A Couple's Guide to Sexual Addiction (6 page)

Next, sit down directly across from your partner. Look directly into your partner’s eyes. Notice how you may judge whatever you perceive to be a flaw or an asset. Then drop that perception or judgment and look and see who is looking out of your partner’s eyes. What or who do you see looking back at you that is the same as or different from what you saw looking out of the eyes in the photos? Spend a minute or two just investigating what you see.

Finally, spend a few minutes discussing whatever you have experienced with your partner. The next time you feel angry or hurt by your partner, bring to mind, as much as you can, the young child, the teenager, and the vulnerable adult that you have seen in your partner’s eyes. And as much as possible, allow yourself to remember the innocent young child, the teenager, and the vulnerable adult that you have experienced by looking into your own eyes. Who is it that is behind that mask?

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The sexual connection with someone you feel deeply connected to is powerful yet vulnerable. When an issue with sexual compulsivity is thrown into that already powerful yet vulnerable mix, a potentially explosive situation occurs.

• Whatever your reaction may be to discovering (or being discovered with) sexually addictive behaviors, you will be able to survive the reactions and shock of this time.

• The partner who has been sexually compulsive needs to have the desire and willingness to stop sexually acting out. The partner who has been betrayed needs to have the desire and willingness to go through the process of investigation with her partner. Both partners also need to be willing to begin to look into the dynamics within the relationship system that are not working.

• Moving through the blockages to intimacy that are revealed through the healing of your partnership can bring your relationship back from what may appear to be certain disaster.

Looking Forward

In
Chapter 3
, we will begin to look at how sexual addiction or compulsion shows up in relationships, and how couples have been able to use this troubling issue and difficult time to find ways to deepen their relationship with themselves and with each other.

CHAPTER 3

Sex Addiction and Your Relationship

Being in a relationship is difficult. To greater and lesser degrees, we all have our challenges in learning to play in the sandbox with each other. Inside a relationship, we can use our commitment to each other as a holding vessel that allows each of us to heal whatever is preventing the intimacy we deeply desire. Each person in the relationship can, if willing, uncover the individual and joint blockages to true partnership. The commitment, the connection, the love, the container of the relationship can support each partner in being able to see what is standing in the way of greater intimacy.

We would like to stress again that before you can move forward with your relationship, the partner who has been sexually compulsive needs to have the desire and willingness to stop sexually acting out. If the desire and willingness to stop is not in place, then you don’t have a basis from which to begin.

Additionally, the partner who has been betrayed needs to have the desire and willingness to go through the process of investigation with her partner. Both partners also need to be willing to begin to look into the dynamics within the relationship system that are not working. What is preventing true intimacy? How is each partner contributing to the difficulties in the relationship?

Why Is This Problem in My Relationship?

We recently heard a country song that stated that if you aren’t getting “good loving” at home, find your loving somewhere else. This is exactly the distorted logic that can drive someone to attempt to find relief in a way that only exacerbates the problem. We recognize that it can feel like the path of least resistance is to view porn and masturbate or to seek another warm body to find the relief and connectedness you desire. The problem is that if you try to deal with your issues outside of your committed relationship, the issue will never be resolved. You will only drive your problem deeper, and you will not be able to find the relief and closeness you are actually seeking.

The urges to connect sexually and to experience pleasure in the waves of orgasm are natural. In an ideal world, we would be able to retain our innocence around our sexuality. Ideally, our pubescent sexuality would lead us to the connected, loving, and intimate connection that is possible in human coupling. But outside of this idealized perfect potentiality, we have the opportunity and challenge in our closest relationships to come face to face with the wounding around our sexuality that occurred in our childhood years and/ or as we moved through pubescence. We can find our way to a healthy sexual connection.

We tend to be surprised when sexuality and/or intimacy become issues in our close partnerships. But where else would the issues and difficulties we might have around sexuality and intimacy arise? Our closest relationships are exactly the place offering us the opportunity to heal the wounds that may have moved us away from the naturalness of our sexual expression and/or away from our natural connectedness with others. Our relationships offer the forum to work with and heal the ways in which we have difficulty with attachment, connection, bonding, and commitment.

Level 1 Sexual Addiction

In this book, we are only able to deal with what have been called Level 1 sex addictions. This includes behaviors that, while unacceptable inside committed relationships, are more widely accepted by society: viewing porn, masturbating, visiting chat rooms, hiring prostitutes, and compulsive brief or long-term affairs and relationships.

Behaviors that involve more serious legal consequences, such as exhibitionism and voyeurism, are beyond the scope of this book, as are behaviors that cause serious consequences for the victims, including incest, child molestation, and rape.

If either you or your partner is involved in behaviors beyond Level 1, we urge you to seek professional help and support.
Chapter 11
includes resources for seeking such support.

Level 1 Behaviors In-Depth

We have found that Level 1 sex addiction or compulsivity can manifest in layers (or types). One layer is not necessarily separate from another layer. The layers are not necessarily progressive; each type of behavior can reinforce or lead to another.

