Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How Partners Can Cope and Heal

What it is

For decades, the standard clinical framing held that a woman married to a sex addict was codependent, that her distress was a symptom of her own disorder, and that her recovery meant examining what in her had enabled him. Dr. Barbara Steffens's doctoral research found otherwise: partners present with the symptoms of trauma — intrusion, hyperarousal, avoidance — consistent with post-traumatic stress, and the appropriate response is trauma care rather than codependency treatment. This book, written with Marsha Means, is where that finding reached the people who needed it, and it is the reason the partner-specific programmes throughout this directory exist at all. It covers what partners actually experience, why the old model caused additional harm, and what genuine healing requires. Essential reading for any pastor or counselor advising a betrayed spouse, and validating for a woman who has been told her pain is a character flaw. Marsha Means's workbook, also in this directory, is the applied companion.

What it may help with

• My spouse's porn use has hurt me
• I'm healing from sexual abuse or trauma
• I need professional counseling

How to access it

Paperback and ebook Purchase from a bookseller

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