Heal the Sex Addicts that Abuse their Wives

One of our sites suppoer's (who wants to remain anonymous) has sent in another terrific aritcle--Dr. Cline works with SAs and realtes how they destroy marriages, how secrets kill love and relationships, but best of all, he describes his paln for working with them and saving marriages.

[Editor's note: In this article, Dr. Cline describes strategies that he has found useful in treating sexual addicts, particularly those addicted to pornography, and that might be helpful to other professionals counseling sexual addicts. Others interested in the nature of sexual addiction may also find it informative.]

Dr. Cline writes: A frequent side effect is that their capacity to love is also dramatically reduced (e.g. it results in a marked dissociation of sex from friendship, affection, caring and other normal healthy emotions and traits which help marital relationships). This sexual side becomes, in a sense, dehumanized. Many of them develop also an "alien ego state" (or dark side), whose core is antisocial lust devoid of most values. Raw id, in a sense. In time, the "high" obtained from masturbating to pornography becomes more important than real life relationships.