Discovery, disclosure, and polygraph are all terribly painful. However during that season, there can be hope for a better future. Also, we have a team of professionals on board to help us get to the other side. Often we’ve even been promised that if we make it through to the other side of disclosure, we’ll have a marriage far better than what we thought we had before Dday. Usually partners decide the new-and-improved relationship is worth the pain that accompanies healing from infidelity, so we hang on for dear life.

What I’ve been very surprised to see is that many couples don’t make progress after those steps. Not because the addict high tails it out of the marriage. He’s there… She’s there. But there’s no comfort, closeness, or anything resembling a healed marriage. There is a yo-yo where some months are tolerable and others are miserable. Marriages can be on that pendulum for years! We exhaust our therapist who might throw their hands up for lack of relational progress. The problem is clear: He’s not doing the work. He doesn’t seem interested in further change – other than his wife “getting over it.” The sadness and injustice of it all weighs heavy on a wife in this situation. So heavy, in fact, it can damage her mind and body.

I am excited to bring you this new series because this is the fruit of several betrayed partners being in this spot together. My sister friends and I have read every book, prayed with passion, and talked it out time and again. Collectively, it seems we’ve tried EVERYTHING to promote healing in ourselves, the addict, and the marriage. This series is a concentrated version of all those experiences. We came into marriage for keeps, and we won’t go down without fighting for the good. But some become stuck in the muck, walking in the boggy mire and never making it to the panoramic vistas at the top of the mountain. We need some downhill wind blowing in our faces and sunshine on our backs – we’ve been in a dark, lonely place for too long.

This series will arm you with knowledge you need to get a better view of the situation. If he is determined to not budge, we can’t look to him for comfort or cues for what’s next. You can’t make another person change just like you can’t make yourself fall asleep. But you can create an environment optimal for sleep to aid the process a little. We want to stop facilitating dysfunction in ourselves and our partner. We don’t want to make this boggy swamp our address! We are willing to make the climb to reach the mountaintop.

I don’t know if the betrayers are ever informed of the “better than before” part of the process before disclosure. Because, just to be frank, often partners are left with some slightly angry-and-withdrawn guys after they’ve been forced to spill the beans and hooked up to a polygraph machine. Some of them are more than slightly angry, they’re downright mean. I believe that standard treatment for sexual addiction is pretty effective. Many addicts, if they endure the treatment process and own their complete healing and maturation, can become sober and gain the tools needed to avoid sexually acting out. Even still, for many couples who get through phase 1 (truth established for her and sobriety intact for him), that process doesn’t make the former addict the “dreamboat husband” we were promised…. It might even feel like we’ve lost the ability to have any of the kind of OK times that we use to have before Dday. Given the battered state of the betrayed partner at this point, we can find ourselves in an acutely desperate place after years of living in a stalemate post disclosure.

In this middle part of recovery – passed addiction treatment but not yet close to warm, nice, or comfortable – it becomes clear that we still need help. We can’t live in this deadlock forever. For any partner who’s been in the recovery community for a while, you know it can be difficult to get the addict to “do this stuff.” We feel lucky if he does the disclosure, polygraph, and some therapy. We know many men won’t. But without a therapist holding him accountable to healing the relationship, progress can be slow at best. The men who have enough maturity and health to get better do. Their lives in all facets heal in reasonable time. The rest of us wait on emotional pins and needles. Wives may keep suggesting books or podcasts or even get couples support/therapy, but it can seem like this relational stuff isn’t sticking for him. Often attempts at couples therapy have been fruitless, so we don’t want to invest more money and emotional energy into those things. Maybe he “presents well” to therapists, but the time spent there never translates to real growth at home. Perhaps you got great care from some of the best professionals you could find early on. Before you know it, you’ve invested $30K and 3-4 years into this mortally wounded marriage, but, even with him sober, your marriage isn’t better. It’s cold and distant and painful.

Are you experiencing any of the following complications of the messy middle?

1. He can’t tolerate her pain or negative emotions. He’s touchy and takes it personally
2. He doesn’t want her to bring up his past indiscretions or the acting out behaviors
3. He feels shame by too many of their interactions – especially if she is drawing attention to his weaknesses or failures
4. His response to feeling shame is freeze or attack
5. He’s resentful
6. He always sees himself as the victim
7. Resistant to “doing the work” (exercises, books, podcast, therapy, change). He doesn’t want to take advice from wife, therapist, coach, pastor, or recovery friend
8. Without the escape of addiction or masks of confidence or charm, you’re seeing in earnest (maybe for the first time) serious deficits in his character and decision-making skills. Your family may be suffering from a long series of bad decisions that he doesn’t stop and correct
9. Still may not be regulating his own emotions well – he can’t identify or handle triggers
10. Unable to emotionally co-regulate with partner. This makes it nearly impossible to be a team or to solve problems together in a satisfying and effective way
11. Doesn’t see how his choices/actions impact others
12. Seems to have a lack of empathy regarding pain and hardship of those closest to him
13. They avoid and distance from problems for long periods of time with little-to-no remorse or awareness
14. Extremely fragile ego – boy is he touchy!
15. Even after quite a bit of therapy under his belt, he still seeks to have power in the marriage rather than connection
16. You see him being impulsive and/or compulsive in areas other than sexual, and these may be worsening
17. They need/demand accommodations from the wife but are unable or unwilling to accommodate her needs or preferences
18. Still hard for him to display appropriate remorse for his acting out or the pain it has cause his wife/family
19. Focuses on what the wife is doing (or isn’t doing) rather than himself
20. No hasty initiative regarding recovery, his wife, or growth
21. Your husband says he’s happy now and you’re the problem (blame shifts)
22. Still looks at women through a lustful, adolescent lens – will this ever change?!
23. Maybe he’s not hostile but he’s a master at withdrawal
24. Matters of the heart seem like a foreign language he doesn’t speak
25. He chooses to be combative way too often

This list describes husbands who aren’t physically leaving or walking away. They’re sober (presumably). These are men who claim they want to stay married. They may even attend therapy or support groups. But interpersonally, there are few positive signs of growth.

I was told by my first coach that this healing journey would be a very long one, and she did not lie! The word “despond” is defined as “to be depressed by loss of hope, confidence, or courage.” Sadly too many couples touched by sexual addiction find themselves in a place where he is sober but not better. However he seems fine if she doesn’t ”bother” him. Hopelessness is very heavy here for her. For some wives, life can be tolerable if he’s not acting out or being unkind, even without the lack of connection. Tolerable, not good. Even still, life can be marked more by what’s missing more than by what’s good when there’s no real sense of warm relating. But for others, the unfaithful partner’s continued immaturity, coldness, emotional outbursts and extreme selfishness are too much bear. The damage to your heart, health, and mind are too great in this kind of relationship, and you know this chapter of your life needs to come to an end. He’s put you through the hell of discovery and therapeutic disclosure to let you die alone here?!… One can also switch between these two groups from day to day- tolerable and intolerable. Being stuck in this place makes you feel nutty and look even worse to others. Because he isn’t storming off like a bad boy, chances are your husband still smells like a rose to those looking onto your situation – especially to himself. So it’s easy for him to convince others of his heroism at “being married to such a hard and bitter woman….” Sound familiar? If so, I hope you’ll stick around for the rest of the series.

Post Script

I had most of this series written out when I came across this INCREDIBLE video on APSATs radio! They hit the nail on the head. It’s a good thing I didn’t hear their conversation before writing, because I might have been tempted to simply direct you to their talk. I am glad I did write more on the topic, because I have some real tools to offer partners in upcoming posts. Enjoy their chat!