What is Reddit's opinion of Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How Partners Can Cope and Heal?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

He needs to find a CSAT. This is a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist.

I have an addictive personality, and I have several addictions. Luckily I’m able to deal with my inclination toward sex addiction by being in a recovery program that deals with Alcohol and other substances.

My therapist is a CSAT and It’s been over 5 years in recovery for my addictions at this point.

My therapist and I believe the way I work is that I will use anything to escape my feelings. We joke that if I were to take up knitting 🧶 that I would get addicted to that.

A CSAT can administer some tests and make a determination if he is really a SA. I believe that is very important.

Finally, a bit of advice, earlier books written about SA paint the relationship partner as a co-addict. There is a good book on amazon which pushes back against this idea.

This is it:

Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How Partners Can Cope and Heal https://www.amazon.com/dp/0882823094/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_nHb.Cb86094Y3

While you might have some co-dependent issues I think it disingenuous to put equal blame on the spouse who has just discovered the sex addiction.

If sex addiction is determined, then I counsel you to think long and hard about reconciliation. Sex addiction is a hugely messy area of addiction and there is a lot of relapse. I know I’m the early stages of going to SA there were very few with long time sexual sobriety. There was a single guy with 10 years who was sponsoring a shit ton of guys because of this. I knew a couple of guys with 5 and 4 years.

Hang in there SA is hard.

I believe it was Your Sexually Addicted Spouse. I think I have the chart saved on my phone. Let me see if I can find it.

First, one of the best ways you can help is making sure that you're doing well yourself. Do you need to talk with someone and heal, too? You might consider picking up this book.

This is quite common in people who have had relationships as yours, most specifically ones who had trauma in their childhoods. If you were abused as a kid, abandoned, etc... That kind of thing will really throw you into an area that is definitely trauma related. I highly recommend this book, as does my own trauma recovery therapist. Good luck to you.

EDIT: If you want to find a therapist specialized in this, I would recommend finding one that is CSAT certified to help partners of sex addicts. This doesn't diagnose her as an addict. It finds treatment geared toward what you're doing through, though. Some main authorities on this subject are Patrick Carnes and Douglas Weiss, and they help certify folks.

Once through is never enough.

For example I just started a new audio book called Your Sexually Addicted Spouse. It's fabulous and I had never listened to it before. Really you have to get it and listen to it. This is exactly what I believe and where I want this sub to go with it's educational theories.

https://www.amazon.com/Your-Sexually-Addicted-Spouse-Partners/dp/0882823094

Totally validating.

:)

I hope this helps, OP. You're not alone by any means.

Has your WS been evaluated by a CSAT? Has he recieved a professional diagnosis? I only ask this because of the huge number of WS that I have seen claim sex addiction over the last 5 years that I have participating in various online forums.

The consensus is that a full evaluation is needed because some WS will claim this as the cause of their infidelity.

I would hold off the Stefanie Carnes book, and would have you look into this book first: https://www.amazon.com/Your-Sexually-Addicted-Spouse-Partners/dp/0882823094

The problem with Patrick Carnes and Stephanie Carnes is their approach to the spouse as a co-addict. While sposes of sexual addiction, in some cases, can be co-dependent, I disagree with painting a whole group of spouses with the same broad brush.

Your Sexually Addicted Spouse moves beyond this model by addressing healing for the spouse of a sex addict by not making them a co-addict, but dealing with the effects of the betrayal which rips through the life of the betrayed.