us attachments share four specific qualities:• Proximity Maintenance—the attached individual wishes to be in close proximity to the attachment figure.
• Separation Distress—the attached individual experiences an increase in anxiety during unwanted or prolonged separation from the attachment figure.
• Safe Haven—the attachment figure serves as a source of comfort and security such that the attached individual experiences diminished anxieties when in the company of the attachment figure.
• Secure Base—the attachment figure serves as a base of security from which the attached individual engages in explorations of the social and physical world.1
In an intimate relationship—or bond—if something threatens those four elements we’ve grown to believe the relationship provides in our lives, we fear that we may lose the important connection we’ve come to enjoy, expect and depend on. The more significant the relationship, the more intensely we feel the fear and threat to the relationship. That fear is called “fear of abandonment.”
Fear of Abandonment: The Fundamental Human Fear
“Fear of abandonment is the fundamental human fear,” Dr. Tim Clinton and Dr. Gary Sibcy write in Attachments: Why You Love, Feel & Act the Way You Do.
They explain:
It is so basic and so profound that it emerges even before we develop a language to describe it. It is so powerful that it activates our body’s autonomic nervous system, causing our hearts to race, our breathing to become shallow and rapid, our stomachs to quiver, and our hands to shake. We feel a sense of panic that will not be assuaged… until we regain a feeling of security. This attachment system is not just part of human behavior; it’s evident throughout the animal kingdom.2
When Attachment Bonds are Betrayed: The Impact of Relational Trauma
When our fear of abandonment becomes our reality in our most intimate relationship—when the one we love betrays our trust—we suffer betrayal trauma and we’re thrown into crisis mode. For some of us, the betrayal is relatively short-lived and we can begin to heal. For others, years, even decades can pass without lasting change. That’s the way it was in Mikki’s case.
I married my high school sweetheart. I knew from the beginning something was absent in our marriage; something important was missing. He physically abused me during the first five years before our first child was born. Because of the abuse I started divorce proceedings, but when he pursued me and it seemed like he was changing, I decided to stay.
But he didn’t change. We’d go to parties and he’d disappear, and I wouldn’t know where he was. I tried to be okay with that, but I had recurring dreams of him walking away hand in hand with someone else. After my second pregnancy, I decided to try to focus on being the perfect wife and mother, hoping that would make a difference in our marriage.
After a few years he went into ministry, yet he remained aloof, angry and withdrawn from me. When I caught him masturbating he simply said, “All guys do it,” and closed the door to his office and on the subject.
The years passed and, eventually, our last child left home. And there we were, looking at each other. I confronted him again when I found porn, but he lied his way out of it. I didn’t know what else I could do.
Finally, I drew a line in the sand and said I was done unless he sought help and made changes in his life. So he sought joint counseling, went to Every Man’s Battle and returned a different man. He confessed to numerous affairs and a one-night stand, along with all the porn. I joined a wives’ group for me, and we continued individual and joint counseling.
After thirty-five years of a horrible marriage, we were on our honeymoon. But it was short-lived. The months following his miraculous turnaround have been one long rollercoaster ride filled with spine-tingling emotional and spiritual intimacy that suddenly gives way to deep plunges into his dark rage and emotional separation.
These cycles have left me physically and emotionally wrung out, and I’ve developed post-traumatic stress disorder and some difficult health problems as a result. Trauma has filled the thirty-five years of our marriage; I’m not sure I can go on in this kind of relationship and survive.
If the attachment bond you felt for your partner has been violated and broken as it was in Mikki’s life, you have a relational trauma wound as well. When that happens, all the warmth, safety, joy and comfort that the relationship formerly held can no longer be counted on. The relationship now becomes a source of danger, because you’ve discovered that much of what you believed about the one you love was a lie.
On A Personal Note: What do you think about the concept of relationship trauma following a betrayal? Do YOU feel unsafe with the person you most expected to be there for you?
The Destructive Effects of Repeated Relational Trauma
If we experience relational trauma in a one-time event during which we hear our spouse’s full disclosure of sexual betrayal, it devastates us and healing requires time and effort. However, when relational trauma recurs—when your partner acts out again sexually or discloses new sexual information in a delayed manner—healing is interrupted. If you’ve just begun to believe that your partner has finally come clean and then he or she produces another heart-piercing disclosure, it slashes through the fragile, early stages of healing taking place in your mind and soul. That was Annie’s experience.
