Editor’s note: Resource Perspectives features articles written by members of Lovefraud’s Professional Resources Guide.
Rebecca Potter works as a licensed mental health counselor in West Palm Beach, Florida. She can be reached at: tlc211@gmail.com.
Surviving betrayal and trauma
By Rebecca Potter
Rebecca Potter profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide
I recently attended a workshop by Dr. Patrick Carnes, Ph.D., author of The Betrayal Bond. I was shocked by the denial of the psychological community regarding the trauma experienced by survivors of emotional and sexual trauma. I took my worn and used copy of The Betrayal Bond to Dr. Carnes for his signature. He signed my copy and asked, “Why used?”
Dr. Carnes’ work has helped me surface from the web of pain and confusion developed while trying to safely escape an emotionally, verbally, financially abusive husband. When I left, I was further damaged by my exposure to the legal system and Family Court. There was no place that I could go to receive treatment, attorneys took advantage of me, insurance companies lied and hid fraud that they had committed with my former mate. Need Dr. Carnes ask why my copy was used and battered, somewhat like me?
Just get over it and move on
This was the attitude I faced when I tried to find professional legal help. The pain in my body was so real, yet invisible to anyone else. I couldn’t explain the terror that I felt when I had to sit in the same room with my former husband: The intense emotion I felt when he told the courtroom lies and the court believed those lies without evidence. The permission that the Court gave to him, which allowed him to further abuse me and how I was ignored and told, “Just get over it and move on.”
The impact of sexual addiction induced trauma
The field of treatment and intervention for disorders related to compulsive sexual behavior and sexual addiction is a new emerging field. Research has focused on the sexual addict, creating models for diagnosis and treatment, while the partners of sex addicts have been neglected and ignored.
Current clinical treatment models prefer to address the partner of a sex addict as a codependent or co-addict, which basically implies that the partner has their own disease termed: co-addiction or codependency. Codependency is in a category of a process addiction—an addiction to certain mood-altering behaviors, such as a tendency to behave in overly passive or excessively care-taking ways that negatively impact one’s relationships and quality of life. Other process addictions include: gambling, food, shopping, spending and hoarding.
The clinical needs of partners of sexual addicts continue to be ignored, minimized, obscured and gravely misunderstood. Partners actually often experience clinically significant sex addiction induced trauma. These traumatic symptoms are a result from the direct impact of sex addiction:
- chronic patterns of sexual acting out
- relational perpetration
- emotional abuse
- deception
- betrayal
- psychological manipulation
Traditional therapists continue to ignore the symptoms of trauma. These partners often present with symptoms that match rape trauma syndrome and post traumatic stress disorder. Sex addiction-induced trauma is a highly specific type of trauma that involves symptoms of fear and panic of potential disease and contamination, fear of child safety and potential of child molestation, social isolation, embarrassment, shame, guilt and intense relational rupture and attachment injuries.
Neglecting the treatment of trauma and focusing instead on co-addiction and codependency are inadequate and clinically contra-indicated, wrought with moral and ethical challenges. Partners and spouses of sex addicts are a profoundly and clinically traumatized population requiring informed care and ethical treatment.
Recovery
I know, because I experienced similar trauma. Recovery has been a long road. I still experience flashbacks and have adrenal fatigue when my symptoms are triggered. I have started women’s and men’s relationship recovery groups. We meet each week to support each other with the withdrawal of leaving a chaotic relationship and help each other process the deep brain injuries from the exploitation and trauma.
I also suggest that survivors participate in online support groups if they are not able to find a trauma therapist in their area. One online group : www.adultchildrenofalcholics.org. There are phone meetings daily. The websites will list the phone meetings. The pain that you are experiencing is real and must be processed with those who understand trauma.
I look at my marriage as an educational process that I needed to experience to assist others in healing. Yes, my ex will marry others and commit the same abuse. There will be many women and children harmed by his manipulation.
For those who continue to work at healing, it’s a long and challenging road. I realize how frustrating it is as you just want to be your old self again. The betrayal steals one’s sense of self. You will recover it with time and patience. Small steps…..very small.
I still have further to travel with my recovery however have made great progress over the past couple of years. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and this time I’m fairly certain it’s not the headlight of a train. There is hope to have a life again for all of us.
My best to all on the journey of life and recovery. Peace.
darwinsmom,
I got into the relationship on the pretext that it would be monogamous. He swore he had been celibate for more than a year and wasn’t interested in casual sex. It all was a lie, and that’s why I feel so violated.
Dear Dawn G,
I think some people physically/emotionally BOND more to the sexual act than others. There is a chemical release (oxytocin) and I think it effects some people more than others. It seems that psychopaths bond little or none to the USUAL releases of oxytocin, so it stands to reason that some others might bond MORE than “normal” I personally think that I am one of those people and am therefore a person who CANNOT have “casual sex.” FOR ME sex is a “bonding ritual between two people who care about each other” not something that is just done CASUALLY for “fun” with no further expectation than the immediate “fun.”
It isn’t just about “morality” of having a one night stand, it is about the feelings of BONDING that I get from sexual intimacy.
