Check-ins and transparency: Discuss his recovery progress and triggers. It s crucial to emphasize that boundaries are not about revenge or policing but about providing structure and space for healing and rebuilding trust. Personal action items may involve seeking personal counseling for emotional healing, along with creating a plan for different scenarios based on your husband s response to recovery efforts. For still others the definition of what constitutes sexual sobriety may be defined by whether or not a person is engaging in certain behaviors or activities. So sobriety may look different for different people. A core concept from 12-step recovery programs is that there is a profound difference between true sobriety and mere abstinence. As he age progresses himself through his story, it becomes clearer and clearer how his sexual sin developed and progressed. Understanding these facts and the dynamic that hurt people can go on to hurt people can help a wife build empathy and can also help her to depersonalize his behaviors. She can hopefully hear in his story that these behaviors are not really about her, they are about much older and deeper pain. Some counselors would say that spouses are codependent at this point, a term that is defined as: A psychological condition or a relationship in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is affected with a pathological condition (as an addiction to alcohol or heroin). Or, more broadly speaking, this can be defined as: Dependence on the needs of or control by another.1 However, while in most addictions the assumption can be made that the partners are co-dependent, or at least the addict s partner had co-dependent behaviors, this is not necessarily so in the case of sex addiction. We understood that he was not going away, but would remain in us as a guide and observer. It was our job to listen and respond to him appropriately. 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. Once the addiction is admitted, the next step is to stop addictive behaviours. Just as an alcoholic must stop drinking alcohol, a sex addict must stop all sexual acting out behaviours. Sometimes these behaviours are obvious, like no more sex outside of marriage, but sometimes they are subtle, like flirting.