​When a couple is facing relationship repair following the discovery of infidelity or sex addition betrayal, defensiveness and anger outbursts can be extremely damaging to the couple’s healing. The betrayed spouse will need to ask questions in order to try to understand what has been happening or what is currently happening in the relationship. It is normal to ask the same question several times over an extended period. The betrayed spouse is seeking emotional safety where he/she thought they were safe, but found out that they were not.
When a betrayed spouse approaches to ask questions, the worst thing that can happen is to be met with defensiveness, shouting or anger outbursts. This will shut down communication and halter the healing process. For the relationship survival, it is a good sign when the betrayed spouse wants to engage and discuss. It is not a good sign when they become numb, checked out or really does not care anymore.
I often remind people of the saying, “Those who have nothing to defend, defend nothing.” Defensiveness only make people look like there is something hidden, that they are doing something wrong, and it creates further doubt.
Couples who do the best in the recovery process are the couples who can talk, share their feelings, take accountability for their own wrong doings, continue to talk and continue to answer questions as they may arise.
 
Ingela Edwards, MS, LPC, NCC, SRT, CCPS specializes in helping individuals and couples heal from sex addiction, infidelity, intimacy anorexia, and intimacy deprivation. Ingela Edwards Counseling serves the McKinney, Plano, Allen, Frisco, Carrollton, Lewisville, Dallas and Sherman area.

Emotional abuse can go unnoticed for a long period of time. Often, the spouse who is being emotionally abused does not realize that they are being subjected to emotional abuse. They may report feeling a little crazy at times, but can’t identify what it is that is messing with their sense of reality. Often, the feelings of craziness are ignored or tucked away. Emotional abuse is not always what we envision as verbal assaults or constant withholding. Emotional abuse can take place so subtly; a person may not even know that it’s happening to them.

Emotional abuse can take place in a variation of ways, such as: name calling, anger outbursts, raging, blaming, shaming and withholding acts of affection. Lies are also abusive and go under the category of emotional abuse. Blatant lies and lying by omission robs you of the foundational piece of the relationship, which is trust. Another component of lying and manipulation comes in form of The Gaslight Effect. Gaslighting is the practice of intentionally manipulating a person’s understanding of their own reality. The goal of this intentional practice is to get the victim to doubt their own reality and memory.

Gaslighting can take place in the workplace and within relationships. Relationships that are affected by infidelity or sex addiction are prime targets for the Gaslight Effect. The victimizer who has a secret and a hidden agenda, does not want the victim to find out what is happening behind their back. In order to cover their tracks, the victimizer will  keep up the lies and when the victim senses that something is not right, victimizer will tell the victim that they are oversensitive, not remembering events correctly or that the victim always overreacts.

Victimizers will utilize lies, denial, defensiveness and charm. The victimizer will tell the victim how they should or should not feel. The victim often gets to hear the phrase: “You shouldn’t feel that way.” Gaslighting can take place because the people who utilize this form of emotional abuse are generally charming and convincing liars who consistently deny any wrong doing on their part. The gaslighting behaviors are so subtle and covert. There is generally no intimidating or frightening behavior that set off warning signals. In order for this type of emotional abuse to be effective, gaslighting relies on first getting the victim to start doubting their own thinking. Once the victim starts believing that it is their own thinking that is distorted, the gaslighting can move into the second stage in which the victimizer can persuade the victim that the victimizer’s ideas are the correct and true ones.

Gaslighting works because eventually the victim becomes so worn down. They may feel depressed and defective as people. They have been told that they are unable to make good choices, can’t remember things correctly and have poor coping skills. The victim starts believing these subtle yet powerful messages. The victim believes they are crazy and have a false sense of reality. They start to lean on the victimizer more and more as they now believe that the victimizer is the one who knows the best. The goal of the victimizer has now been achieved; the victim no longer trusts their own thinking and reality. The victimizer can now go on with the affairs or sex addiction. When the victim suspects something, they will ignore their intuition because they believe they are crazy and just making things up.

The victimizer smiles, brings on the charm at the appropriate times, tells you how much they care about you and slowly tear you apart…..if you are in a relationship that feels like it’s crazymaking, you may have been exposed to the gaslight effect. In order to counteract the gaslight effect, focus should be placed on awareness, self-esteem, boundaries, personal empowerment and reclaiming your intuition.