Plus, the fact that as a retired medical professional, I am well aware of the potential for disease spread even with condoms. One of the classes I used to teach for college kids on sex was called “Scary Sex” and was about the 18 or so sexually transmitted diseases that a condom doesn’t even SLOW DOWN much less stop.
One of my childhood friends who is 64 and divorced was just diagnosed with an STD (fortunately not a fatal one but one that he will now have forever) and he called me for information. I have spent many hours in the last few weeks trying to teach him about WHY he should wear a condom, AND that he should have frequent STD checks, AND that he should demand that anyone he intends to have sex with have an STD Check BEFORE he had sex with them, that casual sex with people you don’t know is medically DANGEROUS, but he was dumbfounded at the information I was giving him. He had never thought about it and he just “didn’t like to wear a condom” and then he went on to tell me how “safe” he was because he didn’t sleep with anyone he didn’t know well enough to NOT use a condom. LOL
I said, “Well there was SOMEONE you slept with that you didn’t know well enough to know she had X STD which she transmitted to you!”
I read recently that the fastest growing group of people with STDs are people my age 50+ because they were not educated as well as younger groups about STDs and the need for CAUTION and “safer” sex. But one of the one liners I used in teaching the kids was “what do you call people who use condoms for birth control?”—-PARENTS! So if it won’t stop pregnancy very well, what about diseases?
SAFE-er Sex does cut DOWN the transmission of most STDs, but even then it is not 100% “safe”—-add that in to the fact that I know about MYSELF that I tend to BOND with whomever I am sleeping with and so I have made a decision that I will not have casual sex, even if it means that I never have sex again as long as I live.
Skylar, You asked if I was still in love with my X hub. I left him 16 years ago, 6 years after the affair, and we tried to have another go at it. I could never completely get over it, although I really tried to, and by the time I left, I really, really wanted to. I knew I’d always love him, and have memories of him, but I didn’t feel I was still In love with him.
I met other men, (lots 🙂 ) entered into knew relationships, and sort of found myself…I finished a BA and started an MA, I was writting prose poetry, and painting…It was probably the high point in my life. I honestly didn’t think about him much.
So, it’s very strange to have all these feelings flooding into me, again. To answer your question, no, I don’t think I’m still in love with him, but I wonder if I’m not still feeling the effects of the trauma bond….Very sad, and a lot of grief….stuff I felt all the time while married to the man.
I actually wish he would have left me that time of the un-opened letter. It would have hurt like hell, but it would have been a clean pain, and I had all that pain anysway, along with a ray of hope and confusion, and knowledge that he hadn’t loved me the way I thought he did, and instead of grieving the loss and getting over it, I was living with it, back in and out of denial. It was hell, inside me.
For all the shit he pulled, I don’t beleive he’s a spath. A total Narcissist maybe, but not a spath, and even that may make it harder, because I believe the reason he didn’t leave me was because he had empathy, and a conscience. But, unfortunately, I could never believe it was because he loved me. And, he tried…he really did, but it was never the same.
Someone asked me (was it you, Louise?) Why I wasn’t mad about the ow being at the fancy hotel for the awards ceremony? I was so mired in denial it’s just unbelievable to me, now. I had so many signs….a mac truck could have run me down, and I’d get up and dust myself off. It’s really preaty scarey when I think about it now.
After we got to florida, I just forgot a bunch of it. It was like I knew it in an abstract way, but not any of the nasty little details. We planned to buy a house, and did, but it took about 4 months for everything to come together, and I mentioned his affair only once in an off-hand way, in all that time.
Get this: I had found a note from the GF before we moved to florida, before the impending disaster, and he had folded it and stapled the top….I put my index finger and my thumb into it and spread them apart just far enough to read, that it was addressed to “Baby” I didn’t read it…why? Because I couldn’t handle it! I was up to my eye-balls with final exams, and thinking about a move across country, Christmas was only days away, I had three kids…. but I also think there was a sense of biding my time….of knowing that if I waited and played dumb he’d come back…and he did. So, anyway, we move into our new house in Florida, have probably been there less than a month, and I wake up one morning and go straight for the note, ( I had taken it and hidden it, even though I hadn’t read it). I never once in those 4 or 5 months thought of that note…I had “forgotten” it.
That is when all hell broke loose and a real bitch was born. LOL. But, at least I had my name on a deed…HA. And, I had my husband seperated from her by several states. HA.
A part of the trauma comes from knowing that he was trying to get caught, either because he wanted me to be the one to leave him, or because he wanted me to wake up and fix the trouble…sexual, in nature, but it was really his problem, and once all this truth came out, it was no longer a problem.
He had allowed the OW to put scratch marks down his back and a hickey on his neck. She had left underwear in my bed, for God’s sake. Hang-up calls and such. They were forcing my hand, but they didn’t get it til I had him in Florida with both our names on the deed.
I still feel respect for him. Is that completely crazy? Is that part of the trauma bond? He raised my daughter from the time they were 2 and 4, as if they were his own, and I never reicieved one dime of child-support from first loser husband.
