Personality Disorders In Partners Of Sex Addicts

I have been watching a situation unfold in the forums that has caused me to do some deep soul searching and thinking about our ability to recognize Personality Disorders in Partners of Sex Addicts.

The Sisterhood is a closely knit group of women whose traumatic experiences bind us together more closely than if we were biologically related. We can almost finish each other’s sentences and we share each other’s pain and victories as if they were our own.  Although most of us have never met each other our friendships are deeper than most.

And, because of the genuine love and bonding that we share I feel that occasionally we are blind to the faults of each other, and, just as in the case of our relationships with a Sex Addict, sometimes we don’t realize when we are being duped or abused. Just as with a SA, we rationalize, minimize or excuse actions in another Sister simply because of the bond we feel for her.

I think it’s similar to a blind spot that relatives often exhibit with their terminally ill family members. Caring for an ill person over a long time forms a close bond between the patient and the caregiver. And, just as with Sex Addiction, the relationship is fraught with ups and downs, critical decisions and high emotions. Also, because the main illness dominates the care, caregivers often miss other symptoms. Both the patients and the caregivers often will ignore or deny the symptoms of an additional major illness simply because they are focusing on the main diagnosis.

So many times I have heard a family member or even the patient themselves say, ‘How could they have diabetes? They are dying of cancer?’

Sometimes we just don’t recognize that there may be concurrent illnesses going on.

Sometimes we want to ignore, minimize or excuse bad behaviors in our Sisters because of the trauma they have suffered by Discovery and the harm they have endured by living with the SA.

And, often the behaviors we see are caused by the trauma of Discovery and it’s aftermath.

But, sometimes they are not.

Sometimes a Partner of a Sex Addict may have come into the relationship with severe Personality Disorders of her own. And certainly this is not only difficult to recognize, it is also difficult to watch it unfold and unravel.

In our concern and empathy for the Partner’s pain we can get caught up in the same emotional roller coaster that brought us down in the relationship with our SA’s. It’s a gradual process that causes us to doubt ourselves.  We recognize that living with a SA is crazy making. We realize that some of our behaviors are certainly caused by us trying to make sense out of the nonsense of Sex Addiction as we try every coping mechanism we can think of, trying to make an abnormal situation normal.

These behaviors are not Personality Disorders. They are misguided and usually temporary coping mechanisms.

Our personalities are formed in early childhood and are firmly set by the time we are teens. Yes, we can make changes in how we do things, and yes, we can stop or start certain behaviors if we really want to. But, our basic personality, normal or disordered, is a part of who we are.

Unfortunately we sometimes find that a Partner of A Sex Addict is also capable of deceit, minimizing, altering facts to fit her reality, gaslighting, avoiding accountability and, worst of all, harming others.

I feel that it is a healthy part of our healing process to be able to recognize that these types of behaviors are unacceptable in anyone, even a Sister.

If we do not accept bad behavior in our SA’s, if we do not allow them to abuse us, if we refuse to stand by and let them harm us or their children, then we should not accept this bad behavior from anyone else, including a Sister.

I feel that the unfolding of the recent situation with one of our Sisters has been an unfortunate learning experience for all of us; but one that will add to our understanding and recognition of the dynamics of disordered people. ~ JoAnn