Hi guys, I left this response to another person in another thread but Trina felt it would be important to share this with everybody. For more information on how our SA spouses and how our coping with them affects the next generation (our children) you can read it in John Bradshawâs book âFamily Secrets.â John Bradshaw is a fellow at the Meadows along with Patrick Carnes and the other gurus of SA. But here is the short version with my story as an example. Make note, there are many different ways we pass on the family legacy this is just one of them.
Typically the couple new in recovery first has to deal with do we stay or do we split up. For those of us who have chosen to stay often it is because of how we think a divorce will affect our children. But even if we choose to split up and be a single parent the next step is to heal thy self as regardless of staying or not the spouse has been dealt a traumatic blow. When we feel we are on stable enough ground after addressing our own trauma regardless of if we stay or not the next step then is to address the trauma to your children which will heal naturally for the most part given you both are in active recovery guided by a therapist, sponsor or counselor knowledgeable in sex addiction. But regardless of whether or not you stay together you must be aware of something, being the children of an addict in and of itself is traumatic not to mention it is partially in the genes. But not to scare you, children are very resilient and heal much more quickly than we do.

Let me explain, in a healthy family the parents are the front lines for modeling healthy relations so that the children can then go out into the world and develop healthy friendships, partnerships with mentors, authority figures and later build their own healthy families. When one parent is addicted and the other parent is trying to cope with the addictâs behavior there is a warped model. Typically one parent (usually the addict) is disconnected, aloof, not available. This causes feelings of abandonment in the child. The other parent copes by either turning her frustrations with the addict onto the children in various forms of abuse or going to the extreme in a more covert type of abuse almost looking like the opposite of what is considered in layman's terms abuse, and smothering the children with love and attention. This was me. I thought coming from a physically abusive home I would never do as my mother had done to me. So in my husband's absence I chose to be a "helicopter mom." This is such a hard fault to recognize as often the mother is praised for her supermom efforts to be all and do all for her child and at first I thought everyone was crazy for suggesting such a thing that I could be as they say "enmeshing" with my son. To further compound that the whole dysfunctional relationship is hard to see from the inside is the fact that we then surround ourselves with people who praise and condone our dysfunctions. But the evidence of the dysfunction was in my son's own relationships. On the surface they looked great. He had many friends, he was popular all the teacher's loved him. But behind the scene my son was always being disappointed and hurt. He had no idea how to say no. He gave away his toys, his lunch, his time and energy just to please everybody. He even began to give into things he knew was wrong just to please his friends and even when he wanted to say no he didn't know how. He was the "good and perfect child." (Logically, I secretly knew there was something wrong with this picture but was afraid to tell anyone and really enjoyed way too much that my son was so perfect.) What I didn't realise was my son, on a daily basis was sacrificing himself. He had no idea who he was or what he liked. I was raising the perfect co-dependant designed to please. Mom had always swept in to take care of all his battles. He was never shown how to say no. He was never told he was an individual. His future would either contain a life filled with heartbreak due to all the people who used him and abused him or he would go the other extreme and rebel with anger living in constant depression and contempt for all those who tried to get close to him. Then most likely resorting to an addiction to medicate the pain and make life just a bit more bearable. Whichever lifestyle he chose he would then choose the equal and opposite mate.

And so the dance goes on and he begets addicted/co-dependant children and they beget these children and so on and so on.

But in this damned if you do and damned if you donât story there is hope. As you begin to heal the pain of your trauma dealt to you with the discovery of your SA spouse, with help of those who have gone before you inevitably you will then want to avoid that which caused your pain in the first place so you will seek out new behavior that will result in finding and surrounding yourself with healthy functional people. This will serve as a model for your children. Like learning a second language they will soak it up and they will be the next generation that will have broken the chains of addiction and co-dependence (again, I hate the word but it is the shortest way to explain relational trauma). And they will carry your legacy and gift. In that way this addiction can become something good. I can't promise this will happen over night as some of our members can attest to. But whether you take steps that are so small you need an electron microscope to see or quantum leaps you will be better tomorrow than you were today and that's something to hold onto.

I hope this help for anyone ready for the next step in recovery or anyone who needs just one more reason to get out of a bad relationship with a SA who is not in recovery.

Lorilou