The 5 Hidden Addictions of an Affair | Couples Academy Show

welcome to another episode of the couple's academy show today we're talking about the five hidden addictions of an affair join us now [Music] welcome morning good morning hello hello there we go there we go i got my coffee in me i got it in me hello everybody everybody we're actually um broadcasting from raleigh north carolina good to be here over the weekend a little giveaway and uh but we had to come live to to be with you here this morning my name is asani i'm danielle and we are couples academy uh listen we want you to share we want you to share this video because we're going to be talking about some information that's really going to be enlightening as to the why of an affair oftentimes when people engage in in affairs it is critically important for them to understand the reasoning behind it not only must they understand it their spouse must understand it as well if there's no understanding then it leaves individuals stuck not able to effectively move forward because if they don't know why it happened they don't know if they could prevent it from happening again and one thing that we know is that an affair has several layers to it there are several components to it there's several aspects of it it's never as simple it's never as black and white as one would think and so i think that if we peel back the layers think about an onion there are several layers that get to the core of the reason well there are layers if you will to an affair and that's what we're here to talk about here today um and so we're going to start off by talking about the very first addiction and this is in no particular order but it just happens to be the first one that we're talking about but listen guys before we jump in we just want to acknowledge those uh that are signing in this morning uh we have so many new people because we're on periscope so not only are we on facebook and uh we're on youtube we're on periscope so we want to say uh welcome to the the new family members but we have rachel good to see you rachel stephen raya lewis sahil uh black hole g691 hey everybody yeah everybody all right so let's jump in listen the first addiction um associated with an affair is the addiction to sex and so often times when people are addicted to sex what they're addicted to they're addicted to an orgasmic release and that orgasmic release can come in a variety of ways it can come from actual sex with multiple people it can come from compulsive masturbation it can come from the viewing of pornography going to massage parlors uh having one night stands but there's this addiction for this drive to get this sensation this fix but one thing we know about the desire to feel that pleasure it's short-lived it is not long-lasting you know as they say love lasts for hours sex lasts for minutes and orgasms last for seconds and some people are addicted to that high that they get in a split second no matter what the consequence may be to their career to their family and to their reputation and think about this we're talking about the five hidden addictions of an affair and one thing i wanted to highlight is that you know these addictions have nothing to do with the her partner and a lot of times their partner is trying to figure out what is it can i do more of how can i fix this i'm sexy i'll be more sexy i'll match you for your desire and unfortunately if somebody has this brokenness and has this um lack of worthiness because that's really where it's rooted at then it doesn't matter how much you do until they heal their brokenness they're going to have to they're going to have to experience this release they're going to have that build up of this anxiety to release and have some kind of sexual experience until they get their wholeness and so when you hear people say listen it's not you right it's me well you can believe that it's a lot of validity to that and a lot of times to your point the hurt spouse takes on all the burden and the responsibility and the blame for why their spouse cheated well maybe if i did this more if i became that more and it has zero to do with you because the addiction is internal it's interesting because the national council of sexual addiction and compulsivity said that literally they get 50 emails in 30 to 40 phone calls every single week from people all around the country uh either from the person struggling with the addiction or the family member and so it speaks to how serious this issue really is we have some interesting information a residential treatment center for addictions reported that 80 of patients being treated for sexual addiction were corporate executives or high level professionals now we and so i think what that does is it changes the face or the or the idea of who's struggling with an addiction oftentimes we have in our minds what this person should look like but even those who supposedly have it all together at the highest levels of society they have these struggles as well yes i had a client who was actually she used to work with uh men and she told me that she would actually deal with these high level executives c level like the most powerful men who would call her in because they wanted to be dominated they have an addiction and they're so powerful that they actually need somebody to tie them up and beat on them because of their need and their desire so i mean these addictions they they span all kinds of gamuts now there's no limit to the types of addictions that you can have but when we are married to somebody that has these addictions and we're trying to fix it and save the day you know it's really futile they really need to go get professional help to deal with the the core root issue what happened in childhood because a lot of this stuff we saw pornography when we were five years old and now ever since then we've been chasing the high things like that that we're unaware of and they're like very deep we need to find somebody that can unearth all that stuff and get us whole so we can restore ourselves and then restore our relationships there was an amazing book that was written uh many years ago called a sexual profile of men in power and the authors embarked on a study of prostitutes and ended up writing a book instead about their best clients politicians and to your point with your client uh she deals with ceos and doctors and attorneys and athletes and these are the individuals who have positions of power who often times struggle the most and and it goes back to you know what i've spent my life telling people what to do being in power being an influence and everybody submitting to my will and so i you know i want to be in a space where i can reverse