Every PoSA’s story is noteworthy. We’ve selected a few that represent different trajectories of sexual compulsion, how it played out and how a partner responded to it in order to rescue her own sense of self, her own life, really. Just as having a chronically ill child impacts a mother’s everyday life, having a SAC partner/spouse does also.
We seek to shine a light for you to navigate your life as well as possible. So although the details may be somewhat different, the essence of the resultant trauma upon you will have recognizable similarities. Rather than focusing on the particular details of the “outer” story, since no two outer stories will be alike, we invite you to find resonance with the PoSA’s feelings, her “inner” story. Recovery means recovering your inner life so that your outer life can be animated by joy, hopefulness and beauty. These women bravely share their stories, so that their individual experiences become a shared knowing from which all may derive wisdom. We are deeply grateful for what they give us by doing so.
Greta’s Story
On September 6, my life changed forever when I discovered my husband of 17 years was cheating on me with a 32 year old divorced woman with 3 kids aged 7, 5 and 1. I learned he found her on a dating site as I began to comb through the computer/phone records, bank and credit card statements. But that is not all I found…I found more horrors– sexting, stripclubs, hotel hookups. And of course there always was his porn problem.
Throughout our marriage I caught him doing porn. I hated it and told him so. He called me a prude. I did not know what action to take. Our intimacy slowly but surely erroded over time. I didn’t know about the sexting (with fake caller id apps to hide the evidence!), hotels and stripclubs. OMG. If you were to ask any one of our friends, they just couldn’t imagine this to be my loving, fun husband. He doesn’t fit the type!
We have 3 amazing, beautiful daughters together. I am horrified that this is the legacy my husband is leaving our daughters. They will wear the scar of his devaluing of women forever.
He currently doesn’t want to seek help for our marriage or his issues. He is taking the “easy” way out by avoiding everything. Making things worse, we found out a few months ago that my mom has stage 4 pancreatic cancer and may have only months to live.
I’m simply devastated and sadly this is not the first time. Before I met my husband, before the internet and easy access to porn, I ended a 5 year relationship with a man who was a phone sex addict! I struggled through years of therapy recovering from that relationship, and now all my old wounds have been reopened and deepened. Only this time, I have children to think of and care for.
Right now, I’m a react-aholic, teeter tottering between being angry and wanting to forgive. But I know the struggle to detach from him is the right thing to do. I have been a stay at home mom for 16 years. I don’t know how I’m going to make it work. Thankfully, I have a ton of support from friends, family and a good therapist and have access to some of the best resources on the planet.
I pray each day to God all day that he fill me with wisdom, strength and courage to keep moving forward. Step by step.
I signed a lawyers retainer agreement yesterday.
A new day shall shine for me again, someday, god willing.
Thanks for allowing me to briefly share my story.
Hope’s Story:
After 24 years of marriage and five children – including one with autism and one with Down syndrome – I discovered that my husband was frequenting prostitutes on his monthly business trips. At that time, it had been going on for nearly 10 years (verified by a family member who was aware of the problem, and by my husband himself.) I don’t know when he started with skin shows and porn.
It is now nearly 3 years since that horrible moment of discovery. I tried to save the marriage with couples therapy. He requested deployment to Afghanistan, hoping he would die and become a hero. While he was gone, I discovered more of his secrets, including AdultFriendFinder, Craig’s List and plentiful porn videos. At some point, I realized he wasn’t going to get the help he needed. It was so much easier for him to blame me.
I went through denial. I cried. I got lots of therapy. I created a support group. I accepted that without trust, I didn’t have a marriage. I walked through the stages of grief. I ran a marathon.
I looked at my past and made a thorough analysis of my relationship with my father and past boyfriends. I decided what I wanted in my future. I also looked at my husband’s past: his angry father, his mother’s death, his large family’s history of mental illness, and his sexual abuse by a priest as a college freshman. It helped me to have some empathy so that I would not hate him. I don’t want to hate the father of my children.
He is an attorney and a high ranking military officer. Three separate therapists indicated he has borderline or narcissistic personality disorder.
I was unable to file for divorce while he was deployed, but I did so immediately upon his return. Concerned with his angry and impulsive outbursts, I did not allow him back in the house. I am glad I stuck to that, because I believe if he’d gotten his foot back in the door, I never would have gotten him out.
