Or teach us something about ourselves that we may have needed to know? Putting It Together Let s walk it through with an example: Let s say you are at your spouse s work event on a Friday evening. As the evening moves on, you become aware that your spouse is going to want to stay for a while longer. You might begin to feel frustrated, irritated, annoyed and begin thinking about how ridiculous this is, they always do this, does he/she think we are teenagers, what s wrong with them etc. The Role of Masturbation in Sexual Sobriety You may be wondering how masturbation relates to the concept of sexual sobriety, especially for people without sexual partners. For some sex addicts compulsive masturbation can become a heavily reinforced behavior that is central to the addictive cycle. Masturbation almost always includes fantasy and for true sex addicts such fantasy can amplify into a downward spiral of obsession, objectification and eventually full-fledged compulsion. B: Advice Regarding Surrender Or Getting Over Hurt On Your Own Any therapist s expectation that a hurt, betrayed partner would get over it and make recovery less messy is not helpful. Advising them to seek out another therapist alone is not helpful. Requiring them to return fixed and ready to surrender themselves to another healing process alongside their unfaithful partner is actually harmful and unfair. For couples who seek to heal these hurts, we know that there needs to be a new foundation built from telling the truth the whole truth. We call this process full disclosure. I (Debbie) work with wives and partners of men who struggle with being relationally faithful. Behaviors include masturbation, fantasizing, pornography, flirting, prostitution, massage parlors, sexual affairs, emotional affairs & other acts of infidelity. It locks them away to keep the child alive. Understanding the brain science of trauma and addiction enables the betrayed partner to see the big picture. The acting out had very little to do with the relationship or the partner. Many mental health professionals do not believe that sex addiction is a legitimate disorder. She makes a firm commitment to change after experiencing a crisis moment. This could be the diagnosis of a sexually transmitted disease, an arrest, attempting suicide or anything else that causes the addict to commit to change. The shock stage. For the next six to eight months, the addict has admitted to the problem but is in shock and disbelief.