Common physical boundaries include: Exiting volatile situations: Remove yourself when conflicts become heated. Physical separation: Request personal space and time away to think and heal. Third-party mediation: Involve a trusted third party when communication becomes difficult. Financial and technological transparency: Request access to his phone, bank statements, email accounts, and credit card statements. that take you out of yourself and away from those around you, acknowledging the behaviors as a problem and finding sobriety by eliminating those behaviors before they show up. But it s much more than that. 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. When Jesus instructs him to stop sinning or something worse may happen, Jesus is telling him that, while the outer circumstances of his condition have been healed, the inner condition is still to be addressed. As with the paralytic, the conditions we deal with actually consist of two problems. With a pornography/sexual addiction, the outer problem is our acting out behaviors. It puts you on an emotional rack and pulls you in opposite directions until you are begging for mercy or you break and ricochet over to one of the extremes just to find some relief. 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. We can never underestimate the power of prayer in the healing of addictions. 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. Factors that add to the chances of rebuilding the marriage include: Establishing a higher level and new kind of communication; Acceptance by the addict that he broke the covenant of marriage and must be willing to accept responsibility; The addict must work to rebuild his wife s trust in him. This takes time sometimes lots of time; If restoration of the marriage is to occur, the wife must firmly establish her boundaries, engage in the self-care of counseling and support, and be willing, at some time in the future, to be called to forgive him.