Intimate Treason. Claudia Black
focuses on the core issues you need to take ownership of that relate to your part of the relationship. Emotional defenses and reactions are addressed as well as unhealthy patterns. It will also help you look at primary behavioral problems common to partners while providing you the opportunity to learn healthier ways of relating.
Chapter Four, “Recognizing the Role of Childhood Influences,” examines the beliefs and behaviors you internalized and learned growing up that have affected your relationships today. These patterns lead to self-defeating behaviors and set you up for unsatisfying intimate relationships. By framing some of the themes from childhood that helped to shape you, you will begin to see what is maladaptive today and what offers direction for personal change.
Chapter Five, “Taking Charge of Your Life,” shows you how to strengthen and build upon the skills addressed in the previous chapters. It will address a variety of immediate concerns and offer problem-solving ideas. Chapter Five sets the stage for moving forward as you become empowered to integrate and practice these skills in all of your relationships.
The last chapter, “Moving Forward,” offers exercises to solidify your recovery plans and set goals for yourself. It also helps you to consider forgiveness and its timing in your healing. It is important to know what forgiveness means to you so you can come to terms with how it does or does not fit into your recovery process at this time. Further in this chapter you will have an opportunity to explore the meaning and role of spirituality. We have seen more women and men deepen their recovery when they have incorporated a spiritual dimension in their healing that is right for them, and we encourage you to explore what that is or might look like for you.
At the time you pick up this book we know you are struggling and looking for answers. You may think the answers lie in what your partner or future partner will do; will he or she act out again; can you ever trust him or her? Our goal in writing this book is to help you see that the answers lie within you. We believe you have the power to affect your own behavior, and create choices in how you wish to live your life going forward. This book is meant to help you regain your self-respect.
By taking this life-changing step in your willingness to not just read, but do the exercises in this book, it is our hope that Intimate Treason will be a piece of your journey. Although an important piece, we realize healing cannot occur only through a book. Ultimately, it must involve sharing with others and making changes. Whatever emerges from these pages for you, we hope it will spur you on toward additional support and help from others knowledgeable about partners of sex addicts. Some of you may have already reached out for professional assistance or sought out self-help or personal resources. For others, this workbook may be your initial step toward healing. You start where you can. We are simply grateful and consider it an honor to walk with you in this part of your healing.
There is an ancient prayer—
“I step into the day, I step into the night;
I step into the mystery.”
You have begun; you have stepped into the mystery.
You are on a journey and where it takes you is yet to be
revealed, but what we do know is it can only help you to
heal your pain, offer you a path that generates clarity, and
empower you in all aspects of your life.
This chapter sets the foundation for your recovery and offers validation for what has occurred and the effect it has had on you. We will gently guide you to create the space needed to voice your sorrow and pain as you acknowledge the reality of your current situation. Putting pen to paper will help disperse the thoughts and feelings that overwhelm you—understandably, in response to the trauma you’re facing. We will also help you explore earlier suspicions and understand how you were misled and what you can do to acknowledge and act on suspicions in the future. These insights and strategies will assist you in repairing your mistrust of yourself and regain confidence going forward. We offer tools to help you feel more stable, and encourage you to reach out and utilize those available support systems.
Telling My Story: The Day My World Changed
This section gives you an opportunity to write about the impact of being deceived by your partner’s sexually compulsive behaviors. You will compile a cohesive picture and timeline of what has occurred based on your experience. By writing your narrative, you give voice to your pain and recognize how you coped, perhaps allowing compassion for yourself to begin to emerge. Your story shows how much you trusted the addict over yourself and begins the process of developing an internal boundary where you separate your truth from your partner’s.
One of the most important first steps in healing from this personal crisis is telling your story. It begins with the crisis and how you’ve been lied to. Living with addiction means your truth is often skewed to fit the reality of the addict, regardless of whether you knew addiction existed or not. The purpose of this exercise is to validate what has happened by helping you tell your story. Narrating what happened and the impact it had on you becomes your truth of all that has occurred. It lays bare your voice; important, powerful, and freeing, since it is no one else’s truth but your own. You may have told no one the full story. Possibly you have had to share pieces of it so as to not bring more pain and embarrassment to yourself.
Narrating your story gives a beginning and an end to what has occurred. It reveals in a more concrete way all that you have gone through. The pieces of the story have been just that—pieces, scattered like a mosaic or puzzle without any shape or definition. Telling what happened becomes a way to make real perhaps what has not felt as real as now.
Writing down your story has many benefits, as it