Despite my returning my rings to him and endlessly repeating that the marriage is over, despite having therapists reiterate that trust has been destroyed, HE wants to reconcile. He won’t move forward with the divorce. Instead of doing the right thing for the kids, he is trying to ensure that I get as little support as possible. (I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for over 20 years, and now with the two special kids, I have to be available for whatever crisis at a moment’s notice.) I have to go to court to force a financial settlement and custody agreement because he won’t negotiate.
I realize my first therapist was accurate when she told me it was too much to expect that he would have no more relapses. He did attend 12-step SA meetings for about a year, in hopes that I would take him back. He was supposedly a leader of not just his local group but also the regional group! He recently fell right back into his online porn addiction, trolling for “DDF NSF” sex.
Another therapist warned me (after counseling the two of us together) that my husband would never forgive me because I abandoned him. THINK OF THE IRONY IN THIS! He destroyed our marriage through his sexual addiction, but HE won’t forgive ME! As time has gone on, I’ve seen how this therapist’s prediction has played out. Indeed, my husband does everything he can to punish me.
BUT… I am a survivor. I love my children. I have tried to remain calm and stable, and my date with the Divorce Master is approaching (finally). I hope that the courts will protect me financially. I can take care of the emotional part.
For me, there was a long time when I woke up every morning crying. Now I wake up with HOPE. With real happiness. I don’t know exactly how the future will work out, I still have a few fears, I still don’t know exactly the right thing to do. But I BELIEVE that the future holds much promise.
My oldest just graduated from college and got engaged. He and his fiancé are both are intelligent, caring and stable people. I see that despite all this pain, the kids can come out of it intact and so can I.
I never bought the idea that I was a co-addict or co-dependent. I am a resilient woman. I didn’t deserve any of this and I have every reason to expect a happier life without him.
If anyone has had experience with divorce involving special needs kids and/or military benefits, I would love to hear about it.
Zoe’s story:
I met Bryce, a photographer, when I was modeling swimwear some eight years ago. There was instant chemistry between us and I accepted his offer for a date gladly. He took me to a swanky rooftop restaurant in the trendiest spot in Miami and afterwards, cuddling in a hip lounge over brandies, I felt he was possibly the handsomest and wittiest, warmest and most worldly man I’d ever been with. I did, however, notice a feeling not unfamiliar to me when I went out with “industry” types: other male models, agency people; many had irresistible appeal to other women and I worried about that with Bryce…it seemed the waitresses and hostesses all knew him in a way that might be a little too friendly for my taste. I shrugged it off as being one part my own insecurity and another part, as being because of Bryce’s naturally magnetic personality. And besides, he was so attentive to me and didn’t really flirt back with them, so why worry, right? On our second date, after dinner he suggested we stop for nightcaps at a nightclub he said was, “fun and hip.”
He drove us in his Porsche to a strip club and wanting so badly to be the “cool” girl that he’d find irresistible, I suppressed my big anxiety about going into such a place with a man I liked. We sat there ordering cosmo’s and when the strippers came by our table to offer him a lapdance, he asked me if I’d mind letting him watch me get one. I admit I was aroused at the idea of arousing him, so I accepted. The stripper did her lapdance on me and I could tell Bryce was on fire.
Between the pulsing music, candlelight and alcohol, and this beautiful young woman locking eyes with me for the four minute dance, I really “got” how men can get hooked on this experience since the girl makes you feel like you’re the only one in the place who exists for her; you are the recipient of all her attention and seduction, albeit purchased attention. I had never thought of myself as bisexual at all, so I was pretty surprised that I found the whole scene a bit dangerous but a turn-on, too, and I’m still not 100% clear how much of the “buzz” was coming from knowing Bryce was excited, and how much it was the mix of those heady ingredients I mentioned.
Next date with Bryce pretty much followed that same pattern: beach day, dinner out and then nightcaps at another strip club where the girls all seemed to know Bryce. Should I be concerned, I wondered? Nah…he’s just a “cool” guy with his finger on the pulse. Right? That’s what I told myself to push away any doubts that started nagging at me.
Long story short, we dated for three months and then Bryce proposed, making me feel like the luckiest girl alive since I’d apparently won the lottery in some unspoken ‘competition’ for such a prized man who had looks, was crazy about me, had money, position, and a hip, if different, lifestyle. I accepted his proposal since he always made me feel like I was the only one who really mattered to him. We were married in a sensational beach wedding and within a year, we were pregnant with our first child followed by a second one the following year.
