Ultimately, the amount and kind of information you reveal should be based on the developmental level of the child. Young children need to know that even though Mom and Dad are not happy, they will love and take care of them. The older the child, the more information you may need to share in order to provide the child with a structure that enables them to understand what is happening between their parents. Mark Lasser’s Talking to Your Kids about Sex8 is another good resource that can help you with this challenging subject.
Ultimately, this crisis provides an opportunity to model to our children that there are healthy, open ways to deal with and talk about difficult topics. It also provides a forum in which to promote healthy sexuality. Too often families neglect discussing sexual topics out of discomfort or embarrassment. Sexual addiction flourishes in secret and dysfunctional views of human sexuality. Learning to talk openly with your kids will provide them with the tools to manage their own feelings and temptations.
Your children don’t need details of what the addict did, but they will most likely benefit from information on addiction and recovery. They are sexual beings, after all, who will ultimately—and may already be—struggling with these behaviors themselves! Sadly, we hear that frequently. Addictive behaviors are often passed from generation to generation. If you discuss these issues openly, you may give your children the encouragement and guidance they need to prevent this problem from developing in their own lives.
Disclosure presents another challenge that comes with sex addiction. How you decide to handle it needs to come from discussions between the addict and the partner and from their agreement on the issue if at all possible. We encourage you to use the resources we’ve listed to help you with this decision.
What is sexual anorexia?
Sexual anorexia and the pain it brings surface again and again, week after week in our work with partners of sex addicts.
“We haven’t had sex for ten years.” “We never have sex unless I initiate; then he doesn’t seem to want me.” “I shower, light candles, put on sexy music and do everything I can to seduce him, but he rolls over and goes to sleep.” These are just some of the comments we frequently hear. The results of all these comments have two things in common: they produce mountains of confusion and emotional pain.
If you’ve lived with this painful consequence of sexual addiction, we know you need understanding and help. We recommend that you read a helpful article on the topic written by Douglas Weiss, Ph.D., a sex addiction specialist, and posted on the Safe Families Web site. In the article, Weiss helps illuminate the dark and painful dynamics that result from this complicated dysfunction that can develop in a sex addict’s life. Weiss defines sexual anorexia as “The active, almost compulsive withholding of emotional, spiritual and sexual intimacy from the primary partner” and goes on to say “It is the consistent sabotaging of any ongoing intimacy in a marriage or committed relationship.”9
Dr. Weiss shares three causes of sexual anorexia, including sexual abuse, attachment disorder and sexual addiction. The article provides a great deal of helpful information for those who deal with this painful issue. Here we share just one part that we hope you’ll find helpful:Weiss (1998) contends that the early sexual reinforcement being bonded to the fantasy world (with or without pornography) and being maintained through adulthood can lead a person to primarily sexually bond to the other world. The neurological chemical bonds to the unreal world combined with the psychological ease of a fantasy world can allow a person to conclude the altered state fantasy world is not only easier psychological and sexually but preferred. Once the individual makes this conclusion, whether in their 20’s or 50’s, the anorexia symptoms will follow.10
Sexual anorexia is a deep-seated issue in many sex addicts, and it requires significant therapy to heal. If you live with this devastating twist on sexual addiction, we know the pain you feel. Try to remember that as painful as your partner’s lack of sexual desire for you can be, it bears absolutely no reflection on you or your desirability as a sexual partner. Rather, it is another symptom of the intimacy disorder present in your partner. And it’s a disorder that requires professional help.
How will I know if it’s time to divorce?
This is another very difficult question and one that no one can answer for you. The answer depends on many things, most of them individual to your situation and beliefs. However, over time most counseling professionals have come to agree that it may be a decision to delay for awhile, if possible. Let’s look at the reasons.
Any life-altering, major decision (especially divorce) imposes changes and subsequent changes and consequences as part of the package. Divorce affects children (whether young or adult), extended family members and friends. It has enormous financial repercussions. And it is yet another loss on top of immeasurable losses you’ve already experienced. To rush on this decision may invite unintended consequences when you can least manage them, and it may add to your already mountainous pile of stressful situations when your emotional and physical energy is at an all-time low. We suggest you try to delay your decision until you are able to think clearly, then weigh all your options.
However, a huge percentage of sex addicts aren’t willing to consider recovery and change until they are about to lose something they aren’t prepared to live without: their family and half of their accrued wealth. Very often, a partner’s role includes the responsibility to take action that can cause the addict to reach a place of brokenness in his or her life so the addict will reach out for help. A partner’s most loving act can mean allowing the addict to experience the painful consequences of sexual addiction.
