Co-Addiction vs. Trauma
Understanding the Truth Behind Partners’ Experiences of Betrayal
When a partner discovers that their loved one is struggling with pornography or sex addiction, the emotional fallout is profound. Terms like “co-addiction” and “trauma” are often used to describe the partner’s response, but they reflect very different understandings of what is truly happening.
“It was the 12-step model that birthed the widely held view that partners of sex addicts suffer from their own disease, the disease of co-addiction. Many partners do not find the help they need within the 12-step process alone to move beyond their raw traumatic pain.
When the attachment bond has been violated and broken you have a relational trauma wound. When that happens all the warmth, safety, joy, and comfort that the relationship formally held can no longer be counted on. The relationship now becomes a source of danger because you have discovered that much of what you believed about the one you love was a lie.
We now know that the body’s response to stress and trauma involves hormones and inflammatory chemicals which can foster everything from headaches to heart attacks, particularly in chronically traumatic lives. When you suffer from trauma symptoms you will likely find it impossible to control thoughts, feelings, and relational interactions as prescribed in codependency and 12-step literature unless you receive help to heal from the trauma.
As an experienced therapist trained in partner betrayal, I can help you heal.”
Adapted from APSATS Board Member Carol Juergensen Sheets LCSW, PCC, CSAT, CPPS A Partners Dilemma- Carol The Coach
What Is Co-Addiction?
The concept of co-addiction or co-dependency suggests that the partner of an addict is somehow enabling or participating in the addictive behavior. This model often implies that the partner is:
- Emotionally dependent on the addict
- Seeking control or validation through caregiving
- Contributing to the addictive cycle through denial or over-functioning
While this framework was widely used in earlier addiction treatment models, it has been increasingly challenged—especially when applied to partners of sex and porn addicts.
What Is Betrayal Trauma?
Betrayal Trauma is a term used to describe the specific type of trauma that occurs when someone we depend on for safety and intimacy violates our trust. Partners of those struggling with sex or pornography addiction often experience:
- Shock and disbelief
- Flashbacks, nightmares, and anxiety
- Hypervigilance and intrusive thoughts
- Loss of self-worth and reality distortion
- Profound grief, anger, and disorientation
This is not codependency. This is trauma.
Why the Co-Addiction Label Can Be Harmful
Labeling a betrayed partner as a “co-addict” can be:
- Invalidating – It minimizes the reality of their pain and shock.
- Shaming – It subtly (or overtly) implies that the partner shares blame for the addict’s behaviors.
- Counterproductive – It may push partners into fixing the addict rather than addressing their own wounds and needs.
Research and clinical experience increasingly show that partners do not choose or enable sexual betrayal—they suffer from it. Their reactions are consistent with trauma, not addiction.
A Trauma-Informed Approach
This means:
- You are not to blame.
- Your responses make sense.
- Healing is possible—and it starts with validation, not diagnosis.
I support partners in reclaiming their sense of safety, voice, and worth. Our work is grounded in compassion, science, and the belief that your pain is real and deserves to be heard.
Implementing Prodependence
Family members often struggle to deal with the fact that a loved one is addicted. They also struggle with statements from therapists, friends, and family members telling them their efforts to care for the addict—perhaps taking on extra responsibilities and forgoing personal pleasures and development—indicate they are:
- Obsessed with the addict and his or her behavior
- Enmeshed with the addict
- Enabling the addiction
- Trying to control the addict’s thinking and behavior
- Making the problem worse
Basically, loved ones of addicts are told that they are “codependent” and their efforts to help are counterproductive and facilitating (maybe even escalating) the problem. And that might in fact be the case. But even when it is, the general codependency belief that caregiving loved ones must “stop rescuing” and “detach with love” does not account for or even recognize the fact that they can’t stop caring for the addict any more than they can stop breathing. What they can do is learn to caretake prodependently—in ways that are more helpful to the addict, and by extension to themselves.
Interestingly, prodependence recommends and implements the same basic therapeutic actions as codependence—a fresh or renewed focus on self-care coupled with the implementation of healthier boundaries. However, the models approach this work from vastly different perspectives. Codependence, as a deficit-based trauma model, views loved ones of addicts as traumatized, damaged, and needing help. Prodependence, as a strength-based attachment-driven model, views loved ones of addicts as heroes for continuing to love and continuing to remain attached despite the debilitating presence of addiction.
Consider the following graph delineating traits that are often seen in loved ones of addicts. In the left-hand column are the negative-sounding words associated with codependence. In the right-hand column, these traits are reframed as prodependent positives.
