If you have discovered that your partner (or spouse) has been using pornography, cybersex, strip clubs, massage parlors, having affairs, using prostitutes or escort services, we know how these betrayals can traumatize you. PoSARC was created as a resource center to help you to regain your strength and heal using the trauma treatment model rather than the co-addict model.

Read more: Introduction to PoSARC

If what you have believed to be reality within your intimate relationship is crumbling and shattering before your eyes, then with a fair degree of certainty, you are experiencing a trauma, a rupture of your primary relational attachment. Maintaining your sanity and deciding what to do has become your greatest need.

Read more: Discovery

Unlike other compulsions and addictions, sex and porn addiction is more easily concealable as there is often no tangible evidence. We can smell alcohol abuse and observe altered behavior from intoxication and drug use. Shopping, gambling and food disorders leave physical traces. But sex and porn addiction can be rendered imperceptible, especially in the digital age.

Read more: Discerning Whether Sexual Compulsion/Addiction May Be Present

The exploitative harm done to one person by another in a marital/primary relationship through any form of abuse, betrayal, addiction or compulsion, is known as Interpersonal Relational Trauma. A form of PTSD, it's important to know how it affects you. Trauma recovery requires re-establishing your safety. You need firm boundaries with clear and certain consequences for further infractions or violations.

Read more: Interpersonal Relational Trauma

You have weathered the discovery that your spouse/partner is a sex addict/compulsive (SAC). Perhaps you are still discovering new behaviors or the extent of his acting out. What does that mean for you and the relationship? For your children if you have them? Feeling lost, without a compass is what each of us feel in addition to feeling betrayed, angry, hurt and devastated. This is where education is your best ally.

Read more: What to Expect

Boundaries are the coastlines between us and others, the world, our own thoughts and feelings and the thoughts and feelings of others, between our spiritual lives and the spirituality of others, for instance. They are instinctual unless they are trained/traumatized away. Partners of sex addicts generally need help with their boundaries once they discover their partner's sexual acting out has violated those.

Read more: Boundary Violation

As your trauma is uniquely yours, the events you have experienced play upon your psyche in a specific way; your wounds are unique and your recovery will be unique. There are some guideposts, though. Directing your own recovery with the support of a group for Partners of Sex Addicts (PoSAs), friends, PoSA coaching, etc. can give you the confidence you may be lacking in taking care of yourself in the world.

Read more: Healing Path

The deception, justification, minimizing and utter lack of empathy on the addict's part often compounds the betrayals exponentially. This causes many partners to shut down, isolate and fall into paralyzing pain with so many unanswered questions: How could he have done this to me? Will the pain and anger ever go away? What have I done wrong? What can I do to change the situation?

But isolating due to our shame, fear, depression or anxiety only exacerbates the pain, confusion and loneliness we may be feeling. We've been there, too. We thought if we could just stay busy enough, or numb ourselves out, eventually we'd wake up and the nightmare would be over.

Read more: Supportive Coaching

Finding out you were living with someone who violated your trust has shattered your world, yes, but it has also ushered in an opportunity for big change. You’re learning to develop and trust your own discernment, the inner guiding voice. This will be a lifelong process, not an event. The event was learning that your partner was a Sex Addict/Compulsive (SAC) and now it's time to re-center yourself in your own safety.

Read more: Recovery You Can Expect from Your Sex Addict/Compulsive

This Section presents valuable insights and guided tours through different components of sex addiction recovery as written from the perspectives of those in recovery. Unlike some articles written about recovery, we believe that recounting grim details of acting out behaviors can be harmful and unnecessary. The stories here are meant primarily for a philosophical understanding of this addiction.

Read more: Help for a Sex Addict/Compulsive (SAC)

Dr. Doug Weiss’ definition of sexual anorexia is, “The active, almost compulsive withholding of emotional, spiritual and sexual intimacy from the primary partner.” But, how can this be? Isn’t this a site for/about partners abandoned by their porn-addicted significant other? How can someone who is addicted to pornography or other sexual acting out then compulsively withhold sex from their partner?

Read more: Sexual Anorexia

Despite the various information found in recovery books and websites, we partners often have questions that remain unanswered, that perhaps someone recovering from sex addiction may have a clearer perspective on. We post a collection of questions here reflecting different aspects of sex addiction and recovery. They are answered by sincere, dedicated men in recovery who gift their time as a living amends.

Read more: Ask a Sex Addict/Compulsive in Recovery

Every PoSA's story is noteworthy. We've selected a few that represent different trajectories of sexual compulsion, how it played out and how a partner responded to it in order to rescue her own sense of self, her own life, really. Just as having a chronically ill child impacts a mother's everyday life, having a SAC partner/spouse does also.

Read more: Partners of Addicts Stories

Oftentimes we have similar enough scenarios for us all to relate to and learn from. This section contains some of the more common calls for help and clarity as we confront the challenges and chaos that sex addicts/compulsives have created in our lives and relationships. We invite you to submit questions and information to us at Posarc which you feel may be useful and relevant to others. We can all help each other.

Read more: FAQs