Sex Addiction Recovery:
by Thomas Olschner, Ph.D., The Intimacy Center, Westminster, Colorado
The
first step: you call for help. You may be in one of the most painful
crises of your life. Or you might be calling because your wife thinks
you have a problem…and you’re not at all sure that you do. Whatever
circumstances led you here, you are wanting to figure out your sexual
behavior and what you can do about it.This article is designed to give you some information about what lies ahead for you. At The Intimacy Center we believe that each person’s journey is a unique one but that the commonalities among our journeys make us a resource for each other. With a willingness to be honest with yourself and others you can deepen your understanding of what has gone wrong in your life and gain tools to improve it.
How Do I Get Started?
At The Intimacy Center we start with a 3-Step process:
- initial session
- assessment and development of a treatment plan
- treatment
The initial session should accomplish the following:
- For you to tell "your story" and explain what you are wanting to accomplish through therapy
- That
the therapist summarizes well what the client(s) have expressed and to
give an initial description of how therapy could be helpful
- For the client to assess whether it "feels" like a good fit between client and therapist
- For the therapist to describe the components of an assessment process
The basic list of written questionnaires is:
-Intake Questionnaire (gives information on presenting problems, family background, symptom checklist, etc.)
-Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory – III (MCMI-III) (This is a personality test that gives us information about problematic interpersonal patterns
you may have.)
-Sexual Dependency Inventory (gives the therapist a thorough history of the out-of-control sexual behavior
Additional assessment devices might be used to clarify other clinical problems such as depression and anxiety. Typically, the written questionnaires are returned and scored prior to the second session. When the assessment is complete the therapist will then meet with the client and present the treatment plan. The treatment plan will include recommendations for specific treatment disciplines that the client will carry out.
3. Treatment
The first task of treatment is to develop a personal recovery plan; at The Intimacy Center the client fills out the Relapse Prevention Plan which is his/her ongoing plan for recovery work and plan for maintaining sexual sobriety. The five components of the Relapse Prevention Plan are: clarifying sexual behaviors which are a break in sexual sobriety (called "bottom line behaviors"), goals for self-nurture, regular treatment disciplines, plans for managing likely sex addiction triggers (Risk Situations), and devising a plan to interrupt any urges to act out sexually (Escape Plan).
Recovery from any addictive problem is always a multi-faceted endeavor. Individual therapy is never sufficient: "it takes a system to change a system." Clients are urged to find a good 12-Step recovery group. Many clients enter a sexual addiction psychotherapy group fairly early in recovery. Many clients need marital therapy to deal with pain and crisis in their marriage.
What Does Recovery Take?
"I have a problem. What is it going to take to get better?"
Initially recovery takes:
- A willingness to do the work of recovery
- A willingness to work at stopping the self-destructive behavior
- A guide (this could be your therapist and/or a sponsor in a 12-Step program)
- Exposure to new ways of looking at yourself (reading books, listening to other people’s experience of you)
- A
group of people traveling in the same direction. This could be a
12-Step group for sex addiction or a psychotherapy group (for sex addiction) or both.
- A
deepening spiritual life. Sex addiction says, "I can go it alone."
Spirituality is about experiencing God. It is about addressing the
"ultimate questions": Why am I here? What should my life be about? Deep self-reflection.
- Learning new ways to nurture yourself.
- Learning
healthier ways of relating. This is about true intimacy: heart-to-heart
relating. A client recently told me: "Life minus love equals zero."
- Healing from painful memories.
So what should you do for your partner? First, quit lying. If you’re not ready to make a full disclosure (see below) then tell your partner you’re not yet ready to tell her the whole story and brace yourself for more anger. But don’t lie and say, "That is everything" when it is not. Second, take responsibility for your actions.
Don’t blame her, your lost job, or anything else. If you have a serious problem that has been around for a long time, acknowledge it as that. Third, listen to her pain. Let her cry. Validate that what she is feeling is a normal reaction. This doesn’t mean that you have to tolerate her abusing you out of her anger. You can ask for a Time Out. Fourth, tell her that you will get help and do the work of getting better. Then do it.
Couples in crisis benefit from therapy to help them move constructively through it. A therapist can help you express your feelings and needs in positive ways and to make plans for reestablishing the trust in the relationship.
