Those are frequently asked questions of the often ignored female partner of a sexual addict. Most couples, whether married or not, have both spoken and unspoken commitments that sex stays within the relationship; they communicate and respect each other’s personal needs and boundaries. Their expectation is for unconditional love, but they know that relationships have conditions that need to be negotiated openly. Unfortunately these commitments and expectations are often a façade for many relationships.

Many women are in relationships that are riddled with deception, lies and false perceptions as a result of a partner’s compulsive sexual acting out. Today in every neighborhood throughout every community, women are being challenged by the addictive nature of a partner’s sexual behavior. It may be the wife who just discovered her husband was with another woman within days of their wedding. It could be the mother of two young children whose husband has just lost his job due to engaging in Internet sex during work hours; or the partner who has masked her shame and confusion about her husband’s chronic pornographic activity, and is now horrified at the thought that her children are going to find out about their father’s voyeurism. It could be the wife of 40 years with a husband who is about to retire, who has known about his affairs from the beginning of their marriage; there’s nothing particularly different about the current affair that she just discovered — it’s just the proverbial  ‘straw that breaks the camel’s back.’

The truth is it could be any woman, with or without children, with or without financial resources. For many, it is a family tradition wherein generations of women in the family have denied, tolerated and rationalized the sexual acting out of their men.

As much as there are similarities between persons who are addicted to alcohol and drugs and those who act out sexually, being the partner of someone who acts out sexually is more personal, confusing and shameful. The partner has been betrayed, deceived and lied to; vows have been violated, again and again. She has been ignored or manipulated emotionally and physically; asked to engage in sexual practices that she finds repulsive and abusive. She may come to find out that her partner has been in long-term relationships that involve financial commitments, and possibly even children; and frighteningly, she is placed at risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

Living with addiction and reacting to addiction is living in a chronic state of loss. The partner is confronted with incredible loss — the loss of the relationship, the stability of the family, loss of health, dreams, esteem. She may live for years caught up in the cycle of chronic grief and all of its many feelings. The losses are ongoing and repetitive, with denial coming in and out of the picture. Not having the truth validated, discounting her own perceptions or having them dismissed by others, and needing to minimize feelings leads to a distorted and unmanageable internal life.

Initially in working with this female client there is a stabilization period. In this period she needs to be heard. She needs to be witnessed, validated and given an educational framework for what it is she is reacting to. There are specific guidelines for disclosure — what and how much information should be shared. Important discussions about initial boundaries and often problem solving are needed to address immediate crises that are frequently due to health, financial or legal problems. Referrals to self-help groups and possibly other professionals need to be offered.

The next stage of treatment and recovery needs to begin where the female partner can address her coaddictive behaviors. Today we have more experience and knowledge about working with a sex addict and realize the partner cannot be ignored if we want to offer the individual partners and their coupleship choices about living their lives not from script, but from self-empowerment.

The coaddict profile

The key to working with this woman begins by recognizing who she is. In truth she didn’t get to this coupleship by accident. Influenced by both culture and family, coaddictive behavior was well learned long before her partner came into her life. As much as the socialization and empowerment of women in Western industrialized culture has changed, women are still more apt to:

• defer to men by giving them the benefit of the doubt
• take on false guilt
• believe they need a man to be okay
• prioritize his needs over their own

Women are taught to acquiesce, be polite, refrain from showing anger, and often feel inadequate about their sexuality or have a distorted and shame-based body image.

Yet this socialization of women, by itself, is not the strongest factor in her coupling with a sex addict. Far more influential is her family history. Looking at family history and dynamics will be significant in the healing. Both the co-addict and addict were raised in very similar family systems in which they experienced a range of emotional and physical abandonment; most often addictive homes, rageful violent homes and sexually shaming family systems. Families where sexual boundaries are distorted or nonexistent are a breeding ground for people who will eventually act out sexually, or who partner with them. Today, the consequence is what we know to be trauma repetition.

