Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How Partners Can Cope and Heal

Now Available! Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How Partners Can Cope and Heal by Marsha Means and Dr. Barbara Stephens. Sexual addictions and compulsive sexual behavior are growing societal problems, with as many as three to six percent of the world population affected. Your Sexually Addicted Partner shatters the stigma and shame that millions of men and women carry when their partners are sexually addicted. ] Learn More about Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How Partners Can Cope and Heal

One Wife's Story, 6 Weeks Into HIS Recovery

I knew he had been looking at porn before we got together, and since he had been single for a while, I understood (although I hated it) and never really thought it was a big deal. I never really gave it much thought at all. Until one day, about six months after we were married, I noticed how rarely we were having sex. (Having sex, not making love. Didn't really realize that distinction til after.) Since we both have really high libidos—a match made in heaven in that regard, as well as many others—I figured out in a flash that the masturbation was cutting into my action!

I said hey, that’s got to stop, that stuff is stealing our ...

] Keep Reading this Story from the Wife of a Sex Addict

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Are You Ashamed of Your Story?

Dear Friend,

Do the details of your husband’s addiction and the “stain” it spilled on your story cause you to feel shame and make you want to hide your pain because you fear others discovering your new reality? Many of us respond that way, even though to do so heightens our isolation and suffering and blocks our journey toward new hope and healing.

But not long ago I “met”—via the Internet—an amazing woman named Katherine who rose above the shame, fear and isolation her husband’s addiction catapulted into her life, and she now uses her story to touch the lives of other hurting women with understanding, courage and love. Whether you still fear discovery, or you long to discover purpose and meaning in your pain, I want to share an exchange I had with Katherine because it reflects a beautiful life-lesson for all of us:

Marsha,
One of the things I feel the Lord pressing on me is to take ‘ownership' of my story. For close to 3 years, I felt like I was going to 'wake up’ from my life. I so remember those times when I would be afraid to bump into anyone I knew. I remember feeling like a scared animal when going shopping and wanting to, needing to leave the store if I happen to see anyone who would recognize me. Over the last year, the Lord has brought much healing. I know that all of this has a purpose and fits into His plan. Using my real name in my story allows me to accept the plan that God has for me. This is my life and I don't feel the shame of it like I did. I see God's hand in it and I want to make Him proud of me.
~ Katherine

Katherine,
I've thought so much about what you wrote about taking ownership of your story. One reason it felt important to me is because one of the steps in healing from trauma requires that we integrate the traumatic events into our over-all life story. I think that is what I hear you doing. How wonderful that you no longer feel the shame you once did about this aspect of your story. The second reason is because you believe that all of this has a purpose. That is amazing, Katherine, because it tells me that you see that God doesn't waste anything in our lives if we surrender it to him, even the seeming garbage of our lives. I've begun to realize that what we thought was waste--even outright trash--gets recycled by God and put to a glorified purpose if we can come to the place you have. I pray that He will bless you for how you are doing this in your life. Thank you for lighting the way for others who need a guide.
~ Marsha

If you are reading this and you are where Katherine once was—still thinking, or hoping, that you will wake up from the nightmare that her life had become—please know that there is hope for you, too. Katherine has what I think of as a “big” story, and it was splashed all over the town where she lived. Yet by taking the necessary steps to seek out and move through a healing process, in just a few years Katherine has gone from wanting to hide, to regularly facilitating a support group for other partners of sex addicts, and teaching and sharing in a large prayer ministry near her home in Canada. Katherine’s new purpose is leading the hurting towards hope and healing.

Our prayer for you is that you, too, will reach out and connect with other women who understand your pain, and that you will commit to a process that can move you through the healing steps required to integrate the trauma into the fabric of your life. Who knows what plan God might have to use your whole story for his higher purpose?

] Read stories from other wives of sex addicts
] Share your story anonymously

Your Trauma Has Found A Voice!

September ‘09 Target Release Date for
Through A Trauma Lens:
Sexual Addiction’s Traumatic Impact On Partners

by Marsha Means, M.A.

Trauma. You’ve undoubtedly felt its excruciating pain as a result of your husband’s sex addiction. And you’re likely intimately acquainted with the roller coaster emotions that follow sex addiction’s discovery; the careening emotions that can plunge you into depression’s darkest recesses or catapult you to heights of anxiety you’ve never before experienced. We’ve heard women express it in thousands of ways. Listen to a few of them describe it in their own words:

• I threw up; couldn’t sleep; couldn’t eat. I cried constantly. I felt horror, anger, rage, terror, fury at God.
• You know that picture of the airplane hitting the tower in New York City? That’s what it’s like in my life.
• I have been having daily Migraines and I’m terrified. I know this will sound silly but I am even sleeping with my Bible.

