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.

In the tiny lull between Thanksgiving and before the impending holiday frenzy really kicks in, we wanted to share our next Survivor's Series episode with you, our readers. And because we received a fair amount of feedback from those of you who preferred the audio-only format of our last episode as it enabled you to multi-task while listening, we wanted to say that even though our new episode is a video, it's just as easy to hit PLAY on your phone and simply listen to it in the car, while making dinner or whatever else you're busy with. 

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". 

Two weeks left of winter and we are bursting at the seams to unveil a brand new resource for partners that we are thrilled to share with you all!

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". 

One of the very many things my sex addict taught me in the years that followed Discovery was that there wasn't just oneflavor of lying, the necessary component that allows secretive behavior to flourish undetected- no, there was a sizable rainbow assortment I never even knew existed. Of course, this is hardly unique amongst sex addict/compulsives (SACs) in their dealings with their partners.

Over the years, I learned, as I'm sure a lot of readers here did, about the many nuances in all the different types of omissions, half-stories and complete fabrications, the gaslighting and the twists and turns involved in purposely manipulating another person's reality. I've read a lot of books on the character disturbed and their manipulative tactics (with lying being primary) but never imagined I'd actually enjoy reading anything on this onerous topic. Till now: