There are a few newcomers I have talked to about this, however it seems everyone wants to lay blame in a nice neat box with a bow on top and that isn't what this is all about.
I just want people to be careful with the advice that is thrown out especially when dealing with something as serious as a mental issue...
My counselor and I were talking on this same subject about a month ago. She's a psychiatrist, which means she went to medical school, and has a background in science, rather than the Dr. Phil pop-culture approach that is not based on evidence but rather opinion.
She said that the test of seeing if someone has a personality disorder that is chemically or biologically based is to treat it as a true disease. So if someone is bi-polar or depressed, they will act consistently in all circumstances since the disease is continuous. If you have a spouse that tells you they lie to you or cheat on you because of a sex addiction, scientifically, it would be they would not be able to control it. That is, they would be cheating on the OP or they would lie in almost all circumstance where there's no stakes involved - like lying to a waitress or a checkout clerk.
It's like diabetes. If you have it, you'll need insulin whether you are sitting in the room with your husband, with your kids, with the car repair guy, whomever. But if you can PICK and CHOOSE, it becomes less like a disease and more like a choice.
If your spouse is kind and nice to the person he or she is cheating with, but a jerk to you, that's inconsistent. Someone who who has a broken leg will be in pain if they are in the car with their husband or on the porch with their lover.
I think we talked about this to understand how important diseases are. Clearly, there are things like sexual addiction, but in those cases, the people cannot stop having sex with others. So it doesn't matter who they have sex with, it will be a person they meet, a 70-year old woman who wants to do it, the only criteria is that they need sex. If your spouse says they need to feel loved and cherished, well, that's a lot different then sex addiction.
There was a discussion I had with my stbx-h a long time ago, where he said that he thought he might be bipolar. When I mentioned that he never seemed to get angry at his mom, he said that she never made him angry. But if someone is truly bipolar, it doesn't matter what the other person is like, the bipolar disease can't distinguish one person from another.
The reason I wanted to point it out is because I truly think there are seriously ill people with mental illnesses and that causes severe pain to the people around them. But wanting to schtup with the local bakery girl, that seems less like a disease and more like malaise and horniness.
