After my husband was released from jail, he went to live at a Catholic retreat center a few hours away. The director was his legal surety. The center was in the country where no one knew us and I visited him on weekends. I still did not know for certain the whole truth of what he had been involved in, so I remained in our hometown with our children who still lived at home.
A few months later, Neil was placed on two years’ probation and the kids and I had to move, because we couldn’t afford our home anymore. I quit my job and we moved into an old trailer at the retreat center, which was all we could afford. Neither one of us could get a job for over a year. We ended up with $49.00 in the bank before my husband got a job as a salesperson. We had made over $100,000 a year prior to all of this; now we make less then 25 percent of that. Finances were a huge adjustment; just trying to pay our basic bills was a struggle. My family was falling apart. It was especially hard on two of our children.
I had to get checked for HIV and any other possible STDs, which was a humiliating experience. Fortunately, I was disease free. However, my doctor was worried about me, because I had lost a lot of weight; I was unable to eat and sleep, which became a problem following my husband’s arrest. Even now, four years later, I am only able to sleep four to five hours a night.
On weekends during the time before I moved to the retreat center, I visited Neil and it was there he told me about his other life. His first affair lasted almost two years and he fell in love with the woman. That devastated me and left me feeling sick. Due to the hurt of losing his affair partner, my husband said he began to have non-emotional affairs. He had eight of them. Some were one-night stands; others he met with often. He also told me about some homosexual affairs.
One day when we were on our way to Neil’s counseling session, he attempted to drive the car into a power pole. I saw the pole coming closer and closer and thought of my children without their parents. I especially thought of my youngest son, now the only one still living at home. How would he cope? At the last moment—with me screaming “please stop”—he pulled the car back into our lane. I was out of my mind with fear. I sat there, sobbing, trying to catch my breath and I couldn’t step trembling.
The losses were great. I lost my ministry, which I mourned for almost three years. This loss was so deep. I felt like God could never use me again because of what had happened. But after a time, I realized I had to stop looking back to what I formerly had and did so that I could move on and believe in God’s redemption.
And miraculously, God is redeeming my life, and healing is beginning to happen in our family and children’s lives. I now regularly help other wives married to sex addicts who live in our community, and I facilitate a partners’ support group. And Neil is now helping other men who struggle with sex addiction. He gives them hope and help as they work to overcome their addictions, just as he has worked hard in the last four years to gain freedom from his. The miracle of new life can happen, even after the most devastating pain. We’re living proof. God is giving us new life!
Somewhere during a partner’s healing process he or she begins to integrate the past and its losses into his or her present life. In that integration the loss takes on new meaning, and the partner may recognize it has produced valuable growth and new purpose in his or her life, as it has in Katherine’s.
This growth, first called “posttraumatic growth” in 1996, can lead to “…improved relationships, new possibilities for one’s life, a greater sense of personal strength and spiritual development… they also may find themselves becoming more comfortable with intimacy and having a greater sense of compassion for others who experience life’s difficulties.”1
That is the paradox of trauma: Miraculously, from life’s most painful losses we can gain life’s most valuable gifts. For most partners of sex addicts, arriving at this place requires time.
In this chapter, we continue to plot the trail through trauma, which leads us to our ultimate destination: integration and triumph. To one day arrive at triumph we must continue the grieving process, which began in the last chapter. Then, as pain begins to subside and time and space become available to focus on growth, we can move through the remaining stages to complete our grieving, arriving long last at transformation’s door. Here, we can find joy, because we realize that what has hurt us and cost us the most has also led to new hope, new passion and new purpose. And, ultimately, to new life!
Let’s look again at the stages of grieving we discussed in the last chapter, while also referring back to the “Pathway to Healing, Empowerment and Transformation Following Sexual Betrayal Trauma” chart.
As you look at the stages of healing, remember only you—with perhaps the aid of your counselor if you have one—can determine where you are in your healing process. Wherever you now are in your journey to healing, we encourage you to continue your emotional processing and grieving, remembering that you will know when the pain has lost its power and you are free to move on.• Acknowledge and process your feelings
• Acknowledge and grieve your losses and the consequences they produced in your life
• For some, face and adapt to separation or divorce
• Alter your attachment to what you’ve lost, let it go and say goodbye
• Develop resiliency
Such lofty goals, which include altering our attachment to what we’ve lost and letting it go, integrating our losses into our larger life story and finding new hope by transforming our pain into a new purpose, may seem impossible from the place in which you find yourself right now. However, please trust that every step along the way moves you one step closer to healing.