If you are in the situation where your partner "doesn’t know" about your out-of-control sexual behavior then the relationship may not be in crisis…but you are in a pickle. You will soon realize that attempting recovery while keeping your partner completely in the dark is a very difficult proposition. It would be like attempting a house remodel without your partner finding out about it. Or perhaps you can pull it off for a while because your marriage is so distant that she is used to not knowing what is going on in your life. You may fear that if you tell her about your sexual problems that she will leave you. Your therapist can help you assess this predicament and make a plan for moving forward.
A Few Words to the Partner
There are few things more painful than sexual betrayal. It is also likely that the experience of being lied to is more painful than the sexual betrayal. You may be feeling like your world is upside-down. This man that you put your trust in, that you’ve invested your life in, has betrayed you. It may be a betrayal with another woman (or man) or it may be the betrayal of his "preferring" women in porn or on a phone-sex line. The pain is the same.
You may be wondering if you are a fool to try to save this relationship. Or you may be clear that you’ll do anything you can to save it. For sure, you know that some very big changes need to be made. And it goes beyond stopping the out-of-bounds sexual behavior. It is likely that there are huge intimacy gaps in your marriage. You probably long for an emotional connection that hasn’t been there for a very long time.
You wonder whether you can ever trust this man again and whether you would be a fool to trust him. You may be so angry that you’ve gone over the line and become abusive. You may feel that there is no one in your world who can really understand what you are going through. This isn’t the typical topic of conversation with friends at Starbucks.
Here are a few suggestions:
First, get support for yourself. Meeting with a therapist who can help you make sense of your feelings and needs is often a good place to start.
Second, remind yourself that your partner’s sexual problems are not a condemnation of your self-worth or sexual attractiveness. He has a problem with fleeing into objectified sexuality to meet non-sexual needs. Reality can't compete with fantasy, nor should it ever try to do so. Your feelings of rejection are real. But it is not because you don't measure up. He has a problem. Of course, this doesn't mean that you are perfect. No doubt, you do things in the relationship that aren't very loving and cause your partner additional stress and pain. But your partner's acting out is not about you.
Third, get more support for yourself. You need a group where your pain and struggles can be understood. CoSA and S-Anon are two 12-Step fellowships for partners of sex addicts. You might find tremendous support there. A psychotherapy group for partner’s in your situation can be a safe place to learn about what you are going through and what you can do about it.
Fourth, assert that your partner do three things to address his sexual problem:
To develop a Recovery Plan that has the approval of an expert in sex addiction and then give you a copy of that plan
To vigorously work that plan
To touch base with you regularly about his efforts to work that plan
This will be the basis for your rebuilding trust. Words are cheap. Actions cannot be faked. You don’t have to worry about what you don’t know (what is he doing when you’re not around) when you have evidence of his growth when you are around.
Fifth, be willing to work on yourself. All of us are on a journey. View this as an opportunity to grow and learn new ways of relating. The healthier you get the stronger will be the pressure on your partner to do his work.
Sixth, ask for some conjoint marital sessions when you need help in negotiating through this crisis. You may need assistance to express your anger and hurt in constructive ways, to negotiate boundaries that increase your sense of safety, and to secure an agreement of how each of you will be working on your recovery.
Working at "deepening" the relationship will need to come later when some trust has been restored.
What about 12-Step Groups?
More people have recovered from alcoholism through working the 12 Steps of AA than from any other approach. Currently there are well over 50 weekly 12 Step meetings along the Front Range of Colorado that address sexual addiction problems. Some of these are for partners of sex addicts and some are for couples. These groups have helped thousands of people maintain sexual sobriety and to recover from their sex addictive problems.
There are three primary 12 Step "fellowships" for recovery from sex addiction: SA, SAA, and SLAA. Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) is a fellowship primarily for married men and other men with a more traditional value system regarding sexuality. The focus of the work is on recovery from "lust" and the fellowship has a set sexual sobriety definition: sex only between married people. Some SA groups have a strong spiritual focus. Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) has a broader range of participants and encourages each participant to define his/her own sexual sobriety. It is more common for there to be a few women in SAA groups than in SA groups. Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) includes men and women recovering from "love addiction" (relationship addictions and romance addictions). These groups are often evenly split between the genders.
For partners of sex addicts there are two fellowships in Colorado: CoSA (Codependents of Sex Addicts) and S-Anon (loosely affiliated with SA).
Recovering Couples Anonymous (RCA) is a safe place for couples to get support for their relationships as they journey through recovery. Most RCA groups are made up only of couples dealing with sex addiction.
Up-to-date info on 12 Step meetings can be found at: coloradoservicegroup.org/meetings.htm
What Is Group Therapy About?
