Subway pitchman, Jared Fogle and “19 Kids and Counting’s” Josh Duggar have a lot in common — they’re two, C-grade celebrities with wives and kids, who on the surface appeared to be living the American Dream, until their sex scandals, some involving children, surfaced.
Now, with the latest revelation about Josh Duggar having not one, but two accounts with the infamous AshleyMadison.com website for married people who want to have affairs, Anna Duggar still claims she’s not divorcing her husband and that she’s still committed to her marriage.
Unfortunately, Josh Duggar isn’t a lone wolf in his pursuit of extramarital affairs, since Ashley Madison claims that they have 39 million users, and now that they’ve been hacked, more names of their clients will be made public. What would you do if one of these users turns out to be your husband?
As a relationship coach, a large percentage of my clients are married to men who are hooked on porn, sex addicts, and cheaters, and I also have an astronomical number of clients who have been molested by their own fathers, and for these reasons I feel that the Fogle-Duggar debacle can be a great vehicle to bring these two closeted problems to light.
Fogle and Duggar, in my opinion, are both sex addicts, although not all therapists believe that sexual addiction is a true addiction, I personally believe that sex addiction is very real, very widespread, and increasingly on the rise; and I further believe that internet porn, with guestimates that 30 percent of all the traffic on the web is porn related, is feeding this monster.
So what is sex addiction? According to the National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity, sex addiction is “engaging in persistent and escalating patterns of sexual behavior acted out despite increasing negative consequences to self and others.” Like all addicts, a sex addict will continue engaging in dangerous behaviors that can and ultimately will destroy their health, their mates’ health, their relationships, their finances, and their entire life; and even the fear of scandal, disgrace, divorce, job loss, and jail time won’t stop them.
If you discovered that your husband were engaging in the kind of over-the-top behaviors that Fogle and Duggar were doing, would you be like Anna Duggar and stand by your man, or would you be like Jared Fogle’s wife, Katie, and divorce him?
One warning – whether a woman divorces or stays with a sexual predator, she will still have to deal with the reality that these kinds of men have a real potential to harm their children. I would advice any woman living this horrific scenario that it is her responsibility, first and foremost, to protect her children. She must read this man the riot act, instill the fear of God in him, and let him know that he will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, should he lay a hand on those children. I have had way too much experience with sexually abused people to know that, eventually, they are capable of coming to a place of forgiveness toward their fathers, but it’s infinitely harder to get them to forgive the good parent, their mother, for not protecting them.
Cindi Sansone-Braff, The Romance Whisperer, talks to the dead to show you how to live well and love better. She is the author of Grant Me a Higher Love and Why Good People Can’t Leave Bad Relationships. Free excerpts of these books are available on Amazon. Call-in or listen every Thursday night, 7:00 pm EST, to her radio show, where you can get free psychic and relationship advice: www.blogtalkradio.com/higher-love. Be sure to check out her web site at: www.grantmeahigherlove.com. She was named Best Psychic five years in a row by the Long Island Press, recommended by Newsday as one of the best psychic/mediums on Long Island, featured in the Daily News and Cablevision’s Neighborhood Journal. Visit her Facebook Page: Why Good People Can’t Leave Bad Relationships.