PoSARC reviews Thanks for Sharing

I think it is courageous to produce a mainstream film about the recovery from sex addiction.

Recently, a recovery coaching client of mine asked me if I thought the movie Shame(2011)would be suitable to show her family and friends as a way of inviting them to understand the hell she has been living in, as the wife of an intransigent sex addict. I told her no, for many reasons that I won't go into here. But my client's question did get me thinking that there hasn't yet been a film that can elucidate what we go through as POSAs. This film, Thanks for Sharing, does express this perspective and yet, does not fit that bill all that well either. I'll explain:

In a poignant scene of this film, Thanks for Sharing, a mature, more seasoned POSA wife is approached at a dinner party by a young woman who is rightly scared to death that the man she is falling for is a long-term sex addict in recovery. The younger woman suggests that this man could slip back into his addiction at any time, couldn't he?--- The more experienced POSA veteran wife speaks straight from the co-addict model script. She tells the terrified newbie that the only way through this is to "keep the focus on herself", "stay on her own side of the street", and realize that "she has issues, too", because after all, "she picked an addict"!

WTF??? Why are we still recycling this crap? Really? The absolute only thing right in that dialogue is that the veteran wife should keep the focus on herself. That's right she should! She's been violated by a man who didn't think enough of her to keep her safe from his behaviors. She now needs to focus on her own safety first; accepting this cripples so many of us POSAs who thought we were operating as a team with our spouses. This forced self-centeredness feels like a betrayal to our love that can be difficult to implement.

This mature POSA fell in love and married her high school sweetheart, a dream romance. Her husband then became an alcoholic and sex addict who infects her with Hepatitis C, a potentially fatal STD.

I am not condoning victimhood here but it feels outrageous to saddle a character like this mature POSA with having her own "issue' ...like that of marrying her first love, which essentially equivocates the heinous future behaviors of her sex-addict husband with what, her corrupted, childhood dreams? Her Mommy or Daddy issues? Or maybe she likes brownies more than she ought to, or buys a few more items than she should at the mall from time to time. Is that equal to his sex addiction? Twilight Zone, anyone?

The film's dialogue which underscores the outdated co-addict model directly reflects the egregiously-perpetuated idea that there are no victims. Nope, no victims. Just all of us coming to the table with our own issues which therefore magically levels the playing field. Just like a woman wearing a short skirt is responsible for her own rape! Excuse me?

As a minister who deeply believes in the Restorative Justice movement, I know POSAs can begin to heal when their victimization is taken responsibility for. The offender has that responsibility. Offering his victim that restoration is necessary for her and it can work wonders for helping him through the shame he carries inside, too. That can offer a much deeper recovery for both of them.

I promise this will be a quick tangent but I do want to say that I advocate for new Federal laws that will penalize anyone who knowingly exposes someone to a sexually-transmitted disease, especially one that is potentially fatal. I feel such exposure demonstrates criminal intent and therefore should allow the victim rights to bring charges up against her perpetrator, even if that is her husband.

There is a tragic percentage of POSAs with similar stories, such as a young client of mine who is in her second round of chemo and radiation from the HPV-turned-cancer which her fiancée gave her, rather than tell her that he has secretly been visiting prostitutes during their relationship. Think she has comparable "issues"? Would an apology make her feel any better?

It doesn't mean I don't champion anyone's desire to try and fix their relationship with a sex addict- I certainly do and have lots of materials to help with that. I believe everyone deserves a fair chance to change. It's just that I don't believe in painting a picture with false hope, because hope is, after all, our drug. Hope obscures reality just as surely as non-relational sex does for a sex addict. Therefore, the antidote to hope is being able to see clearly, which can be quite challenging.

There is one decent female role in this film which features the singer/ actress also known as Pink, cast here as a rather foul-mouthed sex addict. So, in a film with female characters like this, what are you guessing the male sex addicts are like? Well, again, I won't give much away, but let's just say this movie scared the hell out of me, and I'm not easily scared by this crap, being immersed in it every day.

The film does portray, but unfortunately not accurately, the two most common pathways to Sex Addiction recovery, these being the 12-Step S-groups and the model led by Dr. Patrick Carnes. Instead of sticking to the actual way meetings are run, the film erroneously blends these two recovery paths together and, as such, I feel that this renders a disservice to both camps.

In the film's semi-accurate depiction of the 12-Step S- meetings that shows a utilization of a Gentle Path workbook in the early sobriety stage (Stage 1 phase), the film's portrayal veers from the actual 12-Step model, which primarily works to heal the social/spiritual side of the addict and does not utilize workbooks. In essence, it is understood that healing in 12-step groups comes from the support of others who struggle similarly. Nowhere is this more true than in sex addiction in which isolation is a key feature.

Perhaps it would be an evolutionary tactic for the 12-step recovery program to combine the dynamics of both of these two established recovery forces, namely the meetings themselves (sharing and sponsorship) and Dr. Patrick Carnes' workbook to help a new addict acquire a more complete set of tools to tackle sex addiction. Perhaps the current 12-step approach of sharing but no task-oriented books contribute to the overall low rates of recovery from this disease? To the general lay-public, this may sound like hair-splitting, but to a POSA who's possibly waited years for her husband to get into a Recovery program, these distinctions do matter as she watches her husband flail and too often fail, time and again if he is only attending meetings.

My advice is to be cautious, POSAs: If you do share this film, be ready to be interrogated by friends and family questioning your sanity of your choice to stay with your addict. Yep, sex addiction doesn't come out looking too good in this film, but at least the filmmakers didn't whitewash it. Recovery is shown as tenuous and almost situational, rather than the real, heart-mind-body change we POSAs dream our addicts may one day have. In this film, when the addicts are confronted with conflicts in their lives, well...I won't give anything away here but I will say they all could have been helped by a good sex addiction therapist, or trauma therapist who specializes in sex addiction, instead of relegating all their recovery to their 12-step group meetings.

Sound harsh? Yes, but I can't jump on the hullabaloo bandwagon from inside the Sex Addiction Recovery community around the release of this film just because it's about sex addiction. That's like saying we POSAs need to don our best cheerleader outfits simply because our men finally decide to go to a meeting or have actually cracked a book about this crippling disorder.

Yes, it's brave to have made this film, especially given the generally-held belief in our culture that there's no such thing as out-of-control sexual compulsion, nor, therefore, can there be serious damages incurred by it.

Lastly, although I feel grateful that the mainstream film industry has produced a film based on the recovery from sex addiction, I regret that the filmmakers seem to have pandered to the stereotypical selling point of showing gratuitous sexuality (i.e.- Gwyneth Paltrow wearing very little in too many scenes). This felt paradoxically defeating. The filmmakers could have hinted at or suggested sexuality without explicitly showing us long scenes of Gwyneth baring lots of skin.) I would not recommend anyone who is struggling with sex addiction to see this film, at least not without them being prepared to shut their eyes on several graphic scenes.

Overall, I do believe that anything that manages to crack open our culture's denial about the world of pain out here due to this affliction, both that of the addict and especially that of his partner on the receiving end of all the damages, is a good thing.

It will, at least, open up some conversations. It's a starting point.