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.
superkid:
I 100% agree with skylar and panther. He most definitely wrote it. The telling thing is when he said ha ha ha, you wrote this. Yep, he said YOU wrote it because HE wrote it. If there is one thing I learned it’s that everything they say is the exact opposite. So by telling you that YOU wrote it, he was truly saying that HE wrote it. I picked up on soooo many of those AFTER the fact with mine. Of course, at the time, we are too blind to see it. Not because we are dumb, but ONLY because we are not expecting to be taken by someone like that; to be scammed.
Louise, no, we are NOT dumb, and I have a great analogy for why we are not dumb (like we need another…well, yes, we do!) 🙂
Think of it like this:
Imagine the spath is playing a video game with a cheat code that gives them infinite lives and makes them invincible and gives them unlimited ammunition.
Meanwhile, you are playing this video game with 3 lives per try, every shot causes a wound that brings you closer to death, and you have to constantly make sure you don’t run out of ammo.
Now, the sociopath starts bragging about how they are KING of this game, that they can beat THE WHOLE GAME in just 20 minutes!!! He laughs and taunts and struts his stuff, truly believing that he is the MASTER of this game. YOU on the other hand are wondering why you “suck” so badly. You keep getting wounds and dying, game over, no ammo, etc. It takes you a LONG TIME to finally beat the game. By this time, you discover the jerk had CHEAT CODES the whole time. Suddenly you not only realize that you are WAY BETTER at this game and WAY SMARTER than this guy, but now you have a ton of practice and will walk away stronger. Him, on the other hand, you realize wouldn’t stand a chance without his cheat codes. HE is the idiot! He is SO STUPID that he actually thinks beating a video game with cheat codes means he is the MASTER of the game. His strutting around and boasting of his “kills” looks utterly pathetic. You know what it means to actually work for success, but this moron thinks he is the shit just cause he can pull some cool moves when all the rules have been altered in his favor.
God I hate them!!!! YES when he says, “You wrote it,” that means HE wrote it. If they accuse you of cheating, that means THEY are cheating. Go ahead and ask them HOW they think YOU are cheating, and watch them tell you exactly how THEY are cheating on you. They are so freaking DUMB. Ask the sociopath how YOU are covering up all YOUR “lies” and then listen as he tells you exactly how to catch him in HIS. Freaking idiots!!!!
I am feeling feisty today. I’m in the mood to just go from spath to spath with a fly swatter and smack the heck out of them, one at a time. Yeah, that sounds a bit violent….I’ll just go work out now. Grrrr!!!!
great post Panther. I like the video game analogy.
Louise, you are right on about the “You” meaning “I”. Everything is 180degrees the opposite. I mean EVERYTHING.
Yeah, Panther…great post. They are idiots. They think they are so superior to us by telling us all their lies and watching us fall for it, but once we figure them out, the game is over.
Skylar…thanks. Yep, I figured out the “opposite meaning” deal. It took me a bit, but again, when you are being manipulated by the best of them, it does take a minute to put it all together and realize what the real deal is.
Now I am again in utter shock. I checked out the spath only to find out he is “playing” happy dad to another child. A child he abandoned and only reunited with after many years for self-preservation (1 WEEK AFTER I WENT NC WHEN JR WAS 5 WEEKS OLD) …getting the ex to remove child support issues in his own country. I am devastated.
I now have to go get Jr. so this scumbag can get his 1 hour of monitored supervised visits. Why is he not going away?
After me he has become the good guy!! Re-united with family, made lots of new friends, actually becoming succesufull (at my financial and emotional expense) this cannot be the way it appears. This just can’t be. Everyone is duped!!
Agree with the spath tell while accusing you of doing something. That’s the first thing my spath did when he showed me the torn condom wrap… While giggling he asked me whether I had slept with a man or something. I wouldn’t even have known it was a condom wrapping unless he had told me (different color packaging in my country). Then he waves it off as probably some joke from the boys of the reception. When I had a memory flash back to that moment in my sleep two weeks after the break-up, I totally realized, it meant those were his condom wraps and that he had slept with someone.
The boys of the reception did actually play a prank at some point – after the wraps. He had stayed out until the wee hours, and I had returned several hours earlier than him. They told him that I had another man over in the hours he stayed out. But they only played that game with him, after first alerting me what they intended to do. They also acted out his initial expression when they played him to me afterwards. At the time I just thought it was something between men, the joking around. And yet, for some strange reason even then I appreciated the gesture. Now, I think they were most likely on to him, and they truly liked me, and felt he was the loser who needed to be taught a lesson. I appreciate their gesture even more now.
Coping ~ “After me he has become the good guy” – NOT HARDLY – it is his mask.
Don’t believe everything you find when checking him out either. Often it is all a smoke screen and you are only seeiing the very tip of the iceberg. For all you know, maybe the x finally caught up with him and ruined his self preservation. In other words, things are not always as they seem.
Not too long ago, it looked as though my spath daughter was living the happy life with boyfriend and new child – you know on the outside it looked like sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. Then I read the POLICE report on the domestic violence incident at their home. Same song, different tune, only the illusion of change.
Don’t be down on yourself, patience, rope, hang themselves. Keep that in mind.
Coping, I can relate to what you’re saying, but remember that he is just wearing another mask, as Milo says. He is NOT successful, because he has NO SOUL. A good job and a fancy fox trot won’t change that. Don’t be upset to know that he is duping more people. Come to terms with the fact that you weren’t the first and you won’t be the last, because this is ALL he does, all he will EVER do, because it is all he IS. THAT is a pitiful existence and anything other than successful and good. Don’t look on his life now, as though it were his smiling face, and believe it. It’s all a lie, just like his smiles were lies and his “innocent” eyes were LIES.
And….stop checking up on him. Is there a reason you have to check into him? Did I miss anything?
Milo,
You are very right on about the “illusion” that is presented by the psychopaths. The REALITY is never what they acknowledge, but they present the ILLUSION and somehow they seem to think that the ILLUSION is their REALITY….and my ED did the same thing. No matter how bad things were, as long as “the neighbors didn’t know” it was OK….illusion=reality for the disordered. The “smoke and mirrors” that they portray as “illusion/reality” ain’t gonna fly in the real world with people who REFUSE to accept it as reality.
Oxy ~ hope you feel better soon.