If you know Ashlyn and Coby from the podcast, The Betrayed, the Addicted, and the Expert, you’ve perhaps heard them say, “We are in recovery, just like you, only two steps ahead.” S. Heart and I are definitely IN the boat. I am excited to go through this series about addiction with you. I’ve been a psychology geek for a long time, and in recovery, I’ve consumed tons of materials and had the opportunity to receive care from some of the very best professionals in the field (same for S. Heart). However, I want you to know that understanding addiction hasn’t healed what the addiction broke. I can know and understand this material but that doesn’t make my brain instantly reintegrate and calm down. My coaches and therapists have seen my need for help grasping some of the most basic relational concepts – and I still have a ways to go.

You see, sex isn’t your partner’s problem. It’s a bad solution to a deeper, bigger problem. The complicated kind of grief and destruction this addiction creates reflects that the roots and cure aren’t quick and simple. Quips about addiction being “a disease”, “time healing all wounds” or “forgiveness being a cure-all” won’t touch this addiction or the mess it leaves in its wake. All of this is to say: I understand this isn’t simplistic. I understand that you’re confused. I understand that the pain has been around for a long time. I understand that you’re following a treatment plan and still feel lost at sea. It makes sense. Maybe this post will help you see why, which will help you feel seen and understood. All of these steps add up to move us to a more healed state.

What all addictions DO have in common include: Addiction is defined simply as “continued use despite negative consequences.” Addiction will be either a chemical addiction (where you put a substance into your body) or a process addiction (a behavior). Addictions usher increasing loss into the addict’s life accompanied by an inability to stop – or even an inability to feel the losses. With all addictions, the loved ones of the addict suffer. If the losses become too much, they can experience trauma. Addictions take over. And the addict seems all too willing to pay the price – no matter what it is. “Addiction wants you in the hospital, in prison, or in the grave.” As the addiction expands in the addict’s life, unmanageability increases. This forces the addict’s loved ones to either step up and take care of life or let the consequences start piling up. It’s frightening and painful to be the sober adult in this situation. All addicts, regardless of the particular addiction, have a stunted emotional maturity. Partners of sex addicts get to live through this and more.

This post is extremely long because there are many ways in which sexual addiction differs from other addictions for partners. I’ve italicized the difference in each paragraph in case you need to breeze through this post.

In this post, we talked about the elements needed to create the magic of intimate partnership. These elements – TRUST (transparency), COMMITMENT (both parties act to promote the wellbeing of the other), and CALM (the ability to co-regulate emotions together) – are baseline behaviors for all marriages. We come into marriage trusting our spouse and being committed to their good, because healthy adults know intuitively that’s part of the deal. Infidelity trashes every one of these important ingredients, which makes it nearly impossible to feel safe enough to be vulnerable. Sexual addiction destroys the foundation of intimate partnership.

Author Helen Fisher does a good job explaining the brain in love and in break-up. Humans are designed to pair bond. We are surrounded by couples – and that won’t change anytime soon. While men and women may want slightly different things out of a committed pair bond, the truth remains that we still DO want one. If you and your spouse part ways, one or both of you will likely end up in another pair bond because your brain is designed to do just that. Fisher also conducted extensive experiments measuring what happens in the brain when an intimate partnership ends. She says it’s perhaps the most painful experience humans can be in. MJ Denis does a great job here explaining why the attachment rupture created by infidelity is so destructive to the human soul, mind, heart, and body. Attachment is designed by God to be exclusive. We’re not attached to every guy we see or to just anyone…. We’re not attached to all children…we’re attached to our children. When a mother nurses her infant, opiates are released in their brains. God designed attachment to be a strong glue, because attachment in family systems is serious business. Sexual addiction breaks attachment, which is one of the most painful experiences humans go through.

Addicts are altering their emotional state. They’re, in essence, numbing or getting high. This is true for process addictions as well. They’re after a certain feeling state. The difference with sexual addiction, though, is that sex involves another person! Other addictions abuse inanimate objects, but in sexual addiction, the addict uses another person’s body to arouse themselves for sexual intent. They objectify people. Sex should only happen with consent from both parties. The woman jogging down the street has no intention of being used to sexually arouse anyone. She’s just exercising. Sexualizing other people without their consent is what Pia Mellody calls acting from an offending position, because you’re breaking healthy boundaries of human interaction. Non-relational sex isn’t healthy. Reducing humans to body parts that exist simply to sexually arouse yourself is sick and immature. Jim Wilder does a great job of teaching how we all should be maturing out of predatory behavior in this video. God wants men to protect all women! The converse is still true when sex addicts devalue someone for not sexually arousing them. Sadly, this way of thinking and behaving is rampant in our culture. Sexual addiction habituates being a sexual offender toward other human beings.

