August 21, 2026
Sexual Addiction & Betrayal Trauma: Boundaries, Grief and Healing with Roxanna Johnson
What happens to the spouse when the person with the addiction gets all the attention?In this deeply personal conversation, Lisa Lacy sits down with author, speaker and advocate Roxanna Johnson to talk about the side of sexual addiction that is too often forgotten: betrayal trauma and what it does to the partner left trying to make sense of a life that suddenly feels unrecognizable.After nearly 24 years of marriage, Roxanna discovered that her husband had been living with a hidden pattern of sexual addiction. She calls the disclosure “the bomb” because it didn’t simply reveal a secret. It blew apart her understanding of her marriage, her safety and, for a time, herself.Lisa and Roxanna dig into what betrayal trauma can actually look like: hypervigilance, panic, anger, grief, shame, questioning your own reality and becoming so focused on another person’s behavior that you lose touch with your own wants, needs and identity.They also explore one of the most important distinctions in recovery: boundaries are not control. Roxanna shares how she learned to stop twisting herself into what she calls “a pretzel” to keep the peace and instead use boundaries to create emotional safety for herself, regardless of whether her partner chose recovery.The conversation goes into codependency and counterdependence, lovingly detaching, rebuilding self-trust, finding competent betrayal-trauma support, creating a recovery community, spiritual reawakening and grieving the marriage, family or future you thought you had.And perhaps most importantly, they talk about the spouse’s right to heal independently of the outcome of the relationship.Roxanna’s work and book, Forgotten in the Battle with Sexual Addiction: The Journey of a Spouse, give language and support to partners and families who have too often been treated as collateral damage in someone else’s recovery.Connect with Roxanna Johnson:https://ForgottenSpouse.comConnect with Lisa Lacy and Notes From the Edge:https://www.lisalacy.com/podcastWhat did you perform in order to survive?Welcome to the Edge.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Also available on Apple Podcasts