When I first discovered all this I went into the bedroom where his clothes were hanging and ripped them off of the hangers and threw them, screaming “Who were you?” Am I mourning the death of the man I loved, or am I mourning the discovery that the man I loved never existed?

It's like hanging upside down and not being able to right myself. It's being stabbed over and over again and trying to find solid ground under the slippery pool of my own blood; most of the time it's laying in a shallow grave as most of me dies.

Trauma. You can feel it in these women’s words, can’t you? But what many of you haven’t felt is true understanding and empathy from others who recognize and understand your trauma; others who are equipped and willing to help you heal from it. And that’s why we are so excited to make this announcement about our next book, Through A Trauma Lens: Sexual Addiction’s Traumatic Impact On Partners. Our book has found a home with New Horizon Press and has a target release date of September 2009!

This means that if all goes as planned you will be able to buy your own copy just eleven months from now. It also means that my co-author, Barb Steffens, PhD, and I—along with New Horizon Press—will be doing everything possible to get the word out so that more clergy, counselors, doctors, and ordinary people begin to “get it.” Our passion is to represent you and the pain you’ve experienced to those who can help you feel understood and heard, and who can then walk you through your healing journey to wholeness, whether the man in your life decides to change or not.

We invite you to participate in this project with us by praying for us as we work hard to meet a very short January 2nd completion date while continuing to respond to hurting women via email, phone calls, support groups and one-on-one sessions.

We also invite you to participate by taking part in our anonymous trauma survey. You will find the link to the online survey at this end of this article. Because our book will be filled with women’s trauma experiences we need anonymous stories from women like you that we can weave into the writing. So if you would like to help the world understand the traumatic impact sex addiction had on you—and by sharing help people understand it’s traumatic impact on partners in general—click on the link below and pour out your heart. For women around the world we say “Thank you.”

] Participate in Trauma Survey

Two Support Groups Starting Next Week

Marsha Means, M.A., author, speaker, counselor, and former spouse of a sex addict is starting 2 new telephone support groups for wives of sex addicts.

Marsha will help you through the trauma and start you on your healing journey!

For 12-weeks, starting the date and time you select, you will meet with Marsha and your group for an hour and a half.

] Complete Information and Upcoming Registration Dates

Other Counseling Options include:

] One-on-One Coaching Session with Marsha

] Self-led Workbook by Marsha or Marsha's book, Living with Your Husband's Secret Wars

] Ask Marsha, a feature that connects you with Marsha by email to answer a question about your husband's addiction that might be on your mind

Healing: God, Choice, Relationships, Process

As I listen to hurting women share the heartache that comes with loving a sex addict, there are days when I feel as if I have been ministering beside the pool at Bethesda in Jerusalem, surrounded by the sick, the broken, and the dying. At those times I am reminded of the crippled man who had lived beside the pool for thirty-eight long years, waiting and hoping for his healing. And then one glorious day in his life Jesus came, and he walked straight toward the crippled man lying on there on his mat, right where he’d been for the last thirty-eight years, clinging to the ragged edges of his hope. But Jesus did not just miraculously touch him and give him a new body; instead he asked a question, and a rather strange question at that. He asked, “Do you want to get well?” Apparently healing was available to him, but he had to supply the “want-to” if he wanted to be whole. I believe there is a lesson in that picture for us: healing is a choice.

Healing is a Choice

I have never met a partner of a sex addict who did not want to heal. No one in their right mind would choose to hurt this way. Yet even in our desire for healing we sometimes fail to recognize that our want-to must include our action. Though I am a firm believe in salvation through faith, God’s Word tells us that “Faith without works is dead.” And so I believe it is with the healing of our broken hearts and broken lives; we must search out the resources we need to heal, then pick up the phone and make those calls until we find a place to connect for our healing.

Healing Requires Relationship

Healing rarely happens in a world of one. God is a very relational God, and that’s the way he designed us: to hunger and thirst for relationship and connection; for places to be known, yet loved and accepted. Places where we can bring our deepest pain and be heard in love. Places where others will gently hold up a mirror so they can reflect back to us what they hear and see in our words and countenance.

