3 Gateways to Intimacy: Things You Can Practice Doing Now

Intimacy is the ability to be real with a significant other, the ability to be known for who we really are.  And being seen in this way requires that we are secure enough to take a risk and be vulnerable.

Sex addiction has been described as an “intimacy disability.”  Addictive behaviors are ways to deal with stress and negative emotions; ways that do not depend on other people for soothing or emotional support.  Addicts feel mistrustful about being open with their needs and have a deep rooted belief that no one who really knew them could love them.

In recovery, addicts learn to reconnect with themselves and with their inner feelings without running away.  And they learn to reconnect with other people with more trust and less fear of rejection.

But addiction treatment does not automatically resolve all the addict’s fears about being known and about sharing all of themselves with a partner.  Becoming intimacy-“abled” is a much longer process than that of simply kicking an addiction.

Building intimacy skills

It is all very well to tell people to stop judging, to set appropriate boundaries or to “speak your truth in the moment.”  But these can seem pretty abstract and hard to put into practice.

Here are some specific kinds of behavior that the addict can focus on and some ideas about why they may help promote intimacy.

Nurturance

Nurturance involves giving someone what they need.  But in a relationship with a partner it also implies that the nurturer gives something (reassurance, food, listening, back rubs etc.) willingly and without resentment.  You don’t have to be a saint to nurture someone, and you can even do it because you are convinced that it is part of what you should do as a partner.  But real nurturance does mean that you give some attention to what the other person is feeling and that you are sincerely motivated to be kind to them.

Why does being nurturing foster intimacy?  Because it promotes empathy and an understanding of what your partner is like inside.  If done in the right spirit, nurturing makes us more able to be caring.  And taking care of someone is a way for them to feel our love and for our love to become deeper.

Also nurturing another person has the potential to bolster our own self esteem, even if that is not the original motivation.  When we give freely in this way it means that we are “full,” that we are not always worrying about our own need for self enhancement.

Mutual process

How do you relate to a partner when dealing with something specific in your life together?  It could be anything: an analysis of a movie you saw, a decision about buying furniture, or a discussion of one another’s plans and fears.

Addicts are all-or-nothing people: either we do it my way or we do it your way.  Instead of engaging in a constructive back and forth the addict will simply try to convince you of their own point of view.  If you are right they are wrong.

Approaching a question or topic as something to be decided together by a back and forth of ideas is new behavior for many recovering addicts.  But even if it is hard to believe that your partner could be right about anything, you can still practice listening and responding to what the other person says.

This is not the same as arguing your point and trying to convince the other person.  The point is to take a breath and allow the other person’s ideas to stimulate your thinking.

It is obvious how mutual process supports intimacy.  The “we” is greater than each of you alone.  In mutual processing you are building something together.

Shared experiences

It has been said that “love is not gazing into each other’s eyes, but it is gazing together at something else.”  When you can share and experience with someone you are automatically providing fertile ground for intimacy.

People who share intense experiences like being in combat in the armed services know that there is an automatic intimacy of a sort just from having gone through the same thing.  When we share something we re-affirm our common humanity because, to a great extent we have the same reactions to things.  This is especially true for powerful experiences like joy and triumph.

But sharing a joke or a sunset or a silly cat video can help feed intimacy.  This does not require any particular skill; simply that you make sure that you include times when you share experiences in your daily life together.

Fake it ‘til you make it

Fake it ‘til you make it is an idea that is often heard in 12-step meetings.  It means that you engage in healthy behavior even before you have fully embraced it.  And the theory is that in time you will come to feel that it is part of who you are.

In relationships it is also important to engage in specific caring behaviors and ways of relating.  Otherwise couples can end up endlessly talking, reading and “working on the relationship” without really getting anywhere.

Find Dr. Hatch on Facebook at Sex Addictions Counseling or Twitter @SAResource

When are Sex Addicts Ready for a Relationship? Here’s a Checklist

Most sex addicts enter sex addiction treatment with a warped sense of what relationships are all about.  The relational trauma in early life that made them addicts also results in their having:

  • No models of healthy relating over time
  • No experience of giving or getting appropriate nurturing
  • No set of relationship skills such as openness and mutuality

Some sex addicts avoid relationships altogether, preferring to limit their intimate contact to porn, prostitutes, hook-ups, cybersex or other sexually addictive behaviors that allow them to avoid the demands of real connection with someone.

Other sex addicts form relationships and marriages while they are secretly active in their addictive behavior.  They too are avoiding intimacy.  They cannot share their deeper feelings with a partner due to fear of being hurt or abandoned.

Mistaken ideas about what relationships are for

Here are some of the superficial ideas that often form the sex addict’s paradigm of what a relationship is for:

  •  A relationship will bring me social recognition and acceptance in a world I want to belong to.
  •  A relationship with a glamorous person will make me proud and confident and make others envy me.
  • A relationship with the right person will provide the perfect balance to my life.
  • A committed relationship with children will make me a normal person with a normal life.
  • We will be considered a “great looking couple.”
  • The right relationship can cure my addictions.

