A Couple's Guide to Sexual Addiction (8 page)

The couple sought counseling. Barbara came to grips with the fact that she was not being a true partner to her husband. Christopher worked on resolving issues that he had carried around since childhood. They both began to face the truth of their marriage.

What Is “Normal” Sex and Intimacy

In addition to formal marriage contracts, most relationships have either spoken or unspoken agreements about what each person “signed up for” in the relationship and what behavior is acceptable or not. For example, some wives who have little interest in sex have an unspoken agreement that their husbands can seek sexual satisfaction elsewhere. Such relationships typically preclude true intimacy and are not what this book is about. But what behavior does qualify a marriage as having a healthy and positive sexual relationship?

Although there may be no such thing as “normal” sex and intimacy, there are certain clues or guidelines that a relationship is healthy and positive. You can be in an intimate relationship that is not sexual. You can love another person and not be sexual. But most close relationships that are nonsexual could be more accurately categorized as intimate friendships. What makes the marital relationship so special, and affords it the opportunity for a unique intimacy that exists nowhere else in your life, is when the marital partners have sex—and only with each other. Such relationships can exist without sex, particularly when couples are very advanced in age and neither partner wants nor needs sexual interaction. Again, you can also love someone and not engage in sexual behavior. However, a marital relationship where one partner wants a sexual connection that does not exist frequently results in an imbalanced relationship and a barrier to intimacy.

One intent of this book is to help you remove blame, shame, and pain barriers to achieving intimacy. As a couple, you may be able to take steps toward this end on your own. It’s also important to realize that you may ultimately also require more intensive counseling practices than a book can provide. In
Chapter 11
, we offer resources for finding additional help if that is what you feel you may need.

Exercise: Finding a Way to Communicate

It may not seem like it at first, but there is great relief in finally bringing secrets into the light. The following exercise will provide a pathway toward admitting such secrets to your partner. Even though just one of you has been acting out sexually, we can assume that both of you are experiencing a lack of intimacy or closeness in your relationship, and that both of you would like to find a way to feel closer or more intimate with each other.

The first step in building intimacy with your partner is understanding your part in what is happening in the relationship. To do that, you need to see and admit to yourself what your role in the dance has been.

First, make a list (just for yourself) of everything that you suspect is standing in the way of the intimacy that you would like to have with your partner. This is not a list of what your partner is doing to block intimacy; this is a list of what is happening within you. You will keep this list private. Later, you will be able to choose if you would like to share what you have written and, if so, which parts you would like to share. For now, this list is just for you. You are creating it to build an inventory of information for yourself. This is not a list of ammunition to be used to make you or your partner feel wrong or bad. The goal is to create a list for yourself of what you are doing that is preventing closeness and intimacy with your partner.

If you don’t feel comfortable writing or working solo, this exercise can also be done with a trusted friend. At this point, we find it is better if you do not do this exercise with your partner. If you do work with a friend, ask the friend to not counsel you or give you advice or feedback. Your friend’s job in this exercise will be to simply ask the questions and allow you to find your answers. Your assisting friend might ask supporting questions like, “Tell me more” or “What else do you know about that?”

Whether you write your answers or speak them with your trusted friend, as you investigate, don’t just stop with your first response or the most obvious answer. You will gain the most from the exercise if you can let yourself not know the facts as you have always known them. Let yourself be surprised by how you answer, as if you’d never thought about or heard the question before.

Questions for Him

We know you may be looking at some behaviors that you don’t like and don’t want to admit. That’s okay. This is the time to think like a scientist and investigate as dispassionately as possible exactly what you have been doing. You don’t need to answer every question. The questions below are only here to get you started.

• How have you acted out sexually? Start with the worst of it. Just write it down. Take your time. Follow the thread of your compulsive behavior.

• Are there any other ways that you acted out sexually?

• What else is a part of your sexually acting-out behavior?

• What triggers your sexually acting-out behaviors or thoughts? What is happening, what are you thinking before your sexual acting out starts?

• Where does your sexual acting-out behavior begin? Is there a pattern? For example, are you sitting at your computer, at the mall, at work feeling bored or trying to solve a difficult problem?

• Do you have any repeating fantasies or thoughts about acting out sexually?

• How do you attempt to hide or mask your problem from others?

• How do you sexualize and objectify?

• How did you relate to your sexuality when you first discovered masturbation?

• How about when you first made sexual contact with another person?

• Have you really wanted to be in this relationship?

• What has kept you here?

• Have you been feeling distant from your partner?

• Have you been distracted?

• Have you put up barriers consciously or unconsciously?

• What has been happening for you in your relationship? What is your overall experience of your relationship with your partner?

• How have you not expressed yourself in this relationship?

