Impact of sexual addiction on the partner

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Impact of sexual addiction on the partner

One of the concerns with somebody who’s a sex addict, or somebody who has a character problem who betrays trust, is considering the impact on their spouse or partner. That’s a very important consideration because oftentimes a lot of the treatment is focused on the person with the problem and not allowing the treatment to focus on the partner or the spouse who has been suffering the consequences of betrayal. And that’s changing in the field, thank goodness. And what we are discovering is that the partners of sex addicts, and partners of people who have chronic infidelity have what we call PTSD: acute posttraumatic stress disorder. They have hyper vigilance. They blame themselves.They have intrusive images. They have the whole symptom profile we see with acute trauma victims.

So the field has changed to begin to treat partners of sex addicts from a very specific trauma model. This assists them to reclaim their own reality that has been lost. They’ve often felt not pretty enough, not handsome enough, not good enough. Often that was what they were told. And so, one of the experiences their partners have is that they get gas lighted, aphrase that describes a partner of the sex addict is told that she is crazy for thinking that. How could you be jealous of me? How could you even think that? When, in fact, in many instances she was right.

And so the addict or the serial cheater is defended against being exposed each for different reasons. The addict doesn’t want to feel his shame. And the serial cheater doesn’t want his narcissistic reality or esteem to be jeopardized.

And so, oftentimes when the story comes out, most of the time the spouse has been right. The partner has been right in their accusations. By that time though, they become so traumatized that they react to even the slightest stimuli. So they are sitting and watching TV and they notice the attractive woman and they can’t watch the TV anymore.

So we’d have partners who literally couldn’t go out of the house, couldn’t watch TV, because everything became a trigger to them.

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