the road they want to be dominated they want to be done they want to be over yeah yeah yeah and and and then for others there's just this intensity in this drive there was a someone who anonymously said that i had sex with hundreds and hundreds of women i met in travels and business some numerous times some one time some whenever i was in town he says i believe you will find a lot of people out there just like me executives are usually driven power hungry and egomaniacs hard drinking and women are often a part of our story and so it's really powerful and i don't want to i don't want to limit an addiction to just high profile individuals or just men because we know that statistically 60 i don't know 84 of all sex addicts are associated with being men but 16 of sex addicts okay masturbation pornography multiple sex uh sex uh experiences with people are women so it's not gender specific it's something that many many people struggle with all right let's go to the second one the second addiction is the addiction to love and and that is when you are addicted to a heightened physical or emotional feeling that's a part of this in love phase we know that the infatuation or the in love uh phase in most relationships lasts for about two years and then all of a sudden it begins to shift wither in wayne and so then you enter into normalcy but someone who's addicted to the in-love feeling will then pursue relationships to get that high again yeah you hear people say i i fell so hard in love i fell out of love right so we got to stop falling number one because there's a commitment that we're missing that part because if every time i fall out of love i gotta go start searching for that feeling again i'm gonna be disappointed in every single relationship there's also certain personality types that lean into that more who idealize relationships who um have a need for love and connection and when they don't feel it reciprocated then they start seeking outside or they start to actually internalize it and think that there's something wrong with them because they're not receiving the love that they originally were feeling yeah and then when you think about a new relationship you know as we always say new is sexy people are attracted to new when there's a new in love feeling what comes along with that the passionate pursuit uh adoration the thrill of infatuation and so once you know things have become normal between the two of us uh i want something more i want i want what we had when we first started well i want to feel it yeah a lot of times you still have all the basics you still are with somebody that's loving and caring but you are addicted to that in love feeling which it does it windows and it wanes and it changes right it come becomes more of a long-term committed kind of love it's not necessarily this euphoric feeling anymore we talk about this all the time like you know there was a time when you could hold hands in the static you were like oh jump right you turned on just by holding hands well maybe that's the way it's supposed to be because this those endorphins are jumping to attract you to one another right but after a while you've got to get have some kind of emotional maturity so that you know that it's not going to stay that way and that love needs to shift into a more of a long-term stable love and interestingly enough people who are addicted to love if they are in an affair when that type of attention is now reciprocated a genuine reciprocation of the attention all of a sudden they wake up from their from their stupid like oh this is not what i really want reality sets and i'm not looking for a long-term relationship i'm looking for a feeling and the feeling no longer exists in the affair and so that causes them to leave that relationship and jump to another and then to hop back and forth into their marriage hoping to get what they lost a long time ago and and so a lot of times spouses the betrayed spouse they're broken when they find these steamy love letters and these text messages that have the pronouncement of love and and fantasy and the infatuation and it's really crushing to to help overcome those particular feelings so the addiction to love all right let's go to the next one then there's the addiction to romance think about a romance is a very critical element in a healthy uh successful relationship and usually relationships start out very romantic and so there's this desire for the we can get away in the romantic destination in the mood setting and you might be addicted to romance you think so i might tell me more about that i mean you know you think about you do want a little bit of romance sprinkles there right and maybe some maybe some of this is okay when it's inside the relationship i think the issue comes in because we're talking about addictions of an affair right so if i'm stepping out and looking for romance outside of you that's a big problem but if i'm looking for a romance inside with you i think we're good i think that is good right okay but but that drive that need to have you know um as we said it's about the candles and the violins and and all of those wonderful things and i think what happens is in in a relationship you just stop doing it you feel like you don't need to do that anymore and so this is why you can actually learn from an affair not that there's anything good about an affair but once you realize what is a part of an affair this you you can take certain uh um components of it and bring it back into your relationship because that's where it should have been in the first place i think i think the the big issue here is that when people decide that they're no longer gonna put any effort into the relationship this does not give the affair partner a um pass right but this just explains that if you are having a struggle and addicted to romance now you might start seeking out that doesn't validate it in any way shape or form but here you are now searching for what you don't have inside your relationship this is just another form and another reason why people step out that's very so very true sandra says keeping romance alive is so important and it is you want to give romance a chance in your relationship jimmy from periscope says can you be in love with more than one person that's a great question this is a great question i think that you can have see think about the three types of love you have eros love which is the sensual sexual emotional erotic type of love but then you have agape love and and phileo love which is more of a caring enduring type of love and i think what happens is as uh the in-love infatuation feeling fades in a marriage you still love them you care for them you want the best