These ideas come out of a sense of inadequacy and reflect the addict’s inability to imagine a healthy bond.  They reveal his or her narcissistic view of a relationship as a useful accessory and a partner as a fantasy.

Recovery lays the groundwork for relationships

In recovery sex addicts have gained enormously in the areas of self-awareness, self control, accountability, honesty, sharing and empathy.  They have learned to connect with themselves and with others.  And they have learned that they are worthy to be loved and that commitment requires vulnerability.  They are less self conscious, more confident and better at communicating.

All of this does not guarantee that the addict is ready for a relationship. Here are some questions that may help clarify whether the addict is ready to try again.

A relationship readiness checklist*

1.      I am more aware of what I am feeling at any given time and I am more able to identify feelings and think and talk about them.

2.      I have taken care of my basic health needs including having an STD test and other routine tests. If I have been prescribed psychotropic or other medication I follow up on appointments and on the use of medication.

3.      My ability to focus on whatever I am doing is improved and I don’t feel anxious and pulled in different directions as much.

4.      I enjoy having “down time” and I don’t feel like I have to do something all the time.

5.      I have learned that I can go to a counselor or other person I trust for help or advice and I can listen to what they say even if I disagree.

6.      I am aware of any problems I have with other addictions and I have done what I needed to do to address them.

7.      I have found ways to keep myself accountable regarding my addiction that rely on people other than a spouse or partner.

8.      I am willing to try out new activities and interests and I am OK if some things I try don’t work for me and others do.

9.      I am willing to experiment with changing my daily ritual.

10.  I have a greater sense of what I want and need and am clearer on what things interest me in life.

11.  I am more interested and confident in my work or other activities.

12.  I am more flexible and more tolerant than I used to be.

13.  I feel like I can stick up for myself when I need to without going overboard.

14.  I am not as self-conscious about initiating a social contact and I can be more comfortable just being myself.

15.  I no longer feel anxious or apprehensive when I am alone.  I would like a partner but I am OK without a partner.

Having achieved these milestones is a minimum requirement for a recovering sex addict who wants to start out with a new relationship.  But the addict will still have some work to do to.  Applying these new found skills in intimate relationship without repeating the mistakes of the past is the next biggest challenge in recovery.  It takes time, practice and a whole lot more self-examination.

*From my book “Relationships in Recovery: A Guide for Sex Addicts who are Starting Over.”

Find Dr. Hatch on Facebook at Sex Addictions Counseling or Twitter @SAResource

Intimacy Disorder and the Healing Power of Confrontation

Sex addicts seem to be good at looking out for themselves, but in reality the opposite is the case.  They are most often crippled when it comes to relating in a confident and genuine way.  Instead of speaking their truth, sex addicts rely on avoidance, aggression, placating and manipulation.

I believe this is part of the codependence that is at the root of all addiction.  Sex addicts predictably approach other people with insecurity and mistrust.  They have early life experiences that leave them alienated: expecting little from others and fearing abandonment, abuse or neglect.  Being open and genuine in interpersonal intimacy is felt as stressful and potentially dangerous.  This is an intimacy disorder.

Aggression vs. assertion

Self assertion, including healthy confrontation, is actually the opposite of aggression in all the important ways.  What is the difference?

Assertion involves saying and doing things that will give you the best chance of getting what you need but not at someone else’s expense.

Aggression involves saying and doing things designed to get what you need at someone else’s expense.

If you are assertive you are clear about what you need and want but in a way that is respectful of the fact that the other person may or may not go along with what you want.  You have a right to ask for anything, but the other person has a right to say no.

In aggression, you try to push, bully, manipulate or frighten.  You make the other person do what you want but you create a negative experience which is harmful to them.  You get what you want but you damage the relationship.

Avoidance, placating and manipulation

Addicts are often so lacking in the confidence that they cannot tolerate being vulnerable to potential rejection or open to negotiation.  They seek instead to control the situation as a way to stay safe.  They may completely avoid talking about anything that goes on inside them.  Often they have a very elaborate “façade” by which they appear to be what they think the situation demands.

Other times addicts simply bury their own strong needs and feelings by just going along with whatever their partner wants.  Placating is a way of staying in control by dodging any situation which the partner might not like.  This works for the addict because although they resent playing this “childlike” role, they have an outlet, a secret life of acting out that allows them to gratify themselves unhindered and without risk.

Manipulation is another form of control that allows the addict to dodge real communication and avoids negotiation and compromise.  It can be aggressive, as when the addict “guilt trips” their partner or it can be underhanded, as when the addict pits someone else against their partner to achieve an outcome or dishonest, as when the addict flat out denies what their partner is experiencing and tries to distort their reality.

