Years ago, before I knew about my husband’s sex addiction, one of the things that drew me to him, that I really liked and respected about him, was how he seemed to have broken away from the pattern of addiction and dysfunction in his family. His dad was an alcoholic, his siblings had done time for a variety of drug related crimes, and here he was: the one sane and functional member of his family. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t do drugs and was (as far as I knew then) scrupulously honest. He drove the speed limit, signaled when he turned and came to a full stop at every stop sign. I met him while he was taking some of the most challenging classes at a prestigious university, having worked hard and graduated near the top of his high school class.

After his addiction came to light and I saw just how deep and how far back his compulsive behavior extended, and as my eyes slowly cleared from the fantasy and denial that clouded my own thinking, I began to realize just how hard it is to overcome the scars that a dysfunctional childhood leaves. When I met him, the solution to dysfunction was easy; follow the codependent mantra: work harder, do better. So, I assumed Mark was better, stronger and more determined than others, allowing him to come through his childhood unscathed, when weaker and lazier men (or weaker, lazier children) would have succumbed.

The truth was, my husband hadn’t come through his childhood unscathed. (Does anyone?) He knew he did not want what he had grown up with, so he tried to imitate the trappings of a sane and fulfilling life — getting good grades, going to college, getting a job, staying away from the alcohol and drugs that wreaked havoc in his family — without really knowing what lay beneath, unable to recognize the ways in which he was repeating the same compulsive patterns in a new way. And I (as much as I thought I was oh so healthy and sane and better than he in my not-addictness) wasn’t truly healthy enough myself to realize that the popular indicators of success (a college degree, a job, the lack of a criminal record, abstention from drugs, alcohol and cigarettes) are not necessarily indicative of mental, emotional and spiritual health.

Neither of us realized it was possible to, as we both had, work extremely hard at entirely the wrong things. Neither of us realized it was possible to remove some of the symptoms, and take on some of the trappings of health and well-being, without touching underlying distortions of thinking so deeply ingrained they weren’t even noticeable anymore. Until those trappings fell away, until we’d nearly lost our marriage and torn apart the family and the new life we’d built, neither of us could see that we were living a fantasy of health and not the real thing at all.