POSA™ Blog

As the last month of summer continues to bless us with warm days and abundant gardens and the kids head back to school, we are excited to offer another episode of our Survivor's Series. These are the actual accounts of real women who reclaimed their lives once they freed themselves from the Intimate Partner Abuse that chronic infidelity, in all its many forms, engenders. We've written about cheating as a form of narcissistic abuse, as well, since it is the common component in recurrent infidelity.   

When we first launched this Survivor Series, we explained why we felt it was so important to help validate and honor the brave women who had found a way out of the constant anxiety and eventual erosion of self-trust and self-esteem they had come to live with while staying with a chronic cheater, often called a "sex addict". Here's that earlier post: https://www.posarc.com/blog/new-survivor-series-video

In today's new episode (which is audio only, so you can listen while you drive, cook dinner, relax, etc.), you'll hear me interview Sandra, a professional woman with two young children, married for over a decade. Her words reflect the painstaking discovery process, the slow crawl out of the trauma and the patience needed to arrive at the truth she found for herself in the end, all of which she articulates with keen reflective abilities and spiritual generosity. Many of us can relate to the empathic approach she took towards her husband's hurtful behaviors when she says:

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"My personality is more about making things right, fixing things and getting them to work (in my marriage) ...but there's a downside to that: I had to learn to let go and stop trying to fix."

In addition to the valuable insights and lessons from Sandra's story, take note of the somewhat surprising circumstance under which she finally arrived at her decision to create a better life for herself and her children. 

A few weeks ago in The New York Times, reviewer Meghan Daum writes up a new book dealing with infidelity discovered by a trusting wife (author Jen Waite) and the fall-out from that, as well as the steps out of her private hell with her chronic cheater. From the New York Times review of A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal:

"Author Jen Waite retraces her steps through a relationship that first gives her the "strange sensation of seeing the world in color for the first time"  but eventually reveals itself to be a series of setups at the hands of a master manipulator….the memoir is a study in "gas lighting"—making someone feel that she is crazy or only imagining things….
Waite has a knack for showing the ways that cognitive dissonance can chart pathways in the mind that cause emotional confusion to obscure rational thought…
By the end, she has decided to pursue a degree to become a therapist specializing in women recovering from sociopathic relationships…the book works best when Waite is sharing what she learns about destructive personality disorders and what makes certain people vulnerable to those that have them."