Sex Addiction damage to the Couple needs proactive Repair

On-Demand Programme Link - https://mailchi.mp/bb2a7b851246/kairos-centre

Sex Addiction prevalence in the couple's relationship is likely to create tension, conflict , hurt and damage to trust and therefore undermine to couple's relationship. Repair will be needed and almost certainly third party trained help will be beneficial.

When "Mrs Porn" is on her way out and a distance down the road - not necessarily having been gone for a long period - but going is detectible - it's time to work on repairing the couple. Up until then, the couple have different work to do and different journeys, before joint work.

What is a Repair Attempt? Consider this - from The Gottman Institute: "A repair attempt is any statement or action — verbal, physical, or otherwise — meant to diffuse negativity and keep a conflict from escalating out of control. In his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, John Gottman, Ph.D., calls repair attempts a secret weapon of emotionally intelligent couples. His ground breaking research shows “the success or failure of a couple’s repair attempts is one of the primary factors in whether [a] marriage is likely to flourish or flounder.”

What do we do when our repair attempts fall flat? The simple act of making repair attempts is not enough. Knowing your partner, by understanding their "Needs"/Love Language/Apology Language/The Five Loves (in my book The Art Of Loving) - will help to devise ways to effectively de-escalate a conflict/argument -often arising from the betrayal. Each has lost their best friend.

Conflict is inevitable and is not necessarily bad. It is very hard to remain in conflict with someone you are touching and embracing. The block is letting go of pride and actually making the first move to touch the other person. You should try it!

All our deepest fears stem from our desire for connection (to be secure) and significance. Our deepest fears are therefore to lose connection and lack significance.

There are 7 A’s of an effective confession - as a first step towards Repair & Rebuilding connection. They are:

1.    Address everyone involved: admit to your role which contributed to the conflict - to every person who has been directly affected.

2.    Avoid “if”, “but” and “maybe”: do not use words that shift the blame to others or appear to minimise or excuse your guilt.

3.    Admit specifically: identify the specific behaviour which you need to change.

4.    Acknowledge the hurt: show that you are trying to understand the way someone must havefelt by your behaviour.

5.    Accept the consequence: the consequence may have been severe and restitution may benecessary.

6.    Alter your behaviour: explain to the person you offended how you plan to alter your behaviour in the future. 

7.    Ask for forgiveness (and allow the other person time). (Forgiveness is one of the most valuable gifts possible. It is very important to understand true Forgiveness, before giving it. A part of Forgiveness is a promise never to again raise the issue against the person! (That can be very tough to uphold).

Sex Addict - this applies to you: "If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction" — DietrichBonhoeffer

Get some help from The Kairos Centre. See what you cannot see. Begin to change that which you begin to better understand.

Bringing colour back to life - without Shame.

Key words: sex addiction, addicted, partner, porn addiction, recovery, sex drive, therapy, sex therapy, podcast, relationships, relationship counseling, relationship advice, addiction, couples, couples therapy, sex therapy, emdr, love addiction, behavior,