In addition, many partners have done all this. They’ve waited patiently, hoping for change. They’ve confronted the addict and taken consequence-producing action, only to watch as their spouses refused change. In such cases, divorce may be the most realistic decision for you. As we learned in chapter 5, living with sex addiction produces dozens of consequences in our lives, particularly if we live with continued addiction and little or no change. At some point we have a responsibility to take care of ourselves.
We both know partners who have made this difficult decision and progressed to emotional and physical health after their divorces. We also know many who decided to defer the decision to give recovery and restoration a chance and the miracle of change occurred in their lives.
In the end, only you can determine how long you should wait to make a decision as to whether to divorce or not in the face of continued betrayal or lack of commitment. Only you can decide if the damage is too great for you to reconcile, even if your offender is actively in recovery and committed to change. For some, the only way to heal is to move on. We encourage you to involve those you trust in this most important decision if they can provide supportive input in your decision and life.
We are privileged knowing you’ve chosen our strategies and encouragement to help you on your healing journey. Thank you.
Appendix
Advice for Counselors, Pastors or Friends
First, we want to say “Thank you!” for your care and concern for those affected by sex addiction. We the authors know only too well the silence, puzzled looks and occasional scoffing we receive when we tell some people we specialize in helping partners of sex addicts. Many people, even many professional helpers, are uncomfortable and significantly unprepared to effectively respond to someone who has experienced sexual betrayal in intimate relationships. Many people don’t know about or understand sex addiction and often what they do know is incomplete or ineffective for the partners who walk into their offices, their churches or their support groups.
In this book, we have tried to delve into the needs and feelings of partners of sex addicts. Here we offer some additional thoughts and ideas for helping this hurting population.
• Don’t use the term “co-addiction.” The term co-addiction labels a traumatized partner with accusatory stigma, telling that person that you see him or her as somehow partially at f
ault for the mess the partner is in. Contrary to the working model of treatment that sees partners as unhealthy codependents or even co-addicts, many partners of sexual addicts have no awareness of their spouses’ addictive behaviors prior to disclosure. Upon disclosure, many immediately confront the addicts and attempt to communicate, often imposing appropriate consequences immediately.Partners are in a great deal of emotional pain and many are debilitated by the traumatic experience. They also face their spouses’ denials and continued deceit as pertinent information continues to be withheld. Others suffer under the repeated wounding of painful sexual information that leaks out slowly over time.
We recommend you view partners just as you would other victims of traumatic experiences. In this book we’ve discussed how and why such people’s pain is like that of victims of debilitating experiences.
• Provide individual counseling. Individual therapy sessions for partners allow them to work through their trauma symptoms, focus on themselves and deal with their own issues that surface because of this experience. In many settings, the partner’s individual session follows a joint session with the spouse. In these settings, a partner is often given the role of helping the addict recover.However, we see a partner’s needs as requiring separate treatment; at least until he or she’s stable, the addict is committed to the recovery process and that person’s sexual acting out has stopped. Initially, your work with the partner needs to focus on restoring the partner’s sense of safety and empowerment, because the betrayal and trauma it produces strips most partners of those elements in their lives. Until the partner regains those essential ingredients, healing cannot begin.
In addition, a partner’s treatment needs to help the partner understand his or her emotional and behavioral responses to the addiction and educate the partner about what can be done to regain stability. The treatment needs to help the partner establish boundaries to protect the person, as well as the many other helpful activities you’ll find on the “Pathway to Healing, Empowerment and Transformation Following Sexual Betrayal Trauma” chart in chapter 6.
If in your counseling setting you only do couple’s sessions, make sure you incorporate helping the partner with trauma and its symptoms and the partner’s need for support.
• Conceptualize the partner’s behaviors as typical responses to trauma and fear. Among trauma victims, hypervigilance and scanning the environment are normal. Automatic in nature, they are the victims’ efforts to avoid further pain and injury. Help partners understand and accept alternative ways to gain the safety and empowerment they seek. Give healthy, empowering tools that will equip the partner to meet that person’s very real needs, including (as needed) emotional distance (detaching), boundaries, accountability, self-care, support and others you’ll find in this text. Together they enable the partner to exercise some level of control over his or her environment and well-being.Focus on what traumatized partners can do, rather than placing the focus on things over which they have no control. Trauma survivors need to find ways to exercise self-determination and personal responsibility in order to counter feelings of powerlessness to protect themselves. Help equip them to exercise empowering choices in the midst of their personal environments and circumstances. Help partners learn to assess and weigh options against personal values, determine action and then use personal power to follow through.