Marriage is a partnership. Two lives become one – which is more than sharing a business, for example. We share a family. We share sexuality that’s designed to live only between the two of us. We vow to forsake all others. Especially in Christian marriages, we believe that sexual activity outside of marriage is sin. (Sex before marriage is the sin of fornication while sex outside of your marriage is called adultery. Not committing adultery is also one of the 10 commandments.) The faithful partner has kept their sexuality within the confines of the marriage. When a cheating partner jumps the fence, without consent, and participates in sexual activity outside of the relationship, the faithful partner experiences the double bind of being harmed in the area that she also shares with the perpetrator. If your business partner cheats you, your marriage partner can help you heal and move on. Furthermore, there are many other business partners out there. But when your marriage partner, the one who vowed to protect, love, and cherish you, betrays you in an area that was meant to be yours alone, it makes the healing of that offense complicated. The betraying partner took all the power that was designed to be shared away from the betrayed and leaves her with severe consequences. Then she is required to still interact with him in close quarters. On a podcast, a rape survivor said marital betrayal was more painful than rape. How is a brain supposed to process the pain of being hit by a bus then discovering it was the love of your life behind the wheel? Sexual addiction in marriage turns your intimate partner into your perpetrator.

This addiction is different also because few pastors or professionals know how to treat sex addiction. Many treat it as a marriage problem – and it’s not. A nicer wife or more sex won’t do anything for this addiction. When a betrayed partner encounters poor therapy, it increases her trauma. Good sex addiction treatment is very hard to find.

Porn addicts fail to realize there is an entire industry behind the production of sex. Produced sex is about as fake as it gets. There are entire crews behind the scenes: lighting, hair and make-up, post production and more. Bodies are altered, even via plastic surgery. Women are always smiling, even when they’re being physically harmed. They’re always turned on – which isn’t true for anyone. They smile even when they’re exploited. Would you be thrilled to have your pants stripped off in public? No. This isn’t normal human behavior, and it’s not the way normal lovers behave. Porn normalizes inappropriate, exploitative, and even illegal behavior. It’s evil. The porn industry must standardize “the look” for faster Pavlovian responses of the users to get you hooked and hooked fast. And before you know it, your body doesn’t respond to the real thing any more. Sex addiction causes the users to redefine sexual expectations and responses to something unrealistic and possibly even illegal.

Phil’s first therapist was an addiction counselor. He said in his opinion, the reason why sex addiction was so dangerous is because while chemical addictions affect two neurochemicals in the brain, sex addiction affects nine. I don’t know how to fact check that, but we do know sex addicts get high off of their own manipulated brain chemicals which affect our sex hormones to create physical responses – and we do know the chemicals at play. We will discuss this in more detail in another post. We also know the bonding chemical oxytocin protects what it’s bonded to to the exclusion of other people. Sex addiction has enormous impact on neurochemistry, one impact is SA trains the addict’s brain to seek and protect the addiction over their spouse.

Other addictions have physical evidence – bottles of alcohol, missing money, accumulation of things, weight gain, body deterioration, etc. Porn is anonymous, affordable (Free!), and available (sadly unavoidable on the internet). Porn addicts become experts at hiding their tracks. Sex addiction is the easiest addiction to hide!

Sex addiction carries a lot of stigma. Your friends and church don’t know what to do with you. It’s shameful. Some addictions, like workaholism or religious addiction, have very little stigma around them. However, as many wives of sex addicts know, people respond in strange ways because this addiction isn’t understood, especially in Christian circles.

On the other hand, porn can be normalized in the world! This is very confusing and crazy-making: stigmatized and normalized! Our society has moved toward anything-goes sexuality, removing sexual norms. Many people believe that all men use porn or lust. The wife can be shamed for not being okay with it. The truth is most women do not like their partner using porn because we expect sex to be exclusive in a marriage. The world can normalize porn, but we still feel cheated and hurt when our partner uses it.

We’ve all heard the statement, “How do you know when an addict is lying? When their mouth is moving.” Addicts lie, and we’ll learn more about why throughout this series. However, when the lying is about ultimate things such as your family, marriage, trust, sex, use of family’s belongings like computers/phones, living out faith, etc., it has a deleterious effect on the partner’s security and even identity, in a way that other addictions don’t seem to. Our past is different than we believed it to be, and our future is uncertain as well. Our roles change (married to single), or our job changes, or our address changes…. One thing is for certain, we go from being treasured by our spouse (at least we thought we were) to betrayed and deceived (less desirable than porn). Our precious little family goes from secure to threatened. Sex addiction destroys a partner’s self concept and view of the future.

With most addictions, the addictive chemical or behavior can be eradicated from the addict’s life. This isn’t true for food or sexual addictions. We’re all sexual creatures and we carry our sexual hormones around at all times. This is complicated for a couple to navigate. Scantily clad women are used to sell everything. On top of that, women in society are taking beauty cues from a culture that’s been pornified. It feels as if there are no safe spaces for sex addicts. Alcohol isn’t available for free on every other street corner…. Sex addicts can’t get away from the addictive material.

