Did you have a good marriage before Dday? I loved my marriage! Not every season was wonderful, but I can’t remember one day not being madly in love with my husband. (What three years of recovery work has taught me is this probably has more to do with my own disposition than my actual marriage, but I digress.) I spent several months of early recovery “just wanting to go back to how things were.” We all learn too soon that that can’t happen. Then I spent several months saying to myself that if he’d just get honest and stay sober, I’d be happy. I could live with that. What I didn’t see happening is that the new tools and small changes we were both learning were so preferable to our old way of doing things, that when something old would pop up, I didn’t like it! We are going for healthy not sober. Healthy is about connection. Many partners have to decide to take that journey without their husband if he won’t choose to do the work.

Sex addiction is a relatively new field. Betrayal trauma treatment is a very new field! For a couple entering this therapeutic world, there are various combinations of options that can be chosen and no place seems like the cure all. The world of SA treatment can feel a little like the wild west until you get your bearings. Sadly, most all of us have a list of things that didn’t work or caused more pain and expense in the end. I hope your list is short. For those of us lucky enough to be in support groups, we are usually surrounded by people at the same desperate spot on the journey as we are. We need answers, and our cohort doesn’t have many yet. Sure, we can talk to professionals in the field (including podcasters or authors) who have “made it” to the other side, but to couples in the thick of it, their progress seems unreachable.

This is one reason why S. Heart and I wanted to write as women on the path, just two steps ahead. We are your “Girlfriend’s Guide to Surviving Betrayal.” This post is something I desperately wish I had learned earlier and taken to heart. Betrayal feels like life or death, because it could be for a partner. Certainly, it is the end of life as we know it. When your anxiety is off the charts, you’re looking for help. When you reach out to a program to learn their online 12-week partner course is $7,000 (true story), hopelessness sets in. Most of us don’t have the time or money trial and error. So today, I want to suggest ten things you can do with the long-term goal of healing beyond sobriety in mind. Because sobriety isn’t recovery.

Addiction isn’t what’s going to kill your marriage. Experts will tell you many couples go through the disclosure process, the addict gets sober, only for the relationship to dissolve. The real problems underneath the addiction, as well as the wife’s trauma, never get addressed. SA is very complicated to treat. The average couple goes through five therapists when treating it. If you find someone who is great at working with addicts, he may not be the best for family of origin work, and that’s okay. Not only that, fatigue certainly sets in for both patient and therapist along the way. This is heavy material. Your healing process will likely out last any one therapeutic relationship.

Four things need serious attention on this journey: the addiction, the addict’s mental health, the partner’s trauma, and the marriage. It’s said this process can take 3-5 years. However, it’s not uncommon for couples to spend 7 or 8 years in therapy. Addiction treatment will center around getting the disclosure completed and sobriety. (It can take several months – years for the fog of addiction and deception to clear in an addict’s mind.) In my opinion, the most challenging part of reaching full health is the treatment for the addict’s overall mental health. It’s sadly too common to hear stories of marriages that never survive infidelity, even after addressing the initial impact of betrayal. Today’s post prioritizes addiction’s antecedent – the mental health piece.

