Don't Tell their Dirty Little Secret

It wasn’t any fun being married to an abuser and sex addict, but it was less fun fighting for my emotional health only to face our culture’s obsession with protecting the guilty. One of the biggest issues I faced after discovering my husband’s exhibitionism and joining COSA, the group for the spouses of sex addicts, was that “I will surely be blamed for telling” his secret and known as the proverbial bitch. Eventually, through counseling and education, I decided that “telling” was in my best interests and I had to unilaterally not consider how it would affect my ex. As a flaming co-dependent, I spent most of the marriage making excuses for why he treated me so badly, rationalizing away his abuse, and keeping up the façade that we would blissfully grow old together. Thus few people knew how down-right mean a man I lived with.

When I did “tell” the first time by writing my story, Sex Addiction is Not Just About Sex, and having it published on the front page of a Minnesota recovery paper—I changed his name from “Bob” to “Ted” in order to protect him. Also, I was afraid people would attack me for “telling.” And sure enough, they did. The first attack came via my online support group (this group member pretty much typified the criticism that came my way). She wrote, “Why must you expose him? You both seem to have some issues with public displays of private matters.” Meaning both my husband and me. He was displaying his penis and I was displaying him displaying his penis.

Was this group member right? Are abused spouses supposed to be “hush hush“ when a family member’s behavior humiliates and endangers them? She implied that we are not supposed to publicly say, “This is what happened to me. It was taking me down, destroying my marriage, but I found help.” I had considered hushing it up, saving the details for my sponsor and mom only. Maybe it was best to confine the story to closed meetings. Or was it? And best for whom?

I learned in AA that we must share our darkest secrets in order to recover and to offer recovery to others. "Telling" is the only way I know. In the pages of Alcoholic’s Anonymous we find:

· ...every alcoholic has been marked by escapades, funny, humiliating, shameful or tragic. The first impulse will be to bury these skeletons in a dark closet and padlock the door. The family may be possessed by the idea future happiness can be based only upon forgetfulness of the past. We think that such a view is self-centered and in direct conflict with the new way of living. (P 124)

· Cling to the thing that, in God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have--the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them. (P. 124)

· For his sake, we do recount and almost relieve the horrors of our past. (P. 132)

When I met my husband, I told him I was a writer and I write about me. I also told him that if he were in my story and I needed to tell it, the parts that he was in would get told. I couldn’t tell ”his” story only my story with him in it.

The member of the support group that quasi attacked me, mentioned “privacy” as something that I had not considered. But actually I had. John Prin in his article “Are Secrets Good or Bad,” wrote, “To discern the destructive power of secrecy, it helps to distinguish between secrecy and privacy.

· Privacy is an act of choosing healthy boundaries and staying comfortably within them.
· Secret-keeping is an act of hiding from the embarrassment of disclosing things shameful or discreditable.”

I struggled at each juncture when “to tell” became an option. Initially, I revealed things on an as-needed basis. My mom. Al-Anon sponsor. Counselor. Domestic violence group. Attorney. After filing court papers outlining his behavior, I wondered—who needs to know? How dangerous was his behavior? Will I hate myself if someone is hurt as his obsessions progress? Where is my responsibility in this? What about any future women in his life? If a woman wants to work through Bob’s sex addiction, weenie wagging, and woman-hating anger, it might save his life, but at least she should know she’ll be giving up hers. I owe her that

I would be lying if I pretended I didn’t get the tiniest bit of pleasure knowing that our family and friends would understand Bob torpedoed the marriage. I hated them believing lies he told about our breakup. His abuse and deception wounded me deeply. Yet, my co-dependency has an element of gaining sympathy and wanting others to agree that Bob’s the “bad” guy. Part of my struggle was stopping my self-serving behavior as I shared my experience. We all know addiction is a disease and exhibitionism (with all its abusive manifestations) is too. Bob is not the bad guy for being sick and I’m not the bad guy for telling.

One responsible member of his family knows the truth. She asked me; I told. Now, if my ex does do something in the family, say flashes one of his nieces or aunts or gets caught making a film of himself masturbating, I won’t be ashamed of myself for keeping this secret.

Will I ever regret not keeping the secret?

"We are only as Sick as our Secrets," they say. What they don’t say is, "We are only as Safe as the Secrets we don't keep." Have you ever heard of serial killer, Gary Ridgeway from Seattle? He wanted to kill his second wife, Marcia, and didn't for only one reason. During an argument, Gary had violently grabbed and choked her from behind. She was not a co-dependent or caught in the cycle of abuse because she did not keep his secret! Marcia told her dad, mom and friends that her husband had tried to kill her. Guess what? Years later when caught by the police, he told them that he indeed wanted to kill Marcia. There was only one reason he did not stage her death, he explained. Because she told so many people, he deduced they would suspect him and he might get caught. Wow. Telling the "secret" saved Marcia's life.

Often I don’t know where common sense and caring end and co-dependency begins. I may regret telling this story someday. But many people have contacted me, with gratitude for my sharing, so they could begin healing too. Do I have an issue with public displays of private matters? Since my life isn’t private—I don’t know. That woman’s post has given me much to think about. She tapped into my biggest fear about sharing my story—that people would judge it as the wrong thing to do. And yet, one of the things we are told in Co-dependents Anonymous is that we are supposed to be doing what is in our best interests, not worrying about the best interests of others. Is this in my best interests? Well I feel great about it, so for today, I guess it is.