Mary shared her grieving process several months after learning about her husband’s addiction:We were sitting in bed reading together and I got up, went to the shelf outside our bedroom door where I kept a display of wedding memorabilia—our wedding photo, cake knife, guest book, sentimental pieces that I’ve loved—and I took them all down. I felt tempted to throw them out, but feared I’d later regret it, so I packed them away, storing them until perhaps the time comes that they don’t represent loss to me. And then we cried…sobbed hard together for several long minutes. So hard that I kept choking and thought I was going to throw up. I spent part of the time over the toilet, sobbing and choking and gagging. But even as I did, I thought, This is grief! This is good! I knew it was important work. And when I finished I felt better; I felt different!
Mary’s experience of catharsis in grieving about her husband’s addiction makes ever more meaningful Peter Levine’s insight about healing from trauma: “There may be dramatic and poignant moments as well as gradual and often mundane stretches on the road to recovery….For each of us, the mastery of trauma is a heroic journey that will have moments of creative brilliance, profound learning and periods of hard tedious work.”2
Healing requires time. It also requires that we continue to pursue personal empowerment so that we can face the losses in our lives and proactively participate in creating the new reality that our healing will bring.
Cultivate Personal Empowerment
Because traumatization strips us of our personal power—of our abilities to protect ourselves and our children from the pain and disruption that sex addiction thrusts into our lives—the re-establishment (or perhaps the first-time cultivation) of this personal empowerment/self-empowerment quality proves vital for our healing. This quality enables us to manage and direct our own lives; to take responsibility for ourselves and to act effectively on our own behalves and the behalves of others who seek or need our help.
What is personal empowerment? Let’s begin to answer that question by first citing what personal empowerment is not.
What Empowerment Isn’t • Empowerment is not trying to control others
• Empowerment is not about getting our own way
• Empowerment is not selfish or self-centered
What Empowerment Is
“Self-empowerment is about becoming powerful,” says Marcia Chel
lis, author of Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives. “It is a process to use for overcoming any barrier. It is a way to achieve personal success, a way to handle challenging circumstances, a way to make your life work.”3
“Can one quality really encompass all that? And if the answer is yes, how do I get it?” we might ask. The first answer is yes; the second is, “With lots of practice and hard work!” But we can attest to the fact that empowerment is well worth the work it takes. Let’s look at six ingredients of empowerment.
Six Ingredients of Empowerment 1. Healthy boundaries
2. Maintaining solid grounding
3. Self-awareness, impersonal energy and executive awareness
4. Healthy communication skills
5. Healthy conflict management skills
6. Reframing ourselves as survivors rather than as victims
Next we will touch briefly on each of the areas of growth that make up personal empowerment. Afterward, we will quickly outline and explain the qualities and skills that will help you continue to heal as well as contribute greatly to your development. Work, if possible, with a counselor or group and read more on each topic where you need additional growth.
1. Healthy Boundaries
Here we will only address boundaries as they relate to dealing with our triggers when we are in a relationship with a sex addict. Identifying, then sharing those boundaries with your spouse is one way you can take responsibility for your healing and growth:• Identify your triggers.
• Determine the boundaries you need in order to deal with your triggers proactively.
• Communicate your boundaries in a healthy way, remembering the other person can say “No.”
• Find alternative solutions if the other person says “No.”
Of all the ingredients of empowerment, boundaries prove to be the most mysterious and challenging. Boundaries require both our powerlessness and our empowerment.
Not only is empowerment taking responsibility for ourselves by drawing boundaries and asking for what we need, it is also accepting our powerlessness over others, including our spouses. We can’t make anyone honor our position or do what we’d like them to do. Part of being empowered is to be okay with letting others say “No.” Honoring a person’s right to say “No,” then honoring yourself—even if the other refuses to honor your boundary—needs to be okay. When that happens, we must then take responsibility for finding other ways to meet our own needs.
At what point, then, does it become impossible to share a life with the one you love, because he or she isn’t interested in honoring what you need to feel safe or does not want to give up the addictive behavior? Many among us must face this question and must find the answer for ourselves. Therein lies much of the mystery and challenge of establishing boundaries.
2. Maintaining Solid Grounding
In the last chapter, we discussed the importance of solid grounding as a way to avoid habitual dissociation. However, gaining and maintaining this ability also contributes greatly to our personal empowerment. Because our ability to stay grounded and remain present adds to our ability to cope with whatever life experiences we have, make sure you develop and build this ability into your empowerment arsenal. Additional help in the area of boundaries may be found in the book Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. This insightful book has helped millions of others grow in this important area.
3. Self-Awareness, Impersonal Energy and Executive Awareness
Self-awareness is the ability to observe ourselves “from a distance.” Executive awareness is the objective, rational part of our personalities—the impersonal energy part—we discussed in chapter 6 in our discussion about triggers and boundaries. Both of these qualities play important roles in building our personal empowerments, that ability to manage and direct our own lives, no matter what our partners do with their addictions.
