I am so sorry you're having a difficult time. I think our partners were really good at selling us the fairy tale they wanted so badly for themselves, so badly they tried to ignore or compartmentalize.  You are not responsible for that, none of us are.  I'm new here, so I'll leave the wisdom to others.  But you are not alone, and I truly believe it's going to get better with some rough patches along the way.

Much love to you

Last edited by karma8mykeys (June 24, 2019 7:26 am)

NRG,
Your post made me weep. There is so much grief there.  It is so complicated.  I am not divorced, although I know I need to go that direction to start healing.  I find triggers all over the place.  Each new season, a plant, an Easter decoration, a song, a photo.  Each of these memories hurts. 

Some memories are painful memories of the distance and pain I felt in the marriage even before I knew about TGT, and they are more painful now with the new view.  And then some memories that were happy no longer feel happy.  Right now, everything looks like grief. 

Even my interactions with my lovely children are twinged with grief—knowing their dad did not love me, knowing I am hurting them by divorcing and breaking up the “stable family,” knowing they all have pain of their own from the lack of warmth in our home and I wish I would have understood better so I  could have been a better mom by modeling a better relationship.

It goes on and on and on, doesn’t it?

If you have not already, I hope you will read these two articles we’ve listed in here on some SSN discussions in the past few weeks:

“Great Betrayals,” by Ana Fels, NY Times editorial

“What they don’t know will hurt them” blog post by Omar Minwalla.

For other SSN members who have read the Minwalla post already, I recently found someone referring to (I think) a presentation Minwalla made, and there was a list of the many types of trauma and reprocessing that are required of the betrayed partner when they learn of the partner’s secret sexual life, as they work through “betrayal trauma.”  I cannot find that list, but I will look and add to this thread if/when I do!  It gave a lot of specifics to the work referred to generally in The NYTimes essay.

Last edited by OnMyOwnTwoFeet (June 25, 2019 12:46 am)

In my post above I referred to this list. I thought I had seem it somewhere else, in more down to earth language.  But here is the original.  There is so much to process.

This is from Minwalla
https://theinstituteforsexualhealth.com/thirteen-dimensions-of-sex-addiction-induced-trauma-sait-among-partners-and-spouses-impacted-by-sex-addiction/

Thirteen Dimensions of Sex Addiction-Induced Trauma (SAIT) among Intimate Partners and Spouses Impacted by Sex Addiction-Compulsivity©:


Discovery Trauma
Disclosure Trauma
Reality-Ego Fragmentation
Impact to Body and Medical Intersection
External Crisis and Destabilization
SAIT Hypervigilance and Re-Experiencing
Dynamics of Perpetration, Violation and Abuse (SAIP)
Sexual Trauma
Gender Wounds and Gender-Based Trauma (GBT)
Relational Trauma and Attachment Injuries
Family, Communal and Social Injuries
Treatment-Induced Trauma
Existential and Spiritual Trauma

Last edited by OnMyOwnTwoFeet (June 26, 2019 10:39 pm)

Mine absolutely has sexual compulsions.  No question about it.

The "sex addict" bothered me too, mostly because I would like to give a link to the article to friends and family members!  However, in that other Minwalla article we've shared on here recently ("What they don't know will hurt them"), he really emphasizes not SAIT, but that the damage is from maintaining a compartmentalized, secret sexual world.  So I bet he would apply that definition to this list-of-13 now as well. 

In fact, in the "What they don't know" article, he actually seems to go to great pains to NOT use the words "sex addict."  Am gonna post the intro to that article right here so you can re-read, cuz it is just so good.  I feel validated every time I read it.  Ha

What They Don’t Know Will Hurt Them: The Hidden Dangers of Sexual Secrets

When it comes to understanding the harm caused by cheating, infidelity, and deceptive sexuality or relationships, people often tend to focus exclusively on the specific sexual or romantic behaviors that occur in these situations.

…But what about the negative consequences that result from the creation and maintenance of a secret, sexual world…one that is kept tucked away and hidden from the relationship?

... What happens when one person in the relationship engages in pervasive patterns of deceptive tactics and psychological manipulation over the course of months, or even years?

…In fact, the creation and maintenance of a deceptive, compartmentalized sexual-relational reality is often just as harmful, if not more so, than the actual sexual behaviors themselves.

Regarding the list-o-13, I think someone pointed out how a person works through all of these often at once, or many at a time, and circles through them again and again, especially any time new information comes out.  That is a BIG DEAL, IMO.  Having to reprocess everything again. 

I also found these two other sources that were connected and interesting:

https://togetherwecanheal.com/sex-addiction-induced-trauma-how-sex-addiction-impacts-the-partners/

Because the Minwalla article on the list of 13 is very dense reading, I went looking for a simpler summary.  This first link above, is to a blog written by a man who calls himself a recovering sex addict, and he explores the trauma from Minwalla's article in regards to his now-ex-wife. Caviat! I'm not really recommending this overall blog, and I don't love the "Rafiki my mentor" construct in this blog, but in this post, I do like how the author uses simpler language and lists to go deeper into the 13 items that Minwalla's article covers. IYou have to scan down a bit in the article to get to the start of the list.  Worth reading, IMO, for specific examples.

https://www.btr.org/betrayal-trauma-symptoms/

This second link, above, is to a podcast, but no worries, there is a full transcript below the recording.  (Sorry to all our men here about the female focus in this article!) I think this article is a great read, and not too long.  It mentions some of the Minwalla 13, but not all.  Especially interesting here is a list shared by one of this organization's coaches--some of these overlap with the Minwalla List-o-13:

11 Most Common Betrayal Trauma Responses

1. Overwhelming emotions
2. Unusual/uncharacteristic behaviors
3. Sleep difficulties– too much/too little
4. Brain fog--inability to think clearly, memory loss, getting lost easily
5. Eating problems--inability to eat/overeating
6. Anxiety/panic attacks
7. Depression
8. Rumination/obsessive thoughts and intrusive images/flashbacks
9. Difficulty caring for self or others
10. Isolation
11. Obsessive need to check the internet history, GPS, email accounts, text message history, etc. for signs that the danger is still present.

I don't remember where I read it, but somewhere I read that there is a huge similarity between these responses and those of rape trauma.  I feel it isn't right to say our trauma is the same as rape.  But it is still trauma--sexual trauma that denies our "personhood."  And I definitely have a lot of these common betrayal trauma responses.

BTW, some of these and other articles refer to how there is still a tendency by some practitioners to label partners of sexual secret-keepers as "codependent."  Just like the partners of alcoholics.  I just wanna say, and really loudly:  CODEPENDENT is a word that now makes me furious.  I hate being labeled as jointly responsible for my husband's secret.  This is one of the main points of the Minwalla article.  And then, because the betrayed partners present with all kinds of trauma symptoms, those trauma symptoms are taken to be the person's more normal behavior, which plays into the idea that the betrayed partner is actually the problem partner, while the secret-keeper is so familiar at their false persona that they are the easy-to-trust partner.  Thinking about that gets me grumpy.

Last edited by OnMyOwnTwoFeet (June 27, 2019 2:31 pm)