Recovering from sex addiction is a complex and challenging journey, and one aspect that often requires special attention is navigating intimacy in relationships. Intimacy involves emotional closeness, vulnerability, and a deep connection with another person. However, sex addiction can significantly impact a person's ability to develop and maintain healthy intimate relationships. As a sexual addiction […]
He swore on his children’s lives that he wasn’t having an affair. He said someone must have broken into his email account. He kept reassuring his wife that it was nothing. Finally, she got access to all of his phone records and his secret receipts. She also found a second cell phone he accidentally left […]
Like many men, I thought my pornography sexual addiction was a dirty little secret known only to me. However, my wife started picking up on the “signs,” such as how I was not really “there” in our relationship, how I frequently had trouble “finishing” during sex, and how I had a general lack of interest […]
If something seems amiss in your sexual relationship with your partner, it's possible that he is compulsively using internet porn or sexual connection with others in a destructive way and may need help with porn addiction. There are warning signs you might see if your partner is having a problem with sexual compulsive behavior: 1. He may spend a […]
Can I find safety in a world (& in my relationship) that feels unsafe? Our human form is relatively fragile. Resilient in many ways, of course, but even the most cursory amount of attention to the news reveals the many ways our bodies and spirits can be harmed. And we live in a part of […]
If you’ve ever had difficulty relating to someone in your life — and, c’mon, who hasn’t? — you may have gotten stressed by something they said or did. In slang terms, they “rattled your cage.” Other slang terms meaning to aggravate or annoy include “gets on my nerves,” “up in my grill,” or “messing with […]
Common beliefs may tell you that it is essential to have the same interests and styles to co-exist happily. Some 64% of married Americans believe that “having shared interests” is very important for a successful marriage, according to the Pew Research Center. In fact, those surveyed ranked shared interests as more essential than good sex […]
If I were to ask you the question: "Are you taking care of yourself during the holidays?" I'm sure I'd get a mixed bag of responses. During this time of year, we are all very busy, stressed, and pressed for time. It seems like self-care is the last thing on many women's lists. Today, I […]
Resentment is often regarded as a negative emotion to be avoided, much like jealousy. However, as partners of sex addicts, resentment is often a huge part of what you are feeling. There is honesty in resentment. The feeling is very real and is something to be faced head-on in order to progress. Think of it […]
Codependency sounds like a dirty word. We know it sounds bad, must be bad, but what is it really? How can you tell if you are indeed in a codependent relationship? Many people find themselves repeating the same unhealthy relationship patterns despite knowing better. Do you find yourself making lots of sacrifices for your partner’s […]
To define what I mean when I say “women's wisdom,” I would have to say this: there's a sort of sixth sense women have about their own lives — an internal truth that you can hear when you pay attention. The problem is that many of us have trouble accessing this wisdom, because we get […]
American porn is becoming a more and more dangerous thing every day. We have a nation full of men (and increasingly, women) who are desperate for constant novelty, leading them further and further down the seemingly endless hardcore porn rabbit hole into darker and more fringe territory. And the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily […]
Being married to a porn or sex addict is at once infuriating and devastating. No matter which side of the marriage you’re on, this is a profoundly hard time. If you are in addiction recovery and it’s your goal to redeem your marriage, there is a lot of hard work ahead of you. But don't […]
When I set out to tackle the topic of how women feel about their partner’s porn use, I never could have anticipated the response I would get. So many women, dear, smart, and amazing women, were eager to share their heart-wrenching stories with me. Some stories end with healing, and others end with the destruction […]
Women have been coming forward in droves to share their stories of sexual assault and sexual misconduct perpetrated against them by some of the richest and most powerful men in the world. This is, I think, both a wonderful thing and a very complicated thing because, at the end of the day, there are real […]
When a sex or porn addictions first comes to light in a relationship, everything feels chaotic. Perhaps your partner was caught in their sexual compulsive behavior and is reluctant to admit any wrongdoing. Perhaps they confessed their behavior when either guilt or self-doubt became too unbearable. Either way, your relationship has been shattered, and […]
This is a message to the woman who got involved with someone she thought she could change. Maybe you met him while he was still involved in another relationship. Perhaps he was a drinker, a gambler, a sex addict, or an abuser. Maybe you knew someone else who was involved with him in the past […]
To much of the outside world, a relationship that falls apart due to sex or porn addictions has a very clear bad guy. Everything that happened was due to the destructive behavior on the part of the addict, while partners of sex addicts are totally innocent. Seems pretty obvious, right? Unless you're looking at the […]
When working with the heartbroken partners of sex addicts and porn addicts, at a certain point, they tend to come to the realization that their partner is suffering too. It's not at all uncommon (or unhealthy) for their first thought to be “Well, good!” I work with women whose worlds have been rocked by the […]
The partners of sex addicts and porn addicts do not always have an easy road ahead of them. Often, an unevenness can begin to develop almost immediately where "his progress," "his work," or "his addiction," can begin to take precedence over your own recovery. This is especially true if the partners of sex addicts have […]