Sit down on multiple occasions if you need to, and give yourself permission to recall every way you can remember that you compulsively get on the train and ride it to achieving a momentary orgasmic release. Give creating this list the same kind of time and attention you have given to your compulsive sexual behaviors. In time, creating this list will have a reward for you that those sexual behaviors never did. Revealing to yourself what you have done, really admitting it to yourself, is a key to your liberation. Go for it.

Questions for her

We know you are in a tough spot. This is hard. In this moment, just for this part of your investigation, we’d like you to actually not think about or focus on what your partner has been doing or how he has been unavailable to you. His part of the exercise will assist him in looking at what he has been doing. We are interested in what has been going on for you.

We would also like you to think as a scientist and investigate as dispassionately as possible exactly what you have been doing. There may be some very good reasons you have not been entirely engaged in this relationship, but it is likely that you have not been fully participating with your partner. Below are questions to help you investigate the particular ways that you keep yourself separate, protected, and thus not truly vulnerable and intimately connected with your partner. You don’t need to answer every question. The questions are only here to get you started.

• What has been happening for you in your relationship? What is your overall experience of your relationship with your partner?

• How have you not expressed yourself in this relationship?

• What has been getting in the way of your wanting to be with him?

• What’s been preoccupying you?

• How have you been short-changing yourself?

• What did you notice and not pay attention to? What did you see and dismiss about your partner’s sexually acting out or about ways that your relationship is unfulfilling to you?

• Have you been sexually frustrated?

• Did you think that this was just how a relationship works?

• Have you believed that it is possible to actually connect intimately with another person without selling yourself out or manipulating?

• What, if anything, has prevented you from expressing your deeply felt needs, or even allowing yourself to have them?

• What has prevented you from feeling that you can be fully intimate?

• What has been getting in the way of your wanting to be with your partner?

• Have you really wanted to be in this relationship?

• What has kept you here?

• Have you been feeling distant from your partner?

• Have you been distracted?

• Have you put up barriers consciously or unconsciously?

Sit down on multiple occasions if you need to and give yourself permission to recall all the ways that you have distanced yourself from your partner or ignored his distance from you. Revealing to yourself what you see, really admitting it to yourself, is a key to your liberation. Go for it.

For Both—If You Choose to Share

The list of information you have created is for you. You may choose to share some of it, all of it, or none of it with your partner. Full disclosure will be important, but you may not be ready for that just yet. At the end of
Chapter 4
, we discuss creating a space and the ground rules for full disclosure by the partner who has been acting sexually compulsively.

For now, it is important that you find a way to communicate without further distancing yourself from your partner. We have found that it is useful to have some ground rules.

Ground Rules for Communicating Difficult Issues

It is up to each of you to find a way to keep your conversation focused on the issue at hand, to speak fully, and to listen fully. We recognize how difficult these conversations can be, but we also know how they can be a time of opening.

1. First, plan ahead—make an appointment with each other. Be sure you have time and space where you will not be interrupted. Allow as much time as you think you will need. You can schedule separate times for each of you to talk, if you feel that will work the best for you. We have found that you will probably each need at least half an hour to speak.

2. Secondly, in each of your sessions, the person who is listening says nothing until the other person is finished speaking. This might take five minutes or fifteen minutes or longer. The speaker has the floor. When the speaker is finished talking, the listener becomes the speaker and can reply without interruption. The important ingredient is that the speaker knows that he or she can speak until finished. The process of speaking and then replying can be repeated as many times as is necessary within each sharing session. Remember, these sessions are not for finding solutions, but simply for being heard, for getting things out on the table.

3. Remember, the goal of the listener is to be quiet and let the speaker talk. This will pay off. While the listener may feel a strong urge to defend or make excuses, this is not necessary. Now is simply a time to listen. Listening without defending is the beginning of a new level of communication in your relationship.

4. For each speaker, remember to speak to the action and to the feeling. Don’t demean the other’s character. Hurtful things have been done (maybe by each of you), but this does not make the person who did them inherently bad or unredeemable. It is not your job to try to fix or diagnose your partner. Just speak about your experience—how you are feeling. When it is your turn to be the listener, simply listen. If you feel defensive or angry, take some deep breaths. Remind yourself that you are receiving information, not ammunition.

5. Finally, at the end of the sessions, each partner needs to say one thing they appreciate about the other. Don’t attempt to be extra generous by telling more than one thing, but do think of one thing that you truly appreciate. Then thank your partner for being honest and willing to have this difficult conversation. And then, either silently or openly, thank yourself for your honesty and willingness. Having this kind of conversation shows great strength of character.

Once you have recognized and admitted to yourself that there is a problem and have started to gain some understanding of the nature of the problem, you can begin to build deeper intimacy, love, and connectedness.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Being in a relationship is difficult, but if you deal with the difficulty outside of the committed relationship, the issue will never be resolved. You only drive the problem deeper rather than finding the relief and intimate closeness that you are seeking.