In any of the above examples, the addict is avoiding any real confrontation because (a) it is not something they feel they know how to do very well and (b) it is frightening to be transparent with their feelings and needs.  But intimacy in a relationship demands that both people be willing and able to be clear and open about what they want, how they feel, and how things affect them.  No one can do this all the time and no one can be expected to do it flawlessly.  But if one or both of the partners cannot put their needs out on the table they have placed a drastic limit on where the relationship can go.  Learning healthy confrontation can go a long way toward resolving intimacy disorder.

Find Dr. Hatch on Facebook at Sex Addictions Counseling or Twitter @SAResource 

Is Your Relationship Addictive? Take the Self-Test

Relationships should feel good.  They should be happy and loving most of the time.  Addicts, recovering addicts and partners of addicts often have relationships that are the opposite.

As Patrick Carnes has pointed out in his writing, both sex addicts and their partners often have many similarities in their psychological makeup.  Both addicts and partners of addicts often come from families in which relationships were dysfunctional and appropriate nurturing was unreliable.

This early relational trauma leads to both fear of intimacy and fear of abandonment.  And these can lead couples into patterns of relating where each feeds the other’s unhealthy dynamics such as avoidance, manipulation, lack of openness, fear, and over-control.  See also my post “When Love Addicts Fall for Sex Addicts.”

Mistakes addicts and partners make

  • Mistaking sex for intimacy

Most sex addicts and many partners of sex addicts place an undue emphasis on sex as the most important aspect of the relationship or as the proof of whether the relationship is loving and devoted.  Sex addicts have little experience of healthy intimacy and place an undue emphasis on having their sexual needs met, either inside or outside the relationship.  Partners may allow themselves to see their addict’s powerful sexual attraction as the only or most important aspect of love and intimacy.

  • Lack of Courtship Skills

Addictive relationships often begin with sex.  By building a relationship on sex and romantic passion, addicts and their partners may ignore the process of getting to know each other in a healthy way.  There is nothing wrong with enjoying feeling swept away, but it shouldn’t prevent you from learning about one another as part of a process leading to healthy commitment.  In a more normal courtship, people take it slower and ask more questions about the other person’s situation, their relationship history, their feelings about relationships etc.  And they also do not approach the situation with any ideas about what they might need or want in another person (aside form feeling swept away).

  • Mistaking Intensity for devotion

Many addictive couples have patterns of high intensity and high drama in their relationships.  They may have frequent and even violent conflicts and they make often break up and get back together.  Their interaction may be characterized by jealousy, threat, competition, and fear, all of which are mistakenly interpreted as signs that the relationship is the most important and most deeply committed one in their life.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

  • Mistaking power for trust

People who feel inadequate to the demands of an intimate relationship or who are overly fearful of abandonment may have an excessive need for control in their relationships.  Instead of feeling safe and secure in the knowledge that they can deal with problems that arise, they are closed off and mistrustful.  This leads to a vigilance about what the other person is doing and a lack of openness in communication.  The excessive need for control is based in the person’s own insecurity about their ability to sustain a relationship, their worth as a partner and their partner’s reliability.

An addictive relationship self-test*

The items in the test below are informally compiled based on my clinical experience and reading on this topic.  These problems are not unique to addicts and may be experienced by anyone with impaired intimacy and relationship abilities.  But they are very characteristic of addicts and often of the partners of addicts as well.

  1. Growing up I didn’t see my parents as consistently loving, and contented with each other.
  1. My relationships typically start with an intense sexual attraction and rapid involvement.
  1. I find it easy to start relationships but they always get complicated.
  1. I find it hard to know how to get out of a bad relationship.
  1. I sometimes think I stay in a relationship because I am afraid of being on my own.
  1. I am afraid of my partner’s anger.
  1. I sometimes placate or manipulate my partner to avoid confronting things.
  1. I find it easy to get into thinking that my partner is to blame.
  1. My partner and I don’t talk about our feelings about the relationship.
  1. In my relationships one person is always less devoted than the other.
  1. Either I feel superior to my partner or I feel my partner is superior to me.
  1. I am dishonest with my partner at times to avoid upsetting him/her.
  1. When I am in a relationship my partner and I don’t socialize with friends as a couple very much.
  1. Either I or my partner is always trying to get us into some kind of therapy.
  1. I feel that having a good relationship is hopeless.

*Taken from my book Relationships in Recovery: a Guide for Sex Addicts who are Starting Over

When you look at this list of statements, it should be clear that what I am calling addictive relationships are characterized by things like negativity, turmoil and alienation.  A person who has the emotional development required for healthy intimacy would avoid or even run from such a relationship.  Without a level of openness, security and contentment it is impossible for relationships to succeed and for the partners to flourish.

Find Dr. Hatch on Facebook at Sex Addictions Counseling or Twitter @SAResource