Ingela Edwards, MS, LPC, NCC, SRT, CCPS specializes in helping individuals and couples heal from sex addiction, infidelity, intimacy anorexia, and intimacy deprivation. Ingela Edwards Counseling serves the McKinney, Plano, Allen, Frisco, Carrollton, Lewisville, Dallas and Sherman area.

She had been married to the man she loved for a few years when she found the hidden stash of stolen photographs. Photographs of herself and her friends were found along with pornographic DVD’s. She stood there shaking, confused and afraid. At that moment, she lost the innocence of what she believed was true about her marriage and her husband.  In this moment, it all changed. It is a moment that she will never forget. She instantly lost her feelings of safety. She was no longer feeling emotionally safe in her home or in her relationship with her spouse. She wouldn’t feel emotionally safe for many more years to come.

She confronted her husband who admitted to sometimes “fantasizing,” but assured her that was in the past and not something that he was engaged in any longer. She still didn’t feel safe with her husband and asked him to sleep in a separate bedroom. At this time, she didn’t feel like she knew who her husband was or what he was capable of. They went to seek counseling from a licensed professional.  She remembers feeling hopeful, yet anxious.

The therapist told her that is was not good for the marriage to sleep separately and that they needed to be sleeping in the same bedroom ASAP. She obliged and wanted to do whatever the therapist suggested in order to try to save her marriage, yet she was in so much pain. She was so afraid.

Fast forward another few years where more lies and broken promises had taken place.  She was desperate to believe her husband’s promises. Sometimes she questioned her own feelings of complete despair. She felt that something was still not right; he continued to lie and deny. She wanted to believe him and in the future of their family. Eventually, she stopped listening to her intuition. She hid her pain and pasted a fake smile on her face. Eventually, the promises were broken again and the continuous lies confirmed. She went with her husband to therapist number 2.

The therapist was eager to work with the husband and the husband’s diagnosis was formally confirmed as pornography addiction aka sex addiction. She was told by the therapist to go read a book about sexual intimacy.  There were no referrals, no guidance, no support suggested or offered to her. After reading the book that the therapist suggested, she thought that is was her fault that her husband acted out.  She believed that if only she was capable enough, her husband would not be doing these things. She felt like she was defective, “dis-eased”, and not capable of making good choices for herself. She was afraid and had no support. She didn’t know it then, but years later, she had to face the treatment induced trauma that she had faced.

Treatment induced trauma can stem from a variety of ineffective treatment modalities utilized by a therapist. For years, partners of sex addicts were unfairly treated due to the failure to recognize her trauma, pain and grief. The partner was told that she was codependent and that she needed to work on her own “dis-ease”. There was no acknowledgement of her suffering, her anxiety due to all the lies she had been told , her fear as she may have been exposed to STD’s or the effects on her children. Therapist 1 who told the partner in the earlier example that she must sleep next to her husband is basically telling a partner of a sex addict that she does not have the right to set boundaries and should disregard the fact that she is not feeling emotionally safe. She trusted the therapist and was told not to advocate for herself, nor to protect herself. Therapist 2 who offered the only suggestion of reading a book about sexual intimacy added to the fuel of how defective she felt.  That is what treatment induced trauma is. It took her many more years to recover due to the additional and faulty assessments and assumptions.   What she needed was support, understanding, empathy and coping skills to work through the pain and shock that she was experiencing.  There are so many stories of treatment induced trauma from partners of sex addicts, and it should not be that way. To find a certified clinical partner specialist in your area, please visit: http://www.partnertraumaspecialists.org/find-a-specialist/

Ingela Edwards, MS, LPC, NCC, SRT, CCPS specializes in helping individuals and couples heal from sex addiction, infidelity, intimacy anorexia, and intimacy deprivation. Ingela Edwards Counseling serves the McKinney, Plano, Allen, Frisco, Carrollton, Lewisville, Dallas and Sherman area.

You may have been keeping a secret from your spouse for a long time. There may have been times in the past when you wanted to disclose the secret, but the fears of the unknown reactions kept you from saying anything.  Maybe you had no desire to share the secret, but it was accidentally discovered. Anyhow, when secrets come out, the relationship will be rocky for a while. 