Codependent Versus Prodependent Traits
| CODEPENDENT TRAITS | PRODEPENDENT TRAITS |
| Enmeshed | Deeply involved |
| Externally focused | Concerned about the welfare of others |
| Enabling | Supporting |
| Fearful | Concerned |
| Lacking healthy boundaries | Eager to care for a loved one |
| Can’t say no | Chooses to say yes |
| Obsessed with the addiction | Determined to protect the addict and family |
| Living in denial | Unwilling to give up on a loved one |
| Angry | Fearful of further loss with no control |
| Controlling | Trying to be heard |
| Hypervigilant | Anticipating problems |
As stated above, the primary difference between prodependence and codependence lies in how we frame and think about “the problem.” Prodependence recognizes that loved ones of active addicts are perpetually in crisis mode. Naturally, they try to control the crisis. In the process, they sometimes panic and make bad decisions. They may overdo. They may help too much. They may help ineffectively. They may enable and appear to be pathologically enmeshed. But that does not mean they are psychologically disordered. What it does mean is they are people in crisis, behaving in the ways that people in crisis tend to behave. Rather than blaming and shaming these loving people, prodependence meets them where they are, which is coming from a place of love and a desire for attachment. – Adapted from Prodependence.com, Seeking Integrity LLC website.
Codependence
Codependence is a model of human behavior based in trauma theory. To “be codependent” implies that one tends to bond deeply with those with whom interactions often mirror early traumatic deficits. Failure on the part of the active addict then serves as a trigger for the non-addicted partner to act out his or her unmet needs or abuse from childhood within this troubled adult relationship. Codependence implies that the loved ones of addicts, due to their underlying, often unconscious “childhood issues” tend to, as adults, give too much and love too much. Thus, they attract, enable, and enmesh with addicted partners. The goals of codependency treatment revolve around themes of detachment, self-actualization, becoming less needy, and working through past trauma to become more aware, less enabling, and less accepting of troubled, emotionally unavailable people. Prodependence is a model of human behavior based in attachment theory. To “be prodependent” implies that one is able to create deep, bonded adult attachments that mirror our very human, normative longings for healthy dependence and intimacy. Prodependence assumes that, when one loves and bonds deeply, it is natural and therefore non-pathological to do whatever it takes to ensure the safety and stability of those with whom one is attached. Prodependence implies that loved ones of addicts, regardless of prior history, will take extraordinary measures to keep those they love stable and to ensure the safety of their families. There is no pathology assigned to loving in prodependence. Rather, prodependence asserts that loving addicts or other chronically troubled people healthfully requires a different form of love than that with healthy adults. Loving prodependently requires support, guidance, and informed help. Many signs of codependency seem like normal behaviour. Caring for a needy person does not make you a codependent. However, when the act of caring is excessive, unnecessary and actively hidden behind a facade of normality, it becomes codependency. Compassion is normal, but not when it is so overwhelming that it causes you to pursue needless suffering without seeking a proper solution.
Codependents create an illusion of normality to preserve the status quo while they, and others, suffer ongoing hardship. They are caught in a kind of love-hate relationship. They do not enjoy it, yet they maintain it. This is usually due to deeply embedded emotions or learned behaviours that compel them to preserve, rather than heal the problem.
Codependents tend to:
- Want to care for others
- Have a need to feel needed
- Confuse caring with enabling
- Feel responsible for the suffering of others
- Feel guilty if they do not help others
- Feel attracted to someone in need of help
- Rescue the helpless, back the underdog
- Be enraged by uncaring attitudes of others
- Believe others cannot care for themselves
- Do more than their fair share of work
- Do favours they dislike doing
- Control others to maintain secrecy
- Have a need to please other people
- Maintain own self-esteem with good deeds
- Value other peoples’ good opinions of them
- Suppress, avoid talk about their own feelings
- Avoid showing their own true emotions
- Deny, cover up, downplay their problems
- Tell lies to protect an erring person
- Avoid attention and help from others
- Advise others and focus on their problems
- Appear to be competent and self-reliant
- Do things perfectly to earn approval
- Project a successful, happy image
- Isolate themselves and feel lonely
- Communicate indirectly, through others
- Do not know how to set boundaries
- Become the family guardian
- Vigilant, careful not to expose evidence
- Take over the abuser’s obligations
- Neglect their own personal needs
- Fear failure and resist change
- Fear being alone, losing intimate partner
- Fear damaging a loving bond, relationship
- Avoid criticising, distancing their partner
- Depend on a partner for financial survival
- Fear punishment by an angry partner
- Feel negative and positive about the abuser
- Need constant reassurance, fear criticism
- Blame themselves for others’ problems
- Have low self-esteem, feel undeserving
- Experience shame, distrust, insecurity
- Feel angry, victimized, unappreciated, used
- Feel helpless, unhappy, depressed, anxious
- Get emotionally, mentally, physically ill
- Transfer codependency to their children