years. More than a decade ago, after many years of individual therapy and intermittent couples work, I reached the end of the proverbial rope in my marriage. At the suggestion of the therapist I was seeing at the time, I decided I needed a thirty-day therapeutic separation11 from my husband. I realized I couldn’t keep doing the same things and expecting different results. Separation seemed like the next logical step. I didn’t want a divorce, but I couldn’t live any longer in the marriage as it was.
Therapeutic separation is a planned period of time for the couple to focus on individual work, learn new skills, reevaluate the relationship, and potentially recommit with healthier boundaries and agreements.
The day I decided to tell my husband I wanted a separation happened to be a Friday. Little did I know that my resolve would be immediately tested. When you express a limit (also known as a boundary) to someone, it must come from a place of clarity and commitment. If emotions are running high, you’ll be tempted to make threats and issue ultimatums. The problem is that ultimatums and threats are almost always hollow because they’re not grounded on a firm foundation. When requests and boundaries are based on a foundation of clarity and personal authentic power (more on that in Chapter Six), you will be unshakable. You will feel calm in the midst of the storm.
When I told my husband I wanted a thirty-day separation I was unshakable. He attempted to buy time and perhaps convince me to change my mind. He told me he was fine with leaving but he wanted to wait until Sunday. Without skipping a beat, I told him he could stay in our home until Sunday, but that I would be leaving that day with our son to stay in a hotel until he left. Had I not been clear and resolved I might have gone along with his request or gotten into a power struggle with him about who was going to leave.
Countless times I’ve heard partners ask questions like, “Why should I have to ________ (leave the family home, take a timeout, get tested for sexually transmitted infections)?” Although the frustration is understandable—after all, you didn’t cause the breach in trust—the truth is that you’re the only person you have control over. When you lose focus on your goal and engage in power struggles, you’re stuck in the victim role, and caught up in attempting to use control versus doing good boundary work.
As you will learn, one of the ways you’ll know when a boundary you’ve set is right for you is when you feel a calm, grounded resolve even in the face of pushback, resistance, or outright hostility. You will know by how you feel that it’s right. And that’s exactly how I felt in that moment.
That fateful day was a turning point in our marriage. It wasn’t the end of conflict or disappointment—those are part of being in any relationship. But it marked a fundamental shift in me and in the relationship that has lasted to this day. Of course, it also required a commitment from him to his own personal growth, and to our marriage.
The effective use of boundaries is one of the best ways to determine whether or not your relationship is salvageable.
In my case it was. However, if my husband had made different choices I would have gotten the information I needed to decide whether or not I wanted to remain in the marriage. One of the gifts of good boundary work is that it enables you to see your own limits and the limits of others. You learn how far you’re willing to go with others and how far they’re willing to go with you. When you’re clear about these two things, you avoid wasting time in relationships that aren’t healthy or fulfilling.
My request for a thirty-day separation wasn’t about threats, manipulation, punishment, ultimatums, or the many other ineffective ways we attempt to get what we want and need in relationships. My request was about reaching a limit and knowing what I needed to do to take care of me.
Limits are boundaries, and boundaries are self-care. I would even go so far as to say that boundaries are an act of self-love.
If you’re in a relationship with a sex addict who’s still acting out or is in early recovery, your life and relationship are in crisis. It’s likely you’ve been repeatedly lied to, manipulated, or “gaslighted.” Gaslighting is a term often used to describe one of the ways addicts avoid being found out. It’s a form of psychological manipulation intended to cause you to question your own sanity. For example, your partner may tell you that you didn’t hear what you know you heard, or that he said something that you’re sure he didn’t say. If these deceptive incidents repeat with regularity, you eventually lose faith in your ability to know what is real and what isn’t.
As a partner, you may have even been overtly abused—verbally, physically, or sexually. Your life may be drama-filled and chaotic. Your relationship may feel like it’s about to end, and you may wonder why you’re still in it. Living in the chaos and fog of addiction creates immense pain, suffering, loss of esteem, and undeserved consequences related to the addict’s behavior.
You may live in a constant state of anxiety and feel fundamentally unsafe in the world. Partners often experience panic episodes before and during discovery or disclosure. If you have children, you may worry about how or whether they’ve been impacted by the addict’s behaviors, or how they’ve been affected by living in a family where active addiction is present.
As a partner (or former partner) of a sex addict, you may have attempted to change the addict’s behavior or get him help in various ways. He may have told you he stopped, or that he would stop after a certain time, or that he would get help . . . but he didn’t follow through. You’ve probably made threats or issued ultimatums to the sex addict for continuing his behavior—threats on which you didn’t follow through. There have likely been broken agreements and promises that left you feeling helpless or powerless.
You want him to stop his self-destructive and relationship-destroying behaviors and you wonder why he can’t. You may have thought that if he loved you, he could—or would—stop hurting you so much. Sadly, when it comes to addiction “just do it” just doesn’t work.
I want you to understand how vulnerable you are when you take the perspective that when he stops or gets better you’ll feel better. I want you to recognize and own the power you have now, in this moment, to begin the process of healing and eventually thriving—with or without the sex addict in your life. With the skills and tools in this book, you will learn the power that comes from focusing on you, on your needs and wants, learning how to make requests when that’s appropriate, and what to do when boundaries are broken. The bad news is the sex addict’s out-of-control behavior and what it has done to you. The good news—and the solution to your pain—lies with you. You may have been a victim of his deception and betrayal, but you are no longer a victim. You have the power to take charge of your life beginning right now.
Knowledge is power, and this is especially true when it comes to breaking through the fog and pain of being in relationship with a sex addict. This book will give you, as a partner or former partner, the information you need about sex addiction and sex addiction recovery so that you can make informed and effective choices in your best interest.
Even if you’ve had prior experiences in relationships with addicts of other kinds, don’t expect to use the same skill set and strategies with the sex addict in your life. There are fundamental differences between sex addiction and alcohol or other drug addictions, both in the recovery process and in the issues partners face. You will save yourself time and heartache by knowing the difference.
PARTNERS OF SEX ADDICTS: CO-ADDICTS OR TRAUMA SURVIVORS?
In the early days of sex addiction treatment, the focus was primarily on the sex addict. Most of the literature
