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

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