Posts in therapeutic abuse
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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Where Does Hope Fit? And What Is It?

Although I am over nine years from dday, it has been a long journey to find my voice. I well remember putting one foot in front of the other every day as one of the walking dead. I didn’t use the word hope. I just kept going. That was hope. Now, leaving terror behind means I can use my critical faculties to do what they do best—identify, question, analyze and discuss what happened, and choose what happens next.

I seek a just way for us to understand and heal our lives that begins with ourselves as priorities for care, not women to be “managed.“ I will not ignore the domestic violence in our experience or when practitioners add a “therapeutic” version of it to our nightmare. And I keep going. That is still hope.

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Suddenly Alone

What was your dday?

For most women, there were many episodes of uncovering bits of evidence, stumbling over contradictions, and then questioning our husband or boyfriend. We had no notion of the massive bottom to the iceberg on which we stood. But those episodes weren’t ddays.

Dday is something else altogether. Dday is when you grasp you have been deliberately deceived by your life partner on core value ground. You may not know all the who, what, where, when or why’s—but you know there’s been a breach in your relationship that is a critical breach. It’s not about a crisis that reveals illness, a mental lapse of some kind, or a stress related behavioral problem. Dday is when you perceive for the first time that he is “okay” with hurting you. That, in my opinion, is dday.  And for me, that meant I was suddenly alone.

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The Big Boundary Bluff

I received a message this week from an exasperated wife. She had come to realize the farce of all the boundary work she had been asked to do to save him and their marriage. Nearly ten years ago I remember thinking the same thing about all the “keep ‘em busy and let them think it will make a difference” boundary work the industry and even partner advocates espoused. Somehow it just didn’t make a lot of sense.

And nearly ten years later, I have a better idea of why it didn’t make sense then, and now. So, I’ve listed the points I believe wives and partners should consider before they comply with the industry’s boundary homework assignments.

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When Practitioners Can't Bear "Bearing Witness"

It’s taken a lot to get you to this place. First, you had to get him to go to an appointment with this sex addiction treatment practitioner. That process took hours—searching for information and resources, learning vocabulary and approaches, finding practitioners nearby, and choosing which one seemed the best fit. Then began the bargaining, begging, threatening, and arguing needed to convince him to go to the appointment that you had to make on his behalf. After he went he told you how caring and understanding she was. And now it’s your turn to go. 

Settling into your chair in the therapist’s office, you are nervous but also anticipating the first scrap of caring and safety you will have received since this whole nightmare began.

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