for them you're willing to support and do all types of things for them but that emotional feeling uh maybe for someone else i don't know if you can have a strong emotional desire for two people at the same time because now your heart i mean i i could see how you can have one i can definitely see how you can have the in love feeling in that infatuation with multiple people because it's the euphoria stage right it's that beginning state once you move into the vallejo love where it's long-term and committed and more caring uh it's sort of like an oxymoron right if you're long-term and committed with me then how can you be that with other people right so i do think that that's where people get twisted right they have these feelings and these emotions for people because they haven't had any struggles they haven't gone through anything yet this is the big issue it's just like you're stepping out to try to find something this feeling with somebody else with someone who you haven't really gotten to know them you haven't been frustrated by them you haven't been disappointed by them and the minute you do become disappointed by them and have a real experience with them you'll be on to the next person too so you are still in search of this insatiable feeling that if you don't get the help you need to restore yourself so you're not addicted to it you'll continue to do that and that's why it's so critically important that when you're in a marriage when you're in a committed uh relationship you have to guard your heart because it's so easy to allow yourself to be distracted and tempted by outside forces that will pull your heart and your mind in so many different directions there should be an energy that you have with your partner yeah an emotional a sexual or social energy that's protected because once you have that then the relationship begins to yeah we've got some comments but we do you at the bottom though oh okay what if your husband does not like doing romantic things together well that's worthy of a conversation you know it's important that you talk about how it's important to you right and what you like and if you're in a mutually beneficial relationship then his desire should be to meet your need and your desire should be to meet his needs right and when you both win you win as a couple right i mean we're talking about you know if if hassani wasn't as romantic as i need him to be that's not going to mean i suddenly have a romance a romance addiction right we're talking about people who are insatiable and they cannot stop themselves because they're in search and for trying to fulfill this need somebody else had asked about well then what's the point if if i can't fix them then what's the point of of can of staying with them and i think that's that's what we're talking about here we're talking about these addictions where people actually need to go and get the support that they need um the the fact is is that you cannot fix your partner i don't care what the issue is whether they have an addiction bad habits language issues whatever it is uh weight issues you cannot fix your partner you can't so there are different people that help and specialize in different things they need to get themselves in the hands of somebody that can support them with whatever addiction that they have listen you're watching the couple's academy show we hope you're getting so much information we've covered the first three addictions but we'll cover the next two right after this quick commercial break [Music] so my name is jose and this is my wife kathy we just finished our first meeting with couples academy um and it has been a life changing experience um first time i've heard about asami was when i was driving my car tears in my eyes and i was in a situation where i did i thought i was losing it all somehow going through videos on how to be a better person came out a narrative version of of the process and i saw myself my relationship everything that was going wrong in my my relationship was being narrated by a sign so i bought it to her she watched some of the videos and and i um contact hazani um and he gave me a call back i was in colombia i told him i think we should need i think we need to do this and it's been three amazing three amazing days yeah we have changed our life um we couldn't we couldn't do it ourselves i definitely think that if this didn't happen i don't know where we would have been now uh i would definitely recommend this for people who are struggling to marriage it doesn't matter what the situation is um couples academy has showed me that they've been through a lot of different situations they have done it at all um and i don't think there's a [Music] specific situation but they cannot help i mean it will help it will help at least internally for you to make to be a better person and eventually save your marriage don't wait until mistakes happen in the relationship i wish i wish we would have done this before but it happened now it happened for a reason and thank god it really happened and we were agreed to do it and we did it and i'm so excited for the things that we're gonna apply we recommend it all right we're back we're back we've had questions that we want to quickly get to sandra says what if there we go thank you what if both partners don't have the same sexual intellectual spiritual and emotional energy and are different um well i think we all are different i think one of the challenges uh maybe is that we expect our partner to be just like us we are different and we have different energies and different levels of things and and this is the hard work i mean nobody said relationships would be easy right i mean there was something that initially brought you together there was a connection there was a passion there was a level of intensity that you both had whatever that may have been so the question is has it been lost how was it lost you reverse engineered that to figure out what you need to do to get it back and then the other thing is you you're different like you change you go through changes that's kind of in life that's key we change and my thing is like you know what what is your level of commitment with the person i mean this these things like this are the reasons why people these are the reasons people give for stepping out well my she didn't have enough sexual energy or whatever we have all these reasons why we step out trying to find something in somebody else when you stepping out with somebody else who has their own bag of issues that you just did did not discover yet that's why you have people on their third fourth fifth and sixth marriages like because they weren't they did not have long suffering and they weren't