the workbook for partners
Pages to write on rather than lessons to take. Twenty-two exercises across five parts, built around one job — getting your own knowing back, on paper, in your own handwriting, where nobody gets to correct it.
22 exercises · 5 parts · printable & fillable PDF
$37 CAD
printable & fillable PDF
not yet open for purchase — you'll hear from me directly when it opens.
what it's for
Understanding the pattern is the first half. The second half is different work, and it can't be done by reading. Years of raising something and having it come back as yours teach a specific habit: checking yourself before you trust yourself. That habit doesn't lift because someone explains it to you. It lifts by being practised out of.
So this is a workbook rather than a book. It asks rather than explains. The exercises are short, most of them are written fast on purpose, and several of them ask you to put down what you actually noticed next to what you told yourself instead — which is usually the first time a woman sees the size of the gap in her own handwriting.
There is no scoring anywhere in it. Nothing here rates you, stages you, or tells you where you should be by now. It ends where you decide it ends.
the five parts
Each part closes with the same exercise — what I would say now — so you can see your own position move across the book rather than take my word for it.
Three specific rooms, and what you remember of each. What you told yourself against what you actually noticed. Three questions to put to your own material. And the ones you talked yourself out of — usually the most useful pages in the book.
Grief without an event is hard to grieve, because there's nothing anyone will recognise as a loss. This part gives it edges: the same memory in both columns, what you are actually grieving, and the things nobody held a funeral for.
Where you are, without a score — deliberately not an instrument, deliberately not numbered. Markers described in your own words, and a record of what your body does and in which rooms it does it.
The centre of the book. Catching the audit reflex in the act. Holding a read with nothing to back it. Deciding what you do with a signal now. And finding where your reads are already received without argument — because for most women there is somewhere.
What you want to know and what you don't — both are legitimate and the choice is yours. Then your terms, in your own words. The book closes by returning you to the very first page you wrote.
how it's built
Print it and write by hand, or fill it on screen. Laid out with real room to write — not lines squeezed under a paragraph.
Nothing rates you or stages you. The self-check in Part Three is deliberately built so it cannot read as a test.
Exercise 1 records where you are on the day you start. The last part sends you back to it, with space to answer again.
It pairs with Module 4 of the course, but it doesn't require it. Plenty of women use the workbook on its own.
before you buy
No. They pair well — the workbook sits naturally alongside Module 4 — but it stands on its own, and at $37 CAD it's the least expensive way to start doing something rather than reading something.
There's no schedule. Some women do a part a week; some open it, do three exercises, and come back later. Part Four is the one worth slowing down for.
No. Nothing is submitted anywhere, there's nothing to upload, and no account to keep. It's a PDF you download and it's yours.
Some of them will. They're short by design and you can close the book. If you're working with a therapist, this is good material to bring into a session rather than to work through entirely alone.
Twenty-two exercises, five parts, printable and fillable. Written for the woman who has been checking herself before she trusts herself, for longer than she'd like to admit.
$37 CAD
printable & fillable PDF
not yet open for purchase — you'll hear from me directly when it opens.
When the workbook does open: fourteen days, no reason required, refunded in full. You keep the files either way. Terms and refunds
free · start here
Six pages, free, read in a sitting. If you're not sure any of this describes your life, start here rather than with the workbook.
the course · $197 CAD
The explanation the workbook assumes. Four modules on what you felt, what can be running underneath, and why this is different from an affair.
This is educational material, not therapy, and not an assessment of you. Nothing here is a diagnosis — I'm a social worker and psychotherapist, and diagnosis isn't mine to give. What follows is a way of understanding a pattern I've seen often in twenty years of practice, offered so you can think about your own situation with better language than most of us are handed. If you're working with a therapist, bring this to them. If you're not, this may help you decide what kind of support you're looking for.
Throughout, the person with the pattern is “he” and the partner is “she.” That reflects where this shows up most often, and it isn't the only way it happens. If your situation is arranged differently, everything here still applies — read it with that adjustment.
Before you buy, read the terms and refund position — fourteen days, no reason required, refunded in full. You keep the files either way.
A sex addiction without sex, and a betrayal without a single incident.
If you're struggling right now, you don't have to sit with it alone. In Canada, the 9-8-8 Suicide Crisis Helpline is available 24/7 — call or text 9-8-8. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
Elizabeth Joy Dubois, MSW, RSW · Ontario, Canada · registered social worker and psychotherapist.
For the man in recovery and for therapists: sexaddictionhelp.ca