Recovery is also very much about recognizing that much of who we ve presented ourselves to be to others, and many of the ways we ve chosen to do it, have been based on dishonesty. It is in learning how to have real closeness with others authentic intimacy that we begin to heal. To do that, we ll need to spend a bit of time understanding the early wounds that created our intimacy disordered behavior (addictions). You aren t alone. Please give yourself some grace and keep reading. Soon, there are three key things you ll know and understand: Who is actually positioned to help hurt partners heal infidelity pain? Who may not help aid betrayal trauma recovery? What must be done when partners are unable to move past the emotional pain. This is something that never would have happened without the trials that my husband and I have endured together. 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. The five components to treatment According to Mark Laaser,1 author and recovering sex addict, there are five components to treatment and recovery for sexual addiction. They are: Stopping sexual behaviours Stopping rituals Stopping fantasy Healing despair Healing shame. Stopping sexual behaviours Admitting there's a problem is the first step to coming out of denial. But a visit to the dentist will most often make it just a memory after a few short weeks or even days. However, conditions don t want to go away despite our best efforts and intentions they seem to camp out in our lives, building and creating more and more disruption and pain not just to ourselves but often to those around us. Visual information is processed in the limbic system in microseconds. This is why pornography is such a big deal. Visual information is processed faster than any of our other senses. Even the ingestion of heroin or cocaine is much slower in comparison. The brain responds to visual sexual images in microseconds, and the chemical reactions take place instantly and automatically.