Plus, he DIDN’T abbandon me, even if wanted to….that is decidedly un spathy, I think….
I am having some huge revolations, lately, and writing, and reading the old poetry I was reading back in the day, and remembering old dreams I had, and putting stuff together. I actually feel like i’m finding a part of myself that I lost a long time ago.
I know this is a long post, and very self involved, so I thank you guys for being patient with me. Thanks, kim
Hey I came back here looking for Coping…
Hello Coping. Hopefully you’ll wander in and see this post. I saw your message yesterday about how angry you are getting, and I wanted to respond, but it was suuuuper late here in Germany and I passed out from tiredness.
What I wanted to tell you is that I think you SHOULD get angry. If you haven’t been truly, good and honest angry yet, then it’s high time you let the flames fly and burned up some good ole heat. I got to the anger emotion very quickly. I am in some other weird land right now (for another time), but the anger stage was important. I haven’t been on here long enough to have been there when you first wandered in, but the way you talk about your emotions almost sounds as though you’ve never fully let them come out in full force and express themselves. You sound like you’ve approached this with your head primarily, which is good, but your post indicates to me that your emotions might finally be catching up with all your hard work, which is likely a GOOD thing, not bad. It sounds so cliche, but I really mean this: get MAD. Probably you’ve had some fuming sessions, but if there is still a lot of anger in there, let it out!!! Stop thinking there is something wrong with being pissed off to high hell and then stuffing it back down, thinking it’s wrong. NO! Get mad! This might be a great turning point for you. You have every right to be pissed. You can be pissed that it happened at all and pissed that healing is SO DAMN HARD, but you have the right to be PISSED so get effing livid and go punch a pillow or violently hurl marshmallows at the wall. Whatever works. Get it out!
DawnG…thanks for coming out and saying what you did about feeling sexually violated. Your saying this aloud made me realize that I’ve been stuffing down rage about the very same thing. I remember that during the relationship, at times I had an overwhelming desire to literally castrate him with my bare hands. I didn’t even know at the time what was really going on with him, and I chastised myself for having such ‘evil’ thoughts about the man I thought I loved. I think my subcon was trying to communicate with me in the form of strange urges like this, and I was denying myself the right to feel what I really felt. I wanted to castrate him and I still do…..thanks for saying what you said. I needed to hear that statement aloud in order to confront that emotion in myself too…
DawnG: You said he claimed to have been celibate…mine convinced me he had been a fucking virgin and had waited all his life to share this special thing with me (he also used this as leverage to call me a whore and cum bucket all the time and tell me that I had no right to deny him sex when he wanted it because he had waited for me while I was busy screwing other people…he said I owed it to him now to always be available!)
CASTRATION!
Dear Kimmie,
You know, I think we don’t process all this “Old shiat” until we get the more recent shiat processed and get the “emotional leisure” to go back and reach into Pandora’s box and pull out this stuff that we had so much going on that we didn’t have time, energy or resources to process.
Just like I had to heal from the Summer of Chaos attack before I could go back and process the stuff from my childhood, and my younger days….I was NO longer distracted by the immediate danger of a bear chasing me, so I could sit down, relax and THINK about the previous “bear attacks” and how I should have dealt with them at the time. If you have a bear chasing your arse right NOW you do NOT have the “leisure” or resources to think about last week, or last month or last decade.
I think, for what it is worth that it is a GOOD SIGN that you are going back and dealing with this shiat that you left in the “box” because you were raising kids and had so much other stuff going on that you did not have time, resources or energy to deal with AT THE TIME.
So hang in there and just deal with it, and come to a resolution with it. I think it may be a bit painful, but once it is resolved, you can continue on your journey of healing and growing.
How is pinkey doodle doing? ((((hugs)))) Love Oxy
Hi Oxy. Thanks for the reassurance. Pinky’s enjoying the cooler weather and getting fat.
How are you?
Kimmie,
Got another round of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever–at least that’s what the lab reports say, BUT….it could be from my previous two cases, so will have to take the antibiotics for now, and then in 2 weeks go have blood drawn again to see if this is an old case or a new case showing up in my blood. I feel like carp so it could be any number of things that wouldn’t yet show up in my blood. There are several tick borne diseases that take WEEKS to show up even though you start feeling bad within a week or two. My husband had one and it was 8 weeks before he showed up + in the blood tests and we knew WHICH antibiotic to use, unfortunately, it is a “bad” antibiotic and the one I’m on now is pretty rare with side effects, but it won’t kill EVERY kind of infection that the ticks carry, only lymes, RMSF and Erliciosus (I’m not sure how to spell that last one, that’s what my dog had so I am betting it may be that, but if so that would be the RIGHT medication for it as well) just a wait and see sit-u-nation.
Living in the country does leave me vulnerable to ticks and insect type psychopaths and parasites, but at least it could be worse. LOL They could be 2 legged instead of 4-6 or 8 legged and at least it isn’t illegal to KILL THEM! LOL
Just take it slow Kimmie, and don’t beat yourself up, just process the old shiat and put it to rest….I think it just means you are doing well and making progress in your “finding meaning in the madness” (((hugs)))