POSA™ Blog

Whether the betrayer is in our past or we are still wondering whether change is possible for them, this gorgeous poem written by Nobel prize- winning poet and playwright Derek Walcott (b. January 23, 1930—) feels tailor-made to give comfort to hurting partners. We offer it here to inspire you to stay the course of welcoming yourselves home.

LOVE AFTER LOVE

The time will come 

when, with elation, 

you will greet yourself arriving 

at your own door, in your own mirror,

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.

What can you do when you are brave enough to share your story as the victim of infidelity, and you find that your friends and family don't believe you? Or, worse, blame you? Lili talks about how to cope when you feel like you're in a free fall.

Does this ring true for you?  Who has earned the right to hear your story?  Please let us know in the comments below.

Mother's Day can be an especially sensitive holiday for women who have discovered their partners have chronically cheated on them. That pain becomes infinitely magnified if she is pregnant, or has young children with the man when she finds out.

The holiday itself seems correlated with being a mother in a nuclear family which, by design, usually includes a husband.
When the husband has violated his fidelity vow, it breaks the legacy of the intact family unit that Mother's Day alludes to and celebrates.

On a more personal level, the infidelity can deeply humiliate her, wounding her self-identity as a mother. Of course, the sad irony is that she is mother to his child.

It's embarrassing to admit this, but when I was very young and naive, I wouldn't have believed that cheating could happen when happily partnered couples then had a beautiful new baby.
I think I extrapolated that from the look of love on new parents' faces as they proudly wheeled their baby carriages through Central Park.

1.) Because if you are of the population who likes their holidays to have actual religious or historical significance, it might concern you that it's ridiculously impossible to get consensus on the true origin of this holiday.

Between accounts that claim it's a liturgical holiday celebrating the martyrdom of Christian saints, and much earlier pagan history of licentious behaviors occurring on February 13-15, and medieval claims that St. Valentine did not even have any romantic connotations until Chaucer's poetry about "Valentines" in the 14th century... and too numerous a list of other historical claims, legends and folklore from around the world all laying claims to originating this holiday, the research will leave you exhausted and wishing it were Easter already.

Yes, Valentine's Day is a hybridized holiday if ever there was one.

Which basically means -- it was created to encourage shopping (see #2, below):

One of our PoSARC readers shared that, for her, writing poetry helps her to become aware of and start processing through the agonizing realities of her life as a POSA. She has written many poems and sent quite a few to us; this is one of my favorites.

It captures one of the most painful aspects of his behavior that a wife can endure and evokes such stark elements found in nature.