Sharing the truth regarding your addiction in the form of a disclosure can seem scary because you can’t control your partner’s reaction or response. You have no idea if your partner will be hysterical, rageful, physically harm you, go completely silent, or all the above. You may wonder if your partner can handle the truth, how much to share, or what benefits there are to disclosing. However, if your partner has requested a disclosure, please respect him/her enough to reveal yourself completely. Perhaps this blog entry will provide you with some wisdom, insight, and frank sharing from someone who has been on the receiving end of a ‘full” disclosure.
Your partner needs to know who they were in a relationship with and who they are in one now. I always say a disclosure should speak to the scope and depth of the addiction. Your partner deserves to know how the addiction began, how it escalated, and the worst of your addiction. For example, did you break the law? If your partner is going to be shocked, it should be by you, not law enforcement. Did your acting out cause you to lose your job? Did your acting out harm or involve others, such as children, your partner’s friends, neighbors, etc.?
It takes courage for a partner to ask for a disclosure because they don’t know what information will be revealed. Yet they are willing to risk pain to know the truth. While attending a support group, I shared what I knew about my husband’s behavior and expressed concern that there might be more information he still needed to reveal. Someone from the group asked me if I had ever received a disclosure. I asked her to explain what that entailed. Once I understood what a disclosure was, I asked for one.
My husband explained he was getting help from a therapist to prepare a disclosure for me, which sent my anxiety through the roof. I thought my husband would immediately disclose to me. After all, I already knew quite a bit, or so I thought. In hindsight, I appreciate my husband sought the help of a therapist to assist him in providing a “full” discourse. If he had blurted out details without any thought, the disclosure could have been a disaster. Till this day, my husband says he wouldn’t have given me a disclosure if I hadn’t asked. However, there was no way I could have stayed in the marriage without knowing the truth, despite the amount of pain it caused.
Some partners say they don’t want a disclosure even if the sex addict is ready to provide one. It takes time for some partners to build up the strength to prepare themselves to receive a disclosure. Some partners have a hard enough time healing from a discovery or discoveries, the idea that there is more to the story can seem unbearable. You can still prepare a disclosure and share it with a therapist or accountability partner, which helps you keep your addiction in the light. Your partner may change their mind and request a disclosure at a later date when they feel ready to receive one.
A therapist can be a great help when it comes to preparing a “full” disclosure. I have heard horror stories of sex addicts giving explicit details that haunt partners forever. Once a sex addict puts certain pictures in their partner’s mind, they can never erase the images. A therapist can advise a sex addict on how to prepare a truthful disclosure without unnecessary details that do more harm.
Here are some actions I hear of sex addicts doing when sharing a disclosure with their partner, which I deem as avoidable mistakes: Disclosing the sex positions the sex addict participated in when they acted out with others.
- Sharing the type of clothing worn by the acting out partner (thongs, certain perfume, lingerie, colors, etc.)
- Sharing the clothing or jewelry worn by the sex addict (something that may have sentimental value, such as a gift from the betrayed partner)
- Sharing the ethnicity of the people the sex addict acted out with.
- Sharing they thought of other people whom the betrayed partner knows while having sex with the betrayed partner.
- Sharing the names of people the partner knows that the sex addict fantasized about.
- Giving a disclosure but justifying the actions.
- Demanding forgiveness.
Therapeutic support or the presence of an accountability partner allows the sex addict and the betrayed partner to process the information shared. The therapist can observe the sex addict’s demeanor when sharing the information with their partner and observe the partner’s response to the information. The partner can ask questions for more clarification regarding information that doesn’t make sense or sit well with them. The disclosure can cause shock and PTSD in the partner, for which immediate therapeutic help can assist.
My husband didn’t share his disclosure with me in front of a therapist or accountability partner, which was a huge mistake on my part. Someone offered to be present as my support, but I declined. My husband read his disclosure straight through with few stops, and I didn’t interrupt much to ask questions for clarification. In hindsight, I could have used some support while listening to the disclosure.
I had no idea how I would respond, despite journaling about the possibilities of what my husband might share in his disclosure, reading about disclosures, and sharing my concerns with others in my support circles. I wanted to be prepared for anything my husband would share, but unfortunately, I wasn’t. Surprisingly, I didn’t yell, rage, scream, or physically hurt my husband; that occurred much later and several times thereafter. I wept the day I received a disclosure, feeling tremendous despair. I often refer to it as having a gushing wound that I couldn’t control.
Receiving a disclosure is a huge deal. You have just delivered information about your secret life. A life your partner probably never knew about, a life he or she probably never imagined you were even capable of living. You have turned your partner’s world upside down. Even if there wasn’t any physical acting out with someone else, the amount of porn, the type of porn, the amount of time given to porn viewing, emotional affairs, and other unacceptable behavior are equally offensive to the betrayed partner. I still reflect on the disclosure day 12 years later because of the impact it had on my life.
Here are some possible requests a partner may make after receiving a disclosure:
- Divorce
- Separation
- Access to your passwords for your phone, laptop, etc.
- regularly scheduled lie dector tests.
- Changing the home computer password with a code you will no longer possess.
- In-house separation
- Lie detector tests
- Start seeing a therapist.
- Attend “recovery” meetings.
- Talk to a faith leader.
