Selling Hope

I don’t know about everyone, but my gut said, and still says, that SJ grasped onto the “addiction” label because it protected him from the full brunt of the consequences of his actions. He felt, and I saw it so clearly, that being an addict gave him a victim mask to wear over the leering wolf. A large part of that legal, too, as his company dumped him and banned him from even coming onto the property AND from talking to ANY of their vendors or clients from the second they heard, so I know there had to be awful stuff on his work computers. Idiot, governmental top secret double biometrically passworded computers used for that? What an arrogant idiot. And time. Nobody could make permanent choices until he had had time in “therapy” to find the truth of his traumatic past and learn skills to deal with it. He figured, and partially correctly, that there would be compassion for him, then. Not condemnation.

That’s pretty jaded, but that’s the feelings I got from this whole experience. I do not doubt there are people with severely bad “habits” surrounding sexuality. People with very disturbing sexual preferences. Yes, the brain rewires according to constant usages, and with repeated reinforcements. That doesn’t make it an “addiction”.

So, while I do believe “addicts” can learn better skills and coping mechanisms if they choose, I do not believe there is a cure. If the addicts believe they are being helped, they are and that’s subjective. So yes, in a way they are selling hope.

Should the partners buy it? I doubt it. If the addict went for help because he wanted it, before the relationship was in danger, I’d say yes. But, none of us know anyone like that, do we? The only cure is the “addict” deciding he’s done with that. Everything else is just support. Not a bad thing, helpful to someone who really wants it, most likely. Leaves the families involved wide open for abuses, of course. The only person who knows if it’s really effective has extremely highly developed skills of deception and manipulation. Being “cured” has a huge weight of responsibility, so why would they claim that? Then, they are 100% accountable for their behavior. Perpetual potential for, even expectation of, “slips” has got to be the best insurance there is to maintain their cover lifestyle and still keep an ace up their sleeve. An “addiction” is a perfect cover. Carnes was/is an SA. He designed this model. Who actually believed it was about stopping the behaviors? Whatever creepiness there is about Carnes, and there’s a lot, he created something almost flawless in it’s service to his agenda. Big money, built-in out for bad behavior, partners are supposed to be SUPPORTIVE, and addicts get to discuss their proclivities and be in the spotlight eternally.

Not for me.

Being someone who is currently with her husband I have a different view of what hope means to me now, than I may have had a year ago when I first sent my husband to residential treatment.

At that time I hoped he would see the consequences of his actions, that he would stop acting out and wanting to act out, that he would have empathy for me and the kids and that he would try to be a more authentic husband.

In my mind, those were accomplished; but now, that isn’t
enough

My hopes now center around clarity about my husbands capacity developmentally to be who I want him to be, and hope that I can delve into my own healing processes while still moving forward with him. I am not certain this is the case, but that is my hope right now…

So, for me we can call it whatever we want to…but my thoughts are to be cognizant of what you are really hoping for…

Some may be a able to follow a behavior plan better than others, but happiness for me is much more than that…

Teri, you are so right in that “because what sex addicts do is seen as so stigmatizing and often illegal, they are allowed a shroud of secrecy in recovery”. And isn’t that insane? There is stigma BECAUSE it is such damaging behavior. Who are we protecting, really, with this secrecy?

The double sexual double standards of our society are never more clearly portrayed than here. We can talk about everyone’s sexual behavior and the most vulgar acts are on prime time TV, but a person like this needs protection because they might suffer stigmatization? BS. Double BS on the illegal stuff. It’s illegal for a reason, and protecting the lawbreakers is like having a special club and treatment for murders that makes them immune from the law. Hell, that wouldn’t even be as bad, because the victims of murders do not have to live with the permanent damage done, they’re free of it because they are dead. Sounds awful, but it’s true.

Somebody has to win the lottery, eventually

Powerball, maybe.

Barbra,

I just don’t want any sister to get blindsided by fake recovery like I did. I think you are doing a great job, and I am so proud of you. You are handling a lot of really hard stuff very well. I don’t know how I would hold up being surrounded so closely by those who betrayed me.

I know everyone’s journey is their own. But the sisters in the place that you are, Barbra, or the hardest for me to read. The fake recovery betrayal for me was so much worse than all the other discoveries combined. I will do everything I can to spare anyone that.

So, JoAnn, that brings me back to the false hope discussion, JoAnn.

We all know the real hope is in ourselves, but that is not what your question is about. You are talking about hope for recovery for the addict and hope that we can save our relationships and our families. And I would say the whole treatment industry is about selling the hope without giving the reality. We are told the sugar-coated “success” stories. No one is telling the stories like mine. No one gives the statistics. No one talks about co-morbidity with personality disorders. At least that has been my experience. As far as I can tell, SOS is the only game in town as far as that goes. Real hope has to grounded in reality, not in fantasy.

