The shock for the betrayed partner is so profound in the first moment, the first hour and the first day that it is hard to comprehend. It feels surreal, as if it can t be happening. It feels as if you are suddenly outside of yourself watching a movie, seeing yourself react and not feeling connected to your own body. So sex addiction recovery is about far more than one-day-at-a-time abstinence; it s real work we do on who we are, how we were formed and how we communicate with others. When the work has begun in earnest, and after real time has been put in, only then can healthy relationships stand a chance of developing for addicts. Nevertheless, the history of abuse that dominates the pasts of a large majority of sex addicts shows the strong correlation between this addiction and early trauma. According to Patrick Carnes, Ph.D., the pioneering sex addiction researcher, 97 percent of people with sex addiction suffered emotional abuse in childhood or adolescence, while 81 percent suffered sexual abuse. Without a doubt, healing from sex addiction is most definitely possible. But getting there is difficult work, for both the addict and his spouse. God forgives even the ugliest of sins. This means that each of us can experience real and meaningful forgiveness with each attempt to start over and break our patterns of repetitive sin. What did you learn about having needs when you were young? There is so much to discuss about needs, but what I want to focus on in this article is how I help individuals and couples break needs down in order to understand where this larger topic of needs might be getting stuck for them. We can look at the navigation of needs in several stages. Another victory for me has been that I found the confidence in myself to apply for nursing school at age 34 with four kids also in school. I have found joy in following this dream that I thought I had given up a decade ago when I didn t get accepted back in 2010. Perhaps the best part of our story is that when our oldest child gets her first smartphone as a teenager next year, I know exactly the first app I am going to install on it to keep her safe from pornography.