Today, people throughout the world will profess their love with gifts, roses and romantic meals. But for people suffering from sex addiction, normal relationships are not an option. YL speaks to individuals who have tackled their illness head on, in search of the love they could never have previously dreamed of
Seven years ago, Robert decided he desperately needed help if he was to tackle his growing sex addiction. The Aberdeen-based oil worker’s relationships with sex had been uncontrollable for many years, and it had spiralled dramatically from fantasy and masturbation in his younger years to visiting lap dancing clubs up to five times a week as an adult, and latterly frequently soliciting sex workers.
is sense of self-worth nose-dived with his increasing sexual exploits, but he saw no way to curb his lust using willpower alone.
“I swore I wouldn’t use prostitutes. But I used one once when I was suicidal and then it became another addiction and a way of seeking solace,” Robert explained to me over the phone of how his addiction had developed.
“I was very confused because I was promiscuous but at the same time I felt unrequited love for a certain individual and phoned them more than I should have. It wasn’t a linear thing, because I was still masturbating when I was engaging with everything else.”
Flash forward to today, Robert – a pseudonym chosen to preserve the middle-aged Englishman’s anonymity – has been free of lustful urges for six years. It’s an incredible accomplishment given the strength of his sex addiction, but it was a hard won process. Those who have tackled sex addiction, he explained, liken withdrawal to that of coming off drugs or alcohol after years of addiction.
“When I came off lust, I had attacks of depression, of diet and sleeping problems. I was sweating and nervous and anxious. After about a year of surrendering lust on a daily basis I became free from it. I feel I’m a normal person now. I seem like a different person.”
Robert is one of thousands of sex addicts across the world who have confronted their illness by reaching out to Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) – a global network of groups comprising addicts who come together to reach sexual sobriety through a 12-step programme.
ike Alcoholics Anonymous, members strive to truly understand the nature of their illness by sharing their stories, and finding the common ground which links the many ways sex addiction is expressed – from pornography consumption, to acting out with prostitutes, to manipulating personal relationships towards reaching sexual gratification.
It’s a formula for achieving sobriety which has proven to work time and again since SA was founded in 1979. That said, reaching and maintaining sobriety is a lifelong journey members must embark on with utter dedication.
“I could last longer without a meeting than a newcomer who was struggling, but I wouldn’t like to risk it,” Robert explained. As we spoke on the phone, there was no trace of depression or anxiety in Robert’s voice. Yet, despite how far he has come, he doesn’t let pride at reaching sobriety cloud his thoughts. “I feel pleased that the SA fellowship exists, and that it’s allowed me to get rid of this bug-bear, this chip on my shoulder, this liability in my life. But I don’t feel proud of the things I have done.”
ABSOLUTE ABSTINENCE FROM ALL SEXUAL ACTIVITIES
There are a number of groups throughout the world similar to SA. Some focus more on love addiction rather than compulsive sex addiction, while others are specifically geared towards members of specific lifestyles or sexual orientations. The concept of sobriety varies from one to the other too. But for members of SA, the concept is clear – sobriety means absolute abstinence from all sexual activities, including masturbation. This is a founding principal of SA, Robert explained, and one that can’t be moved.
“For me, if you’re an alcoholic and say ‘you can drink cider and whisky, but just not vodka or beer’, it wouldn’t work, because I would still get hopelessly drunk. I tried in my time to stop, say, going to lap dancing clubs, and I would just act out more with pornography, for example. Or if I stopped pornography I ended up going to a prostitute instead. So for me, the definition of sobriety has to be sober from lusting, fantasies about sexual exploits or objectifying people. It’s all or