The Dating Detectives - Confessions of a Dogfish

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

We have a very special episode today that’s a little bit different. Since we started the show we have wanted to talk to someone who has been on the other side of these stories, and then one day we got an email from a man named Jim who wanted to come on do exactly that. Today Jim, a recovering chronic cheater and sex addict, tells us his story to share the red flags that women missed while dating him. Along with Jim we have Marnie Breeker & Duane Osterlind of the Helping Couples Heal podcast to give us some insight on sex addiction and betrayal trauma.  If you or someone you know relates to anything you heard on today's show please visit https://helpingcouplesheal.com/resources/ for information on books, podcasts, hotlines, and in person/ virtual mental health care.  ***The following Program contains names, places and events that have been anonymized or fictionalized for the purposes of protection and safety. The following Program is provided for entertainment purposes only and any commentary from the hosts are strictly conjecture and should not be held as making any definitive statements about the truth or identity of any particular individuals or circumstances. If you or a loved one are involved in an abusive relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for support.***See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The following program contains names, places, and events that have been anonymized or fictionalized for the purposes of protection and safety. The following program is provided for entertainment purposes only, and any commentary from the hosts are strictly conjecture and should not be held as making any definitive statements about the truth or identity of any particular individuals or circumstances. If you or a loved one are involved in an abusive relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7-233 for support. I'm 40 years old. I was married 12 years. I've been divorced for a couple months. And I slept with 25 women during my marriage. Hi, Hannah. Hey. So, listen, I have to get right into it because I'm kind of excited. I love Monday mornings because new episode of dating detectives. But I have to give you a little tip for today's episode.

Yeah, everybody, like, buckle in. So basically today, we have a guest on who was a dog. fish. He will tell you his tale, but he's done some shit. And in addition to being a dogfish, he is also a recovering sex addict in the 12-step program. And we also brought on to experts of sex addiction, like marriage and family therapists, because we had a lot of questions. And, you know, sex addiction is a whole thing and we talk about it. But dog fishing element of what he did, I think we can take away from no matter what your experience is. You don't have to have gone through exactly the situation that this man, Jim, Jim went through. We can take away a lot from what the expert shared.

So thank you for sharing that, Hannah, because y'all, I am like right out the gate, not crazy about this fella. Yeah, McKenzie's like, I have this dude. But this is a very educational episode. Like, there's a lot to be learned here. And so I'm excited for you guys to listen to. to what I said and maybe, I'm curious to know what you guys take away from it. Oh, yeah. And I didn't know. There's so much we didn't know about sex addiction. It's like,

yeah, we'll get into it. But even, not even about that. There's a lot about, I'm going to spoil a phrase that I really loved. We'll get into it. But betrayal trauma, they talk a lot about. And I feel like anyone who's dealt with any betrayal is going to get a lot out of this episode. Yeah. As soon as I heard that, it resonated right away. I was like, oh, that tracks. So let's get it. to it. Let's talk to Jim. Okay, so let's get into it. I want to introduce you guys to who we have with us today. First, I'd like to introduce Marnie. Marnie, can you tell us a little bit about you, please? My name is Marnie Breaker. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, a certified sex addiction therapist, and a clinical certified partner specialist, which means that I have

extensive training and working with partners that have been betrayed by infidelity and sex addiction or serial cheating. And I own my own treatment center in Los Angeles and San Diego, California, called the Center for Relational Healing. I am the co-host of the Helping Couples Heal podcast and the co-founder with Dwayne Austerlund of the global coaching company Helping Couples Heal, which provides services to people all over the world that are dealing with betrayal trauma.

Thank you so much for being here. We also have Dwayne here. Dwayne, tell us a little bit about you. Yeah, thanks for having us on. My name is Dwayne Ocelain. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified sex addiction therapist supervisor. And I run a agency in Long Beach, California called Nova's Mindful Life that focuses on sex addiction and betrayal. And also I'm the co-founder at Helping Couples Heal that focuses on Helping Couples Heal after betrayal from a trauma perspective. That's really amazing. I'm so excited that we, as much as McKenzie and I, Gabin all the time is fun. I'm so excited to have all these people here that are such experts. Amazing. Thank you so much. And we also have Jim. Hi, Jim. Hey, how are you all this evening? Good. How are you? It's so nice to have you here. Thank you. I'm really excited to be here.

