Posts tagged sex addicts are abusers
In My Opinion, Where Do We Go From Here?

Over the last ten years I’ve been pulling back the curtain on the strange and ongoing train wreck of treatment options for compulsive-abusive sexual relationship disordered men and their wives and families. In my opinion there is no evidence-based publishable research available to back up what was being marketed (I searched and searched and am still searching after ten years.) Religious-based versions soon sprang up around it and are now closely allied to it. “Believers” already enrolled in faith-based organizations may be seamlessly transferred into affiliated treatment programs that are easily shrink-wrapped in the religious propositions of the day. Once there, the theories and methods go unchallenged by women who are desperate, traumatized and already conforming to their religious community’s direction and authority.

As long as the compulsive-abusive sexual relational disordered man is reinstated as some version of the spiritual and authoritative head of the household, success is declared. The women and children are there to do what they are told. Meanwhile his true core values that actually run the show are never named or unseated. And in describing that situation I am reminded of a New Testament professor from seminary days (now in Glory) who used to say in his thick Irish accent “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus…vaguely in our minds.”

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therapeutic abuse, self-careDiane Stricklandtelling the truth of your life, tell your story, sex addicts are abusers, reality check, recovery ploys
Living Differently into These Hard Truths

After four weeks of examining how men call sex addicts harm their wives, partners, children and step-children, we need to hit the pause button, catch our breath and see what we’ve learned. So, in today’s blog I’m going to talk about how we live with the truths that we have found the courage to speak, face, hear, and validate.

Before I do that, I want to honor that remarkable courage! Your persistence in reading the blog and validating the hard stories shared over the last four weeks bears witness to your commitment to the value of your lives and your children’s lives. Please don’t lose sight of that! Keep it in front of you at all times. Say it out loud. Talk about it to yourself and to your children. Validate and affirm over and over again. The power of his fake life to make you all doubt yourselves and feel less than “enough” must be undermined by the power of your real lives as a loving wife/partner and loving children/stepchildren.

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Post-traumatic stress, making decisionsDiane Stricklandreality check, recovery for partners, adult children of sex addicts, telling the truth of your life, children's trauma care, sex addicts are abusers
My Family, Eight Years Later

Last week’s blog generated significant response. Thank you so much for letting me know when topics help you validate your experiences and ongoing concerns. One reader sent me the following piece about her family’s trauma and how they lurched along together and ultimately chose to put themselves and each other first instead of the man who continued to lie, gaslight, blameshift, and deceive them all through his fake “recovery” years.

The author and her daughters require anonymity but the daughters, in particular, want other kids to know they aren’t crazy and they deserve better from him—and to ask for counseling trauma care support! Don’t count on the treatment industry to be proactive on anything that might suggest their men called sex addicts may have harmed the family so deeply that children should receive immediate and ongoing attention for trauma care. FYI: This not an account of any father sexually abusing children within his own family.

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expectations for recovery, fake regret, making decisions, Post-traumatic stress, self-careDiane Stricklandsex addicts harm families, sex addicts hurt women, sex addicts are abusers, sex addicts manipulate, partners are priority, families are priority
Hang On To Yourself

Truman Burbank: Was nothing real?

Christof: You were real... that's what made you so good to watch.

Lines from the movie called “The Truman Show”, after Truman (played by Jim Carrey) learns that he was the only one in his life who wasn’t acting a part in a world that wasn’t real.

 The Truman Show resonates with my discovery that most of my life had been absorbed into my husband’s ugly deception. The movie’s ending grips me—where, after Truman’s sailboat prow accidentally pierces the fake horizon, Truman climbs out of his boat onto a fake lake, and seeing a staircase climbs up to find the “exit” door. The show’s creator tries to keep him from going through it, and after they exchange some words (including the lines above) Truman takes his final bow and walks through the door into the real world—a dark unknown. What would he feel—fear, anger, hope, courage, grief, doubt? All these, but still he chooses to leave the fake life and hang onto himself—because he’s the only thing in his life he knows is real.

Truman hung on to himself. And that’s exactly what you need to do.

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therapeutic abuse, self-care, making decisions, Post-traumatic stressDiane Stricklandrecovery ploys, recovering for real, recovery for partners, saving yourself, sex addicts are abusers, sex addicts tricks, sex addicts hurt women, domestic violence of sex addiction
How Men Called Sex Addicts Abuse Their Wives and Partners

After discovery many wives and partners are too traumatized to recognize themselves as victims of abuse. Enter the treatment industry who calls all of it his “sex addiction,” instead. For most of us, that’s a whole lot better than being a victim of abuse. I was sucked so quickly into the “sex addiction” alibi that it took me a while to back my way out. But back my way out, I did, as what I was reading and hearing from the sex addiction treatment industry just stopped making sense.

Along the way I started a list—a list of the offences women face from these men called “sex addicts”. We experience physical, spiritual, emotional, financial and psychological harm that no one seems to name. I realized that if any parishioner came in my office with even some of these signs, I would have concluded she was in an abusive relationship. My first concern would have been for her safety. Only in this farce of a treatment industry is that long list of abuse set aside and replaced with the two words “sex addiction”. Actually, they don’t even bother making a list.

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Diane Stricklandsex addicts are abusers, partners look after themselves, therapeutic incompetence, telling the truth about him, telling the truth of your life, saving yourself, domestic violence of sex addiction, wives and partners pay the price, sex addicts hurt women