From a Betrayed Partner with an SSA + IA Spouse
Q: On the article Addicted Brain for Dummies talks about how it is similar to the movie Beautiful Mind. I’m afraid his porn addiction will always be there even after recovery. It breaks my heart and I’m reconsidering if I’m strong enough to go through this. I’m not strong emotionally or mentally. It gave me second thoughts.
Savvy Answers:
I want to first point out the mindset in this question. When you say, “even after recovery” that implies recovery is an event. Recovery is a lifelong process, commitment, and lifestyle change. As Demi Lovato said, “You don’t get a day off of recovery.”
The truth is once an addict, always an addict, and by that I mean, we as addicts are always at risk of relapsing into our addiction or addiction hopping because of the neural pathways and associations we’ve built.
The thing is, the longer time we have had being sober and in recovery and most importantly replacing addiction behaviors with healthy behaviors we are able to break down the associations and pathways. We can essentially dull them down to where it would take something extreme for us to go back to addiction, and at that point it’s a 100% conscious free will choice.
Betrayed partners are the strongest people on this earth. We go through hell and back (and hell and back at least 10+ times) as we fight to save our marriage. You are stronger than you even know.
The choice is always yours as to whether you stay or not. And it’s key to give one full year of them being in recovery before making decisions. You do not want to make a huge life decision such as divorce in a heightened traumatized emotional state. If you both work recovery 100% for that first year, evaluate after that year and see how you feel.
The only time I ever advocate or think it’s necessary to divorce without that 1 year mark is when there is rape and physical abuse going on. If that’s the case, find your local sexual and domestic violence center to get help on how to get a free to low cost divorce.
And yes, you wouldn’t believe how many sexual addicts have sexually assaulted and raped their partners and gotten physically intimidating, as far as hitting. Anger and addiction are very much intertwined and get worse the deeper in addiction they get.
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