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Sex porn love addiction is all about self-soothing to manage your emotions. It got set up back in the childhood development years. It's just not about sex, it's not about porn. It's all about the repeated use that's set up the physiology to crave those dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, self-manufactured drugs in the body. It's impacting women, men, children aged 10 to 75 across all the age ranges, the sexes, the cultures, the professions. It increased exponentially during COVID lockdown and impacting so many lives. The Kairos Center has created the first online comprehensive sex porn love addiction. It's a video on demand recovery program which you can access from anywhere in the world and begin to see identifiable changes just within six weeks of beginning this weekly program. Kairos means your appointed time. Isn't it your time to reclaim your life? Bring colour back to life without shame. Click the link below and begin your journey. You owe it to yourself and to others. My triumphs and my strivings. What has happened in your life that you're particularly proud of? Write about your physiological triumphs. Times when things went even better than you expected. Periods when you came through trials and tribulations even better off. Include periods of stress and duress that you survived and mastered, small events that may still be of great importance to you, events from your childhood or your recent past, challenges that you met, periods when you felt powerful, the victories, the glories, the wonderful friendships you maintained, and so on. How have these successes shaped your life? How have they affected the way you think about yourself and your capacity and capabilities? How have they affected your goals and the things that you strive for? What role has pride taken? As I move on down in the sheet, did your parents show you that they loved you? How? What affection was readily expressed in the family? What role does pride take in your accomplishments and in your marriage? Going on to my injuries and healings. What difficult events or periods have you gone through? Write about the significant psychological injuries and insults that have happened to you, your losses, your disappointments, your trials, your tribulations, include periods of stress and duress. Remember these events, learn about you. How have you survived these traumas? Because they were traumas. I want you just to lift your head up and realize, oh gosh. Yes, it may have taken a toll, yes, there may have been casualties, but you're still standing. That's such a big deal. Because what you need to see is actually you have some innate strengths and abilities that we can build on that you can do this again, you can survive this latest trauma, conflict, difficulty in your relationship. Because you've gone through periods where you have faced some tough stuff and you survived. You survived. Use those skills again. Understand what those skills were that you used the last time. Your brain can help you to get through this period of trauma because you've done it before. How did you gird and protect yourself against the stuff impacting you? How do the injuries and the way you protect and heal yourself affect and impact your marriage today? There's a section on my emotional world. How did your family express the following things when you were a child? Anger, sadness, fear, affection, interest in one another. During your childhood, did your family have to cope with a particular emotional problem? How did they cope? How did you cope? Reflect on that because it's gone into you to give you a resource. It could be positive though, or a negative resource, learnt behaviour, learnt pattern of behavior for you to reflect on. Is it an asset or detrimental? What is your own philosophy about expressing feelings, emotions, particularly sadness, anger, fear, pride, love? How do you express love? That's a good deal. What differences exist between you and your partner in the areas of expressing emotions? Oh, this is really probing. This is such a big deal, this exercise. And this one comes from the Gottman Institute, this exercise that I'm taking you through. Something about understanding you, even though eventually you'll be doing this one as a couple. Fancy doing this one on your own first. Yeah, might be a good idea. But definitely do it as a couple. Become vulnerable with each other. That's what's gonna build trust, security. That's what's gonna recede the entrenched ways of difference because of conflict that you've both adapted. Become vulnerable to share. Expose yourself bit by bit. The exercise continues with a section on my mission and legacy. Imagine that you're standing in a graveyard, looking at your own tombstone. Write the epitaph you'd like to see there. Begin with the words here lies and write the epitaph. Now you're ready to write a mission statement for your life. What is the purpose of your life? Don't know? Maybe this is a time for some individual therapy counselling. What is its meaning, your life? What are you trying to accomplish? What is your larger struggle? What is the impediments to stop you achieving? What legacy would you like to leave behind when you die? What significant goals have you not yet achieved or realized? This can be creating something. An obstacle, a problem, a life stage, frustration. Give some examples. Begin to know you and understand some of these unconscious, if not conscious, things, but you'll put in a highlighter pen through them and saying, I now can see that, I now understand that. I now can begin to consider how my thoughts about those things might be playing themselves out in the relationship with my partner. Expect to redo these exercises and update your knowledge from time to time. A powerful exercise. Thank you, Gotman Institute. This is worth doing. You can start by doing it on your own, or together as a couple if you don't feel vulnerable, or together as a couple. If you don't feel you can yet do it as a couple, and you don't feel able to be so vulnerable, or you just need to understand you better, then start with you, but definitely move forward in the couple. All of that stuff about understanding me, better understanding me, really good stuff. Everything about counseling and therapy is all about moving stuff from the unconscious to the conscious. You'll get tired of hearing me say this, but I hope you're getting the point at last. Counseling therapy is not about trying to tell you how to change. It's about taking you on a journey to help you to better see the stuff. Stuff not necessarily negative, the good, the not so good, the indifference, the neutral. And help you to better understand the stuff going on in your life and that work that's shaping how you're doing life. Move stuff from the unconscious, the unseen, into the conscious because what you can now better see, better understand, you get a chance to do something about it. Here's the challenge though. Just because you can better see it, better understand it, we've used the highlighter pen for you to better fully know it's there, no longer the elephant in the room. But just because it's conscious and visible does not mean it's changed yet. But change has begun because you can see a problem. Change doesn't even begin if you don't even know the problem or don't see the problem or don't understand the problem. Counseling can help you to begin to see the issues. Won't call them a problem because they're not a problem to anybody else unless they're a problem to you. They're not working well in your life. And then you decide on the change. Send me a message. It's time to get your relationship back onto a better footing for your future. Let's do some work without shame and bring color back to life. Send the email, send the message to me, Gary McFarlane, at the Kairos Center, and let's begin to reclaim your quality of life.