Motherhood and the changes in my body took me out of modeling but Bryce always made me feel beautiful. I loved being a mother and watching what an incredible father Bryce was. Since I was home a lot with the kids and Bryce got a few shoots to do in New York and Vegas, he went without me. I remember feeling a vague nervousness about his being around all these perfect-looking models in New York (my body not being model-perfect anymore was definitely bringing up my insecurities) and I wondered about him going to strip clubs alone in Vegas. No way, I thought…he’ll behave…he’s such a good father and we’re his whole world. And he hadn’t gone to any of the Miami clubs since becoming a father, had he?
At some level I think the thought of anything ruining my picture of us as the Perfect, Beautiful Family kept me from asking any questions that might’ve had potentially unsettling answers, so I didn’t ask. But then I found a wad of receipts he’d forgotten to remove from his jeans before I put them in the washer, and they were for a restaurant, a strip club and…a hotel. All from the same night.
My world fell apart as I tried in a rage, to piece this horrible story together. When he came home, he denied having done anything wrong, insisting he took a male client out to help secure an important contract, and the strip club was right next to the hotel so he just went ahead and “treated” the client to a big night on the town, picking up his hotel check for extra ” brownie points” with the client. I had no choice but to accept his story but something stayed stuck in my craw, so I had a male buddy of mine go to that strip club next week on the same night the receipt said Bryce was there with a “client” and sure enough, my buddy reported Bryce was there again, alone, getting lapdances with no fewer than four of the strippers. I was beside myself with heartbreak and confronted him while fabricating how I knew he was there.
He did not try to deny it and didn’t seem to feel bad about it, either. Instead, he turned it around on me and said he’d so much rather go with me than go by himself but that I was too busy with motherhood for him to trouble me. I felt so relieved! See? He did want me! We went out the following night after leaving the kids with a babysitter and that night, with too many cocktails in us, I’m ashamed to say he sweet-talked me into having a threesome with one particular stripper who really seemed to catch his fancy.
The next morning, hung-over and with a stranger in our hotel bed, I felt awful that I’d allowed our marriage vows to be broken. Still, I pushed these frightening thoughts out of my mind by reminding myself this was the ‘cost’ of being with a worldly guy, a man who has ‘spicy tastes’ and maybe if I didn’t fight him, this “accepting wife” act of mine would secure his devotion to me forever. We went to the strip clubs every few weeks after that and the threesomes became more regular, always fueled with way too much liquor, since there was no way I could do that “straight.”
Then I found a receipt from one of his recent trips to Vegas that showed he’d dropped $800 at a strip club there. I knew that meant lots of lapdances and booze. I found a receipt from a jewelry store, as well, and when I tried to convince myself it was for a gift on our upcoming anniversary, it didn’t “stick” with me. I decided I couldn’t stand being plagued by doubts anymore so I hired a private detective to install a hidden recording device in our bedroom and told Bryce I was taking the kids to my mom’s in Montana for a three-day getaway since she missed them so.
Sure enough, the device picked up an entire evening’s worth of sexual activity between Bryce and a girl, right in our own bed. I was devastated that he’d do this in the first place, but even worse that he didn’t use a hotel, instead desecrating our marriage bed. Of course, the worst recrimination I saved for myself: In my quest to be the Cool Girl, I’d unwittingly green-lighted his infidelity from the very beginning. I raked myself over some mighty hot coals over that and it took a long time to “get” that I still had a right to be angry at his cheating on me. I asked him to leave our home, citing the tape as evidence of his infidelity and he seemed absolutely crushed that his family was leaving him.
When he called me to beg me to forgive him a few weeks after I’d moved myself and the kids out, I mandated that he either go to a therapist with me AND quit the clubs and affairs, or the children and I weren’t coming back home. Bryce accepted my conditions but for two years, I kept finding evidence of weak-to-non-existent recovery and relapses galore. He’d always offer tearful apologies with perfect-sounding explanations of why stress had gotten the better of him and that he’d now redouble his efforts to go to more 12-step meetings and stay in closer contact with his Sponsor.
After two years of barely-there recovery on his part, I finally decided to tell him I was filing for divorce since our love story was officially over with no chance of saving. He decided to use that as his alarm clock and recommitted himself to REAL recovery and he’s been doing well in the one year since he started. I insist on polygraphs every six months which relieves me of the constant spying and checking. Still, it’s been a horrible road to travel, knowing he’ll always live with the temptations of the lifestyle that was so easy for him to access, and knowing I was complicit in allowing it from the beginning.
