The answer may surprise you. One of the most empowering things you can do now – admittedly a low point in your life – is to take charge of what you need to know about your sexually-compulsive partner’s behavior. But what does this really mean. Better yet, how do you go about it? Read on.

Take Stock of the Situation

First you need to take stock of your current situation. While you may initially think the situation is obvious – your partner cheated on you, one way or another – it’s much more than that. You need to take into consideration how long the partnership or marriage has existed, what type of relationship the two of you have enjoyed during that time, if there are any children involved, your financial circumstances – as a couple and individually, and whether you are currently employed or are dependent upon your partner.

There are other considerations as well, including whether this is the first time you’ve discovered your partner’s sexual transgressions, whether his or her sexual behavior has become more and more flagrant and/or escalated in intensity, frequency and variety. Chances are, if this is the first time you’ve noticed the behavior, or the first time it has been drawn to your attention, the sexually-compulsive behavior may be in its initial stages. That’s the good news.

If such behavior has been escalating for some time and you’ve secretly been somewhat aware but chose to look the other way, excuse it, deny it, or tell yourself it didn’t matter, the sexual compulsiveness may have already intensified to the point of addiction. If so, the sexually-compulsive partner most likely has a rock-solid system in place for perpetuating his or her out-of-the-norm sexual behaviors – including an elaborate web of alibis, lies, and half-truths. Your partner has, in effect, become adept at putting one over on you. That’s the bad news.

Once you take stock of your personal situation, you’re ready for the next step: making a decision.

What’s Best for You?

Do you want to stay with your partner? The reason you took stock of your situation before you try to answer this question is that it has to be based on more than just emotional retaliation. You need to carefully weigh and balance the good of your relationship against the current bad. Whatever you do ultimately decide, it does need to be what is best for you – and your children, if you have any.

After your partner realizes you know, or has told you, of his or her sexually-compulsive behavior, the expectation is that there will be a discussion about it. Even if your partner swears never to engage in the behavior again, and begs for your forgiveness, that doesn’t mean that you need to leap into a decision that doesn’t feel right. First of all, you need time to digest the knowledge, to examine your own feelings and personal situation to determine what you want to do about it. Insist on this time. Be firm with your partner and say that you will not be rushed into making any decisions.

Be prepared for some particularly tough moments during this time, however, as many sexually-compulsive partners want to get the discovery and retribution discussion over and done with as soon as possible. Others want to avoid any conversation about their behavior and prefer to gloss over everything as a “mistake” or a “one-time occurrence.” Again, resist the temptation to be drawn into any lengthy discussions at this time. Simply say that you need time to think things over and you will let your partner know when it is an appropriate time to talk about the situation.

How Much is Too Much?

One point you should stress as soon as you can is how much information you want. What does this mean? Obviously, you’ll need to know certain things about your partner’s sexual compulsion or addiction. On a purely basic level, you need to know if the sexual transgressions involve unsafe sex with strangers – which increase the risk of sexually-transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. Are there multiple sexual partners, or extramarital affairs? Are prostitutes involved?

According to the Mayo Clinic, compulsive sexual behavior, in many cases, consists of generally acceptable sexual acts taken to the extreme. Other compulsive sexual behaviors are outside the bounds of normal sexual activity. These behaviors, called paraphilias, range from cross-dressing to having sexual desires for children (pedophilia).

How much information do you feel capable of learning? Before you can answer this question, you should know some of the signs of sexual compulsion or addiction.

• Avoiding emotional involvement in sexual relationships
• Having sex with prostitutes or anonymous partners
• Having multiple extramarital affairs or sexual partners
• Excessive masturbation
• Masochistic or sadistic sex
• Exhibitionism
• Frequent use of pornographic materials
• Sexual fixation on someone who is unattainable
• Use of commercial sexually explicit telephone or Internet services

It can be very disturbing, from an emotional standpoint, hearing the specifics of your loved one’s compulsive sexual behaviors. The effect of having this knowledge will be forever imprinted in your mind. No matter how you try to erase it, you won’t forget whatever details you find the most painful. This is important, because the one area where you are in control – or should be – is how much, when, and how you want to hear the details of your partner’s sexually compulsive behavior.

