Intimate Partner Abuse: How Does It Impact You?

Intimate Partner Abuse by men called sex addicts is a taboo topic for the treatment industry and religious-based recovery programs and practitioners. Your response to last week’s blog, however, tells me it’s a topic long overdue for attention. Thank you for your feedback and additional items for the list.

Today I’m talking about the impact and consequences from the abuse we have endured. It’s not a pretty list, either, so please take care of yourself as you read it. Pace yourself. Use mindfulness coping strategies, tapping, and self-soothing strategies along the way. And if your symptoms need urgent attention seek professional help or call a crisis helpline for women.

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Post-traumatic stress, self-careDiane Stricklandpartners are priority, wives and partners pay the price, bearing witness, patriarchal assumptions, telling the truth of your life, tell your story, therapeutic incompetence, intimate partner abuse, intimate partner violence
How Men Called Sex Addicts Abuse Their Wives and Partners

After discovery many wives and partners are too traumatized to recognize themselves as victims of abuse. Enter the treatment industry who calls all of it his “sex addiction,” instead. For most of us, that’s a whole lot better than being a victim of abuse. I was sucked so quickly into the “sex addiction” alibi that it took me a while to back my way out. But back my way out, I did, as what I was reading and hearing from the sex addiction treatment industry just stopped making sense.

Along the way I started a list—a list of the offences women face from these men called “sex addicts”. We experience physical, spiritual, emotional, financial and psychological harm that no one seems to name. I realized that if any parishioner came in my office with even some of these signs, I would have concluded she was in an abusive relationship. My first concern would have been for her safety. Only in this farce of a treatment industry is that long list of abuse set aside and replaced with the two words “sex addiction”. Actually, they don’t even bother making a list.

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Diane Stricklandsex addicts are abusers, partners look after themselves, therapeutic incompetence, telling the truth about him, telling the truth of your life, saving yourself, domestic violence of sex addiction, wives and partners pay the price, sex addicts hurt women
Searching for Your Life and What It Means

After dday I was immobilized in the wreckage of three decades of my life. Suddenly, there were huge gaps in time I tried desperately to close. I would shut my eyes and go inside myself—searching for the missing pieces, like remembering my boys as babies and little children—anything to confirm those thirty years weren’t a total fabrication. Time and time again nothing would come. Even though I was married for 32 years, there was nothing left to remember. It was disorienting and heartbreaking. My life as a mother with children was gone completely and I didn’t know if I would ever get it back.

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Diane Stricklandafter discovery, dday
What Kind of Primary Relationship Does the Treatment Industry Have in Mind for You?

Are you wondering when someone in the treatment program is going to advocate and act for your interests? I’m talking about basic stuff—like what you need to know right now about his sexual and sexualized activities, or responding to your concerns that having him around right now makes you hypervigilant and unable to function, or asking them to recognize that blaming you for his behaviours is particularly heinous, etc.

Well, I hope you are wearing comfortable shoes. It will be a long wait.

The relationship paradigm underneath the prevailing treatment program (as with the many religious groups involved with recovery programs for men called sex addicts) is based on the man’s best interests being served first, foremost, always. It’s not a temporary therapeutic priority. It’s permanent. You don’t get an adult back as a life partner. You get a treatment industry approved non-adult project. And often a mean one, at that.

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therapeutic abuse, making decisions, expectations for recovery, self-careDiane Stricklandpartners are priority, misogynist therapy, therapeutic incompetence, patriarchal assumptions
Mid-week Gotta Share~Retreats Just For YOU!

Tania Rochelle, MS LPC NCC (and most importantly—a guest blogger here!) has launched her website, https://sweetwaterretreats.com and her FB page Sweetwater Retreats. Of particular interest is that she is offering three retreats for wives and partners of sex addicts in three different locations. Registration is limited to eight. As well as being a licensed counsellor and teacher, Tania is a publisher writer who uses all her training to develop tools to treat our trauma symptoms. She is a great listener and will be there for you. Also, every participant will receive a follow-up session with me that is included in the retreat fees. Check out the dates and locations here: https://sweetwaterretreats.com/ Scroll down the homepage for retreat fees and dates.

You also might know Tania from Episode 2, Part 1 of PoSARC’s Survivor series. Lili Bee talks with Tania about her experience extricating herself from her life with a man called a sex addict (not once but twice!) and how she is enjoying a life of freedom now, as well as a new relationship that is positively different from the one she left behind. You can watch that video on http://www.posarc.com/ home page. Just scroll down past a few other videos and there it is!

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Post-traumatic stress, self-care, making decisionsDiane Stricklandretreats for partners, partners are priority