Self-awareness enables us to understand what we’re feeling, why we feel and why we act the way we do. Self-awareness is equivalent to “getting in touch with ourselves.” Finding ways to talk about or write about what’s going on inside your mind and heart are the keys to gaining self-awareness. Use a counselor, a support group, journaling or people who love and care about you to help you gain the understanding you need to truly know yourself. Only by gaining self-awareness can we get in touch with what we feel and need so we can act in our own interests.
Once we gain that awareness, we can use our impersonal energy/executive awareness to make empowered decisions and changes in our lives. These abilities are desperately needed when life has been turned upside down by our partners’ addictive behaviors and we have no idea what to do next.
4. Healthy Communication Skills
Interpersonal communication can make or break a relationship in the best of times. In the aftermath of sexual betrayal, however, knowing how to communicate in a healthy way, then remembering to express yourself in a period of heartbreak, can help you survive the upheaval in your relationship.
Healthy communication includes really listening with your heart; it is direct, respectful, clear and clean, meaning there are no hidden messages, no insults or digs. If you find that communicating in a healthy way seems impossible right now, reach out for help from a counselor, clergy or someone else who can help you communicate during this difficult time.
Here we list tips to employ as you work to grow in your skill as a healthy communicator:• Listen without countering. Actively try to hear the other person’s point of view. Stop planning what you are going to do or say next and just tune in. Don’t be defensive.
• Make eye contact. Look at the person as you listen and speak.
• Speak for yourself. Make “I” statements about what you feel and need. Make sure you really understand your partner.
• Seek clarification. State and reiterate what you have heard.
• Stick to the subject. Make your point without throwing around accusations. Provide examples or details to support your point.
• Look inside yourself. What is the motive behind the words you choose to say? Are they used to defend, provoke, distract or to really communicate?
• Ask for behavioral change. Bring the conversation back to your everyday life. What will be different after this discussion? What can be expected?
• Remember your partner’s trigger points. Resist the temptation to use them.
• Remember your own trigger points. Resist the temptation to react.
• Agree to disagree sometimes. Practice respectful acceptance of difference.
• Remember the power of apology. If you know you have been hurtful or wrong, apologize.
5. Healthy Conflict Management Skills
The shock, the hurt and the anger generated by sexual betrayal trauma pollutes both our marriages and our minds with toxic conflict. While counseling, support groups and journaling can help us resolve our inner conflict, we must rely on healthy conflict management to navigate the relational conflict between our partners and ourselves. But such interpersonal conflict requires sharply honed skills if we want to do it in a healthy way.
We recommend a truly helpful book titled Speaking Your Mind Without Stepping on Toes by Henry A. Virkler. Dr. Virkler does a wonderful job of simplifying healthy conflict management skills and helps readers learn to use them in their everyday lives.
He helps us understand that assertiveness and respect are key to managing conflict in a healthy way. “Assertiveness,” he says, “is the ability to express your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires in direct, honest, appropriate ways that do not violate the rights, needs, and self-esteem of another person.”4 That is the goal we must strive for.
6. Reframing Ourselves As Survivors Rather Than As Victims
All of us who have sexual addicts as partners are, in essence, victims of sexual addiction and the toll it takes on our lives. But for some, the victimization experience locks their psyche in a state referred to as learned helplessness. Bessel van der Kolk explains it this way:Peopl
e in whom the effects of the trauma become ingrained often develop a chronic sense of helplessness and victimization. The [trauma] experience is so unexpected and overwhelming that the very foundations of a person’s coping mechanisms are challenged. If the victims already have tenuous personal control, or if the stress persists, they may lose the feeling that they can actively influence their destinies.5
Through no fault of their own, partners who become stranded in this state of helplessness generally need a counselor’s help to find their way out. If you recognize yourself in Dr. van der Kolk’s words, find a way to get the professional help you need to gain access to your empowered self who remains dormant within.
The “F” Word: Consider Forgiveness
Barbara will never forget one particular group session for partners where she brought up the idea of forgiveness as part of a partner’s healing process and immediately a woman across the circle from her nearly shouted, “How can I ever forgive this?!” As the woman spoke about her own experience, it became clear to Barbara that for this woman the word forgiveness held the dark burden of misuse. She had been taught that forgiveness encompasses reconciliation.
Barbara and I believe the act of forgiveness does not necessarily include reconciliation. Forgiveness requires only the action of the offended, while reconciliation requires action from both the offended and the offender. Though reconciliation, if it is possible, often renders a joyous outcome, in reality, many times it simply cannot happen.
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