POSA™ Blog

Losing a marriage or long-term relationship (or even contemplating the loss of the union we thought we were in) is always difficult, but the holidays can make it feel even more so. Gathering around a candle-lit dinner table to partake of a specially-cooked meal, watching excited youngsters open their gifts, hearing holiday music, seeing festive decorations everywhere, all of it can underscore exactly how different this year will be from years past. Dread can seep in just thinking about how much it's all going to hurt if we're having a difficult time this season.

Hello Dear PoSARC Readers,

While you're holed up trying to stay warm during these wintry days, we thought it would be a fine time to share what we're up to here at PoSARC. Besides being glad for the new energy of this year's beginning, we have an exciting project or three underway which we'll be unveiling during the coming months. 

In the meantime we're writing our new projects and working with the challenges women share with us via our coaching work, as well as in our commenting community on social media and e-mails we receive. And speaking of our community, we didn't want to wait till the end of this newsletter to offer a heartfelt thank you to those who have generously contributed to our work via donations over the holidays.
Besides serving to remind us that our work is hitting a chord for our readers and meeting a need in the world, these financial gifts keep us creating videos, writing new content, connecting with our readers and running our website without ads, sponsorship or the need to endorse various therapists or "sex addiction" centers. That independence is vital to our voices remaining as authentic as possible here. 

by Lili Bee and Cassie Kingan

The best part, the closest-to-our-heart part of having a website and blog like PoSARC is the abundance of personal e-mails we receive from partners who find us online or on Facebook and want to share news about what's going on in their relationships and how it's affecting their lives. While some are primarily looking for quick direction or help, many write in, needing a safe place to share their stories of heartbreak, confusion and also their eventual victories. They know we understand because we've been through betrayal trauma, too.  

Along with the many profoundly intimate, personal stories that are shared with us from those new to learning about their mate's sexual deceptions, often as the months and years pass by we also receive detailed updates from our readers, allowing us to witness how their stories evolve over time. It constantly amazes us just how many connections we have with women we've never even met (yet!), all over the world.

Hello Readers~

Even though our last snowstorm in the northeast was just 6 weeks ago, the increasingly warm days are finally signaling Spring!

Here at PoSARC, we're in the midst of new changes, too. Over the past year, we have been steadily incorporating a more multi-sided perspective on what it takes for women to heal from betrayal trauma, or trauma incurred at the hands of the men commonly referred to as "sex addicts." We're speaking out more about the narcissistic traits like massive entitlement which underlie chronic infidelity, so women can begin to come out of shock and start to understand where these behaviors actually originate from. And we're walking away from models that claim to help but actually end up emboldening men (and even colludes with them) to maintain their "rights" to remain covertly abusive instead of calling them to account for their deceptive behaviors. We're writing more, too, about the treatment-induced trauma we hear about way too frequently from our clients who have been damaged while under the care of therapists/coaches/clergy utilizing the prevailing "sex addiction treatment model". 

A few weeks ago in The New York Times, reviewer Meghan Daum writes up a new book dealing with infidelity discovered by a trusting wife (author Jen Waite) and the fall-out from that, as well as the steps out of her private hell with her chronic cheater. From the New York Times review of A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal:

Traveling for Business and Pleasure 

submitted by Sandy M.

We were cleaning up our game of checkers, our daughter beaming with pride as the conqueror, as you first laid eyes on your new conquest across the dark bar.

I slipped her Strawberry Shortcake nightgown over her head, as you discreetly slipped your wedding ring into your pocket.

"Come on sweetheart, let's go brush your teeth," I coaxed, as you flashed Her your most coaxing smile.

I looked into our daughter's beautiful brown eyes- your eyes- and talked about plans for the next day, as you looked into Her eyes- brown? blue? green? and planned your night with Her.

Anger, hopelessness, despair, panic, rage and other "dark" emotions can hijack our nervous systems whenever we are overwhelmed. Those who have struggled with betrayal trauma know this territory all too well.

Overwhelm can come due to a new discovery about our mates' secretive sexual behaviors, it can overtake us when we witness a natural disaster such as an earthquake, widfire or hurricane or it can be due to a political system in distress or transition, as what just happened here in the United States as well as recently in Britain.

I think it's worth taking note of, that no matter which half of the country (USA) one currently feels aligned with, that still leaves roughly half the population that is angry, feels resentful, disappointed, etc. In other words, there is a lot of activation in the environment, regardless of whether your side "won" or not, or whether you participated in voting or not.

The difficult fact is, we now live in a super-charged climate that has the ability to dysregulate our emotional systems whenever we have to interact with the outside world.

So how do we do that without insisting on isolating ourselves inside our own tribe of like-minded others?

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.