The Secret Sexual Basement: What Deceptive Sexuality Really Is — and What Real Recovery Looks Like
All right, everybody. Welcome.
I want to share a conversation with you that I think matters. It really matters. I sat down with my colleague Chris Jones — a UK-based counselor and Certified Deceptive Sexuality and Trauma Therapist who works with the DST model developed by Dr. Omar Minwalla, and the host of the From Harm to Healing podcast — and we went deep into a topic that causes so much harm, so much hurt, and so much confusion: deceptive sexuality.
What makes Chris's voice on this so powerful is that he didn't come into this work as a therapist first. He came in as a client. He's lived it. He lived the divided life, he hid it, and he found his way through to the other side. And now he spends his life helping other men do that same work.
We broke the conversation into four parts, and you can watch all of them right here in this post. If you're a man who's been living a double life and you're exhausted by it — or if you're the partner who just discovered a reality you never knew existed — I think this series is going to land. It's hard stuff. But there is the possibility of healing. There really is.
So let's jump in.
Part 1 — The Divided Life: Living a Double Life with Sexual Addiction
In this first part, Chris shares his own story. Two completely separate realities running at the same time. On the outside — a well-respected man of faith, someone who looked like he had it all together. And underneath, a secret life that only he knew about.
One of the things Chris says here that I keep coming back to is how early the compartmentalizing starts. Maybe as young as 10 years old. You see something you think you shouldn't have seen, you hide it — and without knowing it, you're already building the two compartments. So by the time you're 20 or 30, hiding isn't just something you do. It's a way of life.
And here's the part I really appreciate: Chris is honest that his first disclosure to his wife was, in his words, "sanitized." It wasn't everything on the table. That's real. That's oftentimes how it goes. But it was the beginning — the moment the exhaustion of the divided life finally outweighed the fear of being known.
What to listen for in Part 1:
How compartmentalizing starts in childhood — long before the behavior becomes compulsive
The exhaustion of managing two realities, and the shame of feeling like a fraud
Why disclosure so often starts "sanitized" — and why that matters for partners to understand
Part 2 — The Secret Sexual Basement: What Deceptive Sexuality Really Is
This is the core teaching segment of the whole series. If you only watch one part, watch this one.
Most people think of sexual addiction as a one-part problem: the acting out. Chris explains why it's actually a two-part problem. There's the compulsive sexual behavior itself — what the DST model calls Compulsive Entitled Sexuality. And then there's a second piece that gets completely overlooked, and it's often the bigger problem: everything that keeps the behavior hidden. The lying. The minimizing. The managing of narratives. The gaslighting. The model calls that Integrity Abuse Disorder.
Chris uses a metaphor called the secret sexual basement, and once you hear it, you can't unhear it. Picture a family home. Everything looks normal from the outside. But underneath, there's a hidden basement only one person knows about. He goes down, engages in the secret behavior, comes back up — and then locks the trap door and rolls the rug over it. The basement is one problem. Everything done to keep the basement hidden is the other.
And here's why this distinction changes everything. Someone can be "sober" for years — and still be lying, still getting defensive, still trickling out information. Still causing real harm. If we're only looking at the acting out, we're missing half of the picture. Having worked in this field for a long time, I can tell you — that second half is the piece that was overlooked for years. And it's oftentimes the piece that hurts partners the most.
What to listen for in Part 2:
The two-part problem: Compulsive Entitled Sexuality and Integrity Abuse Disorder
The secret sexual basement metaphor
Why someone can be sober for years and still be causing harm
Why naming the hiding as abuse of another person's reality matters — and why, in Chris's experience, it almost never comes from a desire to harm, but from shame and fear
Part 3 — Beyond Sobriety: The Three I's of Real Recovery
Counting days of sobriety is the floor. It's not the ceiling.
This is the longest part of the series, and honestly, it's where the hope really comes through. Chris lays out what he calls the Three I's of recovery: integrity, intimacy, and integration.
Integrity — and Chris says something I love here — is easy until you actually try to do it. It's not just telling the truth. It's living in what the model calls intentionally accurate, authentic reality. Accurate, meaning your partner knows the truth of what you've done. Authentic, meaning she knows who you actually are. Who she's married to. And that, in itself, is a profound source of safety.
