by Coralie Scherer, Ph.D. & Al Cooper, Ph.D.
Josh will tell you: He just likes sex! Through high school and college he kept track of the "notches on his belt" but a few decades later the women are just a hazy stream of one night stands. He loves the chase and sometimes even feels pleasure. But when the sex is over he is gone.
He tells himself he's quite a stud but a voice inside asks how long he can keep this up. He swears he's going to stay home and relax tonight but the loneliness gets to him and finally, he decides he will "check out the action" at his favorite bar one more time.
Trina just met the "man of her dreams" a few weeks ago. She invited him to stay with her when his wife threw him out. She's so happy giving him what he needs domestically, financially, and sexually, especially when it's something his wife wouldn't do. She loves knowing that she understands his better than anyone else. That is why she is going to surprise him by taking him out to dinner for his birthday and wear the kind of very revealing dress he really likes.
Normally she wears more conservative clothes because she is uncomfortable being the center of attention. But making him happy is what counts. She leaves work early to swing by his office and give him a ride so he won't have to take the bus. She's thinking about placing an ad to give away her precious Siamese because he has hinted that he doesn't like cats.
What do Josh and Trina have in common? On the surface, very little, but inside they are two lonely people desperate for connectedness in unhealthy and compulsive relationships. Josh and Trina may be sex and love addicts.
What is Addiction to Sex and/or Love?
Although people such as Josh and Trina seem at first glance to be very different--Josh relates superficially to many and Trina wraps herself up intensely in one--they can be thought of as extremes on a continuum. Josh's behavior may be acceptable or even admired for younger men but in someone well into middle age they contradict our cultural expectation of finding a mate and settling down for life. Therefore, his addiction is more readily seen as out of control than is Trina's.
Sexual addiction has been called many other things: compulsive sexual behavior, hypersexuality, or sexual impulsivity. Sex addicts are characterized by a preoccupation with sex, the strong desire for sex, and particularly, a sense of shame due to an inability to control their sexual impulses. Sex addicts cannot identify a time when their compulsion began but there seems to be an agreement that it occurs as a coping response to anxiety.
The psychological world had known for decades what the underlying problem is. As far back as twenty years ago, Barth and Kinder (1987) wrote, "the sexually impulsive individual uses sexual activity as a means of avoiding or escaping from personal problems, social stress, and unpleasant emotions, such as loneliness, boredom, tension, sadness, or anger (p.16)." Their sexual activities can range from intense sexual fantasizing, conventional intercourse, and sexual deviation (of a number of types) to violent criminal behavior. Sex addicts often try to distance themselves from their impulses, that is, from their bodies, their hearts and souls.
They use repression and denial resulting in guilt and shame, social isolation, and other inwardly directed negative emotions. In other words, they try to keep their addiction secret and suffer low self esteem and alienation as a result. Frequently, their sexual addiction is accompanied by drug and alcohol abuse or addiction. Often, as the substance abuse abates, the sexual addiction increases and one set of compulsive behaviors substitutes for another. However, both addictions can be seen as attempts to provide a means of avoiding inner emptiness.
What about Trina? What could be wrong with falling in love, becoming one with your partner, placing your loved one above yourself: Isn't that the stuff of romance? Isn't that what love is all about? Trina and those like her have never experienced genuine nurturing and confuse their partner's neediness with desire. Their relationships are one way to try to experience caring but their care-taking can turn to control. Typically love addicts are Super Co-dependents.
They may have grown up in extremely dysfunctional households where one or both parents were either addicted to something (e.g.,alcohol, drugs, work, gambling, food, etc.), mentally unstable, violent, physically and/or emotionally abusive, or even sexually inappropriate with their children. The result was that the parents were emotionally unavailable to their children and thereby discounted their child's perceptions and needs. Future love addicts often became caretakers of one or both of their dysfunctional parents. In this way they got some of their emotional needs met to feel important or valued.
These kids brought into adulthood a paralyzing fear of abandonment so strong that they would do anything to keep a relationship from breaking up. Used to a lack of love in relationships, they are attracted to partners who are as emotionally unavailable as their parents. They hold hopes of transforming the object of their affection with the power of their love. They stay focused on the loved one and discount their own needs and desires. They take on the blame, guilt, and responsibility for the relationship and keep trying harder and harder to please.
They are willing to suffer and endure pain in hopes of getting their partner to acknowledge and appreciate them in ways their parents never did. People who are kind, respectful, and solicitous of them are found wanting, dull, and lacking in excitement. The love addict becomes restless around persons who might really provide them with genuine caring and nurturing. The love addict's caring turns to control as they try harder and harder to achieve the security they never had in childhood. However, rather than create that idealized fairy tale ending they wish for, they more often recreate the home they were raised in.
Recovering from Sex or Love Addiction
While suggestions for treatment of sex and love addiction differ among varying helping groups and professionals, two major concepts are considered important by all:
- since love and sex are natural and important parts of human functioning the impulses need to be re-channeled rather than abandoned and
- full recovery involves developing healthy relationships.
With most addictions, abstinence is a major goal and means to recovery. The alcoholic abstains from drinking; the compulsive gamble stops betting; the addict stops using. Yet, just as the suggestion that compulsive overeaters cease all eating activities would be unrealistic as well as unhealthy, and therefore unwise, the suggestion that sex and love addicts stop partaking of their loving and sexual impulses would be equally unnatural and also unnecessary. Loving and sexual impulses expressed in healthy ways lead to feelings of belonging, positive interactions, and increasing self esteem.
Sex and love addicts have distorted their natural impulses in dysfunctional ways in order to deny their feelings of shame. Therefore, a major goal of recovery is to re-direct and re-channel addictive thoughts and behaviors in order to rediscover their natural loving and sexual impulses and transform their lives.
Developing healthy relationships is vital to recovery from a sex or love addiction. To this end Twelve Step programs modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous serve a valuable purpose. Many sex and love addicts find the acceptance, patience, and structure of a Twelve Step program such as Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) or Co-Dependents Anonymous (CODA) their key to feeling more genuine connectedness with themselves and others. Some find a special friend, mentor, or lover with whom they are able to form a healthy and enduring bond.
Some need more help. A number of people discover that a relationship with a professional therapist with expertise in these issues can be helpful in many situations. A therapist can help them see why they behave in unhealthy ways, can help them identify their unmet needs and find ways of expressing and getting them met, can describe what healthy relationships are like, and can help guide and support recovering addicts as they experiment with new ways of being.
Although sex and love addicts may experience anxiety, loneliness and despair and the road of recovery may seem long and bumpy, they can become healthier in their relationships and lead fuller, more satisfying lives. If you or a loved one need help, get it. Make yourself a priority and attend to this most basic of needs as soon as you can.
About the Authors:
Dr. Al Cooper, clinical director at the San Jose Marital and Sexuality Centre (408-248-9737), runs the training program for Counseling and Psychological Services at Stanford University. Dr. Cooper is internationally known for his work in sexuality and is freqently interviewed by the media. He currently writes a column in Men's Health Magazine.
Dr. Coralie Scherer coordinates online services for the Centre and specializes in sexual trauma, women's issues, and marital therapy.
Revised 11/14/08 by Marlene M. Maheu, Ph.D.