I want to talk about this Patrick Carnes video, which represents every foul against partners in the Sex Addiction Recovery Industrial Complex. Watch it only when you have time for a shower after. This is the man–himself a sex addict–who developed the treatment protocol for sex addicts AND partners. Anyone who has lived with a sexual compulsive long enough will recognize the smugness and blame shifting common to SA’s. It was Carnes who lazily applied the tenets of Alanon to partners, which is like sending someone whose car was totaled to the car wash. It’s all about pretending it can all be fixed with 12 Steps.
The very first thing he says in the video is that “involving family members in therapy upped the recovery rates.” That might be the only true thing the man has ever said. It is wives and partners who drive the recovery. Did your SA come to you and confess on his on? Did he wake up one day and realize, ‘Wow I’m a scumbag. I’ve been abusing my wife for years. I’m not the husband/father/man I want to be. I need to tell the truth and get some help.’ Or did you “discover” the truth on your own, by finding a text message, or a credit card charge, or seeing something pop up on the computer? Most of the partners I talk to say their SA was busted, and that even after discovery, he continued to lie and gaslight.
The partners are usually the ones who find the therapists, order the books, and set the recovery plan in motion. They do this while they’re still in shock, because their lives and their children’s lives are at stake. The SA goes along with it because he has a lot to lose: money, reputation, a respectable life to prop his secret one up on. If the partner leaves or kicks him out, if he loses everything immediately, he will not even pretend to be in recovery. The Sex Addiction Industry depends on US.
So there Carnes is, condescending, patronizing, saying that we’re “pretty mad” and have to “learn so much,” blameshifting by saying we often “have a history of going for emotions,” as if that were a bad thing. As if feeling our pain makes us lesser. What should we be doing instead, numbing it by jacking off…making an appointment with a “tantric massage therapist”…surfing Craigslist personals?
As Dr. Omar Minwalla has written so honestly and eloquently:
Victims need recognition of the patterns of harm and abuse they experience and have endured, which goes way beyond the Pollyanna descriptions of “hurt and betrayal” caused by specific sexual acting out behaviors. Furthermore, female victims are violated further by being labeled “co-sex addicts” routinely by professionals and “educated that they have a disease of self-perpetration” rather than being afforded therapeutic intervention for abuse and assessment and treatment for consequent acute and complex trauma (C-PTSD).
Carnes has never admitted this, for to do so would implicate himself in the abuse.
T
It’s just a dreadful thing. A dreadful dreadful thing.
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I was referred to this entry by one of my blog followers. I am married to a sex addict and I write about our tumultuous journey. Although I totally agree with you on the creepiness factor of Carnes and his insensitive and self-serving blame shifting and sweeping generalizations, I will say that his book “Don’t Call it Love… ” was the first book I read last year that actually helped me understand that sex addiction is real and start to understand what my husband was and what he had been doing for decades. I totally skipped all the chapters regarding the partners and spouses because from day one I did not associate with being a co-dependent of any kind and his theories seemed so antiquated. Then I went to a group meeting of wives of sex addicts and found that every single one but me, associated with the co-dependent model and attended S-Anon meetings. I left the group pronto. It didn’t fit my needs. I could read Carne’s book, however, and not get overly emotional (this was very early on). When I read “Your Sexually Addicted Spouse… ” I was terribly emotional reading the stories and I got really tired of all the comparisons of the co-dependent model vs. trauma model since for me personally I gave the co-dependent model no credence. It was actually through Dr. Minwalla that I received the referral for my individual trauma therapy and I will forever be grateful. However, my husband’s experiences with Dr. Minwalla were less than stellar. Dr. Minwalla IS a pioneer, however, in the area of complex trauma in relation to the partners of sex addicts. I wish he still focused on that as part of his treatment program. I was promised and even put in a deposit for a 6-day intensive program for partners of sex addicts last summer, and it never happened. To my knowledge, he has never re-instated that program, but continues to focus on the addict in his treatment programs. Excuse my ignorance as I have only read a little bit of your blog, are you married to a sex addict or were you married to a sex addict? I see that you link to the Chump Lady blog as a resource. I am interested in why you feel like she is a viable resource?