Tolerance is the physical reaction where a body or brain acclimates to certain chemicals requiring more to get the same high. Not all addictions have this effect on a body, but sex addiction does. Tolerance means that sex addiction *always* escalates.

The consequences of addictions vary because the danger level of each one varies. Sex addiction is weighty. Sex brings new life into the world. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that those who sleep with prostitutes become one body with her. In the world of pornography, things can cross into the under-age world very quickly, which is criminal. There are life-threatening diseases contracted from sexual acting out that one won’t get from a gaming addiction. Paul says that sexual sin is the one sin you commit against yourself! This makes sense in light of what we know about brain chemistry today! Porn-induced erectile dysfunction is a very sad and real consequences rampant in culture today. Listen to how the writer of Proverbs talks about these steep consequences:

Proverbs 6:27 "Can a man carry fire next to his chest
and his clothes not be burned?
28  Or can one walk on hot coals
and his feet not be scorched?
29  So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife;
none who touches her will go unpunished.
30  People do not despise a thief if he steals
to satisfy his appetite when he is hungry,
31  but if he is caught, he will pay sevenfold;
he will give all the goods of his house.
32  He who commits adultery lacks sense;
he who does it destroys himself.
33  He will get wounds and dishonor,
and his disgrace will not be wiped away."

Sins like stealing allow for restitution to be made. But sexual sin destroys the one who does it, and the disgrace is life-long. Sex addiction carries weightier consequences with God and man.

Sex addiction affects your legacy and the impact you have on your children in a particular, far-reaching way. What story will our kids have about their parents’ relationship? As your children enter teen and young adult years, they’re developing a world view and you teach them how to handle more mature topics. As they look for guidance and role models, everyone knows not to look to addicts for life advice in certain areas. No one goes to an obese person for health tips. We don’t ask the junkie how to handle drugs. No one wants to shop with a hoarder. Nor do we ask the broke gambler for money advice. Career paths of workaholics don’t appeal to even young kids. But when steering our children into adulthood, how can we not speak to them about marriage, healthy sexual practice, the importance of saving sex for marriage and being faithful to your promise, how to treat members of the opposite sex, dangers of bad internet habits, living our lives in such a way to bless our children and grandchildren, being in private who we claim to be in public, how should a husband treat a wife and vice versa- how did their dad treat their mom and honor his vows to her? How will that impact how they live out their marriage? What place will you have to speak into their adult lives? Our kids need vital guidance in these areas. We are all descendants to people yet to be born. How we handle our marriage today, impacts THEM for years to come. Sex addiction complicates how we teach our children about serious things such as sexuality, marriage, integrity, and more.

God doesn’t give very many outs to married people. But, he does give one! Infidelity can end a marriage. Overeating can’t, gaming too much can’t, even losing oneself to drugs or alcohol doesn’t necessarily end a marriage in God’s plan. Sex addiction is the one addiction that God says can end a marriage.

This addiction carries extra shame for everyone involved. Even in the most severe chemical addiction, a spouse doesn’t feel like the addiction has anything to do with her. Not so for sex addiction. The shame, inferiority, and rejection is felt so deeply and so personally. Sexual addiction causes the partner of the addict to feel a searing sense of personal rejection and defectiveness that doesn’t accompany other addictions.

All addictions are designed to be an escape. Most addictions are used to numb, while some stimulate. However sex addiction carries an extra component that may only be shared with video gaming or internet addiction, which is it’s rooted in fantasy. We will have an entire blog post related to this issue. It’s significant in its peculiarity because it causes the addict to be less and less in touch with reality. Those effects are lasting and devastating. Being married and dependent on someone who is growing increasingly out of touch with reality makes it nearly impossible to lead a healthy life together.

Sex addiction affects the two genders differently. Male and female alcoholics, workaholics, overeaters, or religious addicts will have similar feelings and behaviors. But for male and female sex addicts, there are distinct differences. Women aren’t visually aroused the way men are. Women are drawn to the relational aspects of sexuality. Sex addiction is different from other addictions because gender differences plays a very large role in how the addiction progresses, making it even harder for the sober spouse to understand.

For partners: I hope these 19 distinctions of sexual addiction help you to understand a little more about the very difficult road we are all on. You’re not crazy. You’re healthy. THIS ADDICTION is crazy! This week in particular, it’s hard for me seeing healthy couples operate is a secure, close way. My marriage isn’t there, and our path is different. I have faith in God for the path I am on. Rather than being envious of those couples, I want to be like Debbie Laaser. Once I heard her say that after she sits with a man who shares his disclosure, her response is: “You must have been in a lot of pain to do those things.”

For addicts: I hope you have developed enough shame-resilience and strength in your recovery that you can see this list and say “I don’t want to be that person, and I have the tools to mature away from these behaviors and thinking.” May I encourage you to be open to how deeply sex addiction has contaminated the way you view the world. That can change! When your wife is grappling with the gravity of this addiction, don’t lash out or hide. Simply ask, “What’s that like for you?” and lean in.