of sex addiction treatment including Patrick Carnes, Ken Adams, Stefanie Carnes, Alex Katehakis, and Rob Weiss. And to Kelly McDaniel, for her words of wisdom and encouragement at a chance meeting just a month before the manuscript was due.
Having traveled my own path of recovery for the past twenty-eight years, there are many women and men to whom I offer deep thanks for sharing their experience, strength, and hope. I want to especially thank several key individuals who must remain anonymous, yet have contributed so much to my personal growth and the creation of this book. I am eternally grateful to you.
I also want to thank Lynn Grodzki for her practical and clearheaded guidance, as well as Lisa Tener and Bill O’Hanlon for their expert advice that helped me realize my dream of writing a book. Special thanks to the staff of Central Recovery Press and Eliza Tutellier, my editor.
Lastly, I want to thank my clients—partners and addicts alike—who have trusted me at the most vulnerable and critical times of their lives. Witnessing their transformation and the tenacious resilience of the human spirit is a persistent source of hope, joy, and inspiration to me.
“Truth is powerful and it prevails.”
—Sojourner Truth
The discovery or disclosure that your partner has betrayed you and your relationship in the most intimate way possible—the sexual bond—is devastating. It turns your world upside down and makes you doubt everything you thought you knew about your partner, your relationship, or even yourself. You may doubt your own perceptions and your reality. To choose to stay in a relationship crippled by sexual betrayal and to work through the pain, loss, and uncertainty is no less than heroic, for both the partner and the sex addict.
For more than eight years as a licensed clinical social worker and certified sex addiction therapist, I have worked with partners of sex addicts and sex addicts in individual, group, and couples therapy. I have treated partners in varying stages of their healing journey, beginning with the pre-discovery phase, through the crisis stage, and into the growth and thriving stage. One of the greatest joys of my work is to witness the transformation of my clients. The personal and relational growth that is possible with commitment, perseverance, and hard work is remarkable.
I’ve seen firsthand the pain and suffering endured by partners of sex addicts caused by lack of information, misinformation, or the absence of good self-care and boundaries. What I know for sure is that if you’re in an intimate relationship with someone struggling with out-of-control sexual behavior, you must arm yourself with knowledge and expert guidance.
You may think that if your sex addict partner gets help, all your problems will be solved. I hope to persuade you to adopt another, more powerful mindset. You’ve been deceived, betrayed, and deeply wounded. These experiences alone warrant a period of focused and deliberate self-care and healing.
There are many residual effects of living with an addict still active in his addiction. Your esteem has likely been eroded over time, impacting the way you feel about yourself physically, sexually, and emotionally. If you’ve been with your partner for many years, you may have lost respect for yourself, wondering why you’re still in the relationship, or why you “put up” with repeated indiscretions and disappointments.
Living with active addiction often means a life of broken promises, empty threats, lies, and other crazy-making experiences. Once surrounded by the fog of addiction, you feel as though you’re at the mercy of the addict’s unpredictable and chaotic dance. But that is an illusion.
With the tools of the 5-Step Boundary Solution (5-SBS) presented in this book, you will regain your ability to identify and trust your own reality. You will learn how to reclaim your personal power by taking action to get your needs met rather than waiting, wishing, or hoping for the sex addict to stop his behaviors so that you can get on with your life and feel better.
This book is especially helpful if you
• don’t know what boundaries are;
• are confused about how to set boundaries;
• aren’t sure if you have a right to set boundaries;
• have set boundaries in the past but didn’t know what to do when they were violated;
• come from a family where boundaries were frequently violated or nonexistent.
Chapter One, “Your Future Is Not Your Past,” starts with the bold promise that even though you’ve been living in the fog of sex addiction and were profoundly betrayed by the most important person in your life—there is hope. You will learn the ways sex addiction has impacted you, why you’ve struggled to maintain your reality, and how the 5-SBS can guide you through the process of gaining clarity and finding serenity, by setting and maintaining effective boundaries.
Chapter Two, “Not All Addictions Are Created Equal: What You Need to Know about Sex Addiction,” focuses on the basics of addiction and the important differences between sex addiction and other forms of addiction. You may be skeptical about the sex addiction label and wonder if it’s just a convenient excuse for bad behavior. This question is addressed, along with an outline of the fundamentals of a good first-year addiction recovery plan for sex addicts.
Chapter Three, “First Things First: How to Recognize a Good Boundary When You See One,” discusses our natural and innate urge to seek safety and why boundaries are essential for your healing. You will learn the two functions of boundaries, the use of “non-negotiable” boundaries, along with some of the common boundaries set by partners of sex addicts in the early stages of discovery and/or disclosure.
Chapter Four, “Boundary Solution Step 1: Knowing and Owning Your Reality,” shows how being in relationship with an addict has a devastating impact on your ability to know and trust your reality. You will learn specific tools to recognize and honor your innate capacity to recognize your truth so that you can regain trust in your reality and intuition.
In Chapter Five, “Boundary Solution Step 2: Getting Your Needs Met,” you will identify the specific needs that aren’t currently being met in your life and in your relationship, and you will create a vision for the future. By starting with the end in sight, you’ll be better able to recognize the boundaries you need to set.
Chapter Six, “Boundary Solution Step 3: Identifying Your Power Center,” focuses on the ways in which powerlessness, authentic personal power, and “power over” manifest in relationships, and how working with power dynamics can enrich or damage your relationship. You will learn the difference between expectations and contracts, and how to use authentic personal power to create an action plan. By owning your power you will avoid the dangers of not taking action, remaining in a victim position, or creating toxic power struggles with the sex addict.
In Chapter Seven, “Boundary Solution Step 4: Creating and Implementing Your Action Plan,” you will learn the difference between ultimatums, demands, and requests. You will understand why demands and ultimatums don’t work, and why making requests is the most effective way to gain clarity and resolution. You will learn how to make clear, effective requests and what to do when your partner says “no” to a request.
Chapter Eight, “Boundary Solution Step 5: Evaluate Your Results: Mission Accomplished . . . or Not: When Boundaries Are Broken,” invites you to take a moment to celebrate if your efforts have been successful, and addresses what to do when boundaries don’t work, are broken, or are violated. This is one