You decide if you only want to know:

• Is it other women or one other woman?
• How long has it been going on?
• How much money has been spent in pursuit of the sexual addiction?
• What services or materials are involved – phone or cybersex, pornographic materials?
• Have you had sex with prostitutes?
• Have you ever touched, had desires for, or had sex with our children – or any children?
• Have you had unsafe sex? When, how many times? Have you been tested for HIV/AIDS?

Sexual Addiction Requires Treatment

Along with taking control of what you need to know about your partner’s compulsive sexual behavior or sexual addiction, there’s another critical element affecting your future – and your partner’s. Sexual addiction requires treatment. Like any other addiction – to alcohol, drugs, gambling, eating, overspending, overwork, or multiple addictions – it will never be cured. Often, sexual addiction coexists with a chemical dependency. Untreated, sexual addiction often leads to relapse to chemical substances.
According to literature on treatment of sexual addicts, by the time they seek treatment, the relationship or marriage is already on the rocks or in great distress. But addicts can learn new coping behaviors, and they can overcome their destructive urges.
This includes sex addicts.

But the partner of the sexually-compulsive individual also benefits from treatment. Sexual addiction is considered a family disease in that more than just the addict is affected. Spouses of the sexual addicts, or coaddicts, according to sexual addiction treatment experts, usually grew up in a dysfunctional family. They may have been sexually abused as children. As a result, they are attracted to needy individuals – a situation that perfectly describes an addict. The coaddicts fear abandonment, will tolerate behavior that others would find unacceptable, and cannot imagine life without their partner.

As the spouse or partner of the sexually-compulsive individual, encourage and/or insist that he or she seek treatment. Be prepared for strong resistance on the part of the sexual addict, however, as denial is first and foremost in their line of defense. This does not mean that you cannot seek treatment for yourself. In fact, your mental and physical health and well being depend on it.

Where to Find Help

Various treatment options are available for your sexually compulsive partner, from individual and group counseling, to residential treatment facilities, inhospital or intensive outpatient treatment centers. Your partner may also benefit from, or start with, participation in 12-step support groups such as Sexaholics Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, and Sexual Recovery Anonymous.

But do not wait for your partner to seek treatment before you get help for your recovery. Just making sense of all the conflicting emotions and personal turmoil that are going on in your life requires both a level of detachment and sound solutions – neither of which you may be capable of at this point. Talk with your family physician, spiritual advisor or member of the clergy, family or trusted friend and get a referral to a counselor that specializes in treating partners or loved ones of sexual addicts.

If all this seems too daunting right now, take advantage of the 12-step groups that are available for others in your situation. There are several to choose from. All are free of charge, have many meeting locations, and may even have meetings available by phone or over the Internet. In any case, thoroughly check out their websites and read through the FAQs, articles, newsletters, and download or send away for literature. There are questionnaires, signs to look for, case studies or personal stories, and many helpful solutions. Best of all, you’ll find a network of caring individuals, each of whom has gone through some form of what you’re now experiencing. They can listen, give you emotional support, and provide concrete examples based on personal experience of what worked for them. Sometimes, just knowing you are not alone is the biggest boost you can get.

Here are some 12-step groups for you to consider:
• COSA (Codependents of Sex Addicts) – Open to anyone whose life has been affected by someone else’s compulsive sexual behavior.
• S-Anon International Family Groups – A program of recovery for those whose lives have been affected by someone else’s sexual behavior. The S-Anon program is based on the Twelve Steps and Twelve Principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. Site offers S-Anon literature that is conference approved and recommended for members to read as a basis for meditation and increased recovery awareness.
• Co-Dependents Anonymous (CoDA World Fellowship) – The common purpose of this fellowship is to help members attain healthy relationships. Helpful information on Recovery Patterns of Codependence including patterns of denial, low self-esteem, compliance, and control.

Give yourself the gift of knowledge, embrace the support from others who have been similarly affected by someone else’s compulsive sexual behavior, and take charge of what you need to know about your partner’s sexually compulsive behavior.

Counselors who treat the partners of sexual addicts recommend that you try a group for at least six meetings to see if it’s right for you. If that group doesn’t work out, try another meeting location or a different group. You will find one that meshes with you. Give it time, and don’t give up. After all, you need to rediscover your identity, self-confidence and self-esteem that may have been lost dealing with your partner’s sexually compulsive behavior.

