Steven Donaldson, M.A., L.P.C.
503.231.0743
www.freefromcompulsion.com
Sexual compulsions don't have to rule your life. I can help.
Please enjoy this article and then give me a call. You can break free.
Dark Secrets
By Anonymous
© Steven Donaldson, M.A., L.P.C. All rights reserved
Introduction
I have only talked to this loving wife on the telephone a few times and she tells me that her husband
consulted with me on the telephone maybe a year ago. I do not remember the conversation. I asked
her if she would be willing to write down some of her experiences for a couple of reasons. One is that
she has an attitude toward her husband’s sexual compulsion that I believe is both rare and healing.
Second she has experienced so much pain that many of the partners of my patients have experienced
and expresses this pain articulately. Third she has found herself in a dilemma that many of the partners
of the men I work with find themselves in. She loves her husband and has good reason to love him.
She has had great difficulty in finding validation and support for her dilemma either from friends or
professionals. On the contrary she has been questioned, criticized, devalued and pathologized for
following her gut instinct to love and support her husband. I think many women will find comfort and
inspiration from her story and I think many men will find hope. This story illustrates that being a
sexually compulsive man does not immediately mean that he is morally bankrupt and that when a
woman who chooses to stay with a sexually compulsive man it does not immediately mean that she is
codependent. I believe this story also articulates well the mechanism of sexual compulsion; sexual
compulsion is a mechanism developed early in childhood to cope with unconscious and overwhelming
anxiety. It is not, as so many believe, simply bad men making excuses for their bad behavior.
Steven Donaldson
A Loving Wife
By Anonymous
When I found your website over a year ago I shared it with my husband and it has truly been a gift to
us. The journey I have been on with my husband has been a hellish, scary one and unfortunately, it’s
not over. It’s been for me a marriage of mostly 10 years of pain, anger, confusion and
misunderstanding. For my husband it’s been an entire life of quiet desperation, feelings of
worthlessness and joylessness. After reading your website information regarding the true nature of
sexual addiction and compulsions, we both feel he is finally on the right treatment path. It’s hard not to
feel that a decade of therapy and financial resources were not wasted efforts after having the
information on your website resonate with truth and validate his/our experience.
We are on the east coast and you the west but my relentless drive for answers led me to your site on the
internet. This is the same internet that exacerbated the preexisting anguish of my husband in the form
of pornography addiction-- just one small symptom of the much larger horrific child abuse issue
underneath-connected me to you and your cutting edge wisdom. I will try to share my story as you
mentioned in our phone call that it may be helpful for me to write it up. It is exhausting for me to do so,
but maybe there will be a therapeutically cathartic benefit to me. My greatest hope is to reduce the
suffering of so many others with less education, understanding and resources to obtain the healing and
compassion that they too deserve. I would NEVER, EVER, have understood the depth and magnitude
of this misunderstood symptom of child maltreatment without having lived with it for so long. I so
clearly see that sexual addiction is not a simple addiction to a substance by undisciplined or immoral
men but an attempt to cope with unbearable emotional trauma that is buried beneath the surface.
Some called my relentless search for answers obsessive and codependent. This in itself was damaging
to me personally as it ironically perpetuated the self doubt I already struggled to shed as a child of an
alcoholic. One therapist led me to believe that my tolerating the kind of behavior my spouse exhibited
made me an enabling codependent making me sicker than him. This was like being punched in the
stomach, causing me to doubt my beliefs, my intelligence, my motives and my sanity. The reality is
that I love my husband and I know who he is inside. I can tell the difference between the horrible
coping mechanisms he uses to hold himself together and the man I know and love. I may not be able to
explain it but I know who he really is and I knew even that day that her advice to me was off base. My
husband is a good man, fighting a battle few can understand and I love him.
