Your Rights in the Wake of His Wrongs

I have the right to ask for what I want and then choose how I will respond if you can’t or won’t give it to me.
~ Iyanla Vanzant

My baby girl is nursing a broken heart. Like a whole lot of 16-year-olds dealing with her first heartbreak, she's trying to figure out what went wrong. And what she's figured is this: By setting boundaries and by asking for what she wanted (she asked for more regular contact when she and her beloved were apart instead of the 48-hour silences), she was accused of being "emotionally manipulative."
"Am I, Mom?" she asked. 
No. She's not. 
She's wiser than her years and though this was her first romantic relationship, she's always had a strong sense of herself and her boundaries. (I've learned a lot from her, incidentally, about setting and keeping boundaries.)
But we know this about boundaries, don't we? That when we ask for what we want/need, others, who don't want to give us what we want/need, will try and convince us that what we're in the wrong. That we're asking for too much. That we're too sensitive. That we're manipulative. In other words, they will respond with counter-moves in order to get us to back down, to make ourselves small, to keep the peace.
To which I say, hell no.
And to which I said to my sobbing daughter, hell no. Your job is not to make yourself small to make others happy, to prioritize others' comfort over your own.
That said, her ex was completely within her rights to say 'no' to more contact. She's allowed to have her own needs/wants. But what was unkind and wrong was the accusation of emotional manipulation. 
And far too many of us accept fault when all we're doing is stating our needs.
As Iyanla puts it, clearly and succinctly, "I have the right to ask for what I want and then choose how I will respond if you can't or won't give it to me."
Which means,  you get to ask him to stop going out for a beer with his friends if it makes you uncomfortable in the wake of cheating.
He gets to say 'yes' or 'no' but his choice makes his values clear and you get to decide what to do with that information.
You get to ask him to move jobs if his affair partner works with him. You get to ask him to seek help for his addiction(s). You get to ask him to give you any/all passwords to any/all electronics.
See the pattern?
You get to ask him.
He gets to respond.
And then you get to choose what to do with that information.
Here's what you don't want to do:
Ask him for what you want/need.
He refuses.
You ask him again. You beg. You plead. You explain.
You sulk. 
Nope.
You are a grown-ass woman who is entitled to ask for what she needs. And then determine what to do with his response.
It's when we expect him to read our minds that things go off the rails. It's when we're afraid to set boundaries that we get into trouble. It's when we don't prioritize our own wants/needs that resentment takes root.
It's not easy, especially if you've spent a lifetime staying small to keep others comfortable.
But this is the time to say 'no more.' 
I have the right to ask for what I want and then choose how I will respond if you can't or won't give it to me.
It's that simple. And that hard.
And that necessary.

Moment-by-Moment Survival Guide for the Heartbroken

So often I hear of betrayed women feeling "stuck". They don't want to leave their marriages, at least not yet. But they just can't seem to move past their pain. And though I wish there was an easy fix for such "stuck-ness", I know of none. I do, however, know of a not-so-easy fix. At least it wasn't easy for me.
It's a matter of focusing on the "now".
It's perhaps no coincidence that, perusing the bookshelves for something – anything – that would help me cope with my maelstrom of pain, I picked up a little book called The Power of Now, by a guy named Eckhart Tolle. (This was in his pre-Oprah days and I'd never heard of him.)
I began reading through my tears. And though it's not a simple read, I managed to discern this: Pain comes from focussing on the past. And anxiety comes from focussing on the future.
Yet we live in the present. All we ever have is this precise moment.
Consider that so much of the pain surrounding betrayal is about focusing on what happened (the mind movies imagining the two of them together, the reading and re-reading of text messages and e-mails, the triggers that transport us back to the moment when we first discovered or that remind us of what was happening one week/month/year ago) or on what might happen (he could do it again, I could wind up destitute and alone, they could be laughing at me from their yacht...). In both cases, however, you're not focusing on the now. Right now, for example, you're reading this post. Whether or not he is or is not still having an affair isn't the point. You, right now, are okay.
That's not to say you're not hurting. Probably a lot.
But you're alive. You're breathing and functional and able to read. So, for all intents and purposes, you're okay. Stay focussed on that simple truth.
You are okay. I am okay.
And guess what? What happened is over. All the hand-wringing and finger-pointing in the world is not going to undo what's already occurred. And about what might happen? Well, you likely have a lot less control over that than you realize. You can control yourself. And that's about it. The rest, you have to take on faith.
It's not easy. Certainly not for a reform(ing) control freak like I. To give up the long-held notion that I can magically control those around me was tough. But the evidence that I couldn't – for all my best intents – was all around me.
I had "now". So I held on tight.

Sex Addiction: Is that why your husband cheated?

It took six months, following the initial discovery of my husband's affair, for him to confess the truth. It wasn't just one affair...it was dozens. He was, he confessed, a sex addict.
The night my husband told me, he curled up on the floor in the fetal position, sobbing. He told me that I was disgusted with him and that he'd leave.
The truth is I was relieved. Relieved because the missing piece was finally there to complete the puzzle I'd been agonizing over. "Why, why, why...?". I suddenly got it. While I wasn't exactly happy with this revelation, it gave me something I could understand. His affair had always baffled me. He'd chosen someone nasty, troubled and unattractive, inside and out. When I learned that their relationship wasn't really a relationship at all but a transaction...well, I could begin to let go of the questions that had plagued me.
But that was only the start.
My husband had already been working with a counsellor that specialized in sex addiction. Though he wasn't a CSAT (certified sex addiction therapist), he was responsible for setting up a number of sex addiction treatment centers and was a recovered sex addict himself.
We spoke with him immediately and he gave me a quick Sex Addiction 101 chat. "Don't ask yourself what those women have that you don't," he advised me. "What they have, you don't want. They're very troubled people."
He explained to me that sex addiction is perhaps better termed an "intimacy disorder." The emphasis isn't on sex at all, really, but on the sex act as self-medicating. Most addicts use it to numb emotional pain, loneliness, anxiety. They turn to it the same way an alcoholic turns to a drink. But when the act is over, the addict can be overwhelmed with feelings of shame, guilt, self-loathing...which often leads to promises of abstinence, further acting out...and the cycle repeats.
I am, by no means, an expert. I am, however, someone with a front-row seat as this addiction is being wrestled with.
Today, Oprah, together with Dr. Drew Pinsky (he of Celebrity Rehab fame), are tackling the issue of sex addiction. Dr. Drew's new VH1 Show is Sex Rehab...and my fingers are tightly crossed that it doesn't become voyeuristic, but rather shows the gritty, sad side of an issue that too often becomes joked about.
I continue to learn. It has been extraordinarily painful. It's even tougher, I believe, to heal from an affair when your spouse is often so busy beating back his own demons that he has little time for your own angst.
However, I remain hopeful that the day will come when we will be able to talk about sex addiction in the same manner as other addictions – that the cloak of shame will be lifted.