Something to celebrate. Mike Caussin marked a big milestone in his battle with sex addiction — and thanked Jana Kramer for still being by his side despite some of the darker moments.
“As an addict I carry a lot of shame. Others who share a similar disease can relate. We rarely like to speak about it let alone acknowledge it,” the former NFL athlete, 33, wrote in a thoughtful post shared to his wife’s Instagram account on Monday, December 28. “But this Thursday I celebrate the most sober year of my entire life. I’ve had my stumbles and falls over the last four years in this program but this year has finally been different.”
Caussin acknowledged that the strides he’s made in the past year wouldn’t have been possible “without finally allowing myself to lean into others, lean into my wife and lean into God.” While he didn’t intend to earn “attention, sympathy or congrats,” the Virginia native hoped to “express humility” about his struggles and be a source of support for others going through a similar battle.
“As human beings and especially as men we can learn to be vulnerable, we can allow others to help us when we need it,” Caussin wrote. “So, maybe going into this new year we can all lean into each other a bit more. It’s our choice whether we want to live divided or together. So, given that choice, why would you want to be divided? We are all different and that’s what makes us the breathing miracles we are. Let’s choose to embrace that in 2021.”
The retired tight end and Kramer, 37, married in May 2015 and welcomed their first child, daughter Jolie, three months later. The duo separated in September 2016 after Us Weekly broke the news that Caussin had cheated. During their time apart, the athlete received treatment for his sex addiction. They later reconciled and renewed their vows in 2017 before welcoming their son, Jace, in November 2018.
In March 2019, the “Why You Wanna” songstress revealed that her husband suffered a “massive” relapse in his addiction the year before. During an episode of their “Whine Down” podcast, Kramer clarified that while Caussin “wasn’t physical out of the marriage” in this particular instance, he still did “something he should not have done” that “could have been awful.”
The drama didn’t stop there for the couple. Earlier this year, the One Tree Hill alum received a DM on social media claiming that Caussin had once again been unfaithful.
“The reason why it caught me off guard was because the very first time I found out Mike cheated on me was through a DM,” Kramer explained on her podcast in October. “I think — I told my therapist this — I almost have this weird PTSD where I go through my DMs, almost looking to see if the truth is gonna prevail in the DM again. I have this fear when I go through my DMs. … The really sucky thing about it is that my default can’t go to ‘There’s no way.’ That’s where it hurts the most, where I can’t just go, ‘I trust him 1000 percent. He would never do that.’”
At the time, Caussin admitted that he was “crushed” that Kramer couldn’t find a way to trust that he’d improved.
“It sucks that I’ve done what I’ve done in the past to create that in a relationship right now,” he said. “My hope is that years down the line, if something like this happened again, she’d be able to bring it to me and we’d almost be able to, like, laugh about it because there is that much trust in the bank. But I didn’t fault her at all for questioning me for still trying to figure these things out.”
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