your compulsive impulses. In learning how to tolerate your negative feelings, you build the internal structure that allows you to see that you may feel extremely uncomfortable in a given moment, but you are still okay. When you begin to know that you can survive the painful impulses you are having, then the grip that the sexually addictive coping strategy has on you is loosened.
Broken Trust
One of the spokes on the wheel of sexual addiction is shame. Shame leads to the desire to cover up, and covering up leads to lying—outright false statements, and lies of omission. Such lies are one of the most troubling parts of the addictive behavior for the partner of an addict.
If you are sexually compulsive, you may recognize by now that the sexually addictive behaviors that objectify women—behaviors such as using porn excessively, flirting inappropriately, going to adult entertainment locations or websites, engaging in affairs—are hurtful to your partner. They prevent you from engaging intimately. These behaviors quite obviously break the bonds of intimacy. They damage the relationship and impair trust. But we often hear from partners that the factor that is the hardest to reconcile, the hardest to forgive, is the lying.
Let’s put this in perspective. As human animals, a part of how we naturally navigate in our world is through what we experience as normalcy, as regularity. We get out of bed in the morning and know that the sky will be up, the ground will be down, our eyes will be our eye color, our hair (if we have any) will be our hair color. When shocking events occur that are out of our expectations, we become destabilized. Our brains need time to reorder and reintegrate the new information.
If a man is having an affair, is cruising for prostitutes, or is spending late hours at work masturbating to porn, some people believe that his partner somehow intuitively knows. We have not experienced that to be true. Quite often, the partner of a sex addict does not know anything about the nature of her partner’s activities. However, she generally does suspect that something is off. Generally, she has questioned her partner about a suspicion and he has lied in response to her query. She senses something to be true (“things are not quite right”) and the person she trusts, her intimate partner, is telling her that her senses are wrong (“things are fine”) when really she is not wrong. This is destabilizing. She begins to question her perception of reality. When she finally does begin to see the truth of her suspicions, not only has her ability to trust her partner been damaged, her capacity to trust her own sense of reality has been impaired.
Often, someone in the grip of addiction can, in a given moment, so fervently believe his own lies that the deceitful fabrication can actually register as truth to his partner. It is important for both partners to understand and hold compassion for the destabilizing that has occurred because of the lies. The bottom line here is that if you have been lying to your partner, you have rocked her sense of reality. If your partner has been lying to you, your sense of reality has been distorted. Distorted reality can make you feel kind of crazy. Recovering from that takes time. It begins with simply admitting to what has been done and hearing the admission. The admission then needs to be followed by telling the truth again and again and again—in what we call an “undefended” way. In Chapter 8 , we discuss more fully the process of undefended honesty.
Megan and Steve
Megan and Steve met in their mid-forties, and both felt they had finally found the person who really understood them. In the beginning of their marriage, they felt deep love, connection, and passion for each other. They both reported that early in their marriage their sex life was passionate and satisfying.
Steve had inherited his family’s property, so Megan and Steve lived in Steve’s childhood home. After they had been
Broken Trust
One of the spokes on the wheel of sexual addiction is shame. Shame leads to the desire to cover up, and covering up leads to lying—outright false statements, and lies of omission. Such lies are one of the most troubling parts of the addictive behavior for the partner of an addict.
If you are sexually compulsive, you may recognize by now that the sexually addictive behaviors that objectify women—behaviors such as using porn excessively, flirting inappropriately, going to adult entertainment locations or websites, engaging in affairs—are hurtful to your partner. They prevent you from engaging intimately. These behaviors quite obviously break the bonds of intimacy. They damage the relationship and impair trust. But we often hear from partners that the factor that is the hardest to reconcile, the hardest to forgive, is the lying.
Let’s put this in perspective. As human animals, a part of how we naturally navigate in our world is through what we experience as normalcy, as regularity. We get out of bed in the morning and know that the sky will be up, the ground will be down, our eyes will be our eye color, our hair (if we have any) will be our hair color. When shocking events occur that are out of our expectations, we become destabilized. Our brains need time to reorder and reintegrate the new information.
If a man is having an affair, is cruising for prostitutes, or is spending late hours at work masturbating to porn, some people believe that his partner somehow intuitively knows. We have not experienced that to be true. Quite often, the partner of a sex addict does not know anything about the nature of her partner’s activities. However, she generally does suspect that something is off. Generally, she has questioned her partner about a suspicion and he has lied in response to her query. She senses something to be true (“things are not quite right”) and the person she trusts, her intimate partner, is telling her that her senses are wrong (“things are fine”) when really she is not wrong. This is destabilizing. She begins to question her perception of reality. When she finally does begin to see the truth of her suspicions, not only has her ability to trust her partner been damaged, her capacity to trust her own sense of reality has been impaired.
Often, someone in the grip of addiction can, in a given moment, so fervently believe his own lies that the deceitful fabrication can actually register as truth to his partner. It is important for both partners to understand and hold compassion for the destabilizing that has occurred because of the lies. The bottom line here is that if you have been lying to your partner, you have rocked her sense of reality. If your partner has been lying to you, your sense of reality has been distorted. Distorted reality can make you feel kind of crazy. Recovering from that takes time. It begins with simply admitting to what has been done and hearing the admission. The admission then needs to be followed by telling the truth again and again and again—in what we call an “undefended” way. In Chapter 8 , we discuss more fully the process of undefended honesty.
Megan and Steve
Megan and Steve met in their mid-forties, and both felt they had finally found the person who really understood them. In the beginning of their marriage, they felt deep love, connection, and passion for each other. They both reported that early in their marriage their sex life was passionate and satisfying.
Steve had inherited his family’s property, so Megan and Steve lived in Steve’s childhood home. After they had been
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