When I first realized my husband was a sex addict, I bought many books, read all I could find online, and studied my materials from the groups I attended to understand sex addiction. After all, if I could understand sex addiction, I could understand my husband. If I could understand the lies, the risks he took, and the danger he put his entire family in, I could reasonably make sense of everything. However, this was easier said than done because it was unrealistic.
Making sense of my husband’s addiction meant asking him several questions. Here are some examples:
- When did you realize you were an addict versus a cheater?
- How could you behave like this for so long?
- How many betrayals did you have to experience before you realized you might have a problem?
- Did you ever feel guilty?
- How could you pursue sex with me knowing who you were with?
- How could you sit in church knowing you had a double life your wife knew nothing about?
- How could you go on romantic dates and weekend getaways with me knowing what you were doing?
- How could you take the risks you took which could have impacted our health and financial future?
- How could you preach honesty to our kids when you weren’t practicing it yourself?
- Did you feel like a hypocrite?
- Why did it take you so long to realize you had a problem?
- Didn’t you worry about me finding out and what would happen to our marriage and family?
- Do you love me?
- How could you do this to me?
If you are a partner of a sex addict, I am sure at least one of these questions has run through your mind.
The questions above occupied a tremendous amount of space in my head to the point of exhaustion, and I asked them a million times to make sure the answers were the same because I didn’t trust my husband, and I needed to feel a sense of safety. None of the information I had made sense to me, and I desperately needed everything to make sense so I could feel normal again. It’s like putting a book up on the shelf that I could observe, smell and know the pages would read the same whenever I pulled the book off the shelf. If the information made sense, I could manage it and attach an explanation to it; I didn’t realize this was wishful thinking because the truth is some of that book is in a language I will never understand.
Let me explain further; my husband would answer some of the many questions I asked but not all, which infuriated me. How could he not have an exact response to my questions? I didn’t realize it then, but he was trying to answer some of the questions for himself for his healing. Examining your shameful behavior in a quest to answer why you made certain choices while acknowledging how those choices hurt others is mighty yet necessary work. However, I wasn’t trying to hear that at the time. To me, there had to be logical answers to my questions. I had a right to demand answers, and I couldn’t understand my husband’s hesitancy in answering my questions.
One day I was on the phone with Molly Ann Miller, the author of My Husband Has a Secret: Finding Healing for the Betrayal of Sex Addiction. She listened to me complain about how I couldn’t understand my husband’s behavior. I questioned how he could live such a compartmentalized life. I will never forget what she told me, “You are trying to apply logic to insanity; you will never completely understand sex addiction.” She explained that we learn as much as possible from books, attending meetings, connecting with other betrayed partners, listening to our addicts and therapists, and other resources to understand sex addiction. Still, we will never completely get it, just like sex addicts will never completely understand how their actions hurt us.
Miller was right, and I needed to hear her speak reality to me, freeing me from trying to understand everything about sex addiction. Realizing there was a limit to understanding sex addiction helped me ease up on myself. I didn’t have to take responsibility for something I had nothing to do with.
Addiction of any kind isn’t like 1+1=2; it’s not logical, and no solution will give you guaranteed results – it’s insanity. Some may feel like “insanity” is harsh, but for me, “sickness” doesn’t do justice to the actions of a sex addict. If you are going to talk honestly about sex addiction as a sickness, you have to acknowledge there is a little insanity wrapped up in the explanation as well. How else can one explain the risks sex addicts take and the lengths they go through to get their fix without concern for their loved ones or the harmful consequences? Here are just a few examples:
Loss of employment (can impact the family’s financial security)
STD’s (can affect your health)
Public humiliation (can impact you and your entire family)
Divorce (can impact you in various ways, not to mention if you have children)
Jail time (same as above)
Financial loss from spending on sex addiction (can impact financial security)
Molested children (can impact the children and the family emotionally, psychologically, and mentally)
It’s shocking to realize adults can appear rational, religious, professional, kind, or loving yet be capable of insane behavior that can lead to horrible consequences.
Now, I am not saying it’s not worth learning all you can about sex addiction. I am a fan of knowing what sex addiction is, what it stems from, how it can escalate, and the different levels of sex addiction so we know what we are dealing with. However, one must understand sex addiction may never fully make sense to us. Understanding sex addiction and how your partners’ behavior fits into the description and levels of acting out behavior is insight for you. Knowing how my husband’s childhood contributed to his addiction, his triggers, and how his addiction escalated gave me a deeper understanding of how he became a sex addict.
Most of us can wrap our heads around alcohol or drug addiction easier than fully understanding sex addiction. For most people, sex addiction is something they have heard of but didn’t understand until it was necessary. I think sex addiction is a mystery that no one talks about because of the shame for both the partner and the addict. Rarely will you see someone in church or on television praising God for healing from sex addiction like you possibly would for alcohol or drug addiction.
If you are recovering from addiction or witnessed others recover, understanding sex addiction may not seem that challenging. I didn’t struggle with addiction or see anyone in my family struggle, so understanding sex addiction was incredibly hard for me despite everything I was reading and listening to.
I don’t expect ever to understand the insanity of sex addiction perfectly. However, I’ve accepted the ugly past, the information my husband shared with me, and the knowledge of sex addiction I possess. I wouldn’t say I like the info I have, but it’s the reality of my marriage. Understanding sex addiction made it easier to know I wouldn’t accept unacceptable behavior moving forward.
I do appreciate what I understand about my husband’s addiction. I stress his addiction because everything I read in the books or heard didn’t apply to my husband; it wasn’t his story. I needed to know my husband’s story to learn how bad the addiction was for him, how it escalated, and why it became a part of my husband’s life. If one ever wants to experience true intimacy with the addict after sex addiction and understand their partner. In that case, they must know the addict’s story, not the millions of other sex addict story possibilities.
If you are not with your partner, I still think it’s a good idea to learn about sex addiction, if for no other reason than to know the signs so you hopefully won’t find yourself in this position again. In addition, you may find yourself helping a friend or loved one with this same issue which you will be able to empathize with.
I appreciate knowing what my husband was capable of and how bad his addiction became. My husband knows he could relapse if he doesn’t work the recovery program like his life depends on it. He continues to do the work to understand his insanity, take responsibility for his actions, and stay sober. I also have enough information about sex addiction and my husband’s story to know I can’t go through what I went through ever again. If my husband loses his sobriety at any point, I know I can make decisions that are honoring to me.
Thankfully, I feel like it’s not my job to be a sex addiction expert, nor do I desire to be. So I don’t exhaust myself anymore trying to make sense of the insanity of sex addiction. With time, my husband has been able to go back and answer most of those questions I previously asked him with more understanding of himself and his addiction (not to mention I wasn’t going to let him off the hook with some of the questions). As a result, I am free to use that same energy I spent trying to understand the insanity of sex addiction on myself and my healing journey, which is a much wiser use of my energy.