In addition, here are some other resources and website links for women that may prove helpful in your path toward rediscovery.

• A Woman’s Healing Journey – This site contains articles for spouses of sex addicts, Q&A about coping, stories from wives of sex addicts, getting him to change, online community, books and resources and more.

• American Foundation for Addiction Research (AFAR) – This link is to a literature page on family issues relative to sexual addiction.

• Gentle Path Press – Books and resources on hope and freedom for sexual addicts and their partners, principles for achieving personal balance, how to mend a shattered heart, ready to heal and other titles.
 

Infidelity as part of sexual compulsivity, then, poses real problems for the couple trying to maintain their relationship. If there are children involved, the situation is even more difficult. Each partner carries a tremendous sense of guilt, shame, anger and other emotions. For the sexually compulsive partner, hiding the secret of the affairs becomes a full-time job. Lying and deception become so common-place that it’s hard to tell the truth anymore about anything. For the spouse of the sexual addict, the sense of betrayal, abandonment and loss are almost too much to bear. Both partners are seriously damaged.

What can be done about infidelity and sexual compulsivity? What should be done? The answers may surprise you.

Honesty May Not Be the Best Policy

If a person is an alcoholic or addicted to drugs or gambling or workaholism and is undergoing treatment and/or is in recovery, he or she is most likely also attending a 12-step group meeting of some type. This may be Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Cocaine Anonymous (CA), Narcotics Anonymous (NA), Gamblers Anonymous (GA) or Workaholics Anonymous (WA). In fact, the 12-step method originated by AA has been adapted by the other groups to address their specific focus. Going to the meetings, receiving the support of other members of the group who have gone through similar circumstances and are themselves in recovery, the addict works his or her way through the 12 steps. Two of these steps involve honesty and disclosure – to self and others.

Steps eight and nine of the AA 12 steps involve making a list of all the people we have harmed and being willing to make amends to them all (step and making “direct amends” to people we have harmed “except when to do so would injure them or others” (step 9). Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) has incorporated these same steps, word for word, into their own 12 steps (adapted from the original AA 12-steps).

There are other 12-step groups or fellowships for sexual addiction and sexual compulsivity, all of which are affiliated in an Interfellowship Program. These groups include SA, above, as well as Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA), Sexual Recovery Anonymous (SRA), Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA), and Sexual Compulsives Anonymous (SCA). While they have slightly different philosophies and approaches, they all stress honesty. Interestingly, they all have the same steps eight and nine in their own 12-steps.

Meeting with the 12-step groups that deal with sexual addiction and sexual compulsivity, the individual seeking help and support is encouraged to open up and admit their powerlessness over their sexual obsession, or lust, or unmanageable sexual behavior. They also receive the support of others in the group in order that they can take a moral inventory, admit their wrongdoings and share their hurt, feelings, shame, guilt, anger and other emotions in the safe confines of the group. This is the personal honesty that is a requisite part of being in the groups.

When it comes to telling the spouse/partner about the infidelities and all the sordid details of the affairs that the sexually compulsive person has committed, however, that’s another story indeed. Remember the part in step nine – “except when to do so would injure them or others” – well, unburdening your own conscience at the expense of another does much more harm than good. It may make you feel better, but it may also cost you your marriage or partnership. Clearly, then, honesty is not always the best policy.

Jennifer Schneider, in landmark research of couples and infidelity and sexual compulsivity, found that the offended partner very much wants to be in control of exactly how much is disclosed and to have these feelings of distrust and violation acknowledged by their sexually addicted partner and the therapist they are seeing as a couple. In other words, the power over what and how much about the infidelity is disclosed rests in the hands of the offended partner, not the sexual addict. That’s a bitter pill for the person who wants to unburden themselves and let go of their own guilt. It means they have a lot more work to do before they can reach the stage of broaching this subject with their partner. They’ll just have to chin up and do a lot more soul-searching.

What Can The Sexually Compulsive Partner Do?