Although the past several months have left me reeling, I was beginning to heal and felt hopeful again. Then my husband was sent abroad by his company. When he came home he confessed that he purposefully toured the red-light district in the city he was in and almost gave in to the sexual temptation that seemed to overtake him when he saw the girls standing on street corners.
When he told me, he seemed devastated. He was crying, and he said, “I’m never going to get better! I might as well give up!” He went to bed inconsolable, lost in the shame he felt.
When I laid down beside him he was already asleep. I could feel myself sinking into a black hole. Part of me was angry, yet I knew it wouldn’t do any good to condemn him. I also knew I needed space to deal with my feelings, so I moved to the sofa for the night. Lying there, I cried and prayed for hours. All the pain started over again. I’m struggling with my own self-esteem. I’m getting older every year and I know I’m never going to be one of those beautiful young girls that he looks at. Sometimes I feel like just letting go and giving up!
Just
as fresh blood oozes when the scab is ripped from a deep wound, so too, does fresh, raw pain gush from yet another trauma injury when new sexual betrayal or, as in Annie’s case, near sexual betrayal is disclosed. With each new revelation that your marriage is not secure, healing must begin anew. And as it does, hope of returning to “normal” often slips further and further out of sight.
New disclosure not only creates a delay in your healing, it can also set up a new set of problems. When fresh disclosure interrupts the re-establishment of safety, which is so essential to your healing, it can set up a cycle of chronic trauma pain—post-traumatic stress. And with post-traumatic stress comes the potential for post-traumatic stress disorder to develop in your life. Trauma expert Tana Slay, Ph.D., explains it this way:When the natural healing process is interrupted or interfered with, then the pain of the trauma can intensify and become chronic. The chronic nature of trauma pain can develop into severe emotional disorders.3
And as we’ve said earlier, post-traumatic stress disorder can cripple a life, and it can trigger complicated, long-term health problems.
On A Personal Note: The image of a scab ripped open is a powerful and painful one. What image would you use to describe your pain after repeated disclosures?
The Painful Effects of Delayed Reconnection
Even when no new betrayal occurs and no new disclosures are revealed, if months pass and a loving emotional reconnection does not take place between you and your partner, your trauma can extend, dragging out your healing process. Again, that extension holds the potential to set up a cycle of chronic trauma pain. Jessica shares how she experienced such a delay in her marriage.
I never dreamed that we would be dragging this drama out. I thought that the “truth would set us free” from this secret. I thought we would pick up the pieces, mend and go on. I thought that we would be okay by now, months after his revelation. I had no idea that the childhood wounds at the heart of his addiction were so deep and that I would be a “nut case” regarding all of this. Right now it looks hopeless.
Each of the reasons discussed so far—the depth and expectations of our deepest attachment bond, the piercing pain produced by betrayal trauma, the universal fear of abandonment generated by sexual betrayal, the threat of repeated incidents and the isolation and loneliness created by delayed emotional reconnection—provides part of the answer to the question: Why does your partner’s sexual betrayal hurt so much?
But there are other, simpler reasons this addiction slashes right through the core of our hearts and souls. Let’s look at these reasons next.
The Betrayal of the Marital Promise
Shelly told us about how her views of marriage and commitment were shattered.
“This is not what I signed up for!” Shelly almost shouted. The deep pain and disappointment seeped from her words, even over the phone line.
“When I married my husband, I expected to be treated the way my father always treated my mother. He loved and adored her right up until the day he died. By their example, I was taught that marriage was a promise—a commitment to complete faithfulness for the remainder of our lives. And those were the words he spoke to me on our wedding day!
But that’s not what I got!”
Shelly’s beliefs about the institution of marriage and the meaning of wedding vows sounds typical of those we encounter in our work with partners of the sexually addicted. We’ve yet to meet a person who is happy that his or her spouse betrayed vows of emotional and physical faithfulness. Meanwhile, researchers’ findings correlate with what we hear from men and women.
“Infidelity or extramarital sex is considered by many as a betrayal of the marital promise…a form of deviant or immoral behavior” one study found.4 Even in this era of high divorce rates, partners—especially those in faith-based communities—hold on to the belief that their life partners will remain emotionally and physically faithful.
