Considering Divorce

When you discover sexual addiction, both saving your marriage and divorce will certainly come to mind. 

Regardless of where you may be in your thought process about your marriage and potential for divorce, I urge you to research divorce and child custody in your state as soon as possible. After you do the basic research, make an appointment with an attorney WITH your husband, and both of you write and sign a legally binding post-nuptial agreement to make sure he cannot ruin you financially in a divorce. Make that a condition for continuing the marriage.

Experts suggest giving yourself a year to see if your addict will commit to recovery and change his lifestyle. I am adapting the following from an article by Virginia Gilbert. I didn't like her emphasis on partners going to 12-step programs for their co-dependency. Partners of sex addicts are not necessarily co-addicts, so I've rewritten this. If you like, you can read the original here.

The One-Year Rule

The discovery of a partner's sexual compulsivity is a wake-up call. IF both partners are committed to recovery, the marriage could actually be transformed into a real union marked by genuine intimacy and integrity. This is a big IF, as many sex addicts also have personality and mood disorders that stand in the way of recovery. Determining whether the addict is willing to commit to treatment takes time. Unless physical abuse is present or children's safety is threatened, sex addiction therapists recommend that addicts and their partners spend a year in treatment before deciding whether to stay or go. 

The following is a suggested treatment plan for couples dealing with sexual acting-out within a marriage. For the sake of clarity, I refer to addicts as "he" and partners as "she," although the reverse can be true. 

What the Addict Needs to Do

1. Commit himself to treatment. This should involve individual therapy with a sex addiction specialist, therapist-facilitated support groups [not 12-step groups with no qualified facilitator] and, depending on the severity of the acting-out behaviors, an inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment program. 

2. Be accountable. Addicts choose to cheat; they are not driven to cheat by their partners. The first step in an addict's recovery is to take responsibility for hurting his partner and threatening his family's stability. If an addict doesn't genuinely take ownership of his behaviors, recovery is not possible. 

3. Identify and abstain from bottom-line behaviors. These may include affairs, prostitutes, massage parlors, chat rooms, masturbating to porn. Weekly therapy, internet and phone monitoring, accountability to the spouse and periodic use of lie detector tests can help the addict avoid slippery-slope behaviors and also help the spouse to regain trust.

4. Disclosure. Disclosures are facilitated by therapists in couples sessions. Typically, the addict reads aloud his sexual history, including behaviors that occurred within the marriage. The therapist will assist the couple in processing this information and setting boundaries for acceptable behavior. The disclosure is crucial: the spouse needs to know the extent of her partner's addiction in order to decide whether she can stay in the marriage. 

What the Partner Needs to Do

1. Commit to her own recovery. Partners tend to be caretakers who structure their lives around the addict. Their own needs, wants, and values are often obscured by years of self-neglect due to "other focus." Further, it is draining living with someone whose attention is always elsewhere. The partner must shift her focus from the addict to her own mental, emotional, and physical health. 

2. Get appropriate treatment. This means individual therapy with a sex addiction specialist familiar with both the trauma-based model and co-dependency, peer support groups online or in person, and education about addictions and personality disorders. Although partners are never responsible for the addict's actions, they need to learn why they were drawn to a relationship with a disordered person with a diminished capacity for intimacy. 

3. Manage her own treatment, not the addict's. The discovery of the addict's behavior is intensely traumatic. Partners often become hypervigilant, trying to control the addict to prevent further trauma. Snooping through the addict's belongings, calling multiple times a day to check the addict's whereabouts, telling the addict's therapist how to treat the addict are understandable responses to trauma, but can actually be re-traumatizing, in addition to shifting the focus from where it needs to be: on her own recovery. The partner must learn the only behavior she can control is her own. 

4. Rebuild her life. Whether she decides to stay in the relationship or end it, she needs to set personal goals that will enhance her life. This may mean taking charge of finances, seeking paid work, developing a self-care program, and nurturing relationships with friends and family. 

When It's Time to Leave 

After one year of treatment, a partner should have enough information to make her decision. If the addict has never truly committed to recovery, attended therapy erratically, never gave a formal disclosure of his sexual history and continued to act out sexually, the relationship is probably not salvageable.

Hopefully, in that year, the traumatized partner has diligently attended individual therapy, has developed a strong support network, reconnected with family and friends, and set up a separate bank account.  If it is clear the addict is not invested in saving the marriage, a spouse may now be emotionally and logistically ready to leave. 