Marked manifestations of coaddictive traits

Denial. Simply put, denial is dismissing your own intuition. It is blatantly overlooking what is right in front of you. A coaddict wants to trust her partner; give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, what does it mean to find out she cannot? Does it mean divorce? More arguing? Disrupting the children’s lives? Lifestyle threatened? She is not desirable? Punishment from the church? While the coaddict is busy questioning, the addict stands strong in his denial – rationalizing, protecting his stash and continuing his addiction.

Denial doesn’t necessarily mean not having a clue. It means dismissing the seriousness of the behavior, ignoring the consequences. Partners don’t know what to believe so out of fear they simply believe what makes them feel safest. The addict lies to them and now they lie to themselves. Confused by self deception, they do not take action and they spend their energy reacting or stamping out fires. This denial is supported by common beliefs and fears, some of which include:

• I can’t live without him.
• I might end up alone, and if I am alone, that proves I am not worthy.
• No one else will ever love me.
• He’s the father of my children, and they need their father.
• All men are like this.
• My family might find out and I’d feel humiliated.   
• The kids might find out and I won’t know how to handle it.
• If he is a sex addict, then all the good times in the past were a lie.

Preoccupation. Many partners, particularly those who suspect or know about some of the addict’s behavior, live their lives in response to it. They have this insatiable need to know what he is doing, thinking and feeling, so they will know what they are supposed to do, think or feel. They have questions, suspicions, a sense, a knowing; they wonder and question. They want to know, but don’t want to know; want validation, or want invalidation.

“I was like a detective checking his calendar, his cell phone, his trip schedules for work, asking pointed questions of his coworkers, I would set traps for him, not trusting him to act responsibly.”

Hypervigilance becomes a way of life, being vigilant to his behavior and trying to attach meaning to it. “He came home early, that means …” “He’s acting all loving, and that means ...” “He is being nice to the kids, that means ...” “He’s angry, that means …” “He’s quiet, that means …” They are consumed with what they think he is feeling and thinking.

Control. Preoccupation with the addict’s problems frequently leads to controlling behavior. It is an attempt to bring stability to chaos, to bring safety to that which is dangerous. Controlling behavior is also a defense against shame. When controlling, coaddicts don’t feel a sense of inadequacy. If anything, they feel empowered. Controlling behavior imparts a sense of power at a time in life when they are overwhelmed with fear and helplessness. It is a false, hollow power that, at a time of desperation, seems like a quick fix.

Examples of controlling behavior include:

• Throwing out the stash
• Canceling plans
• Silent treatment
• Relocating
• Lying
• Making threats
• Sexual manipulation
• Flirting with others or threatening to be sexual with others to create jealousy in the addict; acting or dressing sexy to gain or maintain his attention; being sexual with the addict to prevent the addict from being sexual with others.

Image Management. Projecting to the world that they and their family are well and happy reinforces the delusion that everything must be okay. Coaddicts frequently learn to live in fantasy, inventing a false reality that is less painful than the truth. They become adept at living with a high tolerance for inappropriate behavior to the extent that they don’t even recognize the inappropriateness any longer. They chronically give him the benefit of the doubt and give away their own reality. They lose themselves in this process, to live a life of internal chaos, emotional isolation and pain marked by control and numbness.

Perfectionism becomes a part of many women’s image management and often stems from having internalized shame, operating from the belief that she has to be the best to get his or society’s approval; or to be the best, simply to not be rejected.

Distorted boundaries. No boundaries, walled boundaries, damaged boundaries — everything but healthy boundaries. Boundary violation and distortion is a given; beginning in childhood and setting her up to be a good coaddict, to become someone who will not recognize or challenge behavior that hurts her. It is possible, that as a child, she had no way to defend against boundary invasions. When someone lives with boundary violation and distortion it erodes her esteem and creates confusion about who is responsible for what. It sets her up for becoming a victim and/or victimizing others. Living with an addict only reinforces boundary violations because they are masters at trampling on boundaries. In time, as esteem is battered, boundaries sustain major damage. While a lack of boundaries sets people up for victimization, it can also set them up to be hurtful and intrusive to others. Going in either direction is an act of being boundary-less. They are not protecting themselves when they are in a victim stance. They also lack boundaries when they fail to respect the boundaries of others. This lack of containment, being boundary-less is most apparent when they are enraged.

