Are You Courageous Enough to Explore and Admit Your Ignorance?

In a blog and video earlier this year, I identified and illustrated four adverse factors that husbands of sexual abuse (SA) survivors potentially bring into their marriage. Adverse Factors are the perspectives and behaviors a husband brings into his marriage that mimic the events surrounding his wife’s sexual abuse and/or clash with the effects of his wife’s sexual abuse. Some…

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What do you do when your wife shares her troubled feelings about her sexual abuse?

Not all survivors talk about their childhood sexual abuse. But some do. Among those who do, some share the dark experiences and feelings of their trauma over and over. So as the husband of a survivor, what do you do when your wife shares her trauma with you? A husband’s mind can easily wander off to sports, work, and to-do…

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Navigating through Family Expectations during the Holidays “The Holidays!” Hallmark movies and cards present the holidays with warm, nostalgic scripts and scenes. Songs of the holidays resound with jingles of joy. Decorated homes and cookies portray all things nice and beautiful. The center stage for the holiday festivities is the family gathering. But for victims of childhood sexual abuse (CSA),…

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Reframing How We Respond to Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors (Part 2)

In my previous blog, I proposed our need to reframe our thinking about childhood sexual abuse (CSA) by understanding that the outcome for most CSA survivors is post-traumatic stress disorder and complex traumatic stress disorder. Once we have reframed our understanding of CSA, we can work towards reframing our response to survivors of abuse. Reframing our response includes these three…

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Navigating through Family Expectations during the Holidays

“The Holidays!” Hallmark movies and cards present the holidays with warm, nostalgic scripts and scenes. Songs of the holidays resound with jingles of joy. Decorated homes and cookies portray all things nice and beautiful. The center stage for the holiday festivities is the family gathering. But for victims of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), being with the family of origin—where the…

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Seasonal Triggers: Our Bodies Remember

A survivor’s memory of trauma can be triggered when any of their five physiological senses are stimulated by an environmental condition that occurred during their trauma decades earlier. If your wife is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, there are environmental conditions that can trigger her memory of the abuse. When this occurs, the trauma of her past once again invades her present. The seasonal changes of autumn can be powerful and plaguing triggers.

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Coping with COVID-19 in a Marriage Affected by Sexual Abuse

During the Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic, many marriages are being challenged in new ways as “Stay at Home” orders are given to many states and localities. Constant togetherness is not always a good thing. Men and women in marriages affected by a spouse’s childhood sexual abuse can find it extra challenging in our new normal. These challenges include: Conflicted couples become more…

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