Latest / Sex & Porn Addiction Recovery with Russell Beebe / If Your Husband Is Addicted to Sex and Porn, Watch This Before You Leave Him
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_00: If you're close to leaving, I'm not going to tell you to stay, but before you make that decision, I want you to have one piece of information.
- 0:06SPEAKER_00: I'm Russell Beebe.
- 0:08SPEAKER_00: I've worked with over 700 men struggling with this, and I was one of them myself.
- 0:12SPEAKER_00: So before you decide what to do, I want to show you something that almost nobody talks about with women in your position.
- 0:19SPEAKER_00: Most women are trying to answer one question.
- 0:22SPEAKER_00: Is he a narcissist or is he a psychopath?
- 0:25SPEAKER_00: And just how much of a monster am I actually married to?
- 0:28SPEAKER_00: That's a fair question.
- 0:29SPEAKER_00: Some men really are that, but most men I work with aren't.
- 0:33SPEAKER_00: Most of them are something different.
- 0:35SPEAKER_00: Something that almost looks identical from where you're standing, but underneath it's working very differently.
- 0:41SPEAKER_00: Think about a heroin addict for a minute.
- 0:43SPEAKER_00: Not because sex addiction is the same as heroin, it isn't, but because the behavior around it is often identical.
- 0:49SPEAKER_00: A heroin addict lies about where he was, he hides money, he tells you he's fine when he's clearly not.
- 0:55SPEAKER_00: Nobody watches that and says, wow, what a narcissist.
- 0:58SPEAKER_00: They say that man's lost control.
- 1:00SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening with a lot of these men.
- 1:03SPEAKER_00: Picture a man who owes money who is terrified of.
- 1:05SPEAKER_00: Instead of telling his wife how bad it's gotten, he keeps hiding his statements, making up reasons he's short on cash.
- 1:12SPEAKER_00: Staying quiet a little longer every time.
- 1:15SPEAKER_00: He's not hiding it because he wants to hurt her.
- 1:17SPEAKER_00: He's hiding it because some part of him is broken and he's convinced that if she never sees how bad it really is, she never has to carry that weight of the issues that he's in.
- 1:28SPEAKER_00: That logic doesn't hold up.
- 1:30SPEAKER_00: It's still a lie, but it's a different kind of lie than the one a man tells when he genuinely cares what happens to you.
- 1:37SPEAKER_00: Your husband has probably built that same broken logic around this.
- 1:41SPEAKER_00: He tells himself in secrecy and that that secrecy is protecting you, when in reality, all it's doing is buying him a little more time before he has to face what he's done.
- 1:51SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem with that explanation.
- 1:53SPEAKER_00: It tells you why he lied.
- 1:54SPEAKER_00: It doesn't tell you why it still feels like he chose this over you.
- 1:58SPEAKER_00: And that part is real.
- 2:00SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to explain that part away.
- 2:02SPEAKER_00: If anything, I might make you angrier because now you're being asked to hold two things at the same time.
- 2:08SPEAKER_00: He did this, and he's probably not who you thought a person who does this would be.
- 2:13SPEAKER_00: Both of those things can be true.
- 2:15SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about what this has actually done to you, because almost nobody does.
- 2:19SPEAKER_00: Every conversation gets replayed in your mind, looking for holes, checking his phone, and then hating yourself a little every time for checking it, not believing him, even when he's telling the truth.
- 2:30SPEAKER_00: Because you've been hurt enough times that you can't tell the difference anymore.
- 2:34SPEAKER_00: That's not you being paranoid.
- 2:36SPEAKER_00: It actually has a name.
- 2:38SPEAKER_00: It's called betrayal trauma, and it creates the same kind of hypervigilance you'd expect to see in someone who's lived through something traumatic.
- 2:46SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system isn't broken.
- 2:48SPEAKER_00: It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do after being lied to over and over again.
- 2:53SPEAKER_00: But understanding why you're reacting this way still doesn't answer the question that probably matters the most.
- 2:58SPEAKER_00: Can a man like this really change?
- 3:00SPEAKER_00: Or are you just prolonging the same cycle?
- 3:03SPEAKER_00: My wife almost left me.
