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.