Today, we each work our own recovery programs and a huge part of my own work is in forgiving myself for my complicity. The trauma model from Your Sexually Addicted Spouse has really helped enormously towards that end, as I can see how much I gave myself away in an attempt to secure his love, and that I’d descended into a trauma state when I started getting all the clues he was being unfaithful. When newcomers at recovery meetings now ask me what prognosis I have for our marriage, I tell them that it’s one day at a time. It’s sad to hear those words come out of my mouth, instead of being able to say, “Why, of course I have high hopes for us!” I have to use discernment every single day of my life now. Maybe it’s a gift, and I’ll get to see that eventually.
Thomas’s story
I married the girl of my dreams, Clarissa just after we both graduated from college. We have two beautiful boys together, aged 4 and 11. I work hard to provide a good lifestyle for my family and they are my rock and my stability. That was, until I glanced down at my wife’s phone and saw a text come in while she was out of the room. I picked up her phone and as I read the text that “floated” on the face of her phone, my knees buckled under me: a man named “Guy” wrote that he was counting the hours till they would meet up and he was a good boy in the shower this morning, anticipating his meeting with her tonight.
Short of breath and breaking out in a sweat, I put her phone down and went out for a run. This supposed meeting was set to happen in two hours time. Maybe it was a misdial? Maybe Guy was just a nickname for a girlfriend….my mind was racing to make sense of this. I decided during the calm after the run, to do nothing but observe. I had to fact-gather before I could confront her.
At one hour left to go before their “meeting”, I noticed she hurriedly cleaned up the kids’ dinner plates and asked me if I’d mind watching them for a few hours, she had to go meet a girlfriend from work who was in distress over her boyfriend breaking up with her. My stomach churned listening to what was surely going to turn out to be a lie. It was the hardest smile I ever had to turn on, but I did it, and obliged her request. I did notice she spent quite a bit of time in her bathroom getting ready, something not likely to happen were she truly just meeting a girlfriend. If the friend was in distress, surely she wouldn’t care about the glossy lipstick, dangly pearl earrings and snug top Clarissa was wearing.
I thought I would vomit watching her walk out our front door, pecking the kids goodnight on their cheeks and waving BYE to me. Those next few hours were wretched for me- I was so worried the kids would detect my panic, I opted to put a movie in for us, rather than the usual game we’d play or book we’d read together. The hours passed so slowly! Well after the kids were in bed, she came home, telling a tale about how her poor friend was dumped via text by her longtime boyfriend and they went out for drinks to talk. I said nothing but just got ready for bed.
The past few weeks have availed me of many truths I’ve uncovered about my wife: I feel like a real heel, breaking into her computer to track her credit card bill, but there it was: the night she was meeting that girlfriend, was actually spent in a motel right after I saw a purchase for a bottle from a wine shop two towns away. Additionally, I broke into her e-mail account and found there were quite a few, all showing different men writing to her about meeting up. I saw that she had put up her profile (as a single woman, no kids) on three different meet-up sites. My heart is so shattered, I don’t know if I can take much more.
I finally confronted her without telling her how I knew, and she just continued to lie, telling me my mind was playing tricks on me. I did something I never thought I would do, and called her therapist and told her. She never returned my call. Finally, I read some books and found some websites dedicated to helping those partnered with a sex addict and got myself some help. It is a starting point. I am just so baffled, I don’t know which way to turn. I love my wife with all my heart, we’ve always had sex multiple times a week, with her requesting more than I was interested in but I accommodated her.
I finally cracked and told her a white lie: I said a friend had seen her and a man together in a motel parking lot. A huge fight between us ensued but I held on. At the end, she was crying, confessing that she just can’t seem to stop, the feeling of being desired by other men was too powerful a pull, and that it didn’t have anything to do with me or with our sex life- it was the flirting and sexual courtship she was after. I am heartbroken and don’t know what happens next. But I’m here, working on mending my heart and making sure my sons are kept from this insanity.
Belinda’s story
Ian is a computer program writer and told me about his ‘unwanted’ habit of using porn when he got stressed out, right from our first date. He is ten years younger than I am, and a product of the generation that grew up learning their A-B-C’s on a computer so I knew that Internet porn was a staple for his generation. I never gave porn much thought one way or another although I didn’t much like it. And I truly thought it’s something single guys do but once they have a girlfriend they would naturally stop. This made sense to me. So I applauded his honesty in telling me. Still, I explained that I expected fidelity from him or we couldn’t be a couple. He said he would really try his best to give up the porn when he got stressed, and come to me with his sexual needs instead, which in my naiveté at the time, sounded like a great plan.
