I have a few hard questions for you to think about:

• • Are you in a relationship that is not healthy for you?

• • Are you scared of intimacy or of being alone? (Maybe you’re scared of both.)

• • Do you believe that deep down you are really a terribly flawed human being who doesn’t deserve to be anything but sad, lonely, and unhappy -- someone waiting to be dumped because you just don’t “measure up.”

• • Do you believe you need a boob job, a nose job, or to lose a lot of weight?

• • Do you believe you need a complete and utter re-make?

• • Or maybe you feel you are so bad off that all of the above would never be enough?

• • If you didn’t have these beliefs would you be sticking around in your relationship?

Would you really be hanging around waiting to be abused, ignored, or to be constantly compared to the airbrushed fantasy pictures of incredibly young, sexy women that your partner constantly watches on the internet?

• • And would you spend your time checking his cell phone for all of the numbers he calls and pictures he downloads?

• • Why are you in this relationship?  Do you deserve to be partnered with someone who is always checking out other women or watching them or contacting them? What is your reason for staying?

• • Have you tried to ignore this behavior because you are terrified of being without a man to protect you and show the world that you are loved? If this is true are you really protected in any way?

• • Or are you being betrayed, ignored, and shamed? Do you respect yourself or blame yourself?

These are hard questions to face, but you can face them and reach out for help because you do not have to live this way. My clients are all partners of sex addicts who have experienced this misery; they are hurt, sad, and angry women who have sold themselves short. Their pain is heart-breaking. Their self-blame and loss of self-respect moves me to tears. But they are reaching out because they have come to a place of incredible pain.

Partners of sex addicts are also the most courageous and brave women that I have ever known because they are taking the first step to recovery. From a position of shame and degradation, they are coming into the light of becoming whole.

I know a beautiful woman who has reclaimed herself. In the process, she relived enormous pain, opened her raw and bleeding wounds, and exposed them to the air. It was so painful that I shed tears with and for her. She lost her beautiful big house, faced bankruptcy, but found the self that she had slowly, over time, surrendered to a heartbreaking marriage. Today she has restarted her career and is living in a modest home with her young sons filled with love and laughter. She glows with health and her own inner light.

I also work with a woman who woke up wanting to be done with her life but she had a small child to raise — a scared little girl who refused to go to school and threw tantrums. This woman made a phone call and faced her fears that she had carried around seemingly forever. She called in desperation. She found the courage to give her husband a choice: get help or leave. From that difficult point, they have struggled and grown in immeasurable ways. Today they face their lives openly. Their journey continues.

Partners of sex addicts, there is hope, there is a better way. Reach out to Neaulia Compulsion Solutions.