Can you tell us a little bit about you, Jim? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm 40 years old. I'm divorced, and the reason we're all here is that I am a recovering habitual cheater. I came up. I came on because I wanted to talk about the red flags that were missed and the ones that as a narcissist, I was able to just explain a way that would have gotten me caught millions of times. This is definitely a very different episode from one that we've done. So our whole concept is talking about stories where people deceive usually in the dating world. And we're so grateful that you're willing to talk about your experience since you are recovering and obviously I've done so much work. So we want to hear your story and see what we can all learn

and benefit from it. Anything else you want to share about how you got here or anything else from anybody in the intro department before we jump into the story? I think we need to just jump in. I'm talking at the bit. Jim, as we listen to where you come from in your experience, is it okay that we ask you some questions? Myself as an investigator, like I think I'm going to have a lot of questions. Is that okay? Absolutely. that's why I'm here. Okay, so take it away for us, Jim. Tell us wherever you want to start and kind of give us an idea of why you're here. And we need all the detail. We need the teeth. I'm 40 years old. I was married 12 years. I've been divorced for a couple months. And I slept with 25 women during my marriage. I met my wife online in the summer of 2006. I was home from a year-long vacation in Iraq. So I had a had hell of PTSD when I got back. And so our first five months, she was already hurting from her last relationship.

So it was like two sick people. And so all we did was fight and mess around. Three day cycle. Fight. Calm down. Mess around. Fight again. We continue on the string for like the next four months when finally like I told her,

I had feelings and she either needed to step up and get in a committed relationship with me or I was going to go find someone else. Because, of course, I'd been messed around with other people this whole time anyways. Even though I had all these strong feelings for her, I was still doing stuff. I was using porn and flirting online with women. I was always trying to get pictures from people. Occasionally, I had fun sex anonymously with somebody. I feel bad about it.

And, like, I genuinely loved my ex-wife and still do. But right after we got married, I was hit on by somebody I knew in person. and in the space of 48 hours, I went from not really knowing who it was, getting like 200 photos of them to them following a sexual harassment complaint against me with the school. How were you able to give your energy so intensely to somebody else while you were engaged? She went out of town for the weekend, and I could not handle being by myself. I just want to clarify one thing before we really get deep into the rest of the story. Can you define sex addiction, like officially?

So just like alcoholism, most sex addicts use the 12 steps that were developed for alcoholism in the 1930s to cover addiction. It's the original 12 steps. And the definition is very simple. Once you start, can you stop on your own choosing when you want to stop? And once you do stop, can you stay stopped? So, for example, I spent all of college being a slut. I kept trying to date people, but then I get super clingy after the first time we went out and that was it. But when I decided during that semester, it was safer to have physical intimacy with someone first before I opened up about the rest of me.

So I don't want to mess around the first date because I wanted the validation that I was good enough for them. and they were like, oh, he just wants one thing. I'm out. Over the years, as my addiction got more serious, what I didn't realize until much later is, there was nothing left of me except sex. Dwayne, I'm curious what you have to say. What Jim's saying is is not uncommon for people

who are struggling with compulsive sexual behavior because sex becomes such a priority. And I see so many men who say, yeah, I had sex with people I didn't want to have sex with because sex was the only way in which I knew how to get what Jim was kind of describing. Validation to not feel pain, to not feel alone in the world, that sex was the only way they knew how to do it. And so it becomes that. But I also want to say that doesn't excuse the harm caused that behavior either.

Yeah. Those both can be true for sure. I've honestly probably hit on every woman I've interacted with or used my lack of a action to them as a reason to ignore the work ethic and collect or even their humanity. So like when I say I'm recovering, I'm learning to be a civilized, decent human being. So when you talk about hurting people whenever you're like get hurt before you get hurt and all of this stuff, did you feel bad about hurting them or was it just it's like par for the course? It doesn't matter.

