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.
Cons – Your in the company of many fools.
Your new here, and to save LF readers the pain of reading what unbelieveable things he did ( again) , I will give no details. I could not believe anything that came out of his mouth, as much as I wanted to, and I am sure some things he said were truth, but mixed in with one big lie.
I felt sorry for him mostly, I fell for the pity ploy while he continually lied and disrespected me. I was just always waiting for the shit to hit the fan, clean it up and keep him appeased until the next time, I ran out of next times.
It’s no wonder I walked through life with that deer in the headlights look, being forced to analyze what he was all about, revealed the ugly truth, I have been living to clean up messes my whole life, just to recieve what few crumbs of approval and acceptance I could from my abusers that kept my self esteem so low to their advantage.. Oh well I learned my lesson late in life, I am over the hill without ever getting on top of it, but at least I am done with sliding backwards.
Constantine – I wasn’t with my spath for an extended period of time – less than a year. She is just REALLY REALLY good at mindfuckery.
Recognizing your own beauty is very important. I find now that I hide mine. She targeted it. I don’t often want to share it, and even more often recoil if I start too. Lf is a bit of an exception. And so are a couple of old old friends who I don’t have a lot of contact with.
i had a chat with one of the two who i call ‘lost friends’ (lost in the spath/ MCS debacle) and it was so amazing to ‘feel’ who i used to be through what i was willing to share with him…or rather the ‘way’ i shared with him.
EB,
Ouch, yes it hurts even more when we fall for someone at that age. In a way, no one knows us like our childhood friends/lovers – and when it comes to a love-affair, those are the ones that either turn into the “ideal marriages” (because you grow together when your personalities are still forming); or the most terrible break-ups; because no one can hurt us like the people who know us best. And 28 years might as well be sixty or seventy, since you can’t know someone any better than that! However, it’s at least good that you got out before “half time”: and that you are making such a great comeback in the third and forth quarters!
I do have a girlfriend, and when I still cared, I used to think it would be fun if the spath ran into her – ’cause she’s definitely much better looking (haha); and the spath is also such an image-conscious bitch, that it would drive her absolutely crazy! However, I’m so indifferent at this point, that even THAT is now completely meaningless to me: in fact, I honestly pray I NEVER see her again.
Incidentally, I’ve never even mentioned the spath to my girlfriend. I kind of feel guilty about that, but on the other hand, why should I let her have that influence over this relationship? I won’t lie about it, but I’ll never bring it up, and my friends won’t either. Fu*k her and her memory too, I say.
But I sympathize with you EB. 28 years means your heart must have really been torn out. Still, I’m glad to see you got back on your feet, and and that you help so many others get back on theirs as well. And there is a strange kind of comaraderie, isn’t there, in knowing others who have shared such similar experiences?!
Okay, see you guys later on. Time for my “before work” nap!
Hens,
You mean FORMER fools! And let’s hope that you still have a lot of life in front of you, where you can put your new-found wisdom to good use!
One Joy,
Yes, a year is quite long enough. A person can only feel so much pain, and then it just sort of levels off. What you went through seems to me more than enough to have reached that gruesome threshold. So yes, a longer relationship hurts in a different kind of way, perhaps. But in terms of mindfu*kery and earth-shattering awfulness, your example would be hard to top. In short, you deserve at least a “respected senior membership” to the club!
By the way, I hate noisy dogs! I went through the same thing in my old apartment, and it damn near killed me.
EB,
Oh, and to answer your other question, it’s been exactly six years since the “lid was blown off.” And I haven’t had any contact since then.
Oh, gosh, yeah Constantine… the horror within the horror within the horror…
He dumped me for someone else with hust a 2 sentence note, though a week before he had said that at least I should come live in Nicaragua, and that he wanted to live there instead of my country. Turned out he was lovebombing her for a month already and planned to live in London with her. He switched from me to her, when she probably promised him to help him with the tickets to London, or perhaps bought them already. Don’t even wanna know. But he flew to London 3 weeks after he dumped me. Turned out also that he had cheated on me 3 months before that, with a girl he robbed, and tried to keep interested afterwards. Then I recalled the ‘condom wraps HE FOUND before our door’ in the hostel where we lived together for a while, telling me it must have been some joke from the boys of the reception. Hadn’t he pointed the wrap out to me, I wouldn’t have even noticed it, let alone noticed it the second time around a week later. With all my own ‘money disappearing from my wallet’ experiences, the robbing story of the girl he cheated me with, and those of the ex girlfriend before me… I was certain that he was behind my robbery with assault in the 2nd week of our relation. When the ex-gf told me that he had attempted to visit her in Norway while he was living in Belgium with me (the ‘honeymoon’ period I had assumed that he had been faithful to me, the period I had assumed he had loved me). ANd about a month after his obligatory return to Nicaragua she was there and made a pass on her.