For the sexual addict or sexually compulsive individual who is engaging in multiple affairs or cannot break off an extramarital affair, it’s important to find a therapist specializing in problems of sexual compulsivity.
He or she should attend one or several 12-step sexual help groups (SA, SAA, SLAA, SCA or SRA). In addition, he or she should also get a sex recovery sponsor from one of those meetings.
Check into treatment for sexual compulsivity – either as an outpatient or inpatient. Some treatment facilities specializing in sexual compulsion and sexual addiction offer residential and extensive outpatient treatment. Some have intensive workshops for couples, to be utilized in conjunction with a treatment program.

Patrick Carnes, Ph.D., a nationally known speaker on addiction and recovery, and director of Gentle Path, a 6-week intensive program designed to treat sexual compulsion, is also the author of Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction (1992), Contrary to Love: Helping the Sexual Addict (1989), and several other books worth reading.
There are numerous residential treatment centers that offer treatment for various addictions. Not all of them specialize in sexual compulsivity, however. Promises Treatment Centers in Malibu and West Los Angeles, offer extensive addiction treatment services, including those for sexual compulsivity.

What about Affected Spouses?

If you are the spouse of a sexually compulsive or sexually addicted person who has also been unfaithful, an important part of healing for you is to know and accept that the depression, anxiety and physical pain you feel do not mean that you are losing your mind. These are normal feelings and actually are part of the healing process for your recovery. What you probably need most of all is advice on what you should handle right now.

The worst mistake, according to marriage counselors and treatment professionals, is to stuff your feelings down. Don’t try to ignore them – they’ll just reassert themselves in more destructive ways. You also can’t run away from your partner’s sexual addiction – even though this, too, is a normal instinct. All of these behaviors do long term damage to you.
Instead, isolate and identify your feelings. Take control of you as a person and regain your sense of self-worth and personal power.

Learn how to communicate clearly and effectively with your unfaithful and sexually compulsive or addictive spouse. This is best done by working with a treatment professional who can guide you with appropriate ways of approaching certain subjects.
You need to create a foundation for a new partnership with your spouse, one that is based on trust.

There are also several organizations that can provide support and mutual fellowship while you are going through this process. These include Codependents of Sex Addicts (COSA), a recovery program for men and women whose lives have been affected by another person’s sexually compulsive behavior. Like AA and the 12-step groups for sexually compulsive or sexually addicted persons, COSA is framed according to adapted 12 steps (again, steps eight and nine are the same). You can check out their website and make use of the resources they have online. COSA offers face-to-face meetings (with a meeting locator by state), as well as telemeeting and online meetings.

Check out COSA’s weekly readings on their resources page – especially week one (Sexual Co-Addiction/Codependency of Sexual Addiction), week two (A Question of Recovery), week three (What is Sobriety?), week four (How do I know if I’m a Co-addict/Codependent of a Sex Addict?), and week five (Letting Go).

Another organization/website is Co-Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (COSLAA). See also their Tools for Recovery. And there’s also S-Anon.

For Couples

If you and your partner have decided to make a go of your relationship, and he/she is currently in or has completed treatment for sexual compulsivity or sexual addiction, ask the treatment professional for a recommendation to a couples treatment workshop, seminar or treatment program. This may be an intensive weekend seminar, or once weekly for a specified time, or 10-day program (or other). Some couples and/or family treatment programs are offered as an add-on service to existing treatment programs. For example, you may be able to participate in a multi-day family and/or couples day experience toward the end of the sexually compulsive or sexually addicted individual’s treatment program.

Treatment professionals also recommend that both partners continue to participate in their respective 12-step groups following treatment.

Infidelity and Sexual Compulsivity – Does it Spell the End of the Relationship?

In the final analysis, this all depends on the couple. How strongly motivated are each of you to continue the marriage or partnership? How willing are you to do what it takes to overcome this serious obstacle and challenge in your relationship? If both you answer yes, and give it your wholehearted commitment, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have every expectation of a future together built on renewed trust – and true intimacy with each other.

Remember, though, that neither of you can do this on your own. Sexual compulsivity and sexual addiction is progressive. For the addict, without treatment, the out-of-control sexual behavior only gets worse – and so do the consequences. Likewise, to effectively deal with the ups and downs, and to get the support and encouragement you need as the affected partner, you also need counseling. Take advantage of various tools and support available to you. And, above all, give it time to work. Your ultimate happiness as a couple is certainly something to look forward to.