Episode Details

Tragically, the sex addiction therapy community is focused on the causes of addiction, without focusing on how it affects an addict’s loved ones. Here’s the truth about the causes of sexual addiction.

Betrayal Trauma: The Result of Abuse, Not Addiction

A man’s “addiction” can’t and doesn’t cause betrayal trauma. Betrayal trauma is the result of emotional, psychological, financial, spiritual, and sexual abuse.

To determine if you’re experiencing any one of the 19 types of emotional abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

What Makes Betrayal Trauma Worse?

Tragically, some of the recommendations that sex addiction professionals make to victims of betrayal harm them more.

So what makes betrayal trauma worse?

Causes of addiction: Engaging with the Abuser

Abusers will blame, shame, gaslight, turn tables, lie to, criticize, love-bomb, and re-traumatize victims.

Sexual addiction professionals, clergy, and others counsel traumatized women to share their feelings, ask questions, or work on their communication with a man who has thus far manipulated, lied, and harmed them.

Instead, victims should avoid engaging with the abuser and set boundaries that protect them from the harm that comes from conversations and associations with partners who are known to harm them.

Counseling With and Confiding in Clergy

If a victims meets with clergy and her abuser, religious leaders tend to disbelieve, minimize, or humiliate the victim.

The secondary trauma can be debilitating. Instead, trauma victims need to seek support from trauma professionals, like the coaches at Betrayal Trauma Recovery. Our Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions happen multiple times a day and will provide the validation and support you need.

Isolation and Secrecy

Sometimes sexual addiction professionals counsel women to keep the “problems in the marriage” private. This is problematic, because pornography use and abuse are not a marriage problem – they’re an abuse problem.

Sometimes sexual addiction professionals make victims sign sex contracts or promise not to divorce the abuser for at least a year. Some even do polygraphs, but prohibit the victim from using anything in the polygraph in court, even if it’s criminal.

Transcript: The Truth About Betrayal Trauma & causes of addiction

Anne: I have a member of our community on today’s episode, we’re going to call her Cindy. Welcome Cindy.

Cindy: Good morning, thank you, Anne.

Anne: So Cindy, why don’t you just start with your story wherever you want to start?

Cindy: Sure, last February, I had what I now call my third and final D-Day in my relationship with my husband. I basically witnessed some behaviors that when I confronted him, it became evident to me that he had relapsed quite a time before. So basically, I found out again that he was in his addiction and lying for the three years prior. Being that I had some bottom line boundaries for myself, which was that I would not be in a relationship with an addict not pursuing recovery. And that I would not be kept in the dark again about my reality.

And after talking to him through this, it became evident that it was now time for me to say we couldn’t continue. We had been in recovery for 10 years post my initial D-Day, and I was comfo