Maddona Keightley: Trusting my husband after seeing his sex addiction

Maddona Keightley says her world turned upside down when she discovered her husband’s sex addiction. But still thought her marriage was worth saving.

When Madonna Keightley first found out her husband had an online sex addiction her life was turned upside down.

“I didn’t know who to turn to or where to find help. I didn’t really want to tell anyone, because I felt so embarrassed that I’d married a sex addict,” she said.

Ms Keightley, a counsellor in Melbourne, said that only a few days into her marriage, she made the life-changing discovery while tracking suspicious credit card changes.

“It was just one month and one day after our wedding when my world fell apart,” she said, adding they had been together for five years before this.

“He denied everything, claiming someone else must have stolen and used his card, but deep

down, I knew the truth.”

Ms Keightley said her husband’s behaviour involved objectifying women and seeking validation online.

“The early days were difficult, especially when I thought I saw my husband staring – such as at a woman in a bikini, or in activewear.” she said.

“When I confronted him, there was no empathy, just defensive behaviour.

“I felt like a fool for trusting him and then marrying him.

“(I had) sleepless nights, always feeling sick, while my brain was constantly trying to piece together what he had done and who with, as well as the endless search for more evidence.”

As time progressed and with the help of a certified sex addiction therapist, Ms Keightley and her husband found themselves on an active road to recovery.

“He learned to be empathetic towards me and what I had endured. He also learnt why he resorted to this acting out behaviour,” she said.

Ms Keightley said she now understood how sexual addictions varied for each individual.

“Sex addiction, I discovered, is not one-size-fits-all,” she said.

“For some, it’s pornography, for others, it’s seeking massages with inappropriate endings or engaging in online interactions,” she said.

Maddona Keightley has opened up about how she coped with her husband's sex addiction.

For Ms Keightley, despite her husband’s addiction, their marriage was worth saving.

“It would be easy to focus solely on the negative, but my husband is more than his addiction.”

“I have heard many women say they wouldn’t stay in a marriage like mine, but I have found more reasons to stay than to leave,” she said.

For her husband, Ms Keightley thinks childhood trauma may have been a factor in his development of addiction.

“He said it was like a weight had lifted from his shoulders when he finally spoke about the shame he carried for around 50 years,” she said.

Ms Keightley said the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists (APSATS), played a significant role in her personal recovery.

Now she has been trained to help others in her situation and wants there to be more advocacy for partners of those suffering from addiction.

“I have now trained to become an APSATS betrayal trauma counsellor as there are so few of us in Australia,” she said.

Experts say sexual addiction is highly misunderstood.

Kelly Anne Mitchell, a relationship expert, said that sex addiction was a compulsive disorder.

“It’s about the inability to control sexual behaviours, so they get in the way of your life,” she explained.

Sex addiction is a compulsive disorder, experts say.

“Like any other addiction, it’s essential to understand that it’s a genuine condition,” she said.

“It’s important for people to understand that it is a serious affliction, as opposed to someone who likes sex a lot,” she said.

Gavin Brown, a Clinical Psychologist at an addiction facility, said that there were factors in a person’s life which can lead to sexual addiction.

“A lot of addiction is really just an attempt to regulate negative emotion in some way,” he said.

“Sex is the particular medium that gets used to help regulate that negative emotion.”

Mitchell noted that childhood trauma didn’t cause sexual addiction but it could be a perpetuating factor.

“Early childhood trauma does not cause sex addiction, but it can be a factor in why people with a sex addiction have it,” she said.