The first year of our marriage was good as well as the whole year we dated prior to our wedding. I now
know that I married a man who could not live up to his own ideals for himself and yet I have seen
glimmers of the real man that my husband is throughout the marriage. As I write, I am flooded with
countless memories that symbolize the turbulence, despair and impossibility of the relationship. First,
there was his depression-- deep depression beyond anything most folks can imagine and then the raging
anger and emotional withdrawal, unpredictability and all sorts of compulsive behavior. One especially
deceptive compulsion was his workaholism. This one kept me baffled because there was no visible
substance ingestion like that in a chemical addiction and being a hard worker is usually considered a
good thing. There was insomnia so severe that my husband seemed to go for years night after night
after night with 2 hours or less of sleep. There were night terrors and a hyper-vigilant startle response
as if he had been in combat. It was impossible to give him simple “wifely” feedback about simple
things such as loading the dishwasher without him going into a downward shame spiral of negativity
beyond my comprehension. This is hard to grasp if you have never seen it up close or experienced it
yourself. It is irrational and not at all connected to the present moment. A persistent fear and paranoid
negative state emerged beyond anything I could ever imagine. The many hours of arguments we had
were mind numbingly irrational and exhausting. I wish I had all that time back. Divorce was brought
up every year of the marriage.
In early years I did not clearly understand the sexual addiction aspect. There was such compulsive or
addictive irregular cycles in his eating, moods, sleep, exercising and the workaholism that the sexual
part was not a focus to me. ..and yet it was there all along. I did not even know about the addictive
internet porn compulsion until five years into our marriage. It was a turbulent, lonely life as his wife.
He was a miserable man constantly agitated, quick tempered or coldly indifferent and/or withdrawn
whereas I have always loved life and enjoyed people. I also have a job I love- ironically--as a counselor
where I feel close to many .
I never filed for divorce because my husband ALWAYS sought help for mostly sleep problems,
depression and anxiety so I knew he was wanting and actively seeking help. This made all the
difference to me. The problem was we were “barking up all the wrong trees” as far as therapy goes. In
the early years, he told me he could not remember his childhood. I found that hard to believe then but
now I know it was mostly true and his memories were repressed as they were/are deeply painful. I went
full circle in my struggle to understand cause and cure as a counselor. I was initially against a
medication cure as I felt most things stemmed from nurture could be cured by nurture--not genetic
predispositions as the pharmacology industry seems to suggest. As the years went by I witnessed many
symptoms of mental illness at home while he functioned well outwardly as a respected professional. I
succumbed to the belief of the many psychiatrists that we consulted. It was all about neurotransmitters
and medication trials. The many, well regarded psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and other
various mental health professionals (over 30 professionals in 10 years) in our area gave various
diagnoses: OCD, General Anxiety Disorder, dysthymia, restless leg syndrome, PTSD, bipolar,
depression, ADHD and even a demonic “possession” possibility plus many more. They also
suggested (and he dutifully tried) every antidepressant known to man, mood stabilizers, tranquilizers
and anti psychotic medications and various combinations of all the above. The side effects were often
nightmarish--extreme agitation to extreme zombiness. After many exhausting years, mental health
professionals recommended Electro Convulsive Therapy and experimental drug studies as the only
hope.
I have never felt so alone and helpless in my life. To have so many professionals tell you so many
things that did not concur was frightening. Who will ever know about this? It is all confidential and
they can always blame the patient instead of admit they do not really know. The mental health
profession can be arrogant and self serving. My unique position has allowed me to see and experience
the ugly underbelly of the mental health profession that most will never see. After about 5 years into
the marriage we agreed the medications were useless, perhaps even damaging. I now believe, for him,
they further suppressed the repressed feelings that must emerge in order for him to heal. Otherwise this
repression fuels the addictive behaviors, isolation and despair. So I came full circle back to my original
belief that failures of nurture are the root of childhood trauma and that corrective nurturing is the hope
for healing-not pharmaceuticals. I wish we had this time back and could spare others who are suffering
from this “wild goose chase”.
