I was on Ashley Madison: What Now?!
The pit of your stomach is churning. You’re not able to focus at work and people are noticing something’s wrong. You have yet to let anyone in on your little secret that you’ve subscribed to the Ashley Madison website which promotes secret affairs between users.
Not only is your security breached but your relationship or marriage could also devastated if your significant other and/or the public found out what the website knows about your sexual self (i.e. your physical and sexual preferences, private messages, photos exchanged, etc.). Now that this data is public you have some hard decisions to make. Do you lie and lie low and hope your information isn’t found by anyone? Do you tell half-truths and share that it the subscription was done as a joke or before you were involved in your relationship or do you spill the beans? As a therapist specializing in sex addiction and problematic sexual behaviors, my advice would be to tell your partner. While you don’t need to share lurid details of sexual preferences, positions, or body or ethnic types it is necessary to be honest about what behaviors you engaged in (i.e. texting, emails, images, oral sex, or intercourse). You’ll also want to share the frequency and number of partners and the approximate dates the encounters occurred.
But it doesn’t stop there. In my sex addiction training and practice, oftentimes clients more often than not who are on this site are on numerous other sites as well. In other words, it’s important to help your partner understand the scope of your behaviors.
I would highly recommend seeking advice from a therapist specializing in this area of sex addiction and/or problematic sexual behaviors since the perpetrator and betrayed partner are usually on diametrically opposed positions when it comes to the information that should be shared. In other words the person who had the affair/sexually compulsive behaviors often is afraid to share anything whereas the betrayed partner wants to know every last detail.
Since disclosure brings shame to the addict and pain to spouse and risks the end of the relationship, addicts initially tend to avoid complete disclosure. In contrast, partners often demand complete disclosure, which is a way for them to make sense of the past, to validate their suspicions and the reality they had experienced, which had often been denied by the addict, to have a sense of control of the situation, to assess their risk of having been exposed to STDs, and establish some hope for the future.
Unfortunately, the belief that knowing “everything” will provide control is an illusion, and the partner who has all the details in her head may ruminate and obsess over them and cause herself endless pain. Disclosure of various details can leave partners with unpleasant memories and associations which are difficult to ignore, serving as triggers for intrusive thoughts and negative feelings. If the partner does not begin a personal recovery program this information can become the source of pathological obsessing that can result in the partner’s own acting-out behaviors.
For partners who begin a recovery program, later they come to recognize that knowledge is not necessarily power, that no matter how much information they have they are still unable to control the addict. Instead, they develop guidelines for themselves about what information they want (typically, general information such as their risk of STDs and the addict’s commitment to recovery and the relationship) and what they do not want (details of sexual activities, locations, and numbers).
The therapist can encourage the partner to consider carefully what information he/she (violated party) wants rather than asking for “everything.” One helpful therapy technique is to have the client write down every question to which he/she wants an answer, then give the list to the therapist for safekeeping for an agreed-upon time period, say two months. At the end of that time the therapist and partner review the list and decide which questions to ask. Frequently, after such a cooling-off period, the partner is no longer interested in painful details.
The therapist can also monitor the intent of the disclosure: moving towards greater intimacy is a positive intent; to obtain ammunition to punish, control, or manipulate the addict is a poor intent.
PARTIAL OR SEQUENTIAL DISCLOSURE
It is tempting for the addict to attempt damage control by initially disclosing only some of the sexual acting out. The adverse effects of staggered disclosure can not be underestimated. A recurrent theme among partners was the damage of staggered disclosure by the addict. When the addict claimed at the time to reveal all the relevant facts but actually withheld the most difficult information for later disclosure, partners reported great difficulty in restoring trust. One recipient described it as, “His revelations continued to dribble out over weeks as I continued to ask for information. Each new piece of information felt like a scab being ripped off.” A man who was sent to prison as a consequence of his sexual behavior disclosed to his wife only some of his activities. She wrote, “Some of his past was reported to the pre-sentence investigator, and I received the report only after he’d been in prison for 3 months. When I read it, I felt immense pain and anger. Part of that was not having been told. I felt lied to and I didn’t trust any of the relationship.”
Despite the potential adverse consequences of disclosure, most partners rommended disclosure. We advise that the initial disclosure include the broad outlines of all the behaviors, while not spelling out the “gory details.”
Recipients of disclosure need to be informed by the therapist, however, that disclosure is always a process, and not a one-time event. The reason for staggered disclosure is not always that the addict is deliberately holding back for damage protection or to avoid unpleasant consequences. Other reasons for not having immediately disclosed “everything” include:
- The addict has acted out in so many different ways or with so many different people or has told so many lies that he genuinely does not recall some of them until a later time.
- The addict was in such an altered state at the time of the some of the episodes of acting out – for example, he may have been drinking or using drugs – that he simply does not remember particular events.
- The addict, although remembering all the details of his acting, does not initially consider particular events or actions significant enough to bother disclosing. With increased recovery, the addict realizes the need for disclosing additional history.
- Disclosure of certain actions may be so damaging to the partner or to family relations (for example, an affair with the wife’s sister), or may entail significant risk of violence to the addict (for example, a female addict married to a man who has a history of physically abusing her), that a therapist recommends not disclosing these facts initially, until the partner has received counseling and preparation.
- Certain episodes of acting out occurred only after the initial disclosure. That is, they represented slips or relapses of the addiction. (This is the most problematic situation, in that it is likely to cause the most damage to the process of rebuilding trust.)
- The addict may be so frightened that what he has disclosed may truly be all they were capable of at the time (despite learning more later).
Disclosure doesn’t mean the relationship is salvaged but for those courageous enough to be transparent and honest, it allows some measure of acknowledging one’s responsibility in the hurt, betrayal, and confusion that has arisen in the coupleship.
