Chronic Sex Addiction Relapse: Letting Go Once and For All

Sometimes I feel as bewildered and frustrated as my sex addiction clients when they periodically slip up and engage in their addictive behavior, even as they seem to be making progress in their recovery.  (See also the excellent article by Dr. Patrick Carnes entitled “The Perfect Storm: Assessing for Sex Addiction”)

What is it that makes some recovering sex addicts continue to relapse frequently?  Why are some sex addicts seemingly unable to cut the cord?  I believe that beyond the question of “hitting bottom”, the process of letting go of an addiction is similar to the loss of a relationship and that some addicts get stuck at various stages of the grieving that loss.

Addiction as a relationship

The idea of an addiction as a relationship has been around for a long time.  Sex addiction, like addiction generally, has been defined as a primary relationship with a mood altering experience.  That experience may be a chemical such as a drug or alcohol or it may be an activity such as gambling or sex.  Whatever the chemical or activity, there is some evidence that the brain mechanisms involved in the addiction are all similar.

But beyond brain chemistry, brain alteration and changes in mood (excitement, euphoria, soothing), addictive activity is also something that develops like a relationship.  And the activity as well as everything leading up to it and surrounding it becomes like a friend or even a loved one.

This affection for our addictive activity is not entirely illogical.  For most addicts, their “drug” is something that they have relied on to regulate their emotions, escape stress, and even maintain their ability to function.  A porn addict I know once said “Miss January (his name for his addiction) is always there for me.”  It has served the addict well in some sense.  Yet it also has destructive potential and usually goes against the addict’s own value system.  Hence it is a relationship that needs to end.

In sex addiction treatment a commonly used exercise is that of having the client write a good bye letter, a “Dear John” letter, to his or her addiction.  In this letter the addict “breaks up” with his addiction, often acknowledging that the addiction was important, fun and will be missed.  This exercise underlines for the addict the fact that he or she is letting go of something important.  Whether it is giving up porn, prostitutes, compulsive hook-ups, or fetishes it is going to amount to a real loss.

Grieving the loss

All grief is about the struggle or process involved in coming to acceptance of a loss.  Loss is stressful.  In fact one definition of stress is “a loss or the threat of a loss”.  And so the loss of an addiction is stressful, challenging and potentially even traumatic.

Most sex addicts have a history of childhood relational trauma.  The drug, the “relationship” with a fantasy became a way to endure stress and to substitute something for what was missing in reality.  In dysfunctional families intimacy is fraught with danger and self doubt.  The addictive fantasy involved in much sexual acting out is one of being able to be gratified in a way that feels safe.

Getting stuck in the grief process and relapse

It is possible to get stuck at any point in the process of letting go.  Even once past the denial phase and even after acknowledging the need to let go of the behavior, there may be predictable stages of anger, bargaining, and depression.  A good example is the addict who knows that porn blocking software would hugely improve his chances of getting free of porn addiction but who either rebels against getting it installed, finds excuses, or finds ways around the filters.  I have seen clients use their GPS or their children’s devices when other outlets are blocked.  This addict is stuck in anger and possibly old rebellion against authority.  He or she is saying “you can’t make me.”

Bargaining can go on for a long time too.  The addict makes a deal with their treatment program that says basically “If I get XYZ then I will be able to let go of my addiction”.  This can mean that the addict is going to support group meetings, going to therapy, and reading all the right books but is not willing to experience change.  He is waiting for it to feel right to stop being an addict.  Or he is waiting for a “sign” or for a new relationship to save him etc.  The unpleasant reality is that in giving up the addiction there is nothing that will immediately take its place.  No way to avoid experiencing some sense of loss.

Some addicts go along way down the road to recovery but still can’t give up their addictive behavior completely.  They find that the loss of the addiction brings on depression.  They endlessly analyze why they have relapsed this time.  They feel they cannot tolerate stress or loneliness.  But there is no way to eliminate all of life’s stresses and challenges.  Eventually they begin to realize that they can experience unpleasant feelings without reaching for a drug.    This is the point in a sex addict’s recovery when he or she has turned a corner and is finally done with acting out.  They know it and you can see it.  They will come to acceptance and begin to be solid in their sobriety.

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

Subtle Signs of Self Hate: Recovering Sex Addicts Find New Outlets

There is a common saying among sex addiction therapists that “sex addiction is not about sex, it’s about pain.”    Sex addicts use one or more sexually addictive behaviors such as internet pornography, frequent visits to prostitutes or sexual massage parlors, compulsive sexual hook-ups or serial affairs and so on as a drug of choice to escape stressful or unpleasant feelings.

Sex addicts, like most other kinds of addicts have long-standing doubts about their worth as people.  They have early life histories that have left them fearful of intimate relating.  They are afraid to be open or vulnerable.  They protect themselves from situations in which they feel insecure by retreating into their addictive behavior, their fantasy life of sexual acting out in which they are soothed, gratified and safe.