My husband also had physical symptoms along with an insomnia beyond belief, grinding his teeth
down, carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis from compulsively washing his car and working out at the
gym. His food habits were very very unusual coupled with exercise schedule of a tri-athlete. He also
developed something called psychogenic polydipsia which meant drinking so much soda, etc. that he
had to urninate over 17 times in a day at one point. He got severe eye tics at once along with severe
headaches. I now know all of these were a hyper-aroused state that stemmed from child hood abuse. He
also has spent much of his life in a numbed, dissociated state--a protective survival mechanism from
childhood. There was never a year I did not worry about coming home and finding his body dead
from a suicide. He was a dead man walking. I lived in a silent, chronic dread state (kind of like him)
but knew through our efforts that there was no professional yet out there that “got it”....nor did we.
The therapies were just as varied and dutifully he tried them all: all sorts of talking therapy, Cognitive,
EMDR, hypnotism, prayer, sleep studies, group counseling, drug trials, imago and much, much more.
We even went to the warm springs in the mountains on the east coast where early American and Native
American Indians had bathed for healing. My husband did and still reads his Bible for 20 minutes each
and every day. We both sought out help from Stephen’s ministries (a no cost Christian program) when
funds were exhausted.
We both went to marriage counseling as it was suggested that I contributed to the problem of course.
Being a counselor and reflective myself, I dutifully went through the most ridiculous experiences with
numerous counselors. Imago therapy was one where I was asked to really think deeply about my
unconscious childhood. Even as an adult child of an alcoholic there was nothing in my childhood to
compare to my husband’s deep abuse and current impairments. I loved and enjoyed everything about
life- but the non-intimate, chaotic marriage. Yet I had to explore the possibility of a dysfunctional
“limbic resonance” drawing me to my husband. The truth of it is, he was very different and emotionally
available when I met and married him--so much that I had “consciously chosen” inscribed inside his
wedding ring. It was as if a window opened for him emotionally and then slammed shut.
We tried expensive residential treatment for sexual addiction briefly with the aftercare requirement of
12 step groups for ongoing accountability. This seemed to be a breakthrough but for some more
severely injured persons, severe trust issues from early childhood attachment deficits and trauma
prevent them from utilizing the group since they never have felt truly safe with other humans. This
was true for my husband. He remained alone in the group and frustrated. We had numerous arguments
over this as I felt that if he did not go to his group weekly I could not stay married to him as that would
mean I was “enabling” him. That is what the counselors were suggesting to me. In many other cases I
would agree. This situation was different though. I could not grasp how severely isolated, hurt and
ashamed my husband felt. For him going to these groups including a “Celebrate Recovery” and open
AA meetings, were truly acts of unbelievable bravery for him. Being an extrovert I love groups and
found them an adventure in humanity, but this was a very different experience for him. In the later
years of our current decade together we went to some other private Sexaholic Anonymous groups. I
went to a women’s group and again got feedback/criticism that I was too interested in research and
answers and not looking at myself. I worry that many of the people I met there remain in those
groups not getting the real help for stopping what is underneath the compulsivity and are just coping,
(band aiding) “accepting” and living compromised lives which could be healed.
By this point counseling was making things worse for me. I believe that either these groups are
designed for and work for spouses whose partners do not have the severe level of childhood trauma that
my husband does or that their partners were not motivated in treatment the way my husband was. I was
constantly being asked to deny my gut feeling--the feeling that my husband was acting irrationally. I
was encouraged to attribute responsibility for “our” problems to myself. It was all about my
codependency; about enabling an addict. But in my gut I knew it was not about me. Sure, my
childhood home was imperfect but we had lots of joy in spite of some alcohol abuse and I enjoyed
many warm relationships. I enjoy life immensely now whereas my husband has had no joy ever. Yet
this philosophy of addiction insisted that we were of equally problematic families of origin. My
husband even had some delusional episodes under extreme stress where I begged him to “borrow my
brain” as his brain was failing him. He feared bankruptcy, jail and believed telephones were bugged at
times when this was nowhere near probable. Therapy went off into crazy tangents and I laugh now that
one psychiatrist even suggested that more sex would solve our problems. He obviously was projecting
his own marital issues onto us! (Out of respect for my husband’s privacy I did not share with him how
off base he was.) My husband agreed this suggestion was absurd. Another treatment professional
suggested that the hyper-sexuality indicated that my husband suffered from bipolar disorder. In our
exhausted and desperate state, when a kindly, well intentioned Christian counselor suggested he had a
demon in him, we even considered that possibility. A worse therapeutic experience for me was a
weekend imago based marriage intensive where an “altar call” type thing was done at the conclusion.