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Hi CrazyKat, thanks for your comments. It has been over six years since I read Don’t Call it Love, so I’ll have to refresh my memory about whether it has any merit for sex addicts. If I recall, I bought everything Carnes said about the addicts’ fear and shame, their trauma, their ability to compartmentalize, etc. I wanted to believe that my husband’s problems were the result of childhood abuse, wanted to believe in the shame cycle, wanted to believe anything that meant he wasn’t just a cruel manipulator, a narcissist, or maybe well along the spectrum of a sociopath. But years went by: about eight months of what appeared to be a true effort at recovery, a new softness, some remorse, followed by a quick dropping of his program like a hot potato, simmering resentment, relapse, more promises, fake recovery.
Along the way, I read George Simon, and it all rang so true. It was horrifying. Then I read articles by Minwalla and felt validated that what had happened/was happening to me was abuse. I started putting it together that Carnes is a sex addict, and the game is rigged. He paints SA’s in the most sympathetic light. He expects partners, who have unknowingly been carrying their husbands and families on their backs all along, to continue to prop the addict up. He gives partners false hope: If it’s kind of our fault too, maybe we can fix it! That’s some serious snake oil.
Chump Lady pulls no punches. She has cheaters and serial cheaters pegged. She knows what’s at stake. She knows the investment in a cheater is a poor risk. She’s a cheerleader for self-reliance and self-respect. No one needs this shit. My first husband gave me a black eye, and, frankly, that was far less painful than what the sex addict did. No one suggested I stay with the first guy, but I was advised to stay with the SA for “at least a year” and work on the marriage, during which time he learned from the counselors better methods and language with which to manipulate me.
I’m curious about your husband’s experience with Minwalla. Does your husband consider the things he did to you and your family abusive?
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Hi Tania. Thanks for the background information and I apologize if it is somewhere on your blog as I have read very little so far. If you ever find your way over to my blog, you will see that I love a good dialogue. My husband absolutely does consider what he has done to our family abusive. I was just speaking to him about your blog entry and I also perused briefly one of your first entries, if not your first, regarding sex addiction being classified as abuse. He said he completely agreed with you and could definitely see where you are coming from. I am absolutely not going to validate anything my husband has done nor say he is by any means or by any stretch of the imagination recovered. He broke off his most recent relationship with an affair partner (she is also an addict, an alcoholic, also a blackmailer and a stalker) in August 2013. He stopped watching porn and masturbating obsessively December 2013. He was diagnosed as a sex addict in January 2014. Dday (the day the alcoholic stalker called my mobile phone after years of blackmailing and threatening to tell me the truth, and more than four months no contact by my husband) was mid January 2014. Of course he never once came clean on his own, ever, and I am sure he never intended to. I was completely blindsided by every single one of his disclosures. He always thought he could manage it. Anyway, he found a 12 step group in February 2014, and a sponsor in March 2014. I attended intensive individual therapy through Omar’s Institute in May/June 2014. My husband attended Omar’s 9-day intensive in June 2014. Omar “diagnosed” him as a sex addict with offender propensities as my husband had sex with women who worked for him. The only reason I am still with my husband (and it is a daily battle to get him to communicate openly and in my opinion, he still lives inside his own head, a lot) is because he has committed to recovery and surrounded himself with supportive people and regularly attends meetings and therapy and he is taking responsibility for what he is and what he has done, and on some days, what he continues to do. He is on his 4th step. The therapy I received through the Institute was invaluable for me. She helped me set up a boundary list and also an exit plan. Helping me get back my self esteem and self worth and helping me know that I was strong enough to leave if I had to was what mostly came out of my intensive although she was also amazing at grounding me and helping me with my self harm. My husband also feels like Dr. Minwalla’s intensive was vital to where he is today. He still uses daily many of the practices that Omar introduced him to at that intensive. My husband ended his relationship with Omar last July. We do not live in LA. We truly do appreciate Dr. Minwalla’s work regarding the trauma model as it relates to spouses. We will both be forever grateful to him and his staff.
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