Regular discussions with your husband and a counselor are encouraged to ensure the boundaries remain effective. The main goals of boundaries are not to turn into your spouse s parole officer or to seek revenge. Instead, they serve to: Rebuild trust. Provide space for your healing. Offer concrete goals and standards for his recovery. Constructively compassionate is defined as allowing oneself to be fully present with the experience of oneself, while fostering a mutual acceptance of suffering, to bring a kinder reaction to distressing emotionality. This is intimacy with the self. That intimacy then ripples out into every other aspect of the partner s life. Addictive behaviors show up, sometimes early in life, according to Hatch, as a coping strategy in the form of self-medication to emotional pain. Sex addiction, in particular, creates a sense of excitement and pleasure, while simultaneously ensuring emotional distance and avoidance of true connection the kind of intimacy that can leave one open to being hurt. Mental Health and Sex Addiction Understanding how mental health and sex addiction are connected is crucial for developing empathy for those affected by it. KeyStone Center ECU has compiled a list of examples of how mental health and sex addiction are connected. The Effects of Trauma One instance in which mental health can lead to sex addiction involves trauma. I am sick to my core by virtue of my indulgence in pornography. To be honest, my appetite for porn accounted for why I got the internet in the very first place, and now that I am down in a horrendous pit, I seriously wonder whether there is hope of recovery for me, for whenever I log onto the internet, I must view porn. I wish that when I was going through the many rounds of betrayal I experienced that I knew then what I know today. More information would have helped me feel normal and I would have been able to be kinder to myself when my emotions and behavior felt out of control. At the time I did not understand the science and theory behind the way that we pair-bond and what happens when that attachment is damaged.