Intimacy starts with the self. Do you know what you're thinking? What you're feeling? What you need? Because if you can't be in contact with yourself, you can't have real integrity — these things go back and forth with each other.
And integration is the deeper work. Facing the shadow parts, the pieces of ourselves we're ashamed of and don't want to look at.
We also talk about internal versus external motivation — whether you're changing because you're scared of losing everything, or because you actually want to become a different person. Both matter. But the shift to internal motivation is where I see the deep change happen. And Chris shares what might be the most profound moment of his own recovery: the day he realized, for the first time, "I actually quite like myself." Such a simple statement. And it says everything about what's on the other side of this work.
What to listen for in Part 3:
Why sobriety is the foundation, not the finish line
The Three I's: integrity, intimacy, integration
Internal vs. external motivation — and the question "who do you want to become?"
The longing we all carry to be fully known and fully loved — and the lie that says we can only have one
Part 4 — Facing the Harm: Understanding Betrayal Trauma and How to Attend to It
This is the hardest part of the conversation. And it's the most important.
Because real recovery isn't just about the self. It's about facing the harm caused. When a partner discovers the secret basement — sometimes after 20, 30, 40 years of marriage — the whole reality she trusted comes crashing down. What she believed was real, the history she thought she shared, her sense of safety. All of it gets called into question. This is genuine trauma. Literally, her nervous system goes awry — the triggers, the intrusions, the hypervigilance. It can look a lot like post-traumatic stress. And oftentimes it's not appreciated at the level it deserves.
Chris breaks down the three types of work that real recovery requires: behavioral change, the deeper ego-development work, and what he calls attending — the ability to turn toward the people your behavior has harmed and stay present to their pain, without collapsing into your own shame and making it about you. It's a restorative approach. It's about taking responsibility.
And I want to be honest with you — we really only touched the surface of that piece. What it actually looks like to show up authentically and attend to the harm, day to day, is a whole conversation on its own. Chris said as much in the interview. My hope is that we sit down and go deeper into it together sometime — but even this beginning matters.
And here's something I say to the men I work with, and I said it to Chris in this conversation: if you really commit to helping your partner heal — really showing up, really attending to her pain — you will end up healing yourself in the process. You have to. The two go hand in hand.
One more thing we were careful to name, because it matters: if you do this work and the relationship doesn't survive, that is not failure. Sometimes tremendous healing happens even when a relationship ends.
What to listen for in Part 4:
The scope and depth of betrayal trauma — the shattering of reality
The three types of recovery work: behavioral change, ego development, and attending
Why turning toward your partner's pain is the heart of repair
Why a relationship ending is not the same as failure
The Thread That Runs Through All Four Parts
If I had to pull one thread through this whole series, it's the thing Chris said at the very end. A life lived in integrity — even when telling the truth is hard, even when it's shameful, even when it causes problems — is a liberating life. It honors the people around you. And it honors you.
This work is for the man who's done lying. The man who feels the weight of what he's done and wants to become someone capable of repair — not someone looking for the right words to make it all go away. There's no script for that. There's just the slow, hard, real work of becoming trustworthy again. It's a ton of work. And it's worth it.
Wherever you are in this — whether you've been living the divided life, or you're the partner whose world just came crashing down — there is the possibility of healing. It's hard work. But we can make these changes.
Start Here: The Shame Compass
Shame is one of the biggest things that keeps men stuck in the divided life. It's the fuel underneath the hiding. Our free Shame Compass e-book breaks down the four ways shame shows up — and how to start moving through it.
Download the free Shame Compass e-book →
Connect with Chris Jones
Chris Jones Therapy: — Chris works with men across the UK who have engaged in deceptive sexuality, including through his From Harm to Healing group program
The From Harm to Healing Podcast — Chris breaks down the DST model piece by piece, including interviews with Dr. Omar Minwalla
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This post and the videos in it are for educational purposes only and are not a substitute for professional psychological, medical, or therapeutic advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The content reflects the perspectives and clinical experience of the speakers and may not apply to your individual situation. Always seek the guidance of a qualified mental health professional with any questions you may have regarding your own circumstances.
If you are in crisis or experiencing a mental health emergency, please reach out for help immediately: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (US) — call or text 988, available 24/7 · Samaritans (UK & ROI) — call 116 123, available 24/7 · Find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number (911 in the US, 999 in the UK).