I was always suicidal afterwards. Oh, it affected you bad. Sadly. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about your wife some more. So you meet your wife. Tell us more about what happens and what transpires in your relationship. So after we got married, the sexual harassment complaint against me, I got in trouble and I was able to hide it from her. But as a result, there was a six-month gap between when I graduated and when I started getting paid and the job I'd been hired for. If you think about how stressful your first year of marriage is, and then throw in there, you don't have any. income and your wife has moved 300 miles from her family to live in this little tiny town in the middle of nowhere. And she's supporting you because she cashed out her entire 401k to support

you because she thought she didn't know that we were not going to have money. And so she was really stressed out, full of resentment. I was stressed out in full of resentment and guilt, though, because I knew the reason I wasn't getting paid and was being delayed in the hiring was what I had that little two-day flirtation I'd had a few months prior. Like, I knew that there was, I knew that. Yeah, so I knew that was why. So, like, really stressed out, a lot of stuff going on. And for some reason, I get this notion that I need to know every detail about the sex life of my best friend and his wife, who is my wife's best friend.

And they are the godparents of our children. and like, rather than the healthy way I thought the solution was clearly to text his wife and ask her all sorts of dirty questions and hit on her like crazy and of course that lasted for about a month before she had enough of being sexually harassed. So then I had to tell my wife,

hey, our best friends aren't our friends anymore, sorry. And that was the first time that she knew I had a problem. And we went to a doctor in September 2010. He told me I was a sex addict. And she remembered that, but I forgot sometime within the next 20 seconds. Because then I went through the next 12 years,

carrying on, cheating, flirting. She was always losing female friends because I was trying to sleep with them. Fast forward to February 2021. I was like, hey, I think I have a problem with sex. And she looks at me and goes, you don't remember being called a sex addict. in 2010. What have you been in therapy before the last 12 years? And like any good narcissistic man,

I said, the way you treat me. And never mind that she'd been catching me every six months flirting online. I just wanted to get from Marnie and Dwayne, like not absorbing a diagnosis, specifically a sex addict diagnosis. Like what goes into that? Well, part of it, when in order for someone to continue to act out, really in any addiction, right, especially an addiction of deception. In order to continue to engage in an addictive behavior, you have to be telling yourself all sorts of distorted things, right? The addiction is fueled by distorted thinking. And so I think that Jim, obviously, like, he was diagnosed with that by a doctor. He forgot about it, right? Like, that's one of the symptoms, is like, in order for him to continue to act out, he can't realize that he has a problem, right?

So you would ask about the assessment and the diagnosis of sex addiction. And I think this is important because when someone hears sex addiction, they often think it's an excuse for bad behavior. It's like, oh, you can cheat and do all these awful things and live a life of deception and harm the people you love the most. But the thing with addiction is that it's about continuing to act out and do all these things while you're hurting people. So you're living in a place of complete and utter distortion and really like delusion. And for Jim, the piece about victimization is that instead of Jim looking at himself and realizing what I'm doing is really causing trauma. I am hurting people. I'm destroying my family. But I'm the victim here. I'm going to focus

on how my partner, my wife, is doing all these things to hurt me. And I want to make it clear. I wanted to stop. I just didn't know that I could or that it was an option or how. Like, I knew I was hurting her. There's no way you can deny hurting somebody when you watch them cry or when they tell you they hate you. but I didn't know there was a choice and I couldn't bring myself to be honest about what I was doing. I just felt helpless. Like, this is just my lot in life.

I want to quickly get to the narcissism element before we keep going with the story. Just because I think it's a buzzword that we throw around a lot, especially talking about cheating. But I don't know that I even fully understand what it is and what the signs are. Yeah, yeah, it is a word

that's like throwing around a lot. It's real popular. on TikTok right now. Right. Everything, you know, everybody's talking about narcissism. But when we look at addiction, it's really, it's this complete self-focused that Marnie was kind of talking about, where everything is in service to the addiction because the addiction is the primary way in which they keep themselves out of pain. And they have to dilute others. They have to delude themselves in order to keep that going. As Jim was saying, it's like, I almost feel. I almost feel like I can't stop. It's so out of control. And so the focus has to become all about the self,

because that's how they're going to survive. And if they actually looked at others, they would have to see the consequences of their behavior and really acknowledge all of the pain that they're causing, which causes them more pain. So they just don't do it. And they use all of these tools and deceptions to to keep that addiction going at all costs until once again something happens that blows it all up and they're forced in a way their hand has to be forced to change not all the time but most of the time it's something's going to blow up and they're going to have to face it and look at it that's so real and i think i mean we're talking about a case of sex addiction that's an extreme case but i think that i feel like a lot of people can

pick out signs of that in relationships where it's a little, it's complicated because you don't assume that somebody, you think of narcissism talking about yourself like, oh, I'm so great. But it's equally narcissistic to be like, I'm the worst and we should all focus on that. Or it's just thinking about myself all the time. So like I recently learned that humility isn't thinking less of myself. It's thinking of myself less. So like. Sound bite. Because like with the narcissism, exactly what Marnie was talking about, so many times I would pick a fight just to see what my spouse knew.

