Has your world recently been shattered by your partner’s porn addiction?
Do you feel like your partner isn’t even the person you fell for in the beginning, but you know you want to try to find that person again?
While forgiving this betrayal only takes one of you, rebuilding the trust in your relationship will take the both of you.
Much like a sandy white beach wiped away by a hurricane, trust can be lost in an instant.
The rebuilding, though, happens much differently. Pebble by pebble, over time, it's important to rebuild trust in order for the relationship to work. It takes a lifetime to build trust and just one moment to destroy it.
It’s not automatic, and it’s not easy. It's actually really fucking hard. But it is possible. How?
Participate in Full Disclosure
Full disclosure isn’t a walk in the park for either partner, but it can be incredibly effective. It would mean listening to your partner honestly reveal their behaviors related to their sex and porn addiction.
It’s been likened to the ripping off of a bandage - an excruciatingly awful bandage. I know I’m not really selling it here. Rather than a slow reveal of staggered disclosure, which can often promote more distrust, your partner shares all at once in a very structured and mindful way with the support of trained Certified Sex Addiction Therapists.
In fully disclosing the facts, you take steps towards repairing the foundation of your relationship. After all, how can you move forward and heal if you don’t know what you’re moving forward from?
Get Individual and Couples Counseling
The knowledge of what your partner has done can be very traumatic. It can feel like an explosion of the most destructive sort. Pieces of your former life, or rather what you thought was your former life, scatter everywhere. Please don’t try to pick all the pieces up by yourself.
In addition to seeking out therapy together, get separate counseling apart from your partner. In fact, it’s often recommended that each partner seek their own individual therapy before couples therapy. You will most likely need some help to understand your own emotions. It’s an incredibly difficult time, and you have the right to get help in dealing with it all.
If you and your partner are staying together, you have work to do together. If you’re already working with a therapist specializing in sex and porn addiction, then you’re on the right track. Navigating through this complex time of slow trust-building will require the aid of a knowledgeable support system.
Request That Your Partner Have an Accountability Partner
Or better yet, partners with an 'S'! An important element during this time of rebuilding trust is accountability. While accountability and honesty is important for your partner to have towards you, it isn't healthy and advisable for you to be the "go to" accountability person. It often creates an unhealthy dynamic between the couple wherein you are in a parent-like role. It's helpful to have boundaries around what is important and healthy for you to know versus particular "nitty gritty" information that would be best for your partner to process with their therapist, sponsor, and others in recovery.
Accountability may seem a little bit overboard for some, but it’s necessary. Most likely, the sex and porn addiction entangled your partner while you weren’t around your partner. Or it could have been occurring while you were in the home, and you weren't aware. Staying up after you’d gone to bed, having all-access to the internet, or not being honest with whereabouts could have played a huge role in your partner’s sex and porn addiction.
While it can be painful for your partner to be honest with you, it is necessary for trust to rebuild.
Rebuild Intimacy in Non-Sexual Ways
For some, participating in a 90-day abstinence period is an excellent start on the road to rebuilding trust. This abstinence period is a method of resetting your partner’s sexualized thinking. It’s a sort of detox, per se.
During this period and even if you choose not to participate in the 90-day abstinence period, be open to intimacy in non-sexual ways when you feel safe and comfortable to do so. Sex is often used as a temporary fix for less-than-temporary problems within a relationship. Without the crutch of sex, you may be motivated to find other ways to practice feeling connected to each other.
When you feel ready to do so, emotional intimacy is a good place to start. Spend time reconnecting through communication and activities that aren’t sexual in nature. While setting aside time to have vulnerable conversations can be helpful, please do not rush yourself into reconnecting if it does not feel right for you. This is understandably a very long process of healing, and it is absolutely okay if rebuilding any sort of emotional intimacy is completely off the table for some time.
Rebuilding your relationship will take more than these four components, but I hope this provides some direction to start. If you are interested in some extra support for sex and porn addiction in California (CA), Vermont (VT), and Connecticut (CT), I welcome you to contact me here.