He and his cousin (who wants to have to do as little as possible with him as he can) told me late December a girl who rented a room at his place had been raped there, and he was helping to get the rapist… but neither him or the cousin ever were able to explain clearly how the rapist got in in teh first place. I now belief he must have raped her. That must have been a week or two before cheating with the girl he robbed. And then one time there was this call from prison to help him out, because he had gotten into a fight, and the guy was in the hospital in a coma. I was in total shock, but neither his father or other family could or would verify it, so I assumed he had come up with some crazy lie for money help. Afterwards, he told me it was a lie because he was in jail for being a neglectful father who didn’t pay child support. And yet his own father and mother paid for schooling for the mother and his mother raised his son at her home, and he complained they wouldn’t let him see much of his son and never alone.
I think the worst of him now: capable of murder and rape. If there are two versions of events, I assume the worst version is probably the most true one. I don’t need to ever find out the gory details to know it.
Constantine – i am pretty sure the dog would be good if she were training it properly – but she isn’t. my other neighbour has a dog – who is so well trained – and a high energy dobbie. but HE knows who the boss is. he is not allowed to run around or bark in the apt. mind you his ‘folks’ also take him on runs, not just walks.
Some of these posts have an interesting commonality.
Darwinsmom, you said he pointed out condoms by the door. That was a spath tell. He was dying to tell you about his sexual escapades and the condoms he bought with your money, but he couldn’t. So instead he left the wrappers where you would see them. If I recall, Hens’ spath did a similar thing with a used condom he left in the barn and pointed it out to Hens with an accusation and a tantrum. Am I remembering this right, Hens?
This reminded me of what happened within a couple of weeks of meeting the spath. I was living with a roommate in an apartment. I came home one day and there was a paper bag and a box full of gay male porn magazines right outside my door. I was 17 years old and mortified at the thought of the neighbors seeing this. So I brought it in. It was obviously intended for either myself or my roomie. But why? Now, I understand. It was a tell from my spath. He wanted to see my reaction to it and he wanted to “tell” me that he was into gay porn. Right from the start, he was on the attack with psychological warfare.
And Constantine, I left BEFORE I found out he was cheating on me, because I knew he was planning to kill me. But as soon as I left him, everyone who knew him told me the same thing: he ALWAYS cheated on me, the entire 25.5 years.
Constantine;
It’s funny…..There were so many gaps. I never felt like he ‘knew’ me. He told me as a youngen…..”I’m going to mold you into what I want’…….that’s pretty telling huh? Then….I melted…thinking he cared about me enough to put me through ‘finishing’ school…..NOW…..I’d slap him and take stage right!
We didn’t grow together….I allowed him to ‘mold’ me. I was his gumbie and play toy.
I think he knew my buttons and my melt spots….but not really ‘who’ I am.
If he did……he would have been less vulnerable to me mascecrating him during divorce.
In the end…..I figured HIM out!
Neither of us knew each other…..I wanted to…and thought I did….but alas….I knew nothing, just studied him AFTER the lid blow off……and discovered the truths.
I had the ‘benefit’ of grieving the relationship for YEARS during it…..so when it was finally over…..I really never felt the heart ache like others. I was done, done, done. He affected our kids! That was a boundary NO ONE had ever crossed…..and it made me act without looking back! I HAD to protect my kids. I didn’t get the dear john letter or find him in bed w/ another etc…..at one point I would have said he was the love of my life….and I really thought it was forever….and worked towards that….but when it was done….I didn’t grieve a broken heart, because I didn’t remember what it felt like to love this man…..I lost that years ago, I greived the loss of a fantasy.
I’m glad you have a relationship that presumably makes you happy now. I think we deserve this. All of us.
YOU GO!
EB, your feelings were very much like mine. When it was over, there was a sense of relief. I had grieved over him for years and years. I had been willing to live a celibate life with him because I thought that’s what he wanted. (I win the prize for the most naive). 15 years without sex.
After I left him, I was so glad to understand and to finally have “permission” to leave him because I had a good enough reason: he was trying to kill me.
But even then, I would break down and cry every once in a while at the loss of my fantasy, the lies I had fallen in love with.
If I was distraught at anything, it was at finding out that I had lost most of those 25 years sitting in a cabin in the woods in servitude to a creature from hell. I sometimes thought it would be best to go back and have a final showdown, where only one of us comes out alive.