A Miracle

Last night one of the members of my men's group celebrated his first year of recovery from sex addiction. He was also celebrating the survival of his marriage. Both his year of recovery and the survival of his marriage are miracles. A year ago none of us would have been willing to take a bet on either outcome.

P is a middle-aged professional with a lovely wife and two young adult children. He has been quite successful in his work and lives a luxurious life. Everyone saw him as a great guy--good husband, loving father, caring of others.

You can imagine the shock when he confessed to us about 18 months ago that he had been leading a secret life for several years. He had begun an affair several years earlier with a woman he had met on one of his business travels. They often traveled together. On several occasions she spent the night with him at his home when his wife was out of town.

P let us in on his secret after his wife found out about the other woman. He insisted to us and to his wife that he did not want to end the marriage and that he would end the affair immediately. Several weeks later, he confessed to us that he was still seeing his paramour because "I need to end it my way--I don't want to hurt her by leaving abruptly."

All of us knew he was headed for trouble, but P assured us he could bring the affair to an end without his wife being the wiser. He talked about how the secrecy and illicit nature of the relationship heightened his sexual excitement when he was with this woman. He knew he needed to end things with her if he really wanted to keep his marriage, but admitted how hard it was to let go of the relationship entirely.

Of course, everything blew up several months later when his wife found an article of clothing the other woman had left behind while she was out of town. His wife was livid, but said she wasn't ready to give up on the marriage even though their children and friends all advised her to throw him out immediately.

P surrendered. He called the other woman to tell her he would have no further contact with her. He has kept that promise. He entered therapy with a man well-versed in the power of sexual addiction. P acknowledged to this therapist that he had been leading a secret life for a long time, having been involved with a half dozen other women at various times in his past.
And, finally, P began attending Sexaholics Anonymous meetings on a regular basis. Through the program, he admitted how out of control his behavior had been and how unable he had been to control it.

P's wife is an extraordinary woman. She insisted that P tell her the truth about all his sexual acting out. And he did. Despite her enormous hurt and anger, she hung in there. There were several setbacks when P held back information out of fear of her reaction (it took P a while to understand that his wife was even more upset about his secrecy and dishonesty than about what he had done), but P and his wife were able to work through them. As P was celebrating his sexual sobriety anniversary last night he said that he feels closer and more deeply in love with his wife than he has at any time during their 25 years together.

So why has their marriage survived? How is it possible for P to feel that he and his wife are more deeply connected, emotionally and sexually, despite his compulsive sexual acting out?How can there be trust and openness in the face of such behavior?

I see a number of reasons. First, P totally surrendered to the reality of his addictive behavior and made a decision to do whatever it would take to recover from it. Second, both P and his wife did not try to deny, rationalize, minimize, or otherwise hide the truth of what had happened. Third, and most important, they turned toward each other again and again throughout this past year.

Although P's wife had to take a timeout from the relationship several times when she felt so overwhelmed by the knowledge of what P had done, she always turned back to him and the relationship. And P stayed present over and over again with his wife as she cried out in deep pain or lashed out in intense anger. Despite his strong feelings of guilt ("I know she's in such pain because of what I did") P did not become defensive nor did he try to shut down his wife's powerful emotions.

P has come to recognize that his sexual addiction was an attempt to fix "the hole in my soul." But no matter how exciting the affair was, the hole remained. It is only in the last year, as he has opened up entirely and let his wife all the way in, that the hole has begun to close. So long as he continues on this path of sexual sobriety, the hole will continue to heal.