Addicts may continue to experience low self worth even as they are becoming stronger in their recovery.  It takes a long time to understand and work through the feelings of low self worth and even longer to become confident and comfortable in their own skin. 

Substitute ways of acting out in recovery

Recovering sex addicts who are reliably free of their sexual acting out behavior may exhibit certain behaviors which get in the way of their work, their ability to relate to other people and their intimate relationships.  They are finding new ways to “act out” their feelings and fears now that they can no longer use their drug of choice.

In their work life and social life addicts often exhibit their need to escape their deep self doubt in one or more predictable ways, such a

Conflicts at work.  Addicts may have trouble getting along with others and may be irritable in ways that they never were before.  This is due to the absence of their ability to soothe themselves with their sexual behavior.   

Compulsive overwork or workaholism.  Addicts may pour themselves into their work as a way to escape having to deal with people or relationships.  Work can take up all the space that is left over in which the recovering addict feels ill at ease.

Comparing, competing and contempt.  These are the narcissistic behaviors.  They are an attempt to avoid self doubt and self hate by constantly judging others and trying to be one up.

Need to please.  In the absence of an inner sense of worth and validity, many sex addicts become pleasers.  They feel safe and soothed when they have the approval of others.  This takes the place of a skill they have not yet mastered, that of speaking their truth and being clear about their needs and feelings.

In close relationships addicts will engage in behaviors that tend to put distance between them and their intimate partner.  In this way they escape the demands of intimacy which they feel inadequate to meet.  They do this even as they exhibit codependent behaviors like the need to fix and control.  They will

Subtle or passive aggressive hostility.  This can take many forms such as sarcasm, contempt, sighing, groaning, and eye rolling.  This behavior expresses feelings indirectly which the addict feels incapable of expressing directly. 

Provoke conflict.  Recovering addicts often feel dissatisfied and irritable.  They may project blame onto their partner for this and they may escape intimacy by creating a rift. This can come in cycles, almost like an abuse cycle of lashing out, remorse, reconciliation and repeat.

Flirt or engage in other mini-sexual behaviors.  As discussed in my previous post about subtle forms of betrayal, sex addicts in recovery may use behaviors like flirting, ogling or talking about other people sexually, or reaching out to old girlfriends or boyfriends online as a substitute for their earlier sexually addictive behavior.  This is a way to give themselves a small bit of their drug, a mini “fix.”

Avoid sex.  Sex addicts may take a long time to get comfortable with a sex life with their partner.   Even if they enjoy it, their whole inner sexual landscape has been revamped in recovery and they may have new fears about sexual intimacy such as sudden attacks of performance anxiety or other fearfulness such as jealousy.

Overcoming all of these insecurities and learning to feel and express feelings takes time and patience for both the addict and those around them.  Sex addicts in recovery are building a sense of self and acquiring a set of interpersonal skills that they never had before.  They will get there if they and their spouse or partner or trusted friends are honest about what is going on.

 

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

Why Sex Addicts Blame Their Partners

For most sex addicts, blaming a spouse or partner for a pattern of sexual acting out behavior is a predictable part of the denial process .  Even when they are devoted in many ways to their spouse and family, addicts may still feel that their behavior is caused by something in their situation.

Like all denial mechanisms, this is partly a matter of wanting to avoid feelings of shame about the behavior, as well as wanting to explain it away.  This “shame dumping” as it is sometimes called can be conscious or unconscious, overt or covert.  It is like saying “I’m really a good guy; I only do what I do because of such-and such.”

Your own problems and addictions are usually hard to spot and/or admit to.  But it is always easier to see what’s wrong with someone else or what’s wrong with your life.

Feeling abandoned by a partner with the birth of a child

It is very common for an underlying sex addiction in men to really begin to take hold following the birth of a child.  The problems with the addict’s intimacy avoidance, their addiction proneness, or their lack of emotional maturity were most likely there before.  Often they were masked by the newness of the relationship.

The birth of a child takes the mother away to some extent and puts the emphasis on someone other than the addict.  The addict may flee the new demands and seek to escape into acting out.  In this case the addict may feel unconsciously that they have been rejected or abandoned by his wife and thus feel justified in acting out behaviors like going to strip clubs, prostitutes or sexual massage parlors.

Self sacrifice and overwork

Self sacrifice and devotion to their partner may paradoxically be a setup for the addict to begin to feel like indulging the urge for a separate secret life of acting out.  Many sex addicts are prone to work too hard and try to be the hero for their spouse or partner.

Later they come to resent it and feel that they are owed something.  Instead of being able to practice the intimacy skills of stating their needs with their spouse and letting go of being the hero, they take refuge in a very self indulgent secret life which they feel they deserve.  You will sometimes hear addicts in recovery say “I had to shoot my white horse.”

