Free A Couple's Guide to Sexual Addiction by Paldrom Collins

them?
• What has prevented you from feeling that you can be fully intimate?
• What has been getting in the way of your wanting to be with your partner?
• Have you really wanted to be in this relationship?
• What has kept you here?
• Have you been feeling distant from your partner?
• Have you been distracted?
• Have you put up barriers consciously or unconsciously?
Sit down on multiple occasions if you need to and give yourself permission to recall all the ways that you have distanced yourself from your partner or ignored his distance from you. Revealing to yourself what you see, really admitting it to yourself, is a key to your liberation. Go for it.
For Both—If You Choose to Share
The list of information you have created is for you. You may choose to share some of it, all of it, or none of it with your partner. Full disclosure will be important, but you may not be ready for that just yet. At the end of Chapter 4 , we discuss creating a space and the ground rules for full disclosure by the partner who has been acting sexually compulsively.
For now, it is important that you find a way to communicate without further distancing yourself from your partner. We have found that it is useful to have some ground rules.
Ground Rules for Communicating Difficult Issues
It is up to each of you to find a way to keep your conversation focused on the issue at hand, to speak fully, and to listen fully. We recognize how difficult these conversations can be, but we also know how they can be a time of opening.
1. First, plan ahead—make an appointment with each other. Be sure you have time and space where you will not be interrupted. Allow as much time as you think you will need. You can schedule separate times for each of you to talk, if you feel that will work the best for you. We have found that you will probably each need at least half an hour to speak.
2. Secondly, in each of your sessions, the person who is listening says nothing until the other person is finished speaking. This might take five minutes or fifteen minutes or longer. The speaker has the floor. When the speaker is finished talking, the listener becomes the speaker and can reply without interruption. The important ingredient is that the speaker knows that he or she can speak until finished. The process of speaking and then replying can be repeated as many times as is necessary within each sharing session. Remember, these sessions are not for finding solutions, but simply for being heard, for getting things out on the table.
3. Remember, the goal of the listener is to be quiet and let the speaker talk. This will pay off. While the listener may feel a strong urge to defend or make excuses, this is not necessary. Now is simply a time to listen. Listening without defending is the beginning of a new level of communication in your relationship.
4. For each speaker, remember to speak to the action and to the feeling. Don’t demean the other’s character. Hurtful things have been done (maybe by each of you), but this does not make the person who did them inherently bad or unredeemable. It is not your job to try to fix or diagnose your partner. Just speak about your experience—how you are feeling. When it is your turn to be the listener, simply listen. If you feel defensive or angry, take some deep breaths. Remind yourself that you are receiving information, not ammunition.
5. Finally, at the end of the sessions, each partner needs to say one thing they appreciate about the other. Don’t attempt to be extra generous by telling more than one thing, but do think of one thing that you truly appreciate. Then thank your partner for being honest and willing to have this difficult conversation. And then, either silently or openly, thank yourself for your honesty and willingness. Having this kind of conversation shows great strength of character.
Once you have recognized and admitted to yourself that there is a problem and have started to gain some understanding of the