- Access to the bank account
- An amount of money to spend on themselves
- Time away to process the information they received
Although partners are told they can’t control the sex addict. Some betrayed partners make requests out of a need for a sense of security, not control. No, the partner can’t make you pursue recovery, but the action is reassuring to your partner. The gesture shows a genuine willingness to recover from sex addiction and earn your partner’s trust.
Sharing the disclosure is not a “one and done” activity. Expect many questions for days, months, or even a year after you’ve given a disclosure. It’s a lot of information to process. Trauma causes partners to ruminate over all of the details, so they might ask the same questions repeatedly. Their sense of security has been shattered; they no longer know what to believe or what to trust. I spent many sleepless nights ruminating over everything.
These are some of the questions I asked my husband after receiving this disclosure (some repeatedly):
- How many people did you had sex with?
- How many “hand jobs” or “blowjobs” did you pay for?
- Did you act out with children?
- Did you act out with our children?
- How much money did you spend on “acting out”?
- Did you ever act out with anyone in our home?
- Did you use protection?
- Did you have sex with any of my friends?
- Did any of my friends know about your behavior?
- Why did you marry me?
- Did you ever love me?
- Did you want the life of marriage, children, faith, etc?
- Did you ever go out of town with a plan for acting out with exuberance for the activities you planned?
- Did you participate in group sex?
- Did you participate in same sex behavior?
Some of these questions may seem a bit heavy, but I wanted to know what I was dealing with and what the reality of the past was, not what I believed it to be. However, there were some questions I regretted asking, such as:
- Ethnicity of the people he acted out with – Knowing this was tricky because a partner can change their hair or lose weight if they think this improvement will keep their partner from “acting out,” (which we know won’t), but there is nothing he/she can do about their ethnicity. For a partner, knowing their sex addict deliberately sought opportunities to act out with someone ethnically different from them can be incredibly disturbing. Speaking from experience, it felt like a complete rejection of something I couldn’t control; it felt like a slap in the face.
- Location of behavior – I discovered my husband acted out at a nail salon where I received manicure and pedicure services. This was a tough pill to swallow because I wondered if the same person who provided me with manicures and pedicures serviced my husband. I asked myself, “What if the ladies in the salon knew? What did they think of me?”
Some partners also request information they later regret. I think it’s appropriate to ask your partner to consult a therapist or an accountability partner if they ask something you think will be more damaging than helpful. You can also run your partner’s request by your therapist. However, if the partner still insists on the information, I believe you must provide it because it’s an act of honesty. If you refuse, you are setting yourself up for your partner to increase their distrust of you.
I believe you can request that neither you nor your partner tell everyone you know about how sex addiction is impacting your relationship. Telling everyone in your life can often backfire, especially if you and your partner end up staying together. Although I think it’s the betrayed partner’s choice to share with whomever they choose, the question of intention when sharing with certain people can be a concern. Is the information being shared with people out of support or spite on the betrayed partner’s behalf? Believe me, I wanted everyone who thought highly of my husband to know about his betrayals, but the possibility of my children being harmed made my desire to tell the world a desire I couldn’t act on. Furthermore, I also feared being judged by others.
This is not information that needs to be shared on social media. I shared information with my three immediate family members and my accountability partner.
My husband and I decided not to share the details with our children, who were eight and ten at the time. We explained Mom and Dad were going through a tough time, but none of it was their fault, and we were working to fix our issues. We continued to share more information with our children in an age-appropriate manner as the years went by.
One of my pet peeves is the sex addict who gives a “trickle-down” disclosure versus a “full” disclosure, which is cruel, dishonest, and manipulative. If you aren’t ready to give a “full” disclosure at your partner’s request, do the work to prepare yourself to provide one. If you need to seek the help of a therapist to prepare a disclosure, I highly suggest it. It’s better to give one good stab versus several. I’ve seen countless partners heal from some information their addict shared in the form of a disclosure, only to be retraumatized again with more damming information just when they thought they were starting to feel better. The “trickle-down” disclosure delays your partner’s healing, and it’s much more painful. When a sex addict does this, he or she is setting the betrayed partner up to always expect a shoe to drop, which is no way to exist in a healthy relationship and is incredibly unfair to the partner.
Today, I can say the disclosure I received was devastating, but I’m so grateful that I heard the truth. I didn’t have to blame myself for my husband’s poor choices. With time, I could recognize how sick my husband was and the struggles he experienced trying to “kick“ the addiction before seeking help. Additionally, I could see how I unknowingly enabled my husband’s addiction. More importantly, I could see how my unhealthy coping mechanism kept me from being in touch with myself.
In my opinion, a couple can experience true intimacy when they see each other’s hearts through complete honesty. I believe my husband benefited from disclosing his secret life to me. My husband had to admit his betrayals face-to-face – no longer keeping secrets to himself, where addiction can escalate. You may have led a separate life while active in your addiction, but once the truth is on the table, hopefully you and your partner can examine it together, leaving more potential for connection eventually.
Please let complete honesty guide you as you prepare your disclosure, not fear. Yes, you will hurt your partner, yes, the information may destroy your relationship, but this is part of the price you must pay for your actions. You must be accountable with humility; your partner deserves this. It’s only when you reveal all your life to your partner that there can be a chance to repair the relationship. This is how you keep the addiction in the light: by allowing yourself to be truly seen by your partner.