That's one of the red flags we'll talk about later. That's, no, let's talk about it now. So picking a fight to find out what your spouse knew, that's interesting because that's something I haven't thought about. Like, it happens, though. We fought every three days roughly through the entire marriage, just like I described when we were first dating. And it was basically like,

you know, I would get what I needed from her emotionally or physically, and then the next day would be okay. And then by halfway through that second day, I was no longer okay, and I needed another fix from somewhere. Like, I just got my shot of medicine. Or, like, she said something nice to me or gave me a compliment, because that's all, when it really boiled down to it, like, the two reasons I told people I cheated was I wanted people to compliment me, and I wanted a specific sex act under me.

So that was it. That was the only reasons I ever told myself or justified it to myself. In reality, I couldn't have stopped anyways. I want to point out something that's also really important. When we're looking at this, we're looking at the compulsive side of the behavior, the compulsive sexuality, that's one piece. But then there's this other piece that we call the integrity abuse behaviors. So you can have the sexual compulsivity,

and that's going to be linked to the integrity abuse. and the integrity abuse is the gas sliding, the line, the manipulation, all of that stuff. That's a real important component to look at. And some people who maybe don't struggle with sex addiction, maybe they're cheating, but they don't have sexual compulsive behavior, could have the integrity abuse behaviors, right, without the sexual compulsivity. So when you're looking at cheating, it's important to be able to look at those two pieces. All cheating is not done just because someone is sexually compulsory.

impulsive, right? I think that's a very important distinction to make. But this integrity abuse that happens, you know, what they need to incorporate to keep their deceptive sexuality active, right? They have to engage in all of these abusive behaviors, like I was saying earlier, gaslighting, manipulation, picking a fight, blame shifting. If your husband wakes you up in the middle of the night and proceeds to tell you that something that actually happened was just you having a dream about it. It is time to leave. It is because that classic gas lighting.

Yeah, there was a night in 2015. I went to bed early and then of course, like an idiot, I fell asleep while on my phone, which is like how you get caught 101. And so she came up there and I woke up vaguely as she was walking up to me and she like glanced at my phone. She could see there was an app on it that I was using the cheat. I just casually rolled over

and I wouldn't move and I played dead and she went into the bathroom and I went in and I deleted everything off my phone when she was in the bathroom and she came back and I was still laying there on my phone and there was nothing she could do so she got in bed

about two and a half hours later I woke her up saying wake up, wake up! You're having a nightmare about me cheating on you again. I described the precise situation that like she was screaming about move, I see your phone, I see your phone, let me look at your phone.

And I was like, yeah, I'm about to, and I had to wake up anyways because it was time for me to go to work. And that's her gross into like, waiting for information. Did she believe you? Was she like, oh, thank goodness you told me. It was just a dream. We fought for a good hour and a half about it. And I stuck to my guns the whole time because I was going to be the hill I was going to die on. And I think what is often, often missed.

is this, you know, what me and Marnie are so passionate about is the trauma that's caused to the partners who go through this. When a person is consistently gaslit by a partner, the person is supposed to care for them, they actually, we call it like a traumatic injury to their second brain or intuition. So they end up not being able to trust themselves because they're being told over and over, no, you're not seeing what you're not seeing. And this is a huge injury that gets missed often over and over again. And that takes a long time to heal. Jim, you said the reason you came on this podcast is you really wanted to talk about red flags.

You wanted to help the listeners. We were talking about something that's a real red flag. And I want to highlight that, which is when the betrayed partner is experiencing feeling crazy. Like that internal struggle of, I don't know what's true. I don't know if I can trust myself, right there. The intuition has been shattered. That's a red flag. So when you start to feel that, I feel like I'm going crazy.