willing to work through issues and cover the multitude of sins that we all have right and the moment we find a flaw we're looking at that flaw as the reasons to get out we have to learn to work out these differences we really really really do listen we got two more we're gonna jump into the next uh addiction first so first of all we were talking about the addiction to sex and then the addiction to love and then the addiction to romance well the fourth addiction is the addiction to the internet we know that because of technology and the internet in the ability to connect online it's much easier to get caught up into things and the thing is you can pursue sex romance and love online it happens all the time and even though you go online and initially it's for entertainment or recreational purposes it can then begin to transition into something that's highly inappropriate absolutely and you'll find that even if you have good intentions people are constantly pursuing you right so you get on there and somebody's poking you on facebook or saying hi or doing something to let you know that they're interested i mean people are very bold with it now they really are they used to be they used to try to play it off and act like they just trying to say hi but now they are very very bold with it and so if you have a weakness right if you know that you have these addictions this is a boundary that you might want to consider setting around yourself i know plenty of people who have decided that they are not going to do social media because of the fact that it is too easy to sneak out and do something or it's too easy for them to slide into something that they didn't have no business sliding into absolutely i mean sliding into the dms there it is and that's why to your point a lot of our clients one of them doesn't have it or both choose not to have it because it's a danger zone we just did a conference this past weekend and we were talking about social media etiquette for couples and and somebody i remember some time ago reached out to me and kept reaching out to me and i got to the point i had to just shut it down and i remember i put a post up on facebook and instagram and what i did was i took a picture of danielle and i uh and i put this message on i'm gonna read it to you it says beware i'm married if you're using facebook as a hunting ground to secure companionship or to indulge in a secret sexual rendezvous i am not available prey my facebook status my posts my videos my business my ministry clearly indicates that i'm married not just married but happily married i don't have room for any more friends inappropriate conversations occasional check-ins pokes waves or flirtatious back and forth banter keep your pictures keep your compliments and most importantly keep your integrity that's all you really have i'm not just a male i'm a man a male makes decisions with his penis a man makes decisions with his mind i surround myself with real men to ensure that i live in integrity this post is not meant to expose the women who have shamelessly pursued through messenger rather this post is meant to expose me for who i really am happily married anything and everything that i will ever want to need is found in my wife danielle pettiford so take a good look at this picture there's no me without her wear package deal and if that's something that you're into the answer is still no i'm a member of a new sexual revolution and i'm leading a movement of honest integral faithful men and women who choose to honor god's first institution marriage regardless of your past it's not too late to jump on board this train it's a one-way ticket on the path to marital fulfillment who's joining me and i think that that was the most shared liked it was probably the most and you know what was cool about that is that see it's all about integrity right can i trust what you're doing when my eyes are not on me so i i wake up to see the post myself and i'm like wow you know instead of me finding out that somebody was pursuing hassani because he was engaging in conversation out of curiosity or he just needed to have his ego stroked instead i find out somebody was pursuing him because he shut them down that's the example that's manhood and that's something that that's something that every woman wants is to know that her husband has integrity when she's not looking there it is that's what we all want to know for the men and for the women all right hope that helped here's the very last addiction and it's really multiple addictions because when you're dealing with see there are some individuals who have an addictive personality for things period so whether it be love or romance or sex it could be alcohol it could be drugs you can be addicted to video games whatever it is if there's something that's drawing you further and further away from your spouse yeah it's critically important that you get that in line and get that in check and listen that is not a marriage issue or a couple issue that is an individual issue that you have to work on um because as you begin to work on you and begin to resolve those issues internally it will positively impact your marriage and so the question is what addiction i'm just saying what are you addicted to yes what are you addicted to you need to really take the time to search yourself because a lot of us number one are oblivious to who we really are right and a lot of us um have this image of us that isn't true to the reality that other people see in us and so we're too high-minded we're too which i don't know you have to dig within yourself just like there's a higher level of you there's a lower level of you that's right just like you have many wonderful qualities you have many struggles and you need to properly assess what that is and you need to be aware of when the lower levels of you are rising that's the thing since we ebb and flow between personalities and all this all the time based on the stresses in our lives we have to be aware we know when we're sinking we have to be aware tune in and dial it down so we hope you got something out of today's show uh we are in a series and we hope to see you in the morning make sure you share this we love you all talk to you soon can't bring us down bring us down our love is too high bring us down hey nothing bring us down bring us down can't nothing brings us down our life is too high to bring us down

Channel: Hasani Pettiford - Infidelity Recovery Specialist

Views: 6,046

Rating: 4.9578948 out of 5

Keywords: infidelity, marriage counseling, infidelity in marriage, affair recovery, cheating spouse

Id: uQFJUKXPbyc

Length: 28min 50sec (1730 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2020