That was a year ago. All I have found in this past year is evidence that he not only hasn’t tried to quit, it seems like there’s more porn than ever in his life. I know this because I’ve mastered spy techniques, something I loathe having sunken down to doing. When I confront his lies about still using it, he acts ashamed of himself and promises to try harder but that his work has been more challenging than ever. His list of excuses seems to be growing.
Today, I understand from reading about porn compulsions, that he is addicted to the chemicals that porn dumps into a man’s brain, so that’s why he’s using more than ever. I feel trapped because we live together and I’m in love with him, yet the porn habit feels like it’s a part of him. Worst of all, I feel like I unknowingly signed some secret contract with myself that it’s my job to find him help! I cannot seem to stop finding him therapists, books, and I even spoke for hours to an intake counselor at a rehab place that we can’t even afford! I frightened myself when I found myself obsessing on how to get the money for Ian to attend this rehab.
Meanwhile, our sex life is now non-existent. Partly that’s because we’re always fighting about his lying to cover up his porn use (despite his assurance he’d always practice total honesty with me) and partly because he claims to be too exhausted/stressed out from work to sufficiently relax into making love with me. I’m not stupid, though. I know it’s because he’s “spending himself” at the computer when I’m not around.
Whenever I try to detach emotionally to save my sanity, he decides it’s time to get serious about recovery. I take the bait and off we go for another round of his abstinence for a few days, then right back into the porn cycle. If someone had told me one short year ago about the living hell I’d be in now, I would’ve called them a lunatic. Yet, that’s exactly what my life has become, a living hell.
I am relieved to now have found some resources for partners of porn addicts to help me since I see I can’t help him without being pulled down into his addiction. Besides dealing with all this on the personal level, I also feel such anger at how we’re selling an entire generation of young men down the river with this Internet monster that’s been unleashed.
Gary’s story
Trevor and I started dating when we were each 21 years old. That was twenty years and two cities ago.
We were waiting for the laws to change regarding gay marriage, as we both wanted to marry each other and talked often about the ceremony we’d have, the honeymoon and how great it would be to live as an “out” couple. We even went to register for wedding gifts together in the new city I paid for us to move to, one which was due to soon legalize gay marriage. Oh, and Trevor had convinced me there were no good jobs for him in our old area.
Not long after we moved, I got a call from a friend of ours saying he was online looking at porn and that he didn’t know we were “into that kind of thing”. What? What kind of thing? He said, “You know, posting videos of sexy maneuvers on porn sites! It’s totally hot, I just didn’t peg you as that kind of couple”.
I thought I would die. Carefully, I asked him to send me to exactly where online he found that, and sure enough, with my heart in my throat, I watched the videos of my true love, masturbating in our home office, with my professional degree framed right there on the wall in the background. In other words, our identities were now known by anyone who cared to enlarge that portion of the screen. Alongside that particular video were all kinds of stats showing how often the video had been viewed and also a link to his own account. There was an entire collection of his videos with disgusting-sounding titles, which shocked the hell out of me, as he hated cursing! I couldn’t take much more, and I confronted him that night when he came home. He caved in, and cried, with the truth blurting out in dribs and drabs between his sobs.
These past few months since Discovery has been the most difficult period of my entire life. We’ve been each other’s everything, for over two decades now. Years ago, I supported him fully (financially) when he wanted to go back to grad school. And I never understood why he couldn’t find work he liked…the night of Discovery he confessed that he had an internet porn addiction, which had eaten up most of his days surfing porn.
When online porn stopped doing it for him, he progressed to adult bookstores where he hooked up with other men for anonymous sex. And that led to male burlesque clubs, where he’d often pick someone up, or be picked up himself. He also had incurred a huge mountain of debt from the clubs and from buying porn DVDs. I knew nothing about any of this, for all these years.
After Discovery, I threw him out but he promised me he’d get help, which we got him. However, I don’t know if I can trust his supposed “recovery” one bit. It’s entirely possible he’s just going through the motions, doing “all the right things” because he’s afraid to lose the one good, stable thing in his life, me. I have no idea who this man really is. I feel utterly crushed to bits.
I now live going from therapy session to emotive anger classes, to a betrayed spouses support groups to reading all about his addiction, and then back to therapy. And around it goes, endlessly, all costing me a fortune. I don’t know how much longer I can hang in there until I get a clear sign telling me to take what’s left of me and leave….or stay and face…who knows?