Anger /Rage. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” (Adaptation of the closing line of Act III of The Mourning Bride by William Congreve, first produced in 1697:“Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.”). In the movie Something to Talk About, Julia Roberts plays a character who shows up at the local PTA meeting, stands up and shouts, “Is there anyone here who hasn’t slept with my husband?” In the fury of rage, people may do things that they never would have imagined doing.

For some female partners, rage is homicidal. Stories of murders and threats are common, such as Lisa Nowack, the astronaut who drove 900 miles wearing a diaper, intending to confront, kidnap, and possibly kill the lover of her lover. While many women do not make the headlines, their rage is destructive in various ways. Sometimes they burn down the house, or remove their partner’s belongings and set them on fire. Only a minority of betrayed women actually act out their fury violently. More prevalent are the homicidal thoughts, moments of fantasy that plot revenge.

Sideways anger. Often anger becomes sideways; it is passive aggressive, such as in the following examples:

• When I thought he was with a woman, I would get her phone number and call her number incessantly and then hang up.
• I had an affair myself to show him.
• I verbally raged at my kids for things that had nothing to do with them.
• I spent thousands of dollars shopping when I believed he was lying to me.
• I keyed his car (damaging property).
• I binged on food. 
• I emailed everyone we knew after I discovered emails that told me he was sleeping with a friend. I wanted revenge. I wanted him to be shamed and humiliated. I wanted people to be angry with him and see him as a bad person. In the moment I felt glorious and empowered.

Anger avoidance. Some women say they just don’t feel angry; instead they feel defeated or numb. They may acknowledge that they should feel angry, but aren’t. It is often a part of low grade chronic depression (dysthymia) or major depression.

The Body Knows. While it is intellectually understood that stress is traumatic to the body and compromises one’s health, it is a surprise to many the prevalence of illness that is evident in working with this client population. Whether or not a partner knows about the addict’s sexual acting out or when denying and rationalizing suspicions, they live with stress, both acute stress and a more subtle chronic state of stress. To live with the fears of what it may mean to the marriage and family if they acknowledge the sex addiction, or to live with the anxiety of not knowing what is wrong but believing something is nonetheless off in the marriage, is anxiety provoking. While she may normalize, minimize and rationalize something in her mind, the body knows.

The first symptoms are relatively mild, like chronic headaches and increased susceptibility to colds. With more exposure to chronic stress, however, more serious health problems may develop. Stress has the ability to worsen many diseases that may be caused by other factors. The autoimmune system can become severely compromised when undergoing emotional stress.

Utilizing resources

Addressing sexual betrayal that has become addictive requires specialty assistance and that help is available today professionally and within 12-Step programs. While individual therapy is often where the coaddict begins her recovery, I cannot emphasize enough the healing power of a group, whether it is self-help or therapy groups with women who have similar experiences. It is in the group experience that many women heal to a degree they never imagined possible. It is in the group they come to realize their healing journey is a gift to themselves that will take them through life and its ultimate challenges. There are different 12-Step programs for partners and spouses of sex addicts. S-Anon and Co-Sex Addicts Anonymous (COSA) groups are more prevalent than the lesser known Co-Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (COSLAA) and Recovering Couples Anonymous (RCA).

The possibilities

Recovery is a process with no guarantees about the relationship, but that does guarantee a journey to self-love and self-care. In this journey, the coaddict learns she no longer has to tolerate the hurtful. She doesn’t have to live in the shadow of someone’s addiction, or be controlled by anyone else’s behavior. She can learn to trust herself, listen to her inner wisdom. This is her opportunity to learn about healthy boundaries, such as who is responsible for what, and what gives her a sense of safety. She can give voice to her reality, moving forward in truth. Secrets disappear and the potential for connectedness with self, others and the universe are all there. She deserves to continue her life free of fear, confusion, denial and shame; deserves to believe in her preciousness and to have it honored from within and by those she invites into her life. Her recovery is a journey of honoring and respecting herself. It is moving from immobilization or reactivity to a life of hope, greater esteem and greater choices.

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