More Discoveries

Not only do you probably not feel safe, you probably don't feel cherished. Ask your self why you do not expect this. You do...right? Ok, so maybe consider not calling him a sex addict anymore. Call him on his specific behavior. Tell him that you no longer, can tolerate just sweeping it under the rug. That you need some resolution, and that you need him to help mend your heart, regain the lost trust. Tell him that it is not something forgetible. And the fact that he continues to marginalize your feelings is making things worse, not better or forgotten. If you have the strength here, It might be best to leave the relationship-temporarily, Tell him that when he has decided to address the problem and has completed a few sessions with a councelor and is ready to do some together that you love him enough to wait. This might seem scary but a little while into being away from direct situation, you will be able to think more clearly. Hope to be helping. Good luck and God Bless.

It does sound like he is a sex addict. And completely unwilling to be accountable. Everything he has done is definitely a big deal, and until he can admit that, you certainly have good reason to be afraid of him.

I guess I am old-school as the casual mention of insisting on one's partner be tested for STD as prerequisite to continuing a loving, trusting, nurturing relationship leaves me speechless.
Good luck and be well.

If he has the attitude that it is no big deal to have unprotected sex.....beware. You may be lucky this time around but with his attitude he will continue which puts your in danger. Insist that until he gets help and stops you will insist on protected or no sex with him.
Don't give in to him. I have lost two friends to AIDS who had the same thought process as your fiancee. It is a horrible death.
I hate to say this but you need to get rid of him if he refuses to see the wrong in what he it's doing.

Thanks Ethes, you seem to really understand how I’m feeling. I have been calling him on specific behavior for a long time; that argument was actually the first time I’ve brought up sex addiction with him. I have told him most of what you have suggested. However, it isn’t realistic to separate temporarily right now. I am the only provider in our household, his family is many states away, and I have none. So I would either have to spend hundreds to fly him back to his folks, put him up in hotel here, or stay in a hotel myself. Our wedding is in three months too. I am making an exit plan in case he cheats again because I can’t keep putting up with it. He is also signing two prenups, one for child custody and the other for our financial assets, so if he cheats again he is screwing himself over. It is very difficult dealing with all the lies and secrets, and him rarely taking responsibility for his actions… but how much worse can it get now. I am sticking it out unless there is another betrayal.

Abyss, thank you, it is nice to not feel crazy and have people back me up about this being a big deal. I’ve told him he has to go back to counseling; I’m hoping a therapist can get through to him since I can’t. I am also afraid that he will lie about or downplay the issues and not get the appropriate help because of it. I am taking steps to protect myself in the meantime.

Jerry, I am not sure what you mean. My only other options were to continue to expose myself to whatever he might have because of his affairs or to leave.

Ms Candy, I don’t plan to allow him to continue to put me in danger. Unfortunately I have to police him, because it was the only idea he could come up with to prove that he isn’t having affairs now. So I have all of his email/chat/facebook passwords, the phones are in my name so I can check those records, and he doesn’t leave the house much since he is unemployed and I currently work from home so I am keeping a close eye on him. I don’t much like playing police/parent to my fiancé, but if it gets us through this and motivates him to keep his promises, we will try it. He has also had to go in for a STD test, which luckily came back clean… but that really is just luck. I have shown him the statistics about STDs and explained the risks for contracting AIDS. We have gone through marriage counseling once already too to address one of his affairs, but apparently what he learned there didn’t stick. He is going to have to go back to one on one counseling as well, because this whole situation is making me grow claws again and I am done putting up with this. He needs help.

Thank you all for your support. I really appreciate it. It is hard to navigate this mess alone and it is nice to have people here who care.

Hi Cation,

Please don't misunderstand me here, I'm am NOT trying to say that your boyfriend is right here, nor that you don't have every reason to be worried, concerned, hurt, and angry. However, I do want to point out that if he is a sex addict, he has a disease. Sexual addiction has been accepted as a legitimate psychiatric disorder by both the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Association. It is an addiction, just like alcoholism or drug addiction. It is not a moral failing or the action of some degenerate. It is a disease, pure and simple.

Now having said that, I need to let you know that everything you've done is totally and completely logical, and understandable. You are doing what you need to do to take care of and protect yourself, and that's good because right now, he's sure not watching out for you. But, there are a few other things you can do to help you understand what's going on with him. This way, you'll be in a much better position to figure out what to do.