My husband had missed half of the workshop (due to workaholism), yet, because I did not raise my
hand after a concluding prayer where we asked to keep our eyes shut and make this gesture to show
(the leader?) we were inviting Christ to help us or something of that nature...I was confronted by the
leader as “not being truly involved”. This need of his (an ex minister) for compliant, conforming
external displays of Christianity was projected onto me and doubly wounding. I can assure you, there
was no one more involved than me at that workshop!
A counseling center in Arizona proved to be one of the best experiences we ever had. An intensive
marriage program there left us both feeling respected and understood. The seriousness and some
realities of the situation were brought to my awareness. As cold and indifferent and argumentatively
irrational as my husband could be, I knew the man I loved was in there somewhere, inside his body
hurting and certainly not benefiting from the damaging toxic things he was projecting onto me. I have
vicariously understood through his treatment of me in the marriage what he must have been
treated like as a young child. The rage and emotional withdrawal had to be learned by him from
his parents, just as my emotional attunement and compassion for others had been learned by me
mostly from my mother. So I, too, have experienced trauma in this marriage. The trauma in my
marriage has surpassed 1000 times any impact that my alcoholic family of origin may have had on me.
The offsetting factor for me is that I am a knowledgeable adult and I have resilience from my positive
experiences as a child so I can withstand the verbal and emotional abuse within the marriage. My
network of friends supported me when my husband could not. I have many resources that my husband
did not have as a child when he withstood abuse and neglect all alone in silence.
I meanwhile have read more books over the years than anyone I know in search of answers. I read all
Charles Whitfield, Bradshaw, Patrick Carnes, Alice Miller, neurobiology of Allan Shore, Bruce Perry
on Trauma and Attachment Theory books, defense mechanisms of trauma, codependency, addiction
theory and much much more. Without immersing myself intellectually in the fields of trauma,
neurobiology and attachment theory, psychoanalytic defenses, addiction and Alice Miller books on
repression, I would never have grasped that brain development and personality patterns are so
profoundly impacted by early childhood trauma without these books and this husband. To further
validate this view we discovered that my husband’s only sibling has had a chronic and severe life long
eating disorder. Here was another systemic addiction of a different form and just as lethal, but more
often a compulsivity manifested by females.
I now understand how my husband used many things such as sexual fantasy, interest in the
paranormal and vacations to escape the sense of annihilation he experienced in very early childhood.
As an infant and child his attempts to attach were thwarted by a mother and father who used
shaming, criticism, abandonment to control and manipulate their children. This programming left him
vulnerable to be abused by others. His only reliable safety and nurturance was what he created for
himself psychically and physically in the form of systemic addiction. For him it was sexual addiction
and his sister an eating disorder, yet both have all sorts of other types of dysregulation. What
appears to be a perverse was really a coping mechanism. These wounded adults, like my husband, have
been doubly harmed both as children and then again as adults by the maladaptive coping mechanisms
damaging their adult lives and then again by the misunderstanding and inappropriate, expensive,
ineffective treatment by the mental health profession.
My life has been profoundly affected. I have been angry at all the shrinks, his parents, him, his abusers
and God. Ten years of my life have been “on hold”. I have not had the children and family I wanted. I
have a good sense of humor but my husband does not laugh. I am loving, but my husband does not feel
loved. I have always known that people do not respond to this type of information well. To protect
myself and my husband I have kept our struggle to myself. Mine has been a lonely road. My husband
will not allow me to say anything to his or my family or my friends so we have compromised
relationships with so many. I am isolated from my husband due to the personality that his childhood
forced him to form and then again isolated from others since I can not share this. We risk exposure in
our professional lives. At times over many years I have begged my husband to quit his job for his own
protection.