The most common form of sexual compulsivity that we see today is one partner getting hooked on viewing Internet porn and then masturbating. However, the layers or types of Level 1 behaviors may include:

• Sexually compulsive activities within the relationship including sex that is not coupled with respect for the needs and desires of the other partner, such as using the partner as a sex object

• Lack of ability to engage in sexual contact with one’s partner

• Sexual fantasy, viewing pornography, and masturbation (no contact with actual live people)

• Visiting chat rooms or online sexual live feeds or posing as a single person on online dating sites—contact with live people, but no physical contact

• Engaging sexually with live people but without emotional connection—including contact with prostitutes, massage parlors, emotionless dating, and affairs

• Engaging sexually with live people with an emotional connection— including brief or long-term relationships and affairs

These layers may, of course, overlap and merge with each other. An individual can be engaged at different times in any number of these layers. We list them to help you see that you or your partner are not the only people to be impacted by sexually compulsive behaviors. These are patterns that impact many others as well— you are not alone.

Sexually Compulsive Behavior Inside the Relationship

Even in a relationship that is generally working smoothly, one or both partners can easily lose track of the individuality of the other partner. At times, it can be difficult to remember that your partner views and experiences life through an entirely different lens. We want what we want when we want it, sometimes regardless of what our partner wants. And that “when we want it” is often right now. The urge of the sexual drive combined with the vulnerability, privacy, and tenderness of the sexual connection can cause one partner to mindlessly run over the other partner without realizing what he or she is doing.

We have seen that it is possible that neither partner is fully cognizant of this type of betrayal. There can be a demand or a perceived need for sex from one’s partner that is not coupled with respect for the partner’s needs and boundaries. For example, one partner may demand a type of sexual activity with which their partner does not feel comfortable. Often, one partner may go along with the request of the other out of a sense of obligation, duty, or out of a fear of loss of love or financial support.

One husband believed he couldn’t go to sleep if he didn’t have sex with his wife each night. His wife went along with him because she was afraid he would have an affair if she didn’t. Another husband, a quite successful stock portfolio manager, demanded sex with his wife any day the market declined 100 points or more. This husband didn’t realize his sexual needs were tied to the stock market, but his wife did.

We have found that, at times, a heterosexual man will have fantasies and desires about having anal intercourse with his partner. We have also found that it is quite common for the woman to find this type of sexual contact not only unsatisfying but also thoroughly unappealing, even though she may have been willing to give it a try. This again is a situation where we encourage women to honor their feelings, their bodies, themselves. This is not to say that some women may find this type of sexual contact satisfying. The point is that we encourage men and women alike to honor their feelings and their bodies as well as their partners’ feelings and bodies.

Marie and Jim

Marie had been married to Jim for a little more than twenty years. Jim was a very successful real estate developer and Marie was a writer and stay-at-home mom until their three daughters left for college. Jim called us to seek help for his compulsion with masturbating to Internet porn. Because of the porn Jim had been viewing, he had begun taking videos when he had sex with Marie. Marie was never comfortable with this activity, but went along with Jim because she thought that if he were taking videos of the two of them together then he would at least be having sex with her and not with the pictures on the Internet.

As Marie began to tell the truth about her lack of comfort around the videos, she was able to tell Jim she didn’t want to do it anymore. Marie was concerned that if she didn’t go along with Jim she would lose their sex life altogether. However, in time, the truth-telling Marie did about her discomfort with the videos enabled Jim to understand how he actually needed to connect with his wife if they were going to have an intimate relationship. This, in turn, helped Jim become motivated to address his compulsion with viewing porn.

Lack of Ability to Connect Sexually With Your Partner

Sexual addiction can also manifest as the inability for the sexually compulsive individual to engage sexually with his partner. He only feels safe with sexual activity that does not require actual intimate connection. This is more common than you might imagine.

For some, being with a real person can feel too intimate and scary. An individual may only feel safe in expressing himself sexually through masturbation to images or he may only feel safe in engaging in sex with a prostitute. It is a sad truth that men who have been abused in some way are prone to finding sex with their partner frightening or distasteful. Intimate sexual contact has become distorted, or the excitement of sex with someone perpetually new or different is the only way an individual knows how to express himself sexually.

One of the common themes we see is that of the son who became his mother’s “little man.” At the heart of this dynamic, the mother turns to her son as her partner, often without recognizing what she is doing. He becomes her hero. When that little boy grows up and recognizes that same motherly love coming from his partner, he begins to lose his desire to have sex with his partner. He often does not recognize that this has happened, but his wife has suddenly moved from sex partner to mother. This could happen when he witnesses her with their child or even through the act of her preparing meals and serving them. He sees his partner in the role of mother, and is catapulted into the territory of relating to mother.

Pornography can seem the perfect solution because he can search for images that look like women he was attracted to when he was awakening sexually. We have seen men search for porn images or prostitutes who replicate a particular person—someone who fits the image of the person with whom he was first involved.

At times, men begin using porn and masturbating because the sexual connection inside their relationship has temporarily lessened—for example when children arrive on the scene or maybe when their partner has become engrossed in work or in a project. We would call this type of flare-up of masturbating using pornography episodic rather than chronic. This does not mean that the compulsion to continue using the pornography as a sexual outlet rather than connecting with their partner is any less overwhelming. However, we have found that this kind of fixation is easier to work with than one that is more deeply ingrained or has been in place for a longer period of time.