Once the secret is out, you may have thought that your spouse would be mad and hurt for a couple of weeks, then get over it. That is probably not the case. Whether the secret involves infidelity, compulsive pornography use, drug use or other acting out behaviors, you spouse is likely to be in pure
disbelief at first. Then there may be anger, confusion and pain. There is no time limit on how long the healing process takes as it’s a very individualized.

Your spouse will need time to heal, recover and eventually learn to trust you again in order for the relationship to survive. Going forward, you will need to practice rigorous honesty. You will need to be sensitive to your spouse’s needs and understand that the pain of the secret keeping will take time to heal. There may be times when the relationship seems to be worse as you go through the healing process. The relationship is actually not worse. The relationship has now become honest and sometimes honesty really hurts.  Many things that have not been talked about in the past will now need to be addressed. There will be feelings that need to be processed in order to move forward. It will be uncomfortable and painful at times.  

You can apologize for the pain you have caused, but you can’t go back and have a redo. What you can do is to stay in the present. Listen to your spouse and ask what you can do to help. Do not tell your spouse how they should or should not feel.  Do not get angry or defensive.  Research shows that couples who are able to keep the communication open and honest are able to heal faster. If you feel like you can’t talk about it and just want to “hurry up and get over it,” you will only prolong the recovery process. There is no way around or a quick fix.You will need to answer questions, display complete transparency and implement boundaries for yourself and the relationship. It is hard work, but it is doable. Many people report feeling stronger and more confident is their relationship following all the work that both parties need to invest in  in order to restore the relationship.

Ingela Edwards, MS, LPC, NCC, SRT, CCPS specializes in helping individuals and couples
heal from sex addiction, infidelity, intimacy anorexia, and intimacy deprivation. Ingela Edwards Counseling serves the McKinney, Plano, Allen, Frisco, Carrollton, Lewisville, Dallas and Sherman area.

Many partners of sex addicts express frustration for not picking up on the lies, deception and broken promises in the relationship.  Due to the constant exposure to the sex addicts’ stream of lies, you may have lost your intuition.  Early on in the relationship, your intuition may have signaled that something was not quite right, but after several attempts to uncover the truth and being met by the addicts’ denial, you may have concluded that your intuition must be wrong. Like
any spouse in a marriage, you desperately want to believe and trust the man you love, so you chose to ignore your intuition. Over time, many partners of sex addicts lose all trust in their intuition.  The internal alarm simply stops going off.

Thinking back on your relationship, you may now identify with feeling hoodwinked. When you met, your sex addicted spouse probably told you that you were smart, funny, beautiful, and that you were his best friend. Over time, the sex addict starts to deliberately chip away at your self-esteem by making a shift. At this time, the sex addict starts to attempt to groom and decrease your self-esteem. He may start by criticizing you- maybe it is your looks, your personality, your sexuality or your intelligence. It is done gradually over time- so smoothly; you don’t even realize what is happening. You become the collateral damage of the addiction. You realize that you were hoodwinked, and most likely have been for a time span of many years.

An important factor in your recovery will be to learn to listen to and reclaim your intuition. There is nothing in life that could have possibly prepared you for learning that your spouse has a sexual addiction.  You will most likely have an emotional roller coaster ahead of yourself. Spend some time reclaiming yourself.  Reach out to a therapist who has training in this area, reach out to community resources and read books that relates to partner healing and trauma response. Learning of a loved one’s addiction does not necessarily mean the end of a relationship. It means the end to secrecy, lies and a start to reclaiming parts that may have been lost due to the
addiction.

Ingela Edwards, MS, LPC-Intern, NCC, SRT, therapist at McKinney Counseling and Recovery, specializes in helping individuals and couples heal from sex addiction, infidelity, intimacy anorexia, and intimacy
deprivation. McKinney Counseling & Recovery serves the McKinney, Plano, Allen, Frisco, Carrollton, Lewisville, Dallas and Sherman area.

If sex addiction has consumed your life and the marriage is now in jeopardy due to your actions, you need to fight for your spouse if you want to save the marriage. You fight for your spouse by following through on your recovery work, attending groups and seeing your therapist. You fight for your spouse by not defending yourself, your actions or by turning the tables and making everything about you and your recovery. You fight for your spouse by supporting her through her recovery.

Being supportive is to allow your spouse to share the pain, fear
and anxiety that the addiction has caused her, and you taking accountability for the actions that led to her despair. You simply state, “I see that you are in pain and my actions caused that. I am sorry.” You also know that the past cannot be undone, so you could state, “What can I do for you today/ now?” 
 
