Your Sexually Addicted Spouse

by Barbara Steffens

  Some people find they can change this pattern on their own; others might need to work with a counselor. In either case, there are four steps required to catch and break this damaging habit:• Step 1: Become aware of it. Know that recognizing it on your own can present a challenge. If you can’t afford a counselor, consider a support group or a trusted friend to help point out negative self-talk.

  • Step 2: Find out where the negative self-talk originated. You may have learned to deal with life in this manner from your childhood.

  • Step 3: Acknowledge the pay-offs. What do you get out of the steady stream of counter-productive monologue in your head?

  • Step 4: Take conscious steps to stop the negative self-talk. Begin to listen to your inner voices, challenge the distortions you hear and replace them with positive self-talk.

  Learn and Use Positive Self-Talk

  • Step 1: Notice your patterns. We can’t change anything until we realize we have a problem. So the first step requires that we pay attention to our self-talk patterns. As we do, we’ll begin to realize how often negativity appears in our personal monologue.

  • Step 2: Recall thought stopping. As you begin to catch that inner roar of negative self-talk, use the words “Stop it!” to interrupt yourself. Actually saying it out loud helps reinforce the message. Some people also choose to wear rubber bands on their wrists and snap them when they notice negative self-talk. Breaking old habits makes way for positive new ones.

  • Step 3: Turn self-limiting statements into opportunity producing questions. Statements like, “If I give my partner time to try recovery, I’ll never have a chance to be happy!” increase our fears and stress and interfere with our abilities to contemplate which choices we really want to make. When such fears well up in you, try rephrasing them into opportunity producing questions: “If I give my partner a chance to try recovery, what can I do to take care of myself until I see the outcome of my partner’s efforts?” opens the way for planning and determining how to meet our own needs. This approach produces hope rather than destroying possibilities.

  Begin Emotional Processing and Grieving

  Just as the journey of 1000 miles begins with one step, so, too, does the journey that leads to healing from sexual addiction’s betrayal trauma. Though a partner’s healing journey is never linear, the hard work of healing generally begins with facing reality—with accepting what we have lost—and beginning the process of grieving.

  Get the Help of a Counselor if Possible

  As we said previously, a counselor can help you do the processing and grieving work you need to do. Even if you can’t afford professional counseling, you can heal. Use the resources included here and try to join a short-term partners of sex addicts group so you can experience the numerous benefits a group of this nature provides.

  The Steps that Lead to Healing

  Different models and methods for emotional healing exist, especially for healing from trauma. Opinions and experiences about what works best can vary among professionals as well as partners of sex addicts. What works for one may not work for another. While our needs bear a kaleidoscope of similarities, they bear differences as well. In this section, we seek to present both the general steps we all must move through as we seek to heal from our losses, as well as a variety of methods available to you as you press on toward hope and healing.

  In this chapter and the next, we lay out the steps of healing. Remember, in your life the process will never be linear. You will find yourself repeating some steps again and again until they finally become a part of you and your journey to healing and healthy living. Also, remember that the overall process will likely take months or perhaps years, depending on your circumstances and the quality of your support system. If you persist in working towards your own healing and growth, your pain will subside and finally leave. Your joy will increase many times over and life will take on new meaning and hold surprising new things and new people. We promise you that the effort will be more than worth it!

  Possible Methods for Processing Your Pain

  • Externalize the problem by sharing your story

  • Use nature-based healing therapies

  • Use expressive therapies such as art or music

  • Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

  • Renegotiate you trauma with a counselor’s therapeutic interventions

  • Use body therapies

  A Closer Look at the Healing Methods Listed Externalize the Problem by Sharing Your Story: The Power of Story as Medicine

  This method of beginning our healing is available to any of us, even if we don’t have a counselor or a support group. The addition of these supports will certainly increase the healing effect of sharing our story. However, until we find the support we need, a multitude of online forums for partners of sex addicts are available on the Internet, providing you the opportunity to connect with other hurting partners and share your story and your pain as they share theirs with you. Here your pain is understood, recognized and validated; you’re no longer alone.

  You may ask yourself why talk about the pain and what’s going on in our lives? Does it really do any good?

  “The best way to escape horror is to create your way out,” says Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D, a therapist who used the power of story as therapy with the children at the Columbine school in Littleton, Colorado, following the 1999 school shootings.

  She says:

  Talk to people—talk is the most healing thing you can do. Talk it out. You may have to tell your story over and over before it loses much of its pain.

  And so, in groups and individually in class, but also in hallways, at the drinking fountain, in the parking lot, kids and teachers would tell what was the best, the worst of the stories for themselves. In this way, the ground of their souls was kept soft—not allowed to harden, as it may when one has experienced a great blow and has no one to talk to who can respond with useful insights, words, gestures or looks….Each time you tell your story and receive someone’s caring, you will be healing yourself.9

  Externalizing your story by telling it, by sharing it, is powerful medicine in and of itself.

