'So my husband's a sex addict' (Interview with a friend about how sex therapy changed her)

On trust, family and the politics of sex

You never really know what’s going on inside your friends’ marriages until they end. Alessia had been with Ben for a decade before he told her he was a sex addict, and their otherwise lovely relationship started to collapse, slowly at first, then very fast. Which is when they began sex therapy.

(God I have loved doing these little interviews with my friends so much. We’ve ended up having these sort of elevated conversations about love and death, which can be oddly therapeutic for both of us, and for me, a lovely privilege as well.)

Here Alessia explains what she learned being married to a sex addict, and how sex therapy changed her.

How did you end up going to sex therapy?

Years earlier my husband told me that when he was young, he'd had a problem with sex lines, but it was all in the past. And I can remember thinking, should I stay? I didn’t like what it said about how he might view women or sex and emotional intimacy. But also - I didn't have a very well established (and still don't) relationship with my own emotional or sexual intimacy.

Then what happened?

Well then I got ill, and he was just unbelievable, looking after me. Eventually I got better and had a baby, and one day I went on his computer to book something and his emails were up, and I saw an email from a dominatrix. I just remember feeling this gut punch. And then I started searching his emails and there was just so much there. Craigslist adverts, meets in car parks, escorts. And I can remember looking at the baby and thinking: But I can't leave.