Sex Addiction Sobriety–The Rest Of The Story

So your Sexually Addicted partner has finally embraced his recovery and has been sober for a few years. You finally breathe a sign of relief and feel safe enough to start believing there is a future for the relationship. You begin to adjust to life without chaos. You remain realistic about the possibility of relapses, but those thoughts do not dominate your every waking moment. Life seems pretty good and conversations shift from the addiction to the relationship.

Sounds like your wishes have come true. But have they?

Let me tell you the rest of the story.

Now, I do not claim that my story will be your story. Nor do I assume that this is always how the story goes. But, considering the eerie similarity of symptoms, behaviors and personalities of Sex Addicts I cannot help but conclude that their recovery experiences will also be similar. But I am more than six years past D-day and Larry has been sober for almost four years. It will take years for those of you here, who have just recently discovered your partner’s addiction to get to the rest of your story.

The major issue that I see with living with a recovering Sex Addict is that once you strip away the addiction and the chaos of the compulsive behaviors you are left with a damaged man who chose sex as a way of coping with the feelings and emotions of his life. Now, without his ‘crutch’ he stands emotionally naked, without the cloak of Sexual Addiction to keep him warm. All of his faults that were hidden in the chaotic lifestyle will now be blatantly visible to you and acutely painful for him.

As Larry and I move forward with our lives his Personality Disorders have taken front row. I now realize that we never really had a deep conversation about our relationship. In the past I would talk, he would listen, then he would repeat back to me what he thought I wanted to hear.

Just a few days ago he accompanied me to my counselor, at her request, so that she could gain a little more insight about the relationship. Larry was nervous, said very few words, but did admit that in the past he had been a ‘master manipulator’ by just regurgitating my words and dreams back to me. I have been aware of that for years, but now, when he tries to do that I don’t accept it and ask for his real thoughts.

He has none.

Our conversations are totally one sided. Now, to clarify things, our conversations are not confrontational and I am quite careful not to be accusatory or aggressive. Just an easy discussion of how we should proceed to make our relationship better. But Larry is just not able to handle these types of conversations. He shuts down. He stares into space. He twitches and runs his thumb across his fingertips in a behavior that nurses call ‘pill rolling’. If I ask a question he will sit there, staring into space for five minutes–yes I have timed it. Do you know how long five minutes is when you are waiting for a answer? When I finally break down and say, ‘Uh, that was a question.’ he will answer that he just doesn’t know what to say.

He makes promises that he never keeps or even remembers (classic passive aggressive), remains in denial that he

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