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. There are two tasks in this last phase of the hero s journey: reclaiming their life with a new story that includes the bruises and scars bound together with integrity and pride, and restoring one s self to wholeness. Before putting it all back together, partners must find their meaning in their own personal hero s journey. And the type of responsiveness we received greatly impacted our ability to validate our own needs and set our expectation for whether or not our needs would matter to others. 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. Blow number one is the gut punch of betrayal; a breathtaking breach in trust that changes your relationship in permanent ways. Blow number two is the shocking realization that your partner has been extravagantly and expertly lying and manipulating reality in order to cover up their behaviors. These blows smash into your heart and in an instant plunge you into a whole new world. , a significant amount of people with sex addiction experienced emotional abuse (97%), sexual abuse (81%) or physical abuse (72%) in childhood. Furthermore, people who came from rigid, uninvolved and emotionally absent families were also more likely to experience sex addiction (77%). In other words, sex addicts often come from childhood environments in which they never learned how to create and maintain emotional bonds. Our addict, who longed for acknowledgement and help, had been angry about being ignored and shut out, and had found sex as a means for attention and validation. We each took this opportunity to say, "Thanks for helping us survive, we see you, we will listen now, we will take care of you. We can work together without shame.