1. The addict must be extra safe and gentle with the partner’s heart and mind. Imagine she’s been hit by a bus and most of her bones are broken. Physical therapy will be excruciating. Please be easy on her, help her, and don’t leave her side. Choose to be there every step. She’s going to need to talk about your misdeeds. A lot! Here is a good video about it. Much of this is grief work.
2. To the extent possible, see specialists who are APSATs trained and understand the gentle care needed for partners. I promise you, if this isn’t a priority in your healing journey, it will set both the addict and the partner back in the long run. If you find your therapist isn’t partner sensitive, run–don’t walk.
3. Don’t (AND I REPEAT DO NOT) attempt a half-ass go at a disclosure. I know wives want to know everything, but trickle truth cuts like knives. More injury! Find a very good, safe, skilled therapist and do the entire disclosure and polygraph process. With this step, you get what you pay for. I can tell you from experience, you don’t want to do this twice. Money and time spent on a thorough and thoughtful disclosure process will save grief in the end. Daring Ventures is great.
4. Do intensives (as opposed to stand alone weekly meetings) when possible. They seem to make a bigger impact.
5. Find a therapist who does all the CSAT assessments. Get the results, ask your therapist about them and get understanding. Other addicts have benefitted from things like brain scans with Dr. Daniel Amen. Do at-home assessments as a couple for things like personality (enneagram), intimacy anorexia, or attachment styles. Find exercises where you learn your values. All the information you can get to learn that your partner “is different not wrong” will help! We’ve gotten into these so much that we even got genetic testing! It was insightful!
6. Get a proper mental health and psychiatric evaluation. Please please please know that for many couples, this individual work is where you start to see such good returns that they can pay that forward into healing the marriage relationship more effectively. Conversely, when an addict refuses to address his mental health, it can create a lot of destruction.
7. The partner needs to understand that once the addiction is removed from the addict’s life as well as the false personas he was using to relate and function, you’ll be exposed to some of the worst parts of your spouse. They will be defensive. They won’t have many emotional or relational skills (until later in recovery). You can easily be seriously reinjured. Use detachment and self care like your life depends on it. Your spouse may not be safe until he’s gotten substantial help with his mental health issues and trauma history.
8. The betrayed spouse must make her self care and healing a number one priority. She will need a variety of treatment modalities. Safety and trust take consistency over time. Dr. Keffer’s book is a good resource to learn more. If a spouse tries to jump to “normal” too soon, she will not make lasting progress.
9. The addict needs to learn that time is of the essence! The longer he stretches out telling the truth, getting sober, holding her pain, facing his own maturity deficits, and caring for his partner, the more damage is being done. Sadly, humans aren’t capable of prolonged pain of this intensity. Your wife’s heart and body will wear out. I can understand why you don’t want to initiate the messy work of healing with a hurting spouse, but there’s no way around it. The folks at Redemptive Living get this!
10. Be the man! Put addiction behind you. Take responsibility for your maturation process. Read the book. Watch the webinars with your wife. Learn the material. Change the habit. Be patient during that hard conversation yet again. Move the ball in your marriage. Call the therapist. Do the work. Dream new dreams with her. The simple truth is that very few have the financial resources to pay for a therapist to provide hand-holding on this entire journey. They can guide, but you have to own the transformation. Get better for your own life, and you’ll likely save your marriage in the process. Get after it.

In closing, please look over the information about kinds of addicts, mental illness, etc. In this EXCELLENT podcast, Jill Manning says that 2/3 of addicts have mental illness and 44% have a personality disorder. There’s a good chance you’ve been trying to manage your mental health issues with addiction. These issues will continue to traumatize your wife until you address them. You must get under the hood.

Doug Weiss’s list of Six Kinds of Sex Addicts is a good place to start in looking to see what’s underneath your addictive behavior.

Mental illness, like bipolar, mood disorders, generalized anxiety disorder and the like, usually require medication. Ongoing, untreated trauma can sometimes develop into a mental illness.

Personality disorders (categorized into clusters A, B, C) require new skills and ways of behaving, as they will stay with a person for the rest of their life. Many experts believe many of these to be caused by trauma. Behavior of addicts while in active addiction can mimic a personality disorder.

While mental illness and personality disorders will need to be diagnosed by a professional, defense mechanisms can often be dealt with in a more straight forward manner. These can be stopped or “cured.” They need to be brought into consciousness and replaced with healthy skills. Addiction is a defense mechanism. Journey Into the Divided Heart is a wonderful book on defense mechanisms.

Strong sobriety is something to be proud of, but don’t stop there. Healing is a deeper work. “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap  corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. 10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” Galations 6:7-10