That's the red flag. Listen to that. We call it femtution. And it's not, I mean, typically we talk about cases with women. It's all people's intuition, femtuition. We all have feminine energy. But yeah, it's so hard to trust. I would also say, yeah, the effect is,

to really appreciate how traumatic this is for individuals who have been betrayed by this, the trauma is so real. And oftentimes, many of these individuals who have been betrayed, they feel so alone in the world. They can't talk to anybody about it because they don't know what they're going to say. They feel like they're crazy. Yeah, they feel like it's their fault. Why am I having such intense reactions to this?

I'm going crazy. but to really appreciate how traumatic deceptive sexuality is. I just really would want to put that out there because I think it's just so important to these people who have suffered this because it's just, it can be really debilitating. And once again, it doesn't have to be sex addiction. It's just that, it's that deep betrayal piece of someone you trust, who you have an attachment to, who then basically blows that up.

and all of a sudden you are alone in the world and you don't know what's safe anymore. And that and of itself, it's its own trauma. That's a good, you don't know what's safe anymore. That resonates with me from when I was dating. Yeah. Jim, can you go back to the first time you cheated on her in person from like jumping from online to the person? Yeah, how do you go from online to in person? Like, how does that happen?

A lot of things happened. Obviously, she was upset with me about what it happened with. our best friends. I was really upset about losing my best friend because it's the first male friend I ever truly had. And we've been friends for about two and a half years on this and a sudden. And I was hurting. And she and I weren't getting along too well. We'd had that rough first six months of marriage and then suddenly that incident happened. And now she's pregnant. And I'm going to Germany by myself in six weeks and she's not coming. And then I'm going to Afghanistan, like as soon as I get there and I'm scared to death.

And what if I never meet my first child? You know, all sorts of stuff. I saw the opportunity and I contacted somebody that I had hooked up with years ago. And we went out to dinner. And I was telling myself, oh, we're just going to dinner. Nothing's going to happen. Of course, that's not what happened. So we messed around in her car and then I took a shower and a truck stop and a sink.

I eventually went home and then like I felt. really bad about it. And I didn't do anything in person again for a long time. And the person you're in a relationship with is traveling by themselves. And you know it's a five-hour trip and it takes them 12. They're cheating. Are there anything just like the dream plan that you had? Are there any other little things you did to get away with some of these lies or specific instances? Here's the big red flag. I was going to go away for nine months. And 45 days before I went away, I told her we couldn't have sex anymore for the next 30 days. I told her it was because my psychiatrist had adjusted my antidepressant.

I was going to have erectile dysmuching. I just wouldn't be able to get it up because we already knew. Like, I had all sorts intimacy issues because of antidepressants. The reason we couldn't have sex for 30 days is I had chlamydia. And I had taken the medication for it because I'd had sex with like three different women in three days. So yeah, like if your spouse who is always all over you suddenly doesn't want to have sex anymore. Worth exploring. It's a big red flag.

He's probably got something that you don't want and he doesn't want you to know about. Oh, man. And that's such a, I mean, you were smart. It's a good excuse to say like, oh, I adjusted my medication. Yeah, because my medication was always a problem. You planted the seed for a lot of these lies to work. Oh, yeah. Jim, what was your wife's, the final straw?

What, what tipped her over the edge and she's like, this is it? She never had proof that I cheated on someone on her in real life until Mother's Day, 2021. I'd already been kicked out of the army due to my sex addiction. So she's like, well, I'm not coming to the summer with the kids. I'll come in the fall, maybe, maybe. Because like, I'm in recovery, but it's not going well. And then I reached out to this person I talked to online for like a whole year and never met. It was like, hey, do you want to come fly out here when I'm home?

when I'm home alone all summer in this other state. Well, that woman contacted my wife on Mother's Day 2021. And, oh, no. So, like, and my wife was very upset. She made me sleep on the floor, obviously. Wait, did she, so she didn't know, like, the other woman, she didn't know you were married, and then she found out and then told your wife. Oh, no, she knew us.

We'd known each other for almost two years online at this point, you know? So what made her tell your wife? because we had made an agreement where, like, I wasn't going to hit on her anymore. And if I ever did again, she was going to tell my wife. So, like, she did that. And then the next morning, she's obviously upset. We're staying at my in-laws.