Even when a situation as destructive as sex addiction is present, a partner should not leave a marriage in haste, despite what friends or family may urge. Taking a year to focus on personal growth -- whether or not the addict chooses to do the same -- will give partners clarity and empower them to make the decision that is right for them. 

Sexual addictions destroy marriages

According to PsychologyToday.com:

In a 2004 testimony before the United States Senate, Dr. Jill Manning shared some interesting data regarding pornography and relationships. In her research she found that 56 percent of divorce cases involved one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites.1 Another source, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, polled 350 divorce attorneys in 2003 where two thirds of them reported that the Internet played a significant role in the divorces, with excessive interest in online porn contributing to more than half such cases.

And this from RecoveryRanch.com:

Director of the Center for Research on Marriage and Religion, Patrick Fagan, calls pornography a family destroyer. Fagan’s research suggests that pornography is a factor in many cases of marital cheating, as well as a factor in more than half of the marriages that end in divorce.

Sex addiction may be recognized as grounds for Fault Divorce

According to MemphisDivorce.com

A sex addiction may not affect the manner in which property or alimony is distributed in a no-fault divorce, but adultery and some other circumstances may be considered grounds for a fault-based divorce.

Meanwhile, if child custody is an issue, the addicted parent’s behavior may be evaluated to determine if it places the children at risk or interferes with the parent’s ability to care for the child.

My suggestion if you decide to divorce, and your state recognizes fault-based divorce, file for Fault Divorce. I made the mistake of trying to be "nice" initially, and I filed No-Fault. I changed it later, when he was uncooperative, but I wish I'd just started that way.

Thinking it Through

You may decide, after grieving and much consideration, you cannot live with your husband's sexual addiction.

It isn't easy to arrive at this decision. There may be many complicated factors to consider, such as pension, social security, military benefits, one stay-at-home parent. If you suspect mood or personality disorders on top of the addiction, you are in for a rough ride. You may think it will be easier to stick it out than attempting to escape.

After I discovered my husband's betrayal and sexual addiction, for about eight months I experienced "spinning"– circular thinking with no reasonable answers or solutions. I couldn't concentrate, couldn't think straight because all I could think about was whether I would be able to save the marriage.

My circular thinking was something like this:

1. I can't get a divorce. I have a sacramental marriage! Think of the kids! Think of the finances! How can I take care of the house and the kids myself???

2. I don't want to be alone. I'm afraid.

3. I've invested my entire life in this man. He accepts me as I am. Who else would want me anyway?

4. No marriage is perfect. No person is perfect. Maybe the alternative would be worse than the mess I already have?

5. He says he's sorry. I need to forgive him. I can forgive him. God help me forgive him!

6. I have to save my marriage. I CAN fix this.

7. What will be necessary to fix it? He's going to have to PROVE he is trustworthy. He's going to need to do a full disclosure. I'm going to need lie detector tests. He can't take cash out of the bank. 

8. He says NOW he wants to have a marriage of equality - how can we do that? It's unequal because he's a liar, immature and not trustworthy, and I'm always going to be suspicious. I'm always going to be the saint and he the sinner. 

9. Oh no! I caught him in another lie / breaking another boundary.

10. I can't trust him. What's a marriage without trust? It isn't a marriage.

11. [Go back to Number 1.]

Others who have gone through marital betrayal have described a similar thought process: During this time of spinning, a person may have a very difficult time working because there is just no energy to keep up with it. Nothing matters except dealing with the fear and despair. All the women in my divorce support group experienced this.

I might have kept on spinning indefinitely, but finding evidence that he had not fully disclosed major pieces of his addiction was the last straw for me. One of my sons told me about porn videos on a family computer, and at the same time I discovered evidence of his posting personals on Craig's List.

At that point, I ended the circular thinking on #10: I can't trust him. Period.

I no longer believed that my husband would change, and I knew I would always be coming back to #10. As far as I was concerned, I didn't have a marriage.

After I came to that horribly painful conclusion, I had a series of very clear God Winks. (These are my way of describing what I interpret as affirmations from the Supreme Being that I'm headed in the right direction.) These were unexpected, and surprising. I believe God knew I needed these messages to help me understand that despite my spiritual and religious beliefs, it was okay for me to divorce because what I had was not a sacramental marriage.

What is your circular thinking?

What are your boundaries?

What signs does your husband show of either willingness or unwillingness to do the hard work of recovery?