Early recovery from sex addiction is a tumultuous time, your recovery foothold is shaky at best. So how do you maintain that precarious foothold when your partner is on the emotional rollercoaster? You know the rollercoaster I’m talking about; the one where she is angry, sad, fearful, or an ever shifting mix of all; the one that seems to come out of the blue to you; the one where her facts and logic just doesn’t make sense to you; the one you don’t really understand but have learned to fear.
How do you survive her rollercoaster &, more importantly, how do you help her through it so the seeds for a tiny bit of trust are planted? If the Serenity Prayer seems like your only lifeline for getting through the rollercoaster, let me teach a new strategy for helping to calm the emotional storm and begin to repair your relationship.
First of all, accept that you won’t understand, so don’t make the mistake of saying you do just to appease her. Let me tell you a secret about your wife; she already knows you can’t understand. She may not like that fact, but when she’s not on the rollercoaster she does get that. She also knows you can’t fix her or stop her pain. What she needs from you is not to make the rollercoaster go away, but for you to get on the rollercoaster with her and help her deal with the pain until it eases. Remember when you were a kid and banged up your arm? You probably gently cradled it with your other arm. You held it until the pain subsided. When you can tolerate hearing your partner‘s pain it is like you are cradling her heart and helping to hold her pain until it recedes.
Doctor Charles Drew Medical Blog 