And her mom's like, where the hell is my daughter? And so I was like, I need to tell you something. So I told her mom. And I got kicked out that day, obviously. I'm honestly a firm believer that if a couple doesn't start couples therapy within the first three years of somebody having this trouble, the marriage will not last. And that it's the best thing for the spouse to do is to divorce the husband or the cheater. I hate saying it because I miss her, but I would have never gotten better.

I was already in her recovery when she drew me out to the house. I was never going to get better. I was using it as a chance to cheat. Like, I was at a meeting. And, you know, just so it took her throwing me out. And still for the next two years, I've had trouble. all sorts of trouble. It's not like I'm better. And I really believe that in most cases, the best thing for the spouse that's been cheated on to do is to leave the cheater.

I do have a question for Duane and Marnie specifically. If somebody gets out of a relationship where they have betrayal in it and then they enter a new relationship, you carry that trauma. Obviously, you might already come into it being like, I don't trust you, even though you haven't done anything to my knowledge. Do you have any advice for people going through that? You know, knowing what healthy relationships look like in the first place. So studying what a secure functioning relationship is. So you can know the signs of what a healthy relationship is. There's some great, one of my favorites is Stan Taken and his word. I'm wired for love. Oh, there you go. I love Wired for Love. Right. Yeah. You're such a romantic.

You know what a secure functioning relationship is. And so you have some guidepost to guide you. Because once again, if you've been in a betrayed relationship, it's very hard to trust your gut. You have all this trauma that you're carrying with you. But if you have a secure functioning relationship and you build it on that and you have a partner that's willing to walk with you through that, that's also what you want to look, right? We bring our trauma to a relationship and hopefully our partner can support us in that. That would also be a sign that maybe you're in a good relationship. I want to leave people with a little bit of, you know, support after they've just listened to this whole thing. So if this resonates with someone, what should someone do if they feel like they relate? If they feel like someone they know might be going through something like this, one thing would be to listen to the Helping couples heal podcast. What else? Yeah. And they can they can go to helping couplesheel.com and get all the information. I think the most important thing for them to do is to begin to understand this from a

betrayal trauma perspective to really look at it from that lens. And there are a lot of different resources out there now that can support them. Our podcast is one. But if they just search betrayal trauma, they're going to find, they're going to find stuff that can start to help them down that road because it is, it is a really, really tough, tough spot to be. Well, so many people have experienced what you're calling betrayal trauma. Like, I know I have for sure. Yeah. That sounds like such great resource and that's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. We're so glad that you guys were here today. Thank you so much. I want to say one more thing and maybe this can go in there is for the person who's done the portrayal and if you want to heal your partner, if you're in a

relationship and you want to heal them, this is a key component of it, is really understanding betrayal trauma. And I can tell you over our experience, both Marnie and I've seen this over and over again. If you commit to healing your partner, you will heal yourself. So, you know, go for that. It's worth it. There is so much, something so much better on the other side of all of this, like what Jim was describing, all of the pain and misery of living in this life, in this secret sexual life. There is another side to that, and you can heal and you can heal your partner. We see that. And you deserve to heal. Everybody does. And Jim, your willingness to share is That's what I was going to say.

Yes, absolutely. And it's a side that we don't often hear. We don't hear from the betrayer. Like we hear from the women who got their heartbroken or the men who got their heartbroken. But we don't hear from the person who actually experienced that doing the betrayal. And so that's really interesting. So thank you so much, Jim. I know that must have taken a lot for you to be here and tell your story.

This morning, Dwayne. We really appreciate you. Yeah. Thank you so much for having us. Well, goodbye. Bye, guys. Chow to us if you need anything. Thank you so so much.

Man, oh, man, oh man. That was a lot. It was a lot. So, okay, listen, I appreciate what he had to say. I really do. And there's a lot to take away from that, right? Like, when they were talking about betrayal trauma, that's such a real thing. I feel like that's real.

I really appreciated how our experts, like, held Jim accountable without lacking empathy for his addiction because it is an addiction. Like there was a lot of, I mean, anybody who's dealt with addictions, I was like, man, that's like a real. I think it's easy to think sex addiction is just like an asshole who loves sex. And I don't think sex addiction is the same thing as loving sex. I mean, I know it's not. It's like, no. That was a lot to learn about.