I would suggest that you try to learn as much as you can about sexual addiction, so you will have some idea of the psycho-dynamics that are involved with this condition. Towards that end, I would respectfully suggest that you consider taking a look at a book titled, "Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction", by Patrick J. Carnes, Ph.D. This is the first book that was ever written about sexual addiction which was aimed at the general public, and it's still one of the best books available for explaining the basics of this disorder. It looks at not only the addict's side of the equation, but the partner's side as well and points out issues both need to address.

After you've finished that book, there are several others you might also want to take a look at since they all address the very issues you're facing right now. They are all written for the partner of the sex addict and address the betrayal, hurt, and anger that is so common for folks like you:

"Back From Betrayal: Recovering From His Affairs", by Jennifer P. Schneider, M.D., Ph.D.

"Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How Partners Can Cope and Heal", by Barbara Steffens, Ph.D. and Marsha Means, M.A.

"Mending A Shattered Heart: A Guide For Partners of Sex Addicts", edited by Stefanie Carnes, Ph.D.

"Hope and Freedom For Sex Addicts and Their Partners", by Milton Magness, Min.D., L.P.C., C.S.A.T., Marianne Harkin, and Greg Ottersbach.

All of the above books can be purchased from: www.amazon.com.

There are lots of others sources of support which are available to the partners of sex addicts, and if you're interested, I'd be happy to share a few more of them with you. But I figured that for now, the books would be a good place for you to start. Each of these books will serve to validate your feelings and concerns, and that seems to be what you need right now, someone to tell you that you are absolutely, positively not crazy for feeling the way you do, and behaving as you are. So I'll leave things here for now unless I hear back from you requesting more information.

I hope something here is of some help to you, and I also hope that you are able to work things out with your boyfriend. But just know that what you are now doing is totally and completely sane, and logical. You're taking care of yourself, and that's never a wrong thing to do. Take care, and best of luck to both you and your boyfriend.

Charlie
Sex Addiction Board/Panel Manager

Thank you very much Charlie. I get my next paycheck tomorrow and then I will order some of those books. I also understand (at least a little) what you are saying about him having a disease… I have not dealt with sexual addiction before, but I have had friends who were addicted to drugs and alcohol. The problem is that he doesn’t think that he is an addict or that he needs help, and is really only agreeing to see a therapist for anything at all to humor me. I have heard that addicts can’t change their behavior until they admit they have a problem and often have to hit rock bottom first. I’m afraid that he wont ever admit that he has a problem and get help. I had a friend years ago that was addicted to some very nasty drugs, and when I found out I tried to help her, she said she understood that she had a problem and wanted to get help. She said she needed a few hundred dollars to get into a program, so I gave her the money and asked about her progress frequently. Every once in a while she would ask for more with some seemingly legitimate reason. But then I caught her using again, confronted her, got the name of the program she was supposedly in, did a little research and found out it didn’t exist. She was just using the money for more drugs and leading me on. And I was stupid and didn’t realize. That was a long time ago and I’m not that naive now, but I’m afraid of something like that happening again. I’m afraid of being lead on for years and the next time the truth comes out having it hurt a child too. You know what I mean?

The other thing is, while I understand that addiction is a disease and maybe he couldn’t help all of his behavior, there have been times where his behavior was very carefully planned and thought out and he even considered the consequences and chose to do it anyhow. Like his second affair… I found all of their conversations, and he wrote out much of his thought process, and when I asked him about it after it was over and I’d known about it for a while, he straight up said that he knew it would destroy me, he knew it wasn’t necessary and that he chose to do it anyhow. I have a background in the Criminal Justice field, and as part of that I have studied a little psychology, and his thought process and choice there didn’t seem remotely out of his control. I think it would be easier for me if he hadn’t thought about it, if he said it was completely out of his control and just got help… but knowing that he thought it out and understood the consequences shows that he just didn’t care enough about me, if that makes sense. And now I live with this pain and paranoia every day and we just can’t seem to move forward.

Thank you very much. I appreciate your advice and support. Looks like I’ve got a lot of reading to do soon and that will be very nice, because research at least feels like doing something productive. I really hope it will help; I feel so lost and overwhelmed right now.

When you have a chance, I would love to hear about the other sources of support you mentioned. I know you’ve got a lot of people that you help here though and are probably busy, so no rush. I’ll have those new books to get through soon too.

Thanks again.