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…
The highest compliment a betrayed partner can give to a professional in the sexual addiction or marriage counseling field is “they’re safe.” We’ve been blessed to work with some very safe (and smart) care takers. One thing that made our marriage therapist safe for me was that he let me ask all the questions I wanted – and no question was off limits. I wonder if you have asked yourself this question: Are all men doing this? “This” means cheating…
As a single guy, my husband had a serious porn addiction (although we didn’t know to call it that in the 1990s). He had some sobriety under his belt when we started dating. He confessed his issues up front and we got counsel from wise people at our church who were confident in us moving toward marriage. Despite some mental health struggles in the early years of marriage, Phil didn’t “act out” with self-stimulation or porn. We were very careful…
I was a psychology geek before I became a betrayed wife. When I was 7 years old, I was mesmerized when I saw John Bradshaw interviewed by Oprah. It made an impact. I love people. I love learning about how we think, function and behave. If I knew you, I’d love to sit at a coffee shop and hear your story. With betrayal trauma brain, I can’t apply past knowledge to MY situation very well, but somehow I can take…
incomprehensible layers of isolation now you’re the man with a heart of stone making me pay here by being alone seemingly justified righteous indignation now I’m the woman who holds all her pain looking for somebody else to blame
Hi Friends, Well it’s been several weeks back when I started a series on addiction. I fully intended to share several posts in this series in rapid succession – I was excited about it, too! So what happened? An adult child needed extra support. Work picked up. The holidays came. We took a very long road trip. It’s February. I’m only now beginning to breathe again after all the busyness. I had to take a break from the blog –…
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…
Today I am starting a long series on the basics of addiction. The series will contain about 20 posts. I hope you’ll go on this learning journey with me because I am certain it’s imperative the partner of an addict must be able to identify addiction in its tracks for her own health and safety. Addiction education helps the addict even more! This topic must begin and end with the issue of maturity. When we are talking about maturity, we…
In the aftermath of sexual betrayal, it’s hard to understand or verbalize exactly what all this means. But you know your life will never be the same. You even wonder if life can be good…. This post is about coming to terms with what’s required to heal your marriage; which, is worth noting, is different than healing as an individual. As I’ve tried so desperately to make sense out of the insanity that IS sexual addiction, a great aid was…
A lot of my struggle with coming to terms with my marriage after Dday is that I know what kind of relationship we had for almost 21 years before discovery. We did have a strange season in the early years of our marriage that didn’t include sexual acting out, but it did require quite a bit of counseling and healing. We put the work in and had a very good relationship for years. Many friends told me they envied the…