Heart Matters Specialties

Sex Addicts

When your heart doesn’t matter… the tragedy of sexual addiction

Sex addiction can be broadly divided into two major categories: 1. An addiction to disconnected sexual experiences with another person through affairs, prostitution, massage parlors etc. and, 2. An addiction to pornography in which a person masturbates to pornographic images or fantasies about pornographic images. Sex addiction is a way some people compulsively medicate their feelings or life’s stresses to the degree that their sexual behavior becomes their major coping mechanism. Learn more...

Partners of Sex Addicts

Does Your Heart Matter too? Being the partner of a sex addict…

Often it is the wife of the sex addict who recognizes his addiction first, but in her codependence she has learned not to believe in her perceptions about intimacy in their relationship. Often she has learned to ignore what she needs and wants in the relationship. It is like the proverbial story of the frog who is placed on the stove in cold water. As the water begins to heat up, the frog adapts to the temperature until it is boiled to death. Sex addicts are experts in deception and blame shifting. The shifts in relationship are often subtle, but over time begin to kill the relationship and the heart of their spouse. Learn more...

Codependence

When your heart has been shamed…living with Codependence

Codependence is one of those terms that is used freely, but without a unified concrete meaning shared by those using the word. At Heart Matters Counseling, we use the term as a way of describing a state of personal and interpersonal discomfort marked by a person’s inability to be in healthy relationship on three levels: 1. Spiritually (with a Higher Power), 2. Intrapersonally (with oneself), and 3. Interpersonally ( with others). The first two of these relational levels are foundational to the function of the third and are often overlooked as the primary issues to be addressed as problems arise in the relationships of couples, families and friends.Learn more...