On Sex Addiction....and our own addictions

Are the behavioral patterns we see in chronic betrayers attributable to addiction and nothing else? When colleagues gather here, we often find ourselves wondering whether the term "addiction" is even an accurate one, and/or what else might be going on?

Certainly in the early days right after Discovery, we partners just needed the lying and cheating to stop and complicated-sounding diagnostic terms just addled our trauma-stunned brains further. "Just fix him!", we pleaded, and sure enough, there was a vast array of addiction counselors/therapists claiming the men to be "very sick sex addicts". 

Now, years later, looking at Dr. Minwalla's iceberg model, we can see that the repetitive cheating and deceiving behaviors are more often the resulting symptoms of deeper pathologies.
Labeling the chronic deception and cheating a "sex addiction" problem short-circuits the real story, as it turns out.
Here, Dr. Minwalla takes on the practice of therapists and rehab centers relying on a treatment model simply called "sex addiction": 

"Further, it recognizes that the "lack of control" over sexual behavior may be diagnostically compulsive as in the neurological erosion of will power, but that such behavior can also be the result of an abusive psychology of sexual entitlement, rather than a compulsivity problem. The repetition in behavior despite negative consequences can be due to a "lack of control" but can also be due to "unwillingness to control" or "not being motivated by integrity or morality". Often these problems include some degree of both dependency and inability to control sexual behaviors and also some degree of abusive sexual entitlement, which is not a brain disease or addictive process at all."

Reading this helped many of us realize that pursuing help for our men purely from an addiction standpoint not only didn't frequently yield the positive results that addiction counselors all but assured us of, it often presented additional behavioral problems, some of which we discuss in the embedded videos below.

We needed to reevaluate the predominant addiction model. Dr. Minwalla's iceberg model, once too complicated for our trauma-addled minds to fully grasp, now came into sharper focus and started to make complete sense to us.

In this two-part video series, I speak with visiting colleague and therapist Tania Rochelle, herself a survivor of far too many years with a character-disordered husband.

Together, we wondered: 

What's the same, what's different about calling this an addiction?
What's the role of partners (wives or girlfriends) routinely enlisted by addiction therapists to help motivate the "sex addict" and keep him accountable?
And….what is the cost of the addiction model to wives and partners?

Watch our video series and listen in. 

What elements of your own story did we touch upon in our video talks? What spoke to you, or caused a question to surface as you listened?

Check Out Our eBook Series

We strongly recommend that you read the information in the links below before purchasing eBooks authored by us.
All eBook Purchases are Non-Refundable

About This eBook Series

Who These eBooks Are For

What Readers Are Saying
"Trust your gut….I used nanny cams because I felt crazy. The porn was just a layer to it all. I highly suggest these ebooks. Of all the material I have read and books, these were spot on and so honest. Not like a counselor asking me how I attracted the porn, or a therapist telling me to get into bed and do my job. It is not our fault even though that is the assumption that so many make.”
- Robin W.

Additional eBooks