POSA™ Blog

Over the past many years, we have learned so much about what feeds chronic infidelity (and often keeps it change-resistant) from disciplines and modalities besides psychology and addictionology, though psychology has certainly been instrumental to our understanding. Still, it's not the only frame to consider, by any means.

What has interested us the most here has been adding the vectors of sociology and feminism in our quest to understand the context that infidelity behaviors occur in.

After all, behaviors don't happen in a vacuum, nor are family of origin issues and earlier traumas the only variables that impact the development and trajectory of repetitive behaviors once they form. By repetitive behaviors, we refer to the lies and manipulation tactics Betraying Partners use as much as the infidelity behaviors themselves as each reinforces the other. 

Listen to the replay of PoSARC founder, Lili Bee, on the Katherine Albrecht radio show (36 minutes). It's a great listen, full of useful information! For more on Katherine Albrecht: www.katherinealbrecht.com

So many partners are, like everyone else, feeling overwhelmed by world events lately.
Have you found yourself curious about how you are dealing with the onslaught of distressing news about our chaotic world?

This is an important question for POSAs (partners of "sex addicts") because it's likely you are already functioning in the day to day with a much narrower-than-normal bandwidth available to you due to your betrayal trauma hijacking a lot of your available resources (emotional, psychological, sexual, financial, etc.)

Watching TV or seeing news snippets come streaming into our smartphones and other media devices, overhearing others in our proximity talking about the latest terrorist attack, mass shootings, growing nationalistic movements, refugee or immigration nightmare-- it can leave us absorbing huge collective anxieties and despair.

I have to say, I am smiling ear to ear after reading the new Washington Post article: The Case for Banning Pornography

Instead of the cautious fence-straddling approach taken by most journalists who dare to even take on the subject, journalist and editor Matthew Schmitz courageously charges right into territory normally so defended by aggressive pornography apologists that even the hardiest of journalists have had to don armor in order to write about it in the mainstream press.

Mr. Schmitz invites his Washington Post readers to retire the old "freedom of speech" trope in defense of pornography use (right, because there's so much speech to protect in pornography) and to actually- gasp— have us consider seriously the misogyny inherent in pornography! I think I might be in love, but I digress. 

One of the impacts of working one-on-one with POSAs, or partners of "sex addicts" is that not much about extreme sexual (mis)behavior shocks me very much any more. That's not to say I don't find it heartbreaking each time I hear about it from clients; I most certainly do. But I'm not that often surprised.

Imagine, then, that an article on sexuality in The New York Times should leave me so astounded. Here's the title of the article from yesterday's paper:

More Teenage Girls Seeking Genital Cosmetic Surgery

For those who may not know (and I envy you), genital cosmetic surgery is also called vaginal rejuvenation surgery, a procedure that some women have sought to tighten vaginal muscles and reshape their labia after having children. From an acquaintance who has had this procedure performed, she shared with me that it is extremely painful, a fact downplayed by many surgeons who perform it.

This article, however, isn't addressing the elective surgical preferences of mature women. It is talking about surgical requests of girls 18 and under.
Let's let that sink in for a moment.

Walking the few blocks from my home to where Gloria Steinem was going to be speaking this past Wednesday evening, I was positively giddy. Finally, I was going to meet a favorite heroine of mine, a woman who has advanced women's social equality in America and throughout the world for over four decades now. How privileged I felt to have a little private time with this pioneer whose courage to speak out against injustices to females has inspired me for as long as I can recall.

While I was at a private reception waiting to meet her, I thought about what I might learn tonight that could prove inspiring and useful to partners of sex addicts. I will share those gems in this post.

An hour after I arrived, we met. I had read interviewers describing her as approachable, affable and warm (not to mention intelligent, funny, wise) and nothing could be more accurate. With keen interest, she listened as I shared with her my concern about the increasing riptide of pornography, the glorification of prostitution and the resulting destruction we are witnessing.
And that it was happening despite (or, because of) the gains made by a movement she was so hugely influential in.
We talked about helping women know they have the right to say "no" to it, particularly challenging for young women growing up now within this ever-more-pornified culture. "No" doesn't feel like a viable option for them.

The 2016 United States Election year is well underway. The primaries are long and arduous and they began earlier than usual this year.

It's difficult not to cringe when certain political candidates (who shall not be named) reflexively manipulate, bully, deflect, insult and gas-light anyone blocking their path towards procuring votes and #hashtags of fame. We now unfortunately live in a world where charismatic men are often pardoned for being obnoxious and cruel to their colleagues, and even to those they claim to 'love'.

Please be aware, we are not targeting specific political positions taken by any one candidate; we respect everyone's right to choose here. What we are doing is identifying egregious behavior, language and personality features that, because of their familiarity to us, have the potential to be highly triggering of the post-traumatic stress disorder that so many partners live with.

This week, a PoSA (partner of a sex addict) colleague sent me an insightful article on how to spot the different manipulations that spiritual predators use. She thought our readers would benefit from learning more about this growing trend, both because she knew I had studied abuses of power while at Seminary and because she and I both had heartbreaking experiences while partnered with "spiritual"men who were secretly sex addict/compulsives-- and whom we'd never have dated were they not so overtly spiritual (or so it seemed). It was, for both of us, a big hook.

What sets these men apart from, say, a Wall Street man where you can be fairly certain that they are somewhat used to the now-normalized presence of massage parlors, strip clubs and prostitutes in the work culture of big finance, the religious or spiritual guys position themselves on the far other end of the spectrum, as so far above such low-brow, objectifying activities. You never suspect anything is off because it would be way too incongruent with how spiritually evolved they present themselves to be.