Lili interviews Dr. Barbara Steffans, author of Your Sexually Addicted Spouse

I'm delighted to introduce all our PoSARC readers to my interview with the author of Your Sexually Addicted Spouse, Dr. Barbara Steffans. I think you'll find her as warm, intelligent, compassionate and fiercely committed to helping partners of sex addicts as I did.

You can read our book review of Barbara (and Marsha Means') book here to learn why this read is so invaluable for those of us who wake up and find ourselves partnered with a sex addict/compulsive (SAC).

And....you can sign up to watch this free video series right now with the godmother of the Trauma Model for POSA in the video box on the homepage here.

I absolutely adored meeting Dr. Steffans and spending hours talking with her on all things POSA-related over the course of three long days. We met a couple of weeks ago at the First International Conference on Sex and Love Addiction here in New York and spent time every day connecting and sharing. Barbara was there to promoteAPSATS, her new certification program for clinicians to learn how to treat the partners of sex addicts using the Trauma Model.

What was especially powerful for me was that our time together transpired over the anniversary of my own D-Day (Discovery). I arrived at the restaurant Barbara and I were to have lunch together in, and felt like my heart was tender and bruised from remembering that day many years ago when my life irrevocably changed when I discovered my partner's secret life. I shared it with Barbara over lunch and we both went quiet for a few moments. Once the raw emotion passed, I could feel the immense gift I was being given: to be able to share that moment with this pioneer of the Trauma Model for partners.

Later that morning, I read her an e-mail that had just come into my PoSARC inbox from a young newlywed woman who was planning on taking her life. She said she was unable to find her will to continue living since her husband, the love of her life, seemingly could not, or would not, stop watching pornography and that he was drifting further and further away from her into his fantasy life.

As I read Barbara the e-mail, we were both stunned anew at the brutality of sex addiction on the partners. I recommitted in my heart never to forget what this pain felt like, which isn't hard to do since I work with partners every day in counseling/coaching. Still, there was something beyond coincidence, it seemed to me, that it was the anniversary of my own D-Day, that this raw e-mail from a suicidal partner had just come in and that I was sitting in a restaurant having just met Dr. Barbara Steffans for lunch.

And so....at the end of three days of the Conference's intensive presentations on all things sex addiction related (in which we were still being labeled as 'co-addicts'!), Barbara and I sat in one of the now-empty ballrooms and enjoyed an impromptu "conversation" that I share with you here.

Please enjoy it and may it inspire you to keep yourself central to your own healing as you proceed on your journey to wholeness once again.

Many blessings,
Lili

*Sign up to watch the free video series right now with the godmother of the Trauma Model for POSAs in the video box on the PoSARC homepage here.