POSA™ Blog

Seems good old Noel Biderman who founded Ashley Madison had an app in development that allowed men to rate their wives' appearance and then invite other members of the married cheater's site to go ahead and contribute their own opinion of what someone's wife was worth, looks-wise.

The screenshot (below) shows the app with the rating and the woman's value in dollar amounts that appear as the ratings come in.

PoSARC's inbox was full the past few days with e-mails coming in from readers wanting to share the news: the world's largest married cheaters website, Ashley Madison had been hacked by insiders who called themselves The Impact Team.

The hacking team gained access to almost 40 million website members' personal data, including their names, addresses, credit card numbers and even their sexual preferences, causing the site to immediately suspend operations as panic ensued.

Nothing makes me happier than learning that POSAs are creating grass-roots healing circles in their communities. What I know for sure is that for partners, the healing is accelerated through the sharing of our stories and that often, life-long friendships can grow out of these powerful gatherings. My own closest friend comes courtesy of having been a life-line to me during the early days post- D-Day.

Great happenings here at PoSARC that is sure to give POSAs a lift- one is the opportunity for partners to weigh in on a topic of great importance to most of us, and the second is the announcement of a new POSA meeting in Tennessee, a first for that state.
Let's look at the critical issue of intimacy deprivation/sexual anorexia first:

Have you ever felt like your voice as the POSA didn't matter much whenever research was done that created treatment protocols for the field of sex addiction? 

We're pleased to announce a new addition to our rapidly-growing list of in-person, free support group meetings. This one is being held in Charlotte, NC twice a month and already has eight members!

Thank you to the POSA who made all the arrangements for this meeting to happen and who will be leading it with the blessing of her therapist there.

Have you ever noticed how your powers of discernment have noticeably sharpened during this entire journey of being partnered with a sex addict/compulsive? Part of that comes from frequently having to figure out if you're being given the truth, weighing out what you're told against what you perceive.

While we are having to rely on our intuition over and over again while in relationship to a SAC (sex addict/compulsive), it might be worthwhile to learn some basic skills that can help us along the way.

In the TED Talk video below, fraud specialist Pamela Mayer encourages us to educate ourselves on how to detect a lie but then we're also admonished to "....go the extra mile from lie-spotting to truth-seeking....and ultimately to trust-building". I don't know a single POSA who wouldn't desire that exact trajectory. Cautiously, of course.

While men (and boys) are raised in a society, now a global society, thanks to the Internet, that not only accepts that they'll watch porn, but actually pushes it on them at every possible turn, superstar comedian Russell Brand came out speaking against it.

This is really important because Brand enjoys and benefits quite nicely from his bad-boy image and rock-star status out in the world, not just with girls and women but even amongst his huge "bro" following. To have taken the unnecessary (for him) and hugely unpopular position he took here, claiming that pornography harms us and makes him feel ashamed to use it for lots of reasons, was, plain and simple, an extremely brave move. I am very impressed.

Before I continue to post another installment of a popular feature about Lying and how to spot it, (look for it here this upcoming week) I wanted to announce another new Support Group for POSAs starting up next week in Shreveport, Louisiana.

I have full faith that this meeting will serve that community well because we've gotten a good deal of inquiry from partners in that area about when such a meeting might happen. Now, a woman who has strong organizational abilities and the desire to take on the leadership of a new meeting has approached us with the meeting details already set up and ready to go.

Congratulations to the Shreveport area for now being able to offer a safe space for sharing, support and kinship to partners in need!

For more information on this meeting, please e-mail: posa_shreveport@yahoo.com