Summary: <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> I have Amy Kate back with us this week. Amy Kate is an advocate for partners of sexual addicts. She is a survivor two marriages that ended as a result of sexual addiction. She has six amazing children. She is trained by the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists (APSATS). She is also trained by the American Association of Sex Therapy. She is also a customer service representative at <a href="https://covenanteyes.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=1313">Covenant Eyes</a>. Covenant Eyes is an accountability and filtering software that is one of many tools that we need to use in our own recovery, both for the safety of ourselves and families.<br> Amy: Hi. I'm glad to be back.<br> Anne: We are going to talk about demystifying the behavior of sex addicts today. Being a recovering drug addict I'm sure has its advantages when you are talking about your ex-husband's sexual addiction and how that worked and how devastating it was. Can you talk about the definition of insanity and where you were in that process of serving your husband's behaviors and being in the chaos and not able to figure out exactly what was happening?<br> When we are in a relationship with an active pornography addict or an active sex addict, why is there some much chaos? Why is it so difficult to get to the bottom of what is really going on?<br> Amy: To a non-addict person, when you see these behaviors that are insane--this is kind of what they look like--and they make absolutely no sense; you are unable to wrap your head around why they do the things they do. I tend to think this all comes from cognitive dissonance.<br> The brain wants homeostasis. It wants everything to be calm and centered and make sense and not be chaotic. Cognitive dissonance is the theory that when you have a certain set of beliefs and moral standards and your actions don't match that, it creates its own chaos and a super uncomfortable feeling inside of you.<br> So we have someone who knows that porn is some version of cheating, they know they aren't supposed to, they know they are hurting their wife, they know that having that affair is going to devastate their wife, but they are still doing it. In order to have those two things balanced within the brain, something has to change.<br> They have three choices:<br> <br> * They can change their beliefs so they can decide that cheating is somehow ok. They can decide that porn is ok. This doesn't usually happen though because usually our beliefs are our beliefs.<br> * They can change the action: they could stop doing the behavior but that is not as easy as it sounds.<br> * Or they can change their perception. When they change their perception, this is where you tend to see all the other crazy-making behaviors that drive us insane.<br> <br> Anne: talk about that. Do you mean their perception of their wife?<br> Amy: Their perception of everything starts to change. Essentially, when they are changing their perception, they are changing their reality to make their behaviors fit what they believe. We'll use lying which is probably one of the most rage-igniting things when it comes to partners. The lying drives us insane.<br> But the addict will change the way he views things like the female he is talking to all of the time and ends up having an emotional affair with, "she is just a friend; I don't even think she is pretty!
