POSA™ Blog

Mother's Day can be an especially sensitive holiday for women who have discovered their partners have chronically cheated on them. That pain becomes infinitely magnified if she is pregnant, or has young children with the man when she finds out.

The holiday itself seems correlated with being a mother in a nuclear family which, by design, usually includes a husband.
When the husband has violated his fidelity vow, it breaks the legacy of the intact family unit that Mother's Day alludes to and celebrates.

On a more personal level, the infidelity can deeply humiliate her, wounding her self-identity as a mother. Of course, the sad irony is that she is mother to his child.

It's embarrassing to admit this, but when I was very young and naive, I wouldn't have believed that cheating could happen when happily partnered couples then had a beautiful new baby.
I think I extrapolated that from the look of love on new parents' faces as they proudly wheeled their baby carriages through Central Park.

One of the impacts of working one-on-one with POSAs, or partners of "sex addicts" is that not much about extreme sexual (mis)behavior shocks me very much any more. That's not to say I don't find it heartbreaking each time I hear about it from clients; I most certainly do. But I'm not that often surprised.

Imagine, then, that an article on sexuality in The New York Times should leave me so astounded. Here's the title of the article from yesterday's paper:

More Teenage Girls Seeking Genital Cosmetic Surgery

For those who may not know (and I envy you), genital cosmetic surgery is also called vaginal rejuvenation surgery, a procedure that some women have sought to tighten vaginal muscles and reshape their labia after having children. From an acquaintance who has had this procedure performed, she shared with me that it is extremely painful, a fact downplayed by many surgeons who perform it.

This article, however, isn't addressing the elective surgical preferences of mature women. It is talking about surgical requests of girls 18 and under.
Let's let that sink in for a moment.

Walking the few blocks from my home to where Gloria Steinem was going to be speaking this past Wednesday evening, I was positively giddy. Finally, I was going to meet a favorite heroine of mine, a woman who has advanced women's social equality in America and throughout the world for over four decades now. How privileged I felt to have a little private time with this pioneer whose courage to speak out against injustices to females has inspired me for as long as I can recall.

While I was at a private reception waiting to meet her, I thought about what I might learn tonight that could prove inspiring and useful to partners of sex addicts. I will share those gems in this post.

An hour after I arrived, we met. I had read interviewers describing her as approachable, affable and warm (not to mention intelligent, funny, wise) and nothing could be more accurate. With keen interest, she listened as I shared with her my concern about the increasing riptide of pornography, the glorification of prostitution and the resulting destruction we are witnessing.
And that it was happening despite (or, because of) the gains made by a movement she was so hugely influential in.
We talked about helping women know they have the right to say "no" to it, particularly challenging for young women growing up now within this ever-more-pornified culture. "No" doesn't feel like a viable option for them.

The 2016 United States Election year is well underway. The primaries are long and arduous and they began earlier than usual this year.

It's difficult not to cringe when certain political candidates (who shall not be named) reflexively manipulate, bully, deflect, insult and gas-light anyone blocking their path towards procuring votes and #hashtags of fame. We now unfortunately live in a world where charismatic men are often pardoned for being obnoxious and cruel to their colleagues, and even to those they claim to 'love'.

Please be aware, we are not targeting specific political positions taken by any one candidate; we respect everyone's right to choose here. What we are doing is identifying egregious behavior, language and personality features that, because of their familiarity to us, have the potential to be highly triggering of the post-traumatic stress disorder that so many partners live with.

1.) Because if you are of the population who likes their holidays to have actual religious or historical significance, it might concern you that it's ridiculously impossible to get consensus on the true origin of this holiday.

Between accounts that claim it's a liturgical holiday celebrating the martyrdom of Christian saints, and much earlier pagan history of licentious behaviors occurring on February 13-15, and medieval claims that St. Valentine did not even have any romantic connotations until Chaucer's poetry about "Valentines" in the 14th century... and too numerous a list of other historical claims, legends and folklore from around the world all laying claims to originating this holiday, the research will leave you exhausted and wishing it were Easter already.

Yes, Valentine's Day is a hybridized holiday if ever there was one.

Which basically means -- it was created to encourage shopping (see #2, below):

Please contact the POSA who is starting this meeting at: CentralMEPOSA@mail.com for more details.

Congratulations, Maine! You now have your first POSA Meeting!

* A note: If you are interested in finding out about support groups in your own area, please check our list of meetings first before contacting us- Thanks!) 

One of our PoSARC readers shared that, for her, writing poetry helps her to become aware of and start processing through the agonizing realities of her life as a POSA. She has written many poems and sent quite a few to us; this is one of my favorites.

It captures one of the most painful aspects of his behavior that a wife can endure and evokes such stark elements found in nature.

This week, a PoSA (partner of a sex addict) colleague sent me an insightful article on how to spot the different manipulations that spiritual predators use. She thought our readers would benefit from learning more about this growing trend, both because she knew I had studied abuses of power while at Seminary and because she and I both had heartbreaking experiences while partnered with "spiritual"men who were secretly sex addict/compulsives-- and whom we'd never have dated were they not so overtly spiritual (or so it seemed). It was, for both of us, a big hook.

What sets these men apart from, say, a Wall Street man where you can be fairly certain that they are somewhat used to the now-normalized presence of massage parlors, strip clubs and prostitutes in the work culture of big finance, the religious or spiritual guys position themselves on the far other end of the spectrum, as so far above such low-brow, objectifying activities. You never suspect anything is off because it would be way too incongruent with how spiritually evolved they present themselves to be.