Well, I wonder how many people really think that because I think, probably a lot of people who think sex addiction is nothing more than just being someone who just thinks you deserve sex or need sex all the time. I don't, I just don't think that's true. Well, we've talked about it before, the idea that there are many different types of cheating. And a lot of them, especially when you're dealing with the narcissist, there's really not a lot that's about you as a person. Like, you feel like you're not enough, but really no one will ever be in for them. and I feel like. Yeah, it really has nothing to do with you.

But I do think that it's great to know that there are resources out there for you. If you are someone who has been, if you are a victim of betrayal trauma of any sort, small or big, it's nice to know there are resources out there. So you can actually get those resources. I love therapy. There's resources listed in the description of the episode today. So there's in the episode description, there's a list of resources there. So make sure you check them out.

And it's just nice to know that stuff like that is there. I had no idea. Like, I didn't really talk to someone about that. Oh, my God. Well, one, I love that he mentioned Wired for Love. That book is so good. I highly recommend anyone reading it with a partner. It's probably better if you're reading it with your partner.

But I love that book, just saying. And then also just the fact that there's probably more people facing stuff like this than we know because talking about sex is so taboo. and talking about, especially if you're dealing with some, like, can we talk about his wife for a second? We haven't talked about her. Oh, bless, bless her. Because how, I, oh, it's really easy, I think, to take the case, what, why was she staying, right? And we talked about that a little, like her kids, finances, I totally get that.

And also just like, you don't want this kind of stuff to be true, so easy to. you know, tell yourself whatever you need to tell yourself in order to make your life work. Well, you're so tied to this person and you care about them. And it's also, it must be really hard to know that someone that you love is experiencing this, but also you can be sympathetic and you can be compassionate, but to what it? Like, you know, at some point you have to also care for yourself and take yourself out of a situation that's toxic to you. Yeah, he was like, the fact that his addiction was harming every like the finances and his kids and all of that is like get help if anybody you or anyone you know is experiencing anything like this and I you don't want to admit it like he didn't want to admit it.

He barely admits it now. But like I hope maybe this conversation helps more people recognize that you can get help if you are dealing with anything in this department. It is a real thing. So if any of you are going through something like that or you know someone who is and you want to share your story, please email us. We love to hear all different kinds of stories from all different kinds of people. And I think that this is obviously something that isn't talked about a lot or enough, but you can email us, investigate at datingdetectivepod.com with any of your stories. We'd love to hear them. Or hit us up on Instagram at dating detectives podcast. Please, we love when you tell us what you think about all of this. I'm trying to think if there's

anything else we haven't mentioned or talked about in high. Like, we're like on the come from this conversation. It was a long conversation. I'm sure it won't all make the final cut because y'all, he talked a lot. It was a lot. It was wild. Just keep the conversation going on the Instagram because we love to hear your thoughts. We love to hear what you guys have to say. It's so important to us. And we just like to know what your takeaway is from this. It's always nice to know that there's someone out there going through kind of the same thing you are. It helps you feel not so alone. So keep the conversation going. We want to hear from you. What did you think of his red flags too, everybody? He gave us some we've already talked about, some that are new, I'm sure. If you agree, disagree,

I'm curious what people think about that. Red flags. Yeah. And the red flags, I like when he talked about the red flags. Like, he had a lot of them. And coming from him, it was, it was kind of interesting to hear them come from him. Yeah, he definitely wants to, I think, help people. I hope that he can use his experience to do so. You can see why there might be a love-hate relationship for this. I really wish him the best and I'm so glad that he's getting help and hopefully his family can heal from what they've all been through and everybody going through this we have compassion for everyone even the ups and downs same and make sure you get help too you guys know that there's now you know that there's resources out there for you so I hope that you find that I'm excited to see what you

guys think about this episode what you guys think about our guests and also our professionals I want to know if you had any questions about what they said or what this guy said I'm just, I'm so curious what you guys have to say. So, um, let us know. Also, you guys, if you listen to our podcast and you want to give us a five star review, we would really appreciate it. We would appreciate all of your comments and your five star reviews. They mean a lot to us.

And we love and appreciate your support so much. Thanks, you guys. Love y'all. And love you, McKenzie. I love you. We'll see you guys next week with a brand new episode. Bye, my beautiful dating detective. Goodbye, my beautiful armchair, Smith.