Melissa’s story
Oh jeez, where do I start? With what I eventually found out or that I thought my marriage of 23 years was solid enough? I was such a fool! It turns out that he was seeing one young woman before we even got married that ended up being one of dozens he saw throughout the years. A twenty three year affair! And it was one of many. Right up to and beyond discovery. I have never had full disclosure from him, just three years of lies and half-admissions. The only thing that I am absolutely certain of is that he spent all our savings and retirement on all these scores of women and his addiction. At 65, I face my last years with a failed second marriage, too in debt to divorce him and knowing that he is one of the SACs that will never, ever stop acting out. I feel stuck. We very nearly lost our house as a result of his financial irresponsibility and that may happen eventually because I simply cannot stop him. I may well die having never known a true love. I am wracked with grief every day.
Right after we married, my then-young daughter found porn videos in the boxes he moved into our home. He said that they must have belonged to a friend who shared a basement apartment with him before we married. I believed that. I met him in church, after all. It was a second marriage for both of us and I was so careful about who I dated and this one had all the right “answers”.
Imagine my shock when I began discovering the truth about him. It was three years ago when, while out of town on business, he accidentally dialed me from his cell phone with a woman in the car with him. I heard their entire conversation! From their talking, I could tell that they knew each other well and that he had paid to have her travel to his destination and stay with him for part of his trip and they were discussing what to have for dinner that night. She got out of the car to run into the store and I heard him call another woman to meet up with for the portion of the trip that the first woman was not going to be with him! He had gotten another cell phone that I did not know about and was chatting away with the third woman when the second woman got back into the car. What makes this all so weird is that he told the second woman that he was talking with me. As if there was not a third woman!
I listened until the battery on his cell phone died. I was sick and furious and shocked and beside myself with rage. I called the hotel. No answer. I called the cell phone that I knew he had. No answer. I called his work site the next morning and he called me crazy as a loon, shouting at me that I was making his life impossible. That day I discovered the porn on our computer at home. This had been an ongoing problem for a very long time. He had many hard drives full of his favorite electronic girlfriends.
Again, all of this was denied and although he did go to counseling with me, he never embraced recovery. He lied about that also. He went and visited various women instead of attending meetings. The discoveries piled up and up and up. There seemed to be no end to his acting out.
When I visited a lawyer to divorce him, I was shown that I would be leaving with more debt than I could ever repay in my last years. That is the law and even though his actions—not mine—have brought this debt about, I am responsible for half of it. I have come to expect only lies from him. We live completely separate lives in a house we can barely afford to live in.
This is not a happy story with a fairy tale ending. It is my story that has been the biggest eye-opener for younger members of our PoSA support group. When they see that they, too, could end up at 65 with nothing but debt and a broken heart, they begin setting boundaries for themselves and enforcing consequences. If for nothing else, I am glad that my story has prompted these brave, young women to advocate for themselves. Thanks for letting me share this harsh reality with others.
Angie’s story
Well, I knew our real-life fights were getting worse and worse when I discovered my husband’s virtual hidden life. He had an “avatar” in a virtual reality online game-type thing that allowed his persona to have sex with many other “avatars.” I could hardly get my breath when I discovered this! Fake people having sex with fake people? All online? I was stunned that such things existed. Along with this, I discovered the porn and emails that revealed he was attempting to actually meet up with one of these “avatars” in an upcoming trip. I confronted him in one of the most violent fights we ever had.
I insisted that he be seen by a psychiatrist and we did go shortly thereafter. Do you know that he actually believed at the time that the doctor would want to admit me to the hospital? He really thought that he was fine and I was the crazy one. As it turned out, the doctor put him in a day program treatment for alcohol, pot and sex addictions. I was left to flounder with a couple of visits to the doctor who admitted him and eventually found a CSAT because it was the sex addiction that most distressed me.
I went to N-Anon and Al-Anon and tried a S-Anon group as well. I did appreciate the language that these programs gave me for the things I was feeling about his actions although I never felt like I was a co-addict. I did find a support group that eventually broke away from the 12-Step model and became a PoSA group. My husband is still learning in his recovery after four years and together we have learned that the marriage will have to be rebuilt from the ground up. This is not an easy path, I may never receive the empathy that I deeply desire from my husband. He simply does not have that to give.
When I see newcomers enter our group, I remember the day I found out about my husband’s secret life and it confirms that this world of porn and online sexual activity is hurting many relationships. If you are reading this, you are far from alone and there are many courageous women here to stand by you.