The effects of healthy intimacy on physical health are being proved and documented on a regular basis. As researchers continue to work, confirmation of the benefits of healthy intimacy continue to build. Couples who have learned to invest in healthy intimacy not only multiply their joy and cut their sorrows in half, they enjoy greater physical health as well.

Every person longs to be acknowledged and recognized as a person of value. The gift we give each other is the opportunity to share one another’s “shade”, to find shelter in one other’s word of encouragement, affirmation, and blessing.

This is the hope of healthy intimacy.

The hope of healthy intimacy, however, carries with it the responsibility to journey with that part of one’s partner that is difficult – their “shadow side”. In these the most challenging moments of our relationship, we experience the growth that draws us closer.

Betrayal trauma is the result of any disclosure that puts at risk the life of a relationship. The life that is threatened is the shared life two people have built together. Women who have experienced betrayal often experience confusion. It is as if a dense fog suddenly descends upon their world.

Thousands of people suffer through the trauma of sexual addiction. Most struggle in secret. You may be lost in a swirl of confusing and often overwhelming feelings from anger and rage to shame and despair. But you are not alone. We live in a hypersexual culture. This has contributed to a crisis of healthy sexual expression in our society.

You may have experienced something like this. You sit down at the computer you share with your partner. You can’t remember where you filed a document so you begin looking through file folders stored on the computer. You click a file with a name you don’t recognize. Suddenly you are presented with pornographic images too numerous to count.

In the cultural narrative of sexual addiction, all attention gets focused on the person struggling with the addiction. The spouse or partner is often pushed to the side. When attention is directed to the spouse it is often accompanied by either pity or blame. But the partner matters.

The disclosure of betrayal is often a sudden, explosive experience that can leave a spouse shattered. It is as if the person you have trusted to hold you up, suddenly abandons you to fall crashing to the ground. This is why. . . .

“Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends,” Aristotle said. “But they are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not.”

We learn best from personal experience. Hearing the personal experience of others provides a new perspective we might not otherwise have. In this article Melissa…

“Seduction is the art of coercing somebody to desire you, of orchestrating somebody else’s longings to suit your own hungry agenda. Seduction was never a casual sport for me; it was more like a heist, adrenalizing and urgent. I would plan the heist for months, scouting out the target, looking for unguarded entries. Then I would break into his deepest vault, steal all his emotional currency and spend it on myself.”