I’m a little confused as to how the idea or diagnosis of sex addiction is a copout? Do alcoholics get a free pass to drink? Do drug addicts get a free pass to nod out? Do food addicts get a free pass to eat all they want for whatever reason they want?
No, sex addiction doesn’t let anyone off the hook. They are still responsible for what they have done and for the pain they have caused. What they have now, however, is a diagnosis and a treatment plan that can help them learn to control themselves.
We’ve been talking about sex addiction, but the 12-step group is called Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. So think about that one for a while. Can you be addicted to love? Are we all addicted to love? What’s the difference between truly intimate love and unhealthy love?
Frankly, I don’t think anyone knows. A lot of times it seems to come down to how sex is related to love. Do you equate sex with love? I suppose you could say that when you are in love with a fantasy, it isn’t real love, but how do you know the difference between your fantasy of your love and the reality of your love?
Sex addicts do a number of things, and I can’t remember them all, but SLAA reads the list of behaviors of sex and love addicts at every meeting. Sex addicts use sex in the place of love. They find themselves having sex with strangers. They are obsessive about porn or masturbation or picking up people. They use love or sex to get a high, one after another. They like intrigue. The art of getting away with it.
For a while there, I fit the behavior of a love addict. I fell in love with six women in six months. It was the same emotional arc over and over again—feeling on top of the world when she loved me, and then getting so needy I pushed her away, and crashing to the depths where I could only be resurrected by by another love.
I don’t even know how it happened, because I had never seen myself as any kind of Lothario. I guess the internet makes it easier. What was also amazing was the women who were interested in me. Women no one would ever suspect of having such interests. But I guess there’s more that goes on out there than meets the eye. It’s also someone amazing as to what some of these women say in public compared to their private actions. But that was all on another site, a long time ago.
It ended when I told my wife what I had been doing out of some notion that I was doing the right thing. My wife realized this was not normal, and got me seen by a shrink, and it turned out I was bipolar. In my SLAA group, a lot of participants are bipolar. A lot of high performing artists are also bipolar. It’s part of what gives them the creative energy.
My couples therapist is also in SLAA. He’s really into having me go, as are my therapist and my wife. I’m not convinced. I’m not convinced that my behavior fits the pattern, especially since my medications have dampened that impulse down quite a bit. I’m also not convinced it is an addiction—as in the sense that one is powerless over it. Of course, one of the 12 steps is realizing that you are powerless over your addiction. I don’t get that one. It seems like it is a free pass.
Well, I do have an idea about it. I think that this behavior is so shameful, that we can only be in denial and refuse to talk about it or admit it. By saying we have no power, we can admit that something is going on without feeling shame about it. This is crucial, because we need to feel ok about ourselves in order to work on it. If we are only shamed, we hide and deny and nothing is ever fixed.
Love addiction, I think, is driven by a bottomless pit inside a person. I experience it as a pit that can only be fixed by love, except there is not enough love in the universe to make me feel ok about myself. Love and sex addiction tends to be a sign of low self-esteem. Often times, people with low self-esteem are driven, driven, driven to perform well, in order to try to get some sense of value of self.
In the end, they say, only your higher power can fill that pit inside you. It’s not something you can have filled from the outside. It’s a sort of magical thing, and you have to use magic in order to be able to cope with it and stop acting out, sexually.
It’s very complicated. I feel like I do get support from outside and it does make me feel better about myself. Love is very important, because it’s the only time I believe I am worth anything. It is tied up with sex and status and probably a lot more, and I’m sure I’m a pathetic example of humanity for having such problems.
But there are a lot of us. A lot of people with low self-esteem; a lot of people with bipolar disorder; a lot of people with sex and love addictions. There are more than I ever could have imagined. Almost a secret underground culture. It helps knowing that others struggle with the same issues. It helps to have people who won’t judge us to talk to.
As you can see by this thread, most people are very judgmental. It’s not really helpful to anyone. It is completely counterproductive at getting people to stop these behaviors. Shame just doesn’t work very well in this day and age. Unfortunately, and this goes against the grain for everyone, I think, what addicts need, and what miscreants of all sorts need is safety to admit to and try to work on their problems without getting clobbered before they even start.