POSA™ Blog

I am excited to extend an open-arms welcome to the two newest POSA Support Group meetings that have just become official …..in Cincinnati, Ohio and in West Sacramento, California!

I know that the partners of sex addicts in both Ohio and California worked diligently to get these meetings started and that both have the backing of some of their local area therapists to get the word out about these groups. It's an added bonus when therapists will help groups get publicized either by leaving a flyer in their waiting room or bulletin board, as well as informing any of their own clients for whom such a group may be appropriate.
I love hearing good collaboration success stories!

Thank you so much to all the PoSARC readers who texted and e-mailed yesterday to wish us well in New York as the Great Blizzard started blanketing the city in a huge snowfall.

New York's Governor issued our first-ever State of Emergency, with all public transportation stopped by 8pm and arrest penalties for any vehicles on the road after 11 pm. Seemed pretty serious!

E-mails poured in here from all over the country: Utah, New Mexico, Oregon, Southern California, Arizona, Ohio and more.....so instead of reporting that we are ok to everyone individually, I thought I'd send you all some postcards from Central Park one hour ago:

I have to thank a generous PoSARC reader in the Northwest for recently sending me a wonderful article titled: X is for X-Rated, which offered up some surprisingly fresh insights about the impact of pornography use on relationships with self and partners.

I don't normally link to outside blogs since I enjoy writing my own material here, but this article isn't one our readers will want to miss. Not only that, it's one you might want to share with your partner as well.

The writer, Zach Brittle, a couples therapist, deftly deconstructs the myths perpetuated by pornography use: the myth of perfection, the myth of ease, the myth of privacy and the myth of escape - and he does so in language that feels light yet substantive at the same time.

Once again, another intrepid POSA started her own free support group meeting in the Sonoma County area which I've heard has already grown to about 8 women, just by word of mouth from her and her therapist. Also, her therapist is part of small group practice and there is now an artful POSA Meeting flyer available for the other therapists and clients using that suite of offices.

I know these meetings can provide a lifeline back to reality and back to one's self....the self we were before the relational rupture of Discovery happened. And it can help to have a room full of what in Seminary was termed "Compassionate Witnesses" when we are in the early formation stages of creating our new lives after the old one has been shattered. Anyone who's ever gone through this trauma knows that nothing is ever the same after "D-Day". Who will 'hold' us and witness the we we are becoming?

Once again, a POSA has decided to step up and offer her community a safe space for healing from the trauma of finding out one's committed partner is a sex addict/compulsive (SAC).

This meeting will take place at a church in a beautiful area of the country, Charleston, SC and there is even an SA (Sex Addicts) 12-step meeting there that sends the wives and girlfriends to that PoSA Meeting! So if anyone is in that area, whether SAC or POSA, there is support now available for you.

I hear from many partners of those who've been chronically cheated on who express needing local support and encouragement from other POSAs ---but--- something gets in their way- either they feel they have to be strong already in order to start their own support group, or else they're afraid that a meeting may be way more involved than they have energy or time for.

So we created a short video that answers some of those concerns and helps you get a better sense of, well, how to get a meeting going and how they work best. 

This online Forum on Reddit is for porn addicts who wish to stop PMO (their acronym for porn-masturbation-orgasm) and seek support and encouragement from one another. It is an open forum and a colleague of mine sent me this poignant Comment posted by a porn addict in recovery for a few months now:

I was struck yesterday by virgins talking about their porn use. It made me think about my childhood. Back then porn was something that people did watch and consume but it came with a great stigma. Few decent family men or even virgin men would walk into a video rental and rent porn. They might come into a possession of a porn mag or two. But even that was something that people were ashamed of.

Esquire Magazine, ironically the very same magazine that runs annual special editions of the 'hottest' women in film, on TV, etc. complete with highly sexualized photo layouts of them hit a home run with this article on porn addiction and why young men are quitting.

It may just be the first article on this topic I've read in this extremely popular men's magazine that didn't include the usual porn apologist sections. None. I'm very impressed.

Equally impressive is the fact that the journalist, 29-year old Sam Parker, did not focus on the more common side-effect of prodigious porn use, erectile dysfunction. One might surmise that a men's magazine would focus there, what with the big bummer of intending to boost one's solo sex life only to find oneself utterly incapable of having a sex life because of equipment malfunction that even pharmaceuticals designed to counter that effect often can't help with.