New Book Helps Partners of Sex Addicts

"Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How Partners Can Cope and Heal" “What is sexual addiction?” This question is often met with humor and misinformation. It is not a “high sex drive” or a problem that occurs when one partner wants sex more than the other. Sexual addiction is a destructive disorder that harms not only the addicted person, but also reeks havoc in the lives of those closest to the addict: their partners.

A new book, Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How Partners Can Cope and Heal (September 2009, New Horizon Press), by Barbara Steffens, Ph.D., LPCC, and Marsha Means, MA, is helping the estimated 10.5 million partners (mostly women) of addicts in the United States. In it, co-author Steffens reveals her research findings that nearly 70 percent of women married to reported sex addicts meet the symptomatic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder after learning about their husbands’ deviant sexual behavior. This study dispels current practices that treat partners of sexual addicts as codependents, or co-addicted.

Easily accessible pornographic material and other sexually oriented sites on the internet are only a couple of reasons sexual addiction is a growing societal problem. Recently, the discovery and admission by celebrities, politicians and religious leaders of their deviant behaviors has brought even more attention to sexual addiction problems. Specialists suggest that between 8-10% of the U.S. population struggles with this addiction.

(Source) Press