And those are the kinds of relationships that enable us to begin our healing journey so we don’t waste long years of our lives stranded—like the crippled man beside the pool—without hope or help for decades of our lives. Connection and caring from other women who understand can make all the difference in our lives. Two recent quotes from women in support groups illustrate this point. The first is from a woman whose losses and heartbreak have been far greater than my own, yet she is valiantly fighting to heal. Recently while she shared newly discovered painful information with us she said with great emphasis: “There’s no other place in the whole world where I could say this stuff that I’m saying to you all right now! I’m so glad I have you in my life.”

The second is from a woman on a different continent far, far from the United States. So far in fact that she has to dial into the conference call line to “meet” with our group in the middle of the night! Yet she’s there, putting action to her healing, even in her grogginess. Just last week at the end of a call as she said her “group goodbye” she said: “Thank you all for supporting me the way you do. You’re all truly beautiful!”

Healing is a Process

But just getting together to talk with other hurting partners would not take us very far toward our healing without a healing process. It’s the WANT-TO + RELATIONSHIP + A HEALING PROCESS that helps make healing happen. And of course, God. He is the author of our healing on every level, so even as we use materials that provide a healing process for partners of sex addicts, we incorporate God’s healing love throughout.

As you consider your own healing and where you are in that process, reflect on the following words from a recent group member who has greatly benefited from the blending of these healing components. As you read her words think about whether or not you need to take new action to move further along in your own healing journey.

“I thank God that he allowed me to find you. You have given me hope; you have been able to taste the salt of my tears. You were compassionate. You listened and cared. At first you didn’t mix other stuff in…you just listened. Your compassion gave me hope. Then you gently brought in the truth, gradually, a little at a time, and with each new piece of truth comes new revelation that enables me to “get it,” and to slowly begin to make healthier choices in my life.”

] Information about Support Groups for Wives of Sex Addicts

Groundbreaking Book for Wives Released

Wives Dealing with Sexual Betrayal Can Survive
Dr. Barbara Stephens and Marsha Means, M.A. have released the first chapter of their new book focusing on the trauma and post traumatic stress wives of sex addicts experience.

Sexual addiction is a growing epidemic in our society due to several factors, including a sexually saturated media. Many men (and women) act out through extra-marital affairs, prostitution, obsessive masturbation, and addiction to internet relationships and pornography.

“I felt like I had no idea who he was. Information came out slowly and there were layers upon layers of lies that he told to conceal the level of his addiction. I had no idea who my husband was and it scared me … My world that had seemed so secure, was completely falling apart,” explains one wife.

Dr. Barbara Stephens conducted pioneering research into the trauma that sexual betrayal brings to a wife. Her studies indicated that a high percentage of women suffer from trauma and post traumatic stress.

Marsha Means, M.A. is a counselor, author, and former wife of a sex addict. Over the past fifteen years she has counseled thousands of women dealing with their husband’s sexual acting out.

Now, Dr. Stephens has joined forces with Marsha Means, M.A. to author “Through A Trauma Lens: Viewing Sexual Betrayal as Trauma”. These experienced counselors provide researched insight into the devastating pain and confusing symptoms women experience when faced with this addiction.

The first chapter of “Through A Trauma Lens: Viewing Sexual Betrayal as Trauma” is available online at http://www.awomanshealingjourney.com/booksandresources/index.php. The full edition is scheduled to be released later this year.

May 2008 Newsletter for Spouses of Sex Addicts

The Goose & the Power of the Group

Day after day I encounter trauma in the lives of hurting women—women who’ve experienced sexual betrayal from the man they love. In each of their voices and each of their stories I hear the raw, searing pain that comes with the discovery that much of what they have believed about their lives is not real. None of us is equipped to face, endure, process, and heal from such gut-level agony on our own.

Over the years I have come to see that the very best way to heal from the overwhelming trauma caused by sexual betrayal is in the company of a few other women who are sisters on this particular journey. We desperately need each other and the “power of the group” to make it through our healing process and whatever lies ahead. In a group with a guided healing process we begin to recognize we are not alone; it is not about us; and we do not have to be victims, among many other things.
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NEW! Preview Edition ...Viewing Sexual Betrayal as Trauma

Preview Marsha's new book with co-author Barb Steffens, Ph. D. These two counseling professionals shed light on the trauma you endure from your partner's sexual behavior."We understand that your pain is traumatic, and we're pleased to provide the first book that addresses your pain through a trauma lens and provides a route to healing, no matter what choices your husband makes." – Marsha Means, MA
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