Sexual dissatisfaction

Sex addicts often feel that their sexual acting out whether in porn use, serial affairs, or any other sexual behavior is a direct reaction to something that is missing in their marriage.  They may say that the problem is that they “want more sex than my wife” and their reasoning is that if that is the case then they are justified in going outside the marriage or relationship to get sex.  After all it’s his/her fault.  If their partner were meeting their needs then they wouldn’t have to seek sex elsewhere.   But in reality it’s apples and oranges.  What the addict wants is an addictive high, a dopamine rush that is the result of a secret sexual behavior.  This is not just a case of needing more sex.  And it is certainly not the partner’s fault.

Lack of investment in the relationship

Most sex addicts who have partners and who are active in their addictive behaviors are lacking in the ability to be fully invested in their relationship.  Even if they love their partner very much, they have chosen a relationship and a way of relating to a partner that sets the stage for the compartmentalization and deception that go along with sex addiction.  They often feel that they didn’t really want to get married or commit to the partner in the first place.

All too often sex addicts have no idea what a good devoted primary relationship should look like and they are unable to bond effectively.  They expect little of the relationship and of their partner and so are free to put their eggs in several baskets.  They may think consciously that their partner is just too busy with work or that their partner will be likely to betray them anyway.  But it is not their partner who can’t make the bond happen it is them.  Their addiction (and intimacy dysfunction) is not an effect, it’s a cause.

Intimacy and Secrets: Why Sex Addicts Won’t Tell All

Telling a partner their sexual secrets is the last thing that most sex addicts want to do.  Yet it is considered a vital part of sex addiction recovery for the addict and not just for the partner or spouse.

Disclosing everything about the addict’s secret life is important in finding or maintaining intimacy and yet it seldom happens all at once. Despite the fact that sex addiction therapists and sex addiction support groups stress honesty and coming clean with your spouse or partner, addicts fear it like the plague.  (For additional information about the process of disclosure and planned disclosure in therapy see my post “Partners Need to Know the Secrets and Lies of Sex Addiction”.)

Trickling or staggered disclosure

It is normal for sex addicts to want to hold back as much about their addiction as they think they can get away with.  So initially, they are likely to disclose only the minimum they think they need to.  As treatment progresses and the partner or spouse gets more involved, additional sexual behaviors or additional details about the sexual activities may come out or be discovered.  Staggered disclosure is considered by therapists to be the norm (see Corley and Schneider, Disclosing Secrets, 2002).

The resistance to revealing everything

There are a number of reasons why addicts find it so hard to just tell it all; some have to do with overt manipulation and some are more psychological.

  • Wanting to contain the problem and avoid the risk of turmoil or divorce.  Disclosure does cause turmoil but it does not necessarily cause divorce.  Addicts are often justifiably afraid that honesty may result in a break-up.  They have in effect made a bargain: they are giving up the possibility for real intimacy in their relationship in order to maintain the relationship.  This is probably a long-standing bargain so it is hard to see it as such.  It is based on the addict’s insecurity, abandonment fear and negative core beliefs about him/her self.
  • Wanting to “protect” the partner or spouse.  Yes, disclosure is hurtful to spouses and partners of the addict.  But here again the addict is making a trade off: they are saying in effect ‘Hurting my partner by keeping sexual secrets and sacrificing a closer bond is better than hurting my partner by telling the truth.’  Better for who?   In most cases the wish to protect the partner is a rationalization
  • Thinking that certain facts don’t count.  Addicts in early recovery may not really understand the many ways, large and small, that they have acted out their sexual compulsivity.  It is typical in recovery for addicts to add things to the list of sexually addictive behaviors as they gain greater self awareness.  A porn addict may not be thinking that his sporadic affairs were part of an “addiction.”  Another addict may not immediately realize that coming on to a friend’s wife at a party was related to his addiction to extramarital hook-ups.
  • Wanting to be able to continue the undisclosed behavior.  This is not necessarily a conscious wish to be devious.  It may be that the addict stays in denial about a particular behavior, believing it to be innocent or irrelevant because of an unconscious motivation to cling to the behavior and a fear of having to give it up.  Such is the compulsive and deluded nature of addictive behavior.

Honesty, remorse and empathy

Addicts hold the core belief that they are unworthy of love.  They avoid intimacy by losing themselves in their addictive behavior which not only serves to “medicate” anxiety, depression and other negative emotions but also serves to avoid the risk of rejection by an intimate partner.

As addicts recover, they gradually let go of long-standing feelings of shame, fear and inadequacy.  They are more willing to risk real intimacy and let go of their sexual fantasy life.  As they gain a stronger sense of self they become more courageous as well as more genuinely remorseful and empathic.

Honesty with oneself and one’s partner is considered to be an indication of progress in recovery. It is evidence of a new-found ability to connect.  It is both a cause and effect of the healing process.  The addict demonstrates a new more integrated self by being honest with himself and others—even when it’s scary.

In this sense the growing ability to tell our secrets is part of the process of trauma and addiction recovery.  It doesn’t happen all at once.

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