She may not reveal her name, but blogger “B” divulges far more intimate information than that on a regular basis – about sexual health and wellness. After marrying a sex addict, B begain a blog about life after sex addiction, as well as offering links to resources for women dealing with sex addiction, at thesexaddicts.wordpress.com. Here is her story:
‘I’d never been a relationship girl,’ says B. ‘So I was shocked when, at age 20, I was swept off my feet by a smart, spiky-haired musician boy. We got engaged within weeks, and married when I was 22 and he was 21. On the surface, everything seemed perfect… However, that didn’t mean things were easy. His porn collection made me uncomfortable, but I brushed it off as a guy thing. A year into our marriage, I found out he’d been engaging in sexually-charged online chats with strangers. He promised it would never happen again, and after a lot of arguing, I believed him. Then, four years later, everything shattered.’
After picking up her husband’s phone to make a call, B discovered he was having an affair with her best friend – but that wasn’t all. ‘I learned that this affair was the least of it,’ she details. ‘My husband had been having sex with men, women, prostitutes, and people he met while travelling. This was clearly an addiction. He knew he had a problem, and he wanted to fix it, so he entered a 90-day inpatient treatment programme. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to stay married—and neither was I. We cut off all communication. I was still in love, but I was devastated and afraid of what was happening and how our lives had spun out of control. Deep down, I was able to understand his behaviour as a compulsion and a sign of something bigger—not that he wasn’t in love with me. But that didn’t mean that it could work.’
B recalls, ‘When my husband returned from rehab, we decided we did want to try and salvage our relationship. So we decided to move back in together—but did it under some weird rules. We would pretend we were roommates, meaning sleeping in separate rooms, maintaining separate schedules, and not having sex—we wouldn’t even kiss. We ultimately didn’t have sex for seven months…We weren’t in denial—it was just that we were both so fragile and had so many emotions to untangle that it was too hard to bring them up. For the first few weeks, I was obsessive about where he went and who he talked to…If he wanted to have sex with strangers, nothing I could do would stop him. And it didn’t. He relapsed. In two years, he relapsed four times. Each time, we would separate, and we weren’t sure whether or not we’d come back together. When he came out of rehab for the fourth time, we knew something had shifted.’
‘We now jokingly say we’re in our second marriage, but there’s a lot of truth to the statement,’ asserts B. ‘Our first marriage was dead in the water the second I picked up his phone and found those texts…In honour of our second marriage, we bought a new bed, which was incredibly symbolic for both of us. He’d had sex with so many people in the old one that there was no way I wanted it in my house. It’s been five years since his last relapse, and we’re happier than we’ve ever been. But my husband is still a sex addict. He knows that, I know that, and I don’t trust him 100%. I never will. But for me, that’s not a bad thing. I think it’s unrealistic to trust anyone completely—even your spouse…And I am able to enjoy sex again. For the longest time, all I could think of when we were in bed was where his penis had been. I tried to forgive and forget, but all I could think about were his other partners, and it made it impossible for me to enjoy sex. But that feeling does go away.’
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