  Nature Based Healing

  Though most of us will find our healing path through more commonly practiced methods, other modalities exist for those who fail to find adequate words to access their pain and release its pent up power. Nature’s beauty and wisdom can provide the powerful presence of the natural world and offers endless possibilities for learning, growth and change.

  During one particularly difficult period in Marsha’s life, the outdoors became a healing sanctuary for her, enabling her to continue to meet life’s demands in spite of her pain: “I found that if I could spend one day each week interacting with nature via hiking, biking, cross-country skiing or boating, I could endure just about anything. I could feel God there and my body, mind and spirit fell into the rhythms of the earth and the natural world.”

  Expressive Therapy

  The “expressive therapies” open several creative healing realms as well. “While talk is still the traditional method of exchange in therapy and counseling,” says Cathy Malchiodi, author and expert in the field of art therapy, “practitioners of expressive therapies know that people also have different expressive styles—one individual may be more visual, another more tactile and so forth.” The use of expressive therapy “…can more fully enhance each person’s abilities to communicate effectively and authentically.”10

  Expressive therapies include a variety of modalities for healing:• Art

  • Dance

  • Music

  • Writing

  • Theater

  • Puppetry

  • Psychodrama

  • Play

  Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

  Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an “information processing therapy” that approaches healing trauma from yet another angle. Proponents of EMDR believe who
leheartedly in its ability to access and integrate traumatic life experiences, usually in a relatively short amount of time.

  The EMDR institute explains:

  During treatment, various procedures and protocols are used to address the entire clinical picture. One of the procedural elements is “dual stimulation” using either bilateral eye movements, tones or taps. During the reprocessing phases the client attends momentarily to past memories, present triggers, or anticipated future experiences while simultaneously focusing on a set of external stimulus. During that time, clients generally experience the emergence of insight, changes in memories or new associations.11

  Renegotiating Your Trauma with a Counselor’s Therapeutic Interventions

  Peter Levine, the developer of an approach to trauma treatment called Somatic Experiencing, says:The human immobility response does not easily resolve itself, because the supercharged energy locked in the nervous system is imprisoned by the emotions of fear and terror. The result is that a vicious cycle of fear and immobility takes over, preventing the response from completing naturally. When not allowed to complete, these responses form the symptoms of trauma....

  It is essential that the unresolved activation locked in the nervous system be discharged. It has to do with the process of completing our survival instincts.12

  Levine’s “renegotiation of the trauma” offers a revolutionary way for a client to metaphorically return to that place within where his or her survival instincts were frozen at the moment of trauma’s impact. Here, with the help of a trained therapist, the partner can complete the frozen action and, in so doing, set him or her self free.

  “The drive to complete the freezing response remains active no matter how long it has been in place,” Levine explains. “When we learn how to harness it, the power of this drive becomes our greatest ally in working through the symptoms of trauma.”13

  He continues, “…you need a strong desire to become whole again. This desire will serve as an anchor through which your soul can reconnect to your body. Healing will take place as formerly frozen elements of your experience (in the form of symptoms) are released from their trauma-serving tasks, enabling you to gradually thaw.”14

  For those who would like to learn more about Levine’s approach, we suggest you read Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine.

  Body Therapies

  Body therapy can open an alternate avenue for release for those who find their trauma has taken up residence in their bodies and now expresses itself in physical symptoms.

  “Trauma is ‘locked’ in the body,” says Levine, “and it’s in the body that it must be accessed and healed.”15 Gaylie Cashman, a friend whose accumulated trauma from life experiences left her with PTSD, discovered that it took the addition of body therapy for her to heal. She shares her story of finding hope through this method:I thought that when I married Dan, his loving, supportive understanding would enable me to begin to heal, but instead I fell apart. Shortly after we were married over seventeen years ago, my body almost completely shut down for about four months. I was deeply concerned that I slept for about twenty hours of every day. There were days I slept through the night right into the next evening. To stand up from kneeling down to get a pan in the kitchen, I had to pull myself up by hanging onto the counter. I fell asleep while I was with my favorite guests or watching a movie at the theatre. Doctors suggested I could be suddenly allergic to our pets or I was depressed, but no clear diagnosis was made and no one could help me.

  Once I got through the worst of it, I learned to avoid loud gatherings and I paced any physical work, because any excesses meant I spent the next day in bed. In retrospect, it seems that my body was just taking a much-needed rest from years of dumping fight-or-flight hormones into my system. It was now functioning without that stress response. I was weak and wrung out, yet determined to heal.

  I eventually hit a sort of dead end with my therapy. I felt I had talked about it thoroughly, yet I knew there was more.