Anywhere in the world that you find people recovering from addictive problems you will find them meeting in groups. There are several advantages to group work: a group offers a place to figure out and change your dysfunctional patterns of relating; a group offers you a variety of perspectives through which to understand your problems; a person in recovery needs friends to support his/her recovery; and group therapy is cheaper.
Sex addiction is, at its core, an intimacy disorder. The sexual acting out is mostly a symptom of reaching out for a (fantacized) connection because of the loneliness caused by isolation. We live in a society of commuting alone to work, "professional relationships", electric garage door openers, and privacy fences.
We can go a whole day without a conversation below the surface. We live our lives of "quiet desperation." We become lonely. Men attempt to get all their relational needs met by their wives but without the intimacy skills to even make that relationship an emotionally connecting one.
The psychotherapy groups for sex addiction have two areas of focus: (1) on understanding ones sexual addictive patterns and learning tools for gaining sexual sobriety and (2) understanding ones dysfunctional relationship patterns and changing them.
Two things specifically help group members develop community: a required "community group" (which meets without the therapist for 45 minutes or more after the psychotherapy group) and twice-weekly phone calls to a "phone partner." The therapy group becomes a "microcosm" of ones life, i.e. one replicates ones typical relationships in the group. The intimacy disorder comes to life. As the patterns are identified and the choices clarified group members take steps to grow true friendships, sometimes becoming the deepest friendships of their life.
What If I’m Not a Religious Person?
Religion is about developing practices that attempt to sustain a spiritual life. Spirituality is the awareness of what is beyond ourselves. At The Intimacy Center we believe that every human being is a spiritual being. But we respect each individual person’s spiritual journey. While we are coming from a Christian spiritual experience we believe that every client has a spiritual experience that is worth expressing and a spiritual purpose that is worth being explored. We attempt to create a safety in groups that allow people to explore the important questions of life such as: "Why am I here?" and "What do I want to accomplish with my life?"
Do I Have To Tell My Partner Everything?
The fortunate folks are the ones who have already "come clean" and have experienced a grace and love that says, "I want to work this through." If you are asking this question then you probably have some secrets that you are afraid of revealing. Perhaps, your wife has discovered your sexual chat but you haven’t revealed that you’ve actually met up with women sexually. Or you’ve been caught in an affair but haven’t disclosed that there were two others. Ultimately, it will be very
difficult to build a healthy relationship on top of a deception of who you are. You will hold onto the shame that says, "If she really knew me she’d leave me." We believe that every person deserves loving relationships in which he/she is completely known, and still loved. Warts and all. If you don’t "tell all" that you are you will never experience true acceptance.
This doesn't mean that you need to tell every detail of your sexual misbehavior. In fact, there are many details that your partner may ask you for that you should lovingly decline to answer. These details will probably only plague your partner unnecessarily.
Your partner needs to know if you have participated in any sexual practices that present a health risk to her/him. Your partner also needs to know about any sexual behavior with people whom they know. Your partner will need to gain a clear picture of your sex addiction, what triggers you, how you’ve lied and hid, and steps you’re taking to recover.
The most damage is done by a "step-wise" disclosure, that is, telling your partner part of the story and saying that "that is all" only to reveal another part later. Each disclosure makes it more difficult to rebuild trust. It is far better to say, "I am committed to telling you the whole story but I’m not ready now. I’m not even sure yet what is helpful to tell you and what is unnecessary detail. This is what I can tell you now."
Make a distinction in your mind between honesty and transparency. Commit yourself to absolute honesty: there is no place for lies. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be 100% transparent: you can have thoughts that you choose not to reveal. It is more loving not to reveal certain thoughts. For example, if you have a dream one night of making passionate love to an old girlfriend it may not be helpful to your wife to hear about it. The goal is to have enough transparency to be well-known by your partner.
It is also important to do a disclosure in ways that are respectful of your partner’s needs; for example, at a time when she/he has time to process it. Blurting out a confession in the heat of an angry argument is likely to do as much harm as good. For helpful ideas on preparing for a disclosure read Disclosing Secrets by Corley and Schneider. Some disclosures result in divorce. Most do not. Each person must decide when the time is right.
Even though your healthy recovery depends on a full disclosure to your partner that doesn’t mean your life should be an open book to everyone you know. It is better to select carefully the people who can be trusted with a disclosure
What Do I Do First?
- Complete the assessment questionnaires
- Complete the Relapse Prevention Plan and review with your therapist
- Start working your Relapse Prevention Plan
Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado. She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928
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