The way my husband was parented has cost us dearly in dollars, social connection, intimacy and just
enjoyment of life and each other. Everything done together is usually a strain. Holidays, Christmas
shopping, planning, making dinner...anything can trigger moods/rage. Detaching has been a full time
job for me as well as boundary setting. I used to take his moods personally but the more I learned the
more I realize it has nothing to do with me. I worked through all these assumptions that I was
codependently afraid to divorce. Staying married to my husband has been more frightening than any
divorce ever could be. As a counselor of children I have grown to understand Reactive Attachment
Disorder, so commonly seen in foster children, in a very real way.
I have missed out on being loved and nurtured and cherished in these 10 years because my husband is
not able to love (be vulnerable/trust) at all. His earliest natural attempts at loving were thwarted. It is
not personal. I know I am lovable. He keeps me at a distance while I love the world hoping that one
day, like in the tale of Rip Van Winkle, he will awaken and see all the beauty I daily witness. By mere
chance of birth, I am the lucky one in this respect.
He is afraid of attachment, for good reason. The formation of an avoidant type of personality and use
of many defense mechanisms helped him to survive when nothing else (no one) could or would protect
him as a small child. But I know that “love” is an active verb- meaning it does not have to be about
me receiving love or being loved. It is a choice for me to love him and expect little in return. It is
often hard. He did not deserve his joyless life. For those who insisted I was or am codependent, I
wonder if they would leave their spouse with an onset of Alzheimer’s or a brain injury? But for the
Grace of God, there go I. If the situation were reversed, would he leave me? I know too much now to
abandon him. I respect him for a journey very few could or will ever understand. I long for him to
know joy. His efforts to heal the damage inflicted upon him are heroics others will likely never know.
Along the way my coworkers, family and colleagues have had trials of divorce, miscarriage, disease
and death. Yet for my husband I am envious of even those with terminal cancer who had at least some
happiness before their physical trials emerged. Or the paralyzed person who knew loving relationships
like my husband never has. His (our) suffering is invisible. No one knows to bring a casserole or put
us on a prayer list, etc. There is little, if any, community support for this. There is usually judgment and
misunderstanding. In my silent isolation (like him also) it is sometimes difficult not to be bitter. Still, I
am grateful for the fortune of knowing joy in many ways for many years in my life. I am grateful
friends who sustain me even without knowing this dark part of my life. In some ways, I have developed
a sharpened sense and capacity for joy, have deeper, more intimate friendships and a great deal more
compassion for that which I, in the past, was not able to understand myself.
It was your articles on your website, Steven Donaldson,that shone the light we needed on the wound. It
was a breath of fresh air when we were suffocating. Your suggestions of what works and doesn’t work
in treatment helped us to look into Intensive Short Term Dynamic Therapy. This is the most promising
therapy my spouse has been involved in to date. We are very hopeful and wish we had known of it
sooner. I know now there are many other adults and children out in the world deeply wounded and
misunderstood even by psychological experts whose job is to understand and intervene. Mr.
Donaldson, your work is a voice out of the dark that explains so much for those who will be fortunate
enough to run across it. I am so thankful that I did.
Other Research/books that helped me to understand what I could not fathom:
Becoming Attached - First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love
Robert Karen, PH.D.
Trauma and Recovery - The aftermath of violence-from domestic abuse to political terror Judith
Herman, M.D.
The Inner World of Trauma- Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit Donald Kalsched
The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook -What
Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing
Bruce D. Perry, M.D.,Ph.D. and Maia Szalavitz
The Body Never Lies- The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting- Alice Miller
ALL ALICE MILLER BOOKS and videos, website helpful
The Emotional Incest Syndrome- What To Do When a Parent’s Love Rules Your Life
Dr. Patricia Love
Object Relations Therapy of Physical and Sexual Trauma Scharff and Scharff
Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy- Patricia Coughlin Della Selva
Lives Transformed- A Revolutionary Method of Dynamic Psychotherapy- Della Selva
Ghosts From the Nursery Tracing the Roots of Violence -Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S. Wiley
Patrick Carnes- all books...Bradshaw...all books
Center for Disease Control- Atlanta- ACE -Adverse Childhood Experience Studies
website/articles