Your Partner Held Secrets and Locked You Out of a Part of His or Her Life
Discovering that the person you think you know so well—the one you snuggle up to every night—has locked you out of a secret part of his or her life is shocking and repulsive. Suddenly, every valued memory and belief about your life vanishes into a black sea of questions with unknown answers. One such instance was the horrific discovery Alice made after her husband of thirty-five years died while having sex with a prostitute.
My adult children and I buried my husband a month ago and I’m still trying to determine what I am grieving: the loss of the wonderful, caring man with whom I’ve shared my entire adult life and thought I knew so well or the discovery that the last thirty-five years of my life were nothing but a lie.
Until my husband died suddenly of a heart attack, I only knew him as the perfect husband and father. Then police officers came to my door and told me he had died of a heart attack while having sex with a prostitute! They gave me his watch, his wallet, his wedding ring and the other personal belongings he had with him at the time of his death. In that moment, time stopped and all sense and order vanished from my universe.
“How could this possibly be?” I wondered aloud. Everyone who knew him adored the wonderful, faithful husband, father and friend they believed he was.
However, as my adult children went through his wallet with me, we found several credit cards that I knew nothing about, women’s names and telephone numbers I had never heard or seen before.
After weeks of trying to untangle the mysterious plot these new pieces of information have been revealed: I now know he left me with at least $100,000 worth of debt—debt he accumulated with the call girls represented by the newly found names and numbers in his wallet. These, I now know, comprised the “little black book” carried by the man I loved, adored and with whom I raised my children.
How is it that anyone can so completely fool those who share their lives with him and think they know him best? I can’t imagine that I will ever completely thaw from the frozen shock I’m presently encased in.
Though Alice’s story far exceeds the horror most of us are forced to face because of our partners’ sexual betrayals, even the more “minor” evidences that our partners hide secrets and lock us out of their innermost worlds run counter to our closely held beliefs about what marriage means in our lives and in theirs. The discovery of these secrets can be devastating.
Relapse Potential and the Possibility of Future Betrayals
Another reason your partner’s sexual addiction hurts so much stems from the very real threat it imposes on your partner’s future faithfulness. Men and women ask us again and again: “How do I know my partner isn’t going to do this in the future?” One relatively young woman recently sobbed during a support group meeting, “I’m getting older every year and there is always a fresh crop of ripe young beauties for him to ogle. There is no way I can compete with that!”
The truth is that no one can guarantee a sex addict won’t repeat his or her sexual betrayal sometime in the future. Over the years we’ve heard hundreds of partners say, “If it happens again, I’m out of here!” And a few honest sex addicts express the sadness and concern recently expressed by one man as he talked about his wife’s pain.
He told us how she keeps asking, “How do I know you won’t do this again?” She needs and wants to know she has security with him, to know that this won’t happen to her again. And though he desperately wants to promise her it’s over, that it’ll never, ever happen again, as he hears other men share about their relapses in his Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings, he knows he can’t honestly make that promise. He believes the best he can tell her is, “All I can do is be honest with you, go to my meetings, walk in accountability, call my support people, go to my counseling sessions and live it out one day at a time.”
He’s right: He can’t make a 100 percent guarantee that he’ll never fail in this way again. Yet we know sex addicts who have decades of sexual sobriety. These men and women have made a commitment to themselves and God to stay mentally and physically
pure, one day at a time; their characters, lives and marriages bear the fruit of their faithfulness to their sexual purity. Sexual sobriety is not an impossible goal for the sex addict who wants it and seeks it with his or her whole heart, soul, mind and body.
HIV and STD Risks
The risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) add additional pain and trauma to every partner’s life. Because we can never know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have heard total disclosure, sex addiction leaves us with at least a shred of uncertainty. We recommend every partner be tested for STDs, no matter what his or her partner says.
It isn’t fun; many partners of sex addicts have said that asking their doctors for these tests produced painful humiliation and shame. However, because STDs show up frequently in sex addicts’ lives, this step becomes a must for each of us.
Security Risks as You Get Older
Sharing your life with a sex addict automatically places your older years in the path of possible financial hardship. If a sex addict returns to his or her addiction later in life—or worse, never leaves it in the first place—the risk remains that your partner might abandon you in search of freedom or yet another sexual fling. Add to that the fact that sex addicts often prove to be financially irresponsible across adulthood and you have a setup for possible poverty as you face the final decades of your life. Such is the case for Irene.
Your Sexually Addicted Spouse Page 6