I don't remember how I responded every time he confessed. I remember the first time he confessed to using pornography, we had been married for around 2 yrs. He told me he was using pornography. We prayed together, he cried and repented as a submissive Christian wife I forgave him and life continued.

Periodically through the years I would ask him if he was using still. He would respond, Yes.

He spent a lot of time scrolling on his phone or the computer. I had asked him over and over to stop and be present with the children, when it didn't stop and he again didn't hear one of the children talking to him, that I took the computer outside and smashed it with a sledge hammer. Nothing changed, and we had to buy a new computer.

You may be wondering if that got his attention? It did for a little while but things soon went back to where they had been with him scrolling and zoning.

Now I know that he had no intentions to quit using pornography.

He had a saying that "People change but not much." I should have taken a clue from that.

He ask me to go to couple's therapy, which all focused on him per the therapist. The therapist, I believe, saw who he really was and that is why he focused on him. He was pretty insightful actually and shocked me more than once with was he saw and called out in my former husband. It was extremely frustrating to me that we were supposed to be in couples therapy, yet the only one getting any help or being talked to was my former husband. While I wasn't unseen, I wasn't being given a voice either. He was the one being focused on.

He did start to see a CSAT therapist, with little to no change. All it did was give him the language to use on me and others to make it sound like he was doing the work. His therapist told him about a support group for men with sexual addiction. He attended for a time, but soon stopped because it just gave him more ideas of ways to cheat, his words.

He asked me to do couple's therapy again, I very reluctantly agreed. Again it was all focused on him. It focused on what he needed to change, what he needed to do and I didn't have much of a voice, though I did have more this time as it was a woman therapist.

I know now that he didn't want accountability. Accountability meant owning up to what he was doing to me, our children and our family.

Why have I written all of this about him? To give you an insight into what you may experience.

There are men who take responsibility and really do change their lives. I know them. They are amazing men. Unfortunately, not all men are like that.

I do want you to be aware of this fact, not all men are like my former spouse, though I have to be honest, I know more who are than aren't.

My point?

• Watch actions, don't just listen to words

  • Watch actions for longer than a month ... more like 6-12 months. Not many people can keep a mask on or keep up a facade for that long.

• Listen to words. Listen to hear what is actually being said. Like my former spouse saying "People change but not much." He was telling me he had no intention of changing much, and I wasn't hearing it.

• Ask to be allowed to speak with his therapist, so you are both (you and the therapist) on the same page. A good therapist will ask to speak with you for your side of things. He/she won't take just your husband's side and believe it. They know that addicts are notorious liars.

• Encourage him to get accountability from Godly men or from a sex addiction support group. Notice how he takes your encouragement. Is he dismissive? Is he serious about the accountability or does he blow it off? Again you can be in touch with the accountability partner, not to check up on him but to know that he is taking recovery seriously. With a sex addiction group they are often encouraged to have sponsors that they can call weekly, even daily. Encourage him to have a sponsor.

  • Join the group for the sexual addicts family for your own recovery and support, it will be invaluable to you. I am so grateful for my group of support ... these women understood me because of their own experiences being married to sex addicts.

This is something we discuss in the Priorities and Boundaries Modules of Betrayed but Not Broken: A Survival Guide for Wives.

Lovingly,

Beth