Help for the Partners of Sex Addicts
behavior, allowing it to control her emotions and behavior, realizing that it negatively influences her health and well-being, she finds herself unable to let go. Does she measure the degree of her love by the depth of her torment?
Problems from childhood rear their ugly heads when contemplating why some women masochistically stay in relationships that they find erosive to their sense of security and self-worth. The one characteristic of all dysfunctional families is the inability to talk about feelings and problems. In dysfunctional families, emotions are repressed, major aspects of reality are denied, and roles remain rigid. Children from such families learn not to believe in their own perceptions nor are they able to validate their own feelings. When the family denies a child’s psychic reality, it’s difficult them to trust their own perceptions as adults.
What comes to mind is a “Joey Bishop” episode from the 50’s wherein the wife walks in on him in bed with “a blonde” and Joey and his sexual cohort calmly get up and dressed, the woman walks out the door, and Joey denies that there ever was a woman in the room. The (typically 50’s) wife responds by not believing her own perceptions and being apologetic!!
These women become unable to discern when someone or something is not good for them. Situations and people that others would avoid as dangerous, uncomfortable, or unwholesome do not repel them because they have no way of evaluating them in a self-protective manner. They do not trust their feelings and are unable to be guided by an appropriate sense of entitled self-interest. Rather they are drawn to the dangers, intrigues, dramas and chaos that come from living with an addict.
If she comes from emotionally unavailable parents, she was never able to change her parent(s) into the warm, loving caretaker(s) for whom she longed. Subsequently, she unconsciously is drawn to an unstable, unavailable man with whom she can try to change into a loving, stable man who can give her what she lacked as a child. The ruse rarely works, and these women live in the ever-perpetuating pain and suffering that they lived in as children.
Because her emotional needs were not met in childhood, she is terrified of experiencing the kind of emotional neglect and abandonment she felt back then, and she will do almost anything to prevent a relationship from dissolving. Accustomed to lack of love in personal relationships, she is willing to wait, hope, try harder, and give more chances to a partner that has betrayed her many times over. She may try harder to please him sexually, believing that it is her own deficiency that caused his sex addiction in the first place. In her relationship, she is much more in touch with her dream of how it could be rather than with dealing with the reality of what is. She may be addicted to men and to emotional pain. By becoming enmeshed in a situation that is chaotic, uncertain and emotionally painful, she can avoid focusing on her responsibility to herself, as her family of origin did not provide a role model for guiltless self-care. Alternatively, the highs and drama of life with a sex addict may forestall the experience of deep-seated depression. She may have never been attracted to men who were kind, stable, faithful and reliable. Such men may have been experienced as “boring”.
I’m incredibly frustrated that he/she won’t tell the truth. Even when I present “evidence”, he denies his sexual acting out. How can I ever trust a man who so blatantly lies to me?
Sex addiction thrives in secrecy. Addicts will go to any length to protect their double life. Denial, (“Don’t Even Know I’m Lying”) plays a huge part in any addiction process. The reality of the acting out is protected from the conscious mind. If the addict is unaware of the truth, how can he tell you?
The very thinking process of the addict becomes impaired as he becomes immersed in the denial process, giving way to the minimization of the extent of his behavior. This connects with “rationalization”: i.e. “I’m not really cheating” – “All guys do this” – “I’m not hurting anyone” – “I work hard so I deserve some pleasure.” This combination of denial, minimization and rationalization makes it extremely difficult for him to know the truth.
More complexing is the phenomenon of “dissociation”, or “The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” syndrome. Dissociation is a clinical process that characterizes multiple personality disorder. While I’m not saying the sex addicts have MPD, I am suggesting that some of the same characteristics of that disorder are shared. One side of the personality protects the other side from the truth. Some level of dissociation is in every man who has a “double life”. Each side of the personality has different