In My Opinion, Where Do We Go From Here?

Over the last ten years I’ve been pulling back the curtain on the strange and ongoing train wreck of treatment options for compulsive-abusive sexual relationship disordered men and their wives and families. In my opinion there is no evidence-based publishable research available to back up what was being marketed (I searched and searched and am still searching after ten years.) Religious-based versions soon sprang up around it and are now closely allied to it. “Believers” already enrolled in faith-based organizations may be seamlessly transferred into affiliated treatment programs that are easily shrink-wrapped in the religious propositions of the day. Once there, the theories and methods go unchallenged by women who are desperate, traumatized and already conforming to their religious community’s direction and authority.

As long as the compulsive-abusive sexual relational disordered man is reinstated as some version of the spiritual and authoritative head of the household, success is declared. The women and children are there to do what they are told. Meanwhile his true core values that actually run the show are never named or unseated. And in describing that situation I am reminded of a New Testament professor from seminary days (now in Glory) who used to say in his thick Irish accent “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus…vaguely in our minds.”

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therapeutic abuse, self-careDiane Stricklandtelling the truth of your life, tell your story, sex addicts are abusers, reality check, recovery ploys
Living Differently into These Hard Truths

After four weeks of examining how men call sex addicts harm their wives, partners, children and step-children, we need to hit the pause button, catch our breath and see what we’ve learned. So, in today’s blog I’m going to talk about how we live with the truths that we have found the courage to speak, face, hear, and validate.

Before I do that, I want to honor that remarkable courage! Your persistence in reading the blog and validating the hard stories shared over the last four weeks bears witness to your commitment to the value of your lives and your children’s lives. Please don’t lose sight of that! Keep it in front of you at all times. Say it out loud. Talk about it to yourself and to your children. Validate and affirm over and over again. The power of his fake life to make you all doubt yourselves and feel less than “enough” must be undermined by the power of your real lives as a loving wife/partner and loving children/stepchildren.

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Post-traumatic stress, making decisionsDiane Stricklandreality check, recovery for partners, adult children of sex addicts, telling the truth of your life, children's trauma care, sex addicts are abusers
What’s With Adult Children Turning Against Their Mothers?

For the last three blogs, we’ve been looking at family impact of the secret life of sexual and sexualized activities conducted by a father or step-father. In creating and protecting this secret life as his priority we have seen the devastating consequences to children and teenagers. It is clear that he abuses the whole family, not just the wife or partner. He does this with his deceit, misogyny, lies, blameshifting, gaslighting, denial, abandonment, humiliating behaviors—betraying the family unit as the primary priority for authenticity, intimacy, safety, respect, nurture, honesty and love. He violates the family’s core values multiple ways, multiple times, with multiple destructive consequences to the other members.

This week we are dealing with an outcome that is the second trauma for so many women. This is about adult children who turn on them while protecting and supporting their compulsive-abusive sexual relational disordered fathers. Why does this happen? How does this reveal what is truly at stake for families? And what can wives and partners who are innocent victims of these men do to avoid becoming fresh victims of their misguided adult children? How much loss are wives and partners really absorbing?

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fake regret, Post-traumatic stressDiane Stricklandadult children of sex addicts, low bar for recovery, intimate partner abuse, telling the truth of your life, telling the truth about him, tone-policing, infantilizing sex addicts
Lessons Children Learn from Fathers Called Sex Addicts

Such a strong response to my guest blogger last week—thank you! She has provided a second piece which I am posting today. I have added some “lessons learned” from my family life and from clients. This may be difficult for some mothers to read but is not intended to inspire guilt. Rather it is a caution to those who assume preserving the “family” is the best course for children. It also makes it clear that men called sex addicts are not just abusing the wife or partner. They are harming their children and negatively impacting their development as human beings. The sexual and sexualized behaviors of these men are not just impacting their relationship with wives or partners. It is a family experience of harm largely unexamined by the treatment industry.

Thank you to last week’s guest blogger who is providing another important piece of this puzzle!  I am respecting her and her daughters’ need for anonymity. Here then, are her additional insights about the harm done to children of men called sex addicts.

 Also—important news about Tania Rochelle’s next retreat for partners—with an early discount opportunity! See details at the end of the blog!

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making decisions, expectations for recovery, Post-traumatic stress, self-careDiane Stricklandfamilies are priority, patriarchal assumptions, therapeutic incompetence
My Family, Eight Years Later

Last week’s blog generated significant response. Thank you so much for letting me know when topics help you validate your experiences and ongoing concerns. One reader sent me the following piece about her family’s trauma and how they lurched along together and ultimately chose to put themselves and each other first instead of the man who continued to lie, gaslight, blameshift, and deceive them all through his fake “recovery” years.

The author and her daughters require anonymity but the daughters, in particular, want other kids to know they aren’t crazy and they deserve better from him—and to ask for counseling trauma care support! Don’t count on the treatment industry to be proactive on anything that might suggest their men called sex addicts may have harmed the family so deeply that children should receive immediate and ongoing attention for trauma care. FYI: This not an account of any father sexually abusing children within his own family.

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expectations for recovery, fake regret, making decisions, Post-traumatic stress, self-careDiane Stricklandsex addicts harm families, sex addicts hurt women, sex addicts are abusers, sex addicts manipulate, partners are priority, families are priority