• Help the client build social supports. We have learned through our own professional practices, research and other professionals that trauma survivors do better in recovery if they have positive support systems. Many partners have experienced long-term isolation by the time they seek help. Generally, the isolation is imposed by the addicts and has become part of the dynamics within the relationships. Occasionally, partners hide their secrets out of shame or embarrassment. Breaking that isolation by telling even one other person the truth can be frightening but ultimately liberating and healing.As you help partners, remain aware that many of them have experienced long-term emotional control and, frequently, emotional and financial abuse as part of their marriage relationships. As a result, many have difficulty determining just who’s safe to tell. Even their closest friends may not know. For these reasons and more, support groups or therapy groups can help a great deal, because they become safe places to share, gain insight and awareness and grow. Seek to help partners identify and develop relationships where they can be honest about their experiences, feelings and circumstances.
• Help identify positive protective behaviors. Many partners of sexual addicts do not know how to protect themselves from mental and emotional abuse. Often, they have little understanding of their rights to and needs for personal, protective boundaries. Educating and assisting partners in this area also falls to those in helper roles.Initially, encourage and assist partners in the need to secure physical safety by helping them understand how essential it is that they be tested for sexually transmitted diseases, no matter what the spouses say they have or have not done. Taking this often difficult measure is a step away from denial into the reality that their partners’ actions may have placed them at physical risk.
Boundaries classes or support groups are wonderful adjuncts for partners of sex addicts if you or some other caregiver is able to accommodate that need. If a group is not available, incorporate boundary education into partners’ counseling by asking them to read books on boundaries and then processing them. As you do, you can help partners assess their needs for boundary initiation or modification in their interpersonal roles, particularly with their addicted spouses.
• Teach and inform the addicted partners. Much effort goes into educating traumatized partners about sexual addiction and compulsion and what it takes for addicts to heal. With your new awareness of partners’ pain, help them and their marriages by educating the sexual addicts about the traumatic impact their behaviors have had on their spouses. The trauma recovery model can help encourage the addicts to have awareness, understanding, compassion and patience for the traumatized partners’ healing processes, which can take much time. Use the model to help addicts grow in these ways. If addicts are open, your effort can go far toward helping their marriages survive and eventually thrive.
• Treat the partner as an individual. Often the partner experiences treatment as an extension of the betrayer’s treatment. Traumatized partners are wounded people in need of treatment and care in their own rights, given the traumatic devastation brought about by relational betrayal. Assess the person’s mental health needs, symptoms and relational realities and respond accordingly.
• Refer if necessary. If you lack the experience, understanding and training required to help someone heal from relational betrayal trauma, we recommend that you refer the partner to someone who has the necessary background. The spouse of a sexual addict encounters realities not found in most relationships; therefore, traditional marital therapy is not effective in the initial stages of treatment. As discussed earlier, marital work should follow individual work after the addict has established a solid foundation of recovery. However, we do believe that couple’s educational sessions to assist with communication and crisis intervention can be very helpful in the early stages of healing.Additionally, if a partner suffers from depression or anxiety, refer him or her to a psychiatrist for evaluation. A large percentage of partners need medication to deal with the shifts in their body chemistries due to the extreme stress produced by trauma. Often, progress eludes them until they are chemically stable again.
• For clergy. The Judeo-Christian perspective on the importance of sexual fidelity within marriage reflects the very nature of our relationship with God. For this reason, spouses of sexual addicts often feel confused about and unable to decipher the “right” course of action when sexual infidelity enters their marriages through compulsive sexual behaviors. Add to that the differing opinions about what to label sexual activities that fall short of actual physical intercourse and partners in faith-based communities can feel trapped in a maze of confusion. And if they’ve bee
n exposed to the disease model of addiction, they feel further confusion not knowing if their spouses have actual diseases over which they feel powerless or if they have sinned by violating the biblical standards of faithfulness.Faith leaders vary in their responses to traumatized partners. Some exhort the person to pray for the addict and stay the course. Others tell the person, especially a woman, to fulfill spousal obligations by becoming more sexual. Some step in and immediately confront the addict, strip him or her of leadership positions and dis-fellowship him or her from their midst. And some, like Katherine’s minister, tell the partner to never come back. Many partners of sexual addicts feel pulled between a desire to support spouses and a very real need to protect themselves.
As a spiritual leader, it falls to you to help the traumatized partner make decisions based on beliefs and values of the faith. But you, or a caregiver on your team, need to also provide comfort, support, counsel and practical help as the hurt partner navigates the pain, loss and marital upheaval. Here are some suggestions to aid you in responding in helpful ways when traumatized partners of sex addicts from your congregation seek your help in the midst of their crises.
• Listen. Most partners who seek help usually do so after discovering evidence of sexual behavior outside their marriages. Their worlds have been shattered and they are in crises, sometimes even shock or dissociative states. They need time and space to explain what has happened and to express their feelings. Listen to the pain, confusion, anger and fear without judgment, without rushing to conclusions and above all, without giving advice.
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