When your spouse is triggered or wants to share her feeling, allow her to do so. Do not make this time about you and how great you are doing in recovery. Remember, your spouse needs you to fight for her. You
fight by making it about her and her feelings. When she shares how she feels, you may simply say, “Tell me more about that” or “Is there something else that you would like to say?”  This is not the time to become defensive, sarcastic or making it about you. 
 
Fighting for one’s spouse does not mean that you allow verbal or physical abuse from your spouse. You excuse yourself if verbal abuse or raging takes place. You may simply say, “I can see how angry you are right now. I would like to hear more about that at a time when we can both talk calmly about this. Please let me know when it is a good time for us to continue this conversation. “


It takes courage and practice to learn to hear and tolerate the pain that has been inflicted upon your spouse. In the past, you may have become impatient, defensive, angry and unable to hear the message.Your spouse needs you to hear her. Your spouse needs you to validate the pain that your actions caused her. Relationships can make it, and even become stronger following sex addiction recovery, but your road to couple’s recovery will be longer -unless you can hear her.


Relationships are more likely to end, even if the acting out has stopped, if the sex addict becomes “the hurry up guy.” Dr. Weiss describes the “hurry up guy” as the person who cannot tolerate the pain he has caused. He just wants to move on quickly. He cannot allow for his spouse to grieve. The “hurry up guy” wants it all the acting out to be behind them, as if nothing has happened. It doesn’t work that way. She needs you to fight for her no matter how long it takes.
 
Ingela Edwards, MS, LPC-Intern, NCC, SRT, therapist at McKinneyCounseling and Recovery, specializes in helping individuals and couples heal from sex addiction, infidelity, intimacy anorexia, and intimacy
deprivation. McKinney Counseling and Recovery serves the McKinney, Plano, Allen, Frisco, Carrollton, Lewisville, Dallas and Sherman area.

Partners of sex addicts have sometimes been labelled as: codependent, enablers, co-addicts,and "dis-eased'
just to mention a few of the terms that I have heard in the last few years. The women whom I work with do not fit these labels that were automatically assigned to them in the past. Partners of sex addicts have been betrayed, exposed to lies
and secret keeping from the person that they thought was their best friend, confidant, and partner in life. Once a person’s life is turned upside down due to the revelation of a loved one’s sex addition, sex addiction induced trauma is likely to follow.

Sex Addiction-Induced Trauma (SAI-T) is defined by Omar Minwalla as:“the specific type of trauma and traumatic symptom clusters that result from the direct impact of sex addiction and its associated chronic patterns of sexual acting out, relational perpetration, emotional abuse, deception, betrayal, psychological manipulation and compartmentalization on self and others, particularly partners and spouses impacted by sex addiction.”

Barbara Steffens also described in her book, Your Sexually Addicted Spouse, the trauma symptoms that are often present in many partners of sex addicts. Advocacy for the partner of the sex addict has been slow to change the ways experts in the field work with partners. Finally, it is here.

The Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists (APSATS) was recently established by a team of professionals from across the United States who work with partners from a sex addiction induced trauma model perspective. The Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists (APSATS) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the professional training and certification, public education, research, and advocacy for treatment of sex addiction-induced trauma.

Announcing the inaugural APSATS Board of Directors and officers:
Barbara Steffens PhD, LPCC, BCC , CCSAS – Cincinnati, Ohio - President
Omar Minwalla, PsyD – Los Angeles, California - Vice President
Janice Caudill, PhD, CSAT, SRT, SEP – McKinney, Texas - Vice President
Dan Drake, MFT, CSAT – Los Angeles, California -
Secretary
Dave Brown, M.Div.,LISW, CPSAS – Cincinnati, Ohio - Treasurer
Dorit Reichental, MA, MFT Intern, CPCC, ACC – Los Angeles, California
Richard Blankenship, MA, LPC, NCC, CCSAS – Atlanta, Georgia
Marnie Breecker, MA, MFT, CSAT – Los Angeles, California
Ella Hutchinson, MA, LPC, CCSAS – Houston, Texas
Ingela Edwards MS, LPC Intern, NCC – McKinney, Texas

I am proud to be a part of this movement and to serve on this board. For more information about APSATS, email partnertrauma@gmail.com
or visit www.partnertraumaspecialists.org

Ingela Edwards, MS, LPC-Intern, NCC, therapist at McKinney Counseling and Recovery, specializes in helping individuals and couples heal from sex addiction, infidelity, intimacy anorexia, and intimacy deprivation. McKinney Counseling & Recovery serves the McKinney, Plano, Allen, Frisco, Dallas and Sherman area.