  “Is there any kind of therapy that can get at what is in my body?” I asked my therapist one day. “I know my stuff is somehow trapped in here but I don’t know how to get it out.”

  “No,” my therapist said. “I don’t know of any.” I was passionate to find healing for myself, yet I still wasn’t making the progress I wanted and needed to make. I was addressing every perspective I knew, but still hadn’t connected enough parts of myself to find hope of wholeness. It was at this point in my process that I enrolled in seminary to heal my damaged image of God, a product from my past. Yet I still needed to find a way to include my body in my healing.

  After years of therapy while attending seminary, I remembered the benefits of yoga classes I took years ago. I felt drawn to try it again and found a nearby class. That class changed my course in life. During a session, I was propped up in a supported, opened-chest pose for an extended period of stillness. My usual rounded or closed down shoulders mirrored a self-protective posture I had carried a long, long time. This new pose offered me a physical openness, one with less defensive protection of my frequently guarded heart. In that open pose, an impromptu flow of tears was released from deep within. My deeply felt grief came from a part of me that talk therapy had not yet accessed.

  I felt a surge of hope that my body was actually connected to my story and my healing process. I needed to find out more, though the instructor didn’t know how to help me go further. Within months, I found Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy (PRYT) and it perfectly nourished me where I was in my healing journey. A PRYT practitioner supports the client in movement and/or poses along with non-directive dialogue, assisting the client as she experiences the connection between her physical and emotional selves.

  I took an intense ten-day course, and from this experience, I found I am the type of person who needs to engage my body to access, process and release emotions trapped in me. Getting back in my body helped me taste the empowerment I desperately needed to heal. I was sold. I decided to enroll in the eight-month intense Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy training program so I could continue to heal and become certified to do this work with others. I also appreciated that PRYT was a spiritually neutral therapeutic yoga practice, because it gave me an experiential way to invite my new healing images of God on my wholeness journey.

  “I learned how faithfully my body carries my story at the cellular level as I revisited and sifted through the layers of trauma in this process that helped me give it new meaning. I was empowered to integrate these old wounds with a new perspective, often with compassion toward others and myself. I was surprised to find compassion on myself as I revisited old anger I had shamefully stuffed inside. Now I could view it from my body’s perspective. Though stuffing my anger had enabled me to survive at the time, I was now free and empowered to choose how I would live with my past in a healthy, safe way. I was overjoyed.

  Soon I completed my Master of Arts in Spiritual Formation, which prepared me to become a certified spiritual director, adding to my Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy certification. My life experiences have led me to find two practices characterized by deep listening on all layers of being, for which I am indebted. I understood that my body, thoughts and emotions were in need of healing. But just as much, my spirituality was reconnecting with my life as I experienced a love within my own body that is greater than the trauma and feelings that were trapped inside of me.

  While I am deeply grateful for the medication-free health I currently enjoy, I am always aware that my body is a little bit broken. If tough situations in life set me back, I honor how my body acts as a reliable resource.

  Gaylie’s experiences offer hope to all, even those who’ve become stuck in their healing processes. Her life story embodies the completion of grieving and healing, the development of personal empowerment, the integration of trauma into a larger life story and the transformation of past pain into a positive life purpose. We desire those four components of a healthy and happy future life for you as well. We’ll discus
s each component in the next chapter.

  Chapter 8

  From Integration to Triumph

  Katherine continues to tell us about her harrowing and unforgettable story:It’s been five years now since that fateful day. Neil and I are still married, but the healing process has been painful. However, there is now light at the end of the tunnel.

  My husband was, as we discussed earlier, charged with possession of child pornography and released from prison after one week. He was immediately fired from his job with no severance pay. He had spent twenty-five years in the company. The media publicized the story heavily and I felt my life spinning totally out of control. I worked in an elementary school as an office administrator and loved my job, but it became difficult. All the parents heard the news and when I walked by, many who came to the school for one reason or another stopped talking and stared at me. I was the talk of the town.

  It was so hard to do anything in town; I felt like everyone was looking at me, talking about me. I glanced around me like a hunted animal. When I saw someone I knew, my first thought was I’ve got to get out of here!

  I kept asking myself painful questions. Would I keep my job? How would our church react? Neil was the lay pastor at our church and was scheduled to speak in a couple of days. What was going to happen with that? I had a meeting with the principal of the school where I worked; I needed to explain what was going on and asked for two days off of work to sort out my life.

  You would think that I could find comfort in my church. But no, the pastor asked us not to come back. That was truly one of the most difficult things I had to face: The church I grew up in didn’t, or couldn’t, support me. Because of what my husband did, I was asked to stop coming to services. I had no support; I was to face this alone with God. Any self-esteem I may have had was now gone.