What is Partner's Recovery?
Partner's Recovery Definition:
When people think of “sex addiction,” they normally think of people who are addicted to sexual behavior. Sex addiction affects everyone in the addict’s lives, and it affects their partners and spouses significantly.
Partners of sex addicts need an advocate to call upon. Feelings of fear, hurt, anger, betrayal, and grief require a compassionate effective response. We provide that expert guidance and direction. We offer help for partners of sex addicts to heal through sessions that give them answers to their many questions including: “How can I trust him again?” Our licensed counselors can help you begin your personal journey toward healing.
Partners, or wives living with a sex addict, typically report common feelings such as aloneness and the sense that their addicted partner can’t open up and share his “real” self. This compartmentalization and confusion comes as a result of engaging in certain addictive behaviors that are still not enough and hopelessness that there isn’t enough. Addiction is never fulfilling. You may have many unmet needs and feel emotions including anger, loss, and loneliness as a partner. Many of these issues are addressed in our partners resources.
Even if the addict stays in denial of their addiction, there is sex addiction help for partners and support for you. These feelings of anger, loss, loneliness and many other feelings encountered over the years of living with this addiction will affect you. These feelings need to be dealt with therapeutically whether you stay in the relationship to your addicted partner or not.
REACH OUT & GET HELP NOW
If you are a partner of a sex addict please contact our licensed counselors now and schedule a partner counseling appointment.
You can reach us at 719-278-3708 or email us at heart2heart@xc.org.
Are you the partner of a sex addict?
There are specific signs that show you may be a partner of a sex addict. These signs include:
- Does your spouse have unaccountable money?
- Does your spouse have unexplainable moods?
- Is your spouse unable to be emotionally intimate?
- Does sex appear to not satisfy him/her (wants more right away or there never seems to be enough)?
- Are there many arguments over sex?
- Does your spouse have a supply of pornography (especially the kind you get at adult bookstores)?
- Does your spouse have a history of emotional, physical or sexual abuse or neglect?
- Does your spouse have a lack of sexual activity with you?
- Does your spouse’s moods depend on whether he or she gets sex or not?
- Do they have what looks like a double life?
- Have they made promises to quit a behavior and failed?
- Is there a sense that he or she got their “fix” and now they are better at different times?
- Do you feel used, dirty or abandoned after sexual encounters?
- Do you feel alone during your sexual encounters?
- Is there a lot of anger or erratic behavior when he or she is told “no” to sexual activity?
If you answered yes to several of these questions or if you feel like they apply to your relationship, your spouse my be a sex addict. You should dig deeper to get to the root causes of those signs and address the behaviors associated with them. Check out the What is Sex Addiction page for more information on sex addiction.
If you already know you are dealing with a sex addiction in your relationship, our partner recovery resources can help you. You may also want to make a counseling appointment. In our counseling and intensive sessions, our licensed counselors help you heal from the impact of the addiction and rebuild your trust. We have over thirty years of experience helping couples and partners of sex addicts heal.
Partner's Treatment and Recovery
It is important receive help as a partner of a sex addict. Your life has been devastated in ways you most likely don’t even realize and your long-term emotional wellbeing is also at stake. Partners are at increased risk of depression, loss of self-worth, eating disorders and sexuality. It is important not to minimize your feelings and stressors and to find hope in recovery. Our counselors help partners recover by increasing awareness of the original addiction, by providing professional counseling treatment and by helping them recover with the help of therapeutic materials.
Our Partner's Recovery Treatment Programs
We use complete partner’s recovery treatment programs called “intensives” and counseling sessions to help you recover from your relationship, stabilize your emotions and redefine your personal identity moving forward.
Partner Intensives
Our Partner Intensive program is focused on helping partners recover after learning that their spouse or partner has a sex addiction. The intensives are 3 or 5 days long. They include a full recovery program with three daily recovery counseling sessions with Dr. Doug Weiss or one of our licensed counselors trained by Dr. Doug, access to our recovery DVDs and materials, anger work and more. Recover from your relationship with a sex addict and rebuild your identity through our partner intensive program.
Call us at 719-278-3708 or email us at heart2heart@xc.org to schedule your complete partner’s recovery program.
Partner Counseling Sessions
Our Partner Counseling Sessions are meant for partners of sex addicts who are actively working through sexual addiction in their relationships and are not able to attend a complete partner intensive recovery program. These counseling sessions are scheduled by the hour. You can schedule as many sessions as needed. Your licensed counselor will help you understand your emotions, deal with the trauma, overcome loneliness, help you heal and find support in partners recovery groups.