The decision to resume intimacy should be based on your readiness and trust in your husband s commitment to recovery. If he continues to violate boundaries or threatens your progress, you may need to extend the abstinence period. Physical Boundaries Physical boundaries are crucial during the emotional volatility that often accompanies recovery. There are two types of addictions: substance and process (or behavioral) addictions. Process addictions refer to a maladaptive relationship with an activity, sensation or behavior that the person continues despite the negative impact on the person s ability to maintain mental health and function at work, at home and in the community. Sexual behavior may provide a temporary relief to a person s depressive symptoms. They achieve a dopamine high by engaging in sexual behaviors repetitively. Ultimately this may do more harm than good. Addiction affects dopamine levels in the brain making it difficult to maintain that same intense high. 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. What are the signs? Looking at the behavioral manifestation and realizing how the behavior shows up is one important aspect when determining if someone is struggling with a sexual addiction. Understanding what drives the behavior is also crucial. Having said that, I am not professing to have a recipe for recognizing someone with a sexual addiction, but there are telltale signs. He did not act out because you were not good enough or not worthy of his love. You could not cause his acting out. A secondary gain of mindfulness is that over time, you can learn to be present with the uncertainty, which is a normal response that is manifested out of betrayal trauma in a manner that was not reactive driven.