- 3:04SPEAKER_00: More than once, I'm not telling you that so you feel bad for me.
- 3:08SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you that because I know what it looks like from both sides.
- 3:11SPEAKER_00: We're still married, we have two teenage sons, but I also want to be honest with you.
- 3:15SPEAKER_00: Not every story ends that way, and I'm not here to promise you that yours will either.
- 3:20SPEAKER_00: What I can tell you is actually what determined whether it did or not.
- 3:25SPEAKER_00: Both in my own life and in the hundreds of men I've worked with since, it was never just about whether he stopped.
- 3:31SPEAKER_00: I really want you to sit with that.
- 3:33SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of men still think stopping is the finish line.
- 3:37SPEAKER_00: It isn't.
- 3:38SPEAKER_00: Honestly, it's barely the starting line.
- 3:40SPEAKER_00: A man can be completely sober and still be the same person he was when he was acting out, still defensive, still blaming you when things get hard, still not really listening to you when you talk.
- 3:52SPEAKER_00: Trust doesn't come back because he's stopped.
- 3:54SPEAKER_00: It comes back because he becomes a different man to live with.
- 3:58SPEAKER_00: Someone who owns what happened, without you having to drag it out of them, someone who shows up the same on a hard week as he does on a good week.
- 4:06SPEAKER_00: That takes longer than most people want to hear.
- 4:09SPEAKER_00: Usually a lot longer.
- 4:10SPEAKER_00: So what do you do while you're actually waiting to find out whether he's one of the men who makes it that far?
- 4:15SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the decision that's actually in front of you.
- 4:18SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna tell you to stay.
- 4:20SPEAKER_00: That's not my decision to make.
- 4:22SPEAKER_00: And honestly, some of you shouldn't.
- 4:24SPEAKER_00: But before you walk away, there's one thing I'd encourage you to try if you haven't already.
- 4:28SPEAKER_00: Go to him, not with another threat that you're not gonna follow through on.
- 4:32SPEAKER_00: He's probably heard those before and over time stopped believing them.
- 4:37SPEAKER_00: Tell him clearly, I can't keep living like this unless you get real help.
- 4:41SPEAKER_00: Not another apology, not another promise, real help, and then really mean it.
- 4:46SPEAKER_00: That last part is what separates a boundary from a bluff.
- 4:50SPEAKER_00: Men struggling with this can usually tell the difference, even if they never say it out loud.
- 4:55SPEAKER_00: But a boundary is only half of what protects you here.
- 4:57SPEAKER_00: The other half has nothing to do with him.
- 5:00SPEAKER_00: Somewhere in the middle of all this, you have to stop making his recovery your full-time job.
- 5:05SPEAKER_00: I know that sounds backwards.
- 5:06SPEAKER_00: You're the one watching this video, not him.
- 5:09SPEAKER_00: But the woman who navigates this best eventually stops obsessing over every move he makes and starts asking much harder question.
- 5:16SPEAKER_00: What do I need?
- 5:18SPEAKER_00: Regardless of what he chooses to do, he may get better or he may not.
- 5:22SPEAKER_00: Both of these are real possibilities.
- 5:24SPEAKER_00: And you can't control which one happens.
- 5:27SPEAKER_00: What you can control is whether you're taking care of yourself while you wait to find out.
- 5:31SPEAKER_00: There's one more thing you can control too.
- 5:34SPEAKER_00: Whether he ever gets the opportunity to become the man that makes the decision easier instead of harder.
- 5:39SPEAKER_00: If what you just heard sounds like your husband and he's willing to get real help, or maybe he's still on the fence about admitting that there's a problem, that's okay too.
- 5:47SPEAKER_00: There's a link below where he can schedule a confidential call with our team.
- 5:52SPEAKER_00: You can be on that call too.
- 5:53SPEAKER_00: We'll talk honestly about what's going on.
- 5:56SPEAKER_00: We'll answer his questions, including the hard ones, and we'll help him figure out what his next step should be, whether that's working with us or not, or somewhere else entirely.
- 6:05SPEAKER_00: Either way, he'll leave that call with more clarity than he has right now, and so will you.
- 6:10SPEAKER_00: Talk soon.