BDSM, Tummy-Tucks, and Sex Toys: What Sexual Trauma looks Like
Sexual trauma is such a loaded word that many spouses of sex addicts may limit it to feelings of betrayal, loss of trust, and an inability to engage sexually with their spouse. But there are also spouses who are so traumatized, they lose any sense of reality and become sexually co-dependent in their relationships out of fear.
What does this look like in everyday affairs? For example, spouses who never expressed sexual desire in areas such as role-playing or BDSM may feel sexually inadequate because they learned their husbands or boyfriends engaged or watched these acts in pornography. As a trauma response to those feelings of inadequacy or simply one out of fear their husbands will leave and seek these behaviors in another person, the women will replicate these sexual behaviors.
These behaviors are pernicious because the spouses are conducting these behaviors not out of choice but rather are doing it from a place that crosses their own personal boundaries. This is much different if the woman was engaging in these behaviors prior but because it is a response from the addiction and when pressed these women would prefer not to do them indicates to me an inner conflict.
Another common conflict that arises is when the women undergo plastic surgery to enlarge their breasts, reduce their waistline, or change their appearances in other ways. While the women claim they are ostensibly doing this for their own self-esteem, they often live in denial of how the sexual trauma has impacted this decision.
Truth be told, the women who undergo plastic surgery or alter their sexual behaviors while their husbands are in sex addiction recovery are very rarely in therapy themselves. If they were in the hands of a trained therapist or in group therapy with spouses of addicts, they would clearly be confronted with their behaviors and discouraged from doing so. A large part of the healing from the sexual trauma of addiction is for the spouse to realize she is loved unconditionally for the woman God made her without any changes in appearances or changes in new sexual behaviors.