Secrets usually surround and protect sex addiction. Commonly, sex addicts will minimize, deny or rationalize the addiction. The addict may tell himself that no one is getting hurt because the addiction is
done in secret. The truth is, eventually sex addiction leads to a state of
turmoil, and the family can also be strongly affected.

If you are a person who struggles with sex addiction, you may know the
personal pain that the addiction has brought you. You may have spent years trying to stop your behavior and struggled with feelings of shame, guilt and unworthiness.  Maybe you are still telling yourself that it doesn’t harm anyone, because no one knows? 
 
Your sex addiction not only harms you along the way. It also puts your
spouse in harm’s way.  If you are using pornography, you will probably have less time to nurture, support and build emotional intimacy with your spouse. As you go deeper into your addiction, you may be irritable and blaming towards your spouse and the addict part of you becomes very critical of others. When the lies to cover up the addiction have been exposed, your spouse will not trust you. She will experience pain, anxiety, confusion, and anger. She may starts experiencing trauma response like symptoms.  In cases of acting out with others, your spouse may have been exposed to STD’s as a result of your addiction.

 If you have children, they will be affected by your sex addiction also. They are affected when there is limited time spent with them because you choose your addiction over them. Emotionally, they may also suffer as most addicts are emotionally immature and do not know how to cope with negative emotions. Sex addiction will make you cranky and irritable, as the next “fix” is sought. Children may be exposed to angry outbursts and emotional neglect.  Your children may also lose out on their mother’s attention, as she may be too overwhelmed by your addiction to be totally present with the children. 

The ripple effect is enormous and goes way beyond what is discussed
here.  If you struggle with sex addiction, you deserve to experience recovery – not only for yourself, but also, for your spouse and your children. 

Ingela  Edwards, MS, LPC-Intern, NCC, therapist at McKinney Counseling and Recovery, specializes in helping individuals and couples heal from sex addiction, infidelity, intimacy anorexia, and intimacy deprivation. McKinneyCounseling & Recovery serves the McKinney, Plano, Allen, Frisco, Dallas and Sherman area.

“Your actions speak so loudly, I cannot hear what you say”- Source Unknown

Once trust has been broken in a relationship, it is very difficult to restore. It takes time and a consistent show of certain behaviors to rebuild trust. It is a process that has no quick fix. Trust can be broken in relationships due to infidelity, addictions or due to other lies and deception. Whatever the reason, once trust has been broken, the relationship is in a state of crisis.

One aspect of rebuilding trust is to stop listening to the words spoken and watch for consistent behaviors over time. Listening and believing words spoken by a person who has been proven to be an unreliable source only creates additional anxiety and can be crazy making in itself. An addict often lies to protect the addiction, an unfaithful spouse lies to protect the secret relationship, and some people lie to avoid true intimacy in a relationship. Sometimes, there are so many lies told that it is impossible to sort out what is true and what is not.

Do not spend time engaged in head games. Attention should be paid to observable behaviors. If the unreliable person is actually in recovery, then the behaviors that back that up would be seeing them reading recovery materials, attending groups, participating in therapy and utilizing new coping skills. If the not so truthful person has engaged in infidelity, then the behaviors that may support an end to the illicit relationship could be complete transparency with phone and email accounts, the end to unexplained absences, and show of empathy and regret for the pain they have caused.  

Broken trust produces pain, fear and anxiety. There is no quick fix to this issue. Often people will report that their intuition had been telling them all along what the truth is; however, often this was ignored in place of believing the words spoken by the deceiver. If finding out that a person has broken trust, believe behaviors, focus on your own well-being and allow time to provide all the answers that you need.


Ingela Edwards, MS, LPC-Intern, NCC, therapist at McKinney Counseling and Recovery, specializes in helping individuals and couples heal from sex addiction, infidelity, intimacy anorexia, and intimacy deprivation. McKinney Counseling & Recovery serves the McKinney, Plano, Allen, Frisco, Dallas and Sherman area.