I think we have to have hope for ourselves first. The treatment centers, especially 12 step, co dependency types, just added ‘sex addiction’ to their repitraire to increase their market and likely truely believe it’s an addiction. In a sense the same could be said about Minwalla. Although he approach is completely different, is he selling false hope? He’s very realistic and it would be interesting to ask him his view on this and what his success rate is?

I believe in hope in everything in life. I think there are people out there who do recover, although maybe few. But whos to say who that person is going to be?

I just know when things don’t change; we have to move forward, one way or another. If we have exhausted everything we can do then we have an obligation to ourselves to continue our life and spend our energy where it belongs. It becomes ‘the point of diminishing returns’ if we don’t.

I think if a spouse is showing genuine recovery and your relationship is a healthy one, then there may be hope. If not, life is too short and precious to ‘settle’ and ‘endure’. Life is for living and growing and experiencing…….

~Nap

I forget which sister said it, but I’ll never forget — “More people have seen Bigfoot than recovered sex addicts”.

Of course hope sells. Most SA’s don’t even want treatment, it’s often partners that have to push/get them there. And what drives partners? Hope that something can get better. Does the treatment industry take advantage of our shock, despair, and trauma? Most likely. And in a marketing sense, most addiction treatment centers and rehab places mainly target partners and families to sell the addict programs to, not the addicts. Because after discovery, we are the ones seeking solutions to make this terrible lifequake more bearable and attended to. On our part, that’s only natural.

The SA treatment industry, who are partly made up of sex addicts, definitely have a vested interest in protecting the image of these men and hiding their true nature as abusive and dangerous. I remember seeing this type of thing recently on full display by Rob Weiss, if you recall that thread — his message to the world media: “Sex addicts aren’t monsters. Sex addicts don’t have NPD or APD traits. Sex addicts have empathy and remorse”. In order to make everyone continue to swallow it, as Teri said, partners need to be silenced, diminished, blamed, pathologized — so we are viewed as crazy and thus never believed, gaslighted so we think we are indeed crazy, and our trauma either completely ignored or pathetically given lip service to.

SA’s really should have thought about the stigma attached with their perverted behaviors before they did them. They didn’t care then, so why should the treatment industry protect them now? Live with it. We have to.

I was trying to explain this to friend yesterday. We have been friends for 9 years. I never told her about gollums proclivities or the havoc it had caused our marriage. She was very very shocked. And I did not tell her, gollum told her because she kept asking why I wasn’t at mass. Anyway,she asked me if they can get help and stop, why I don’t necessarily believe that it is possible for him to really change. I told her, this stuff is in his head. I have 3 beautiful daughters, 6,8, and 10. They will soon be teens. His thing was to look at “teen porn”. She asked me if that alone made it more likely that he would do something to my girls. I told her I had flat out told him I had concerns about his viewing content in regards to our girls. His reply ” Well , that is not my bent, and I would never harm our girls.” Just like that. No outrage at my suggestion, just a calm bland comment. Anyway, my real issue is that even if he did not touch my girls, he may LOOK at them that way once they are blossoming teens. I can’t know what is in his insane brain. I can’t take even the THOUGHT he might do that, nevermind actually touching them. Of course that is precisely what his dad is being investigated for. Hope? I got none. The only people that I feel actually understand what I feel is you sisters at SOS. My counselor told me “Well he is not ALL bad,nobody is and he certainly is not a monster.” That is not how I feel at all. That is the hope I think they are trying to sell. It’s not gollum, he really is a good person if he just could get into “recovery” from this “addiction”. Cudos to him for being so honest and upfront about his “problem” . Nevermind the fact that he gaslighted me the whole marriage and only got help after being CAUGHT. It seems spouses are expected to be so grateful that their partner is trying to admit their fault, and give themselves over to a higher power. I feel hopeless. My friend asked if I loved him at all anymore. I said no. Out of self preservation about 1 year ago I gave up all hope of any change and any feelings I had towards him died. I can only look at him with rage and pity, if that makes any sense. Thanks JoAnn for a thought provoking post.

It certainly meets my definition of evil.

I think that is the crazymaking part for me. Gollum was kind and caring and thoughtful sometimes. But he also lied to me about who he was and what he was about. So you in effect have 2 different personas. The one presented to me, the kids, the church and his friends and co-workers. But the other person he is was revealed to me when I had dday December 2005. From that point, I knew what he was. And I held that discovery inside myself for 8 years. And he continued to show me that he is that gollum person who cares not for my feelings or the kids feelings. So who is who? Which one is reality? Both? Evil and good? Which one is more powerful? Is the good one a lie? A performance to cover the evil side? This is what really bothers me. Just who the hell is this guy? And does presenting one image to others when you are actually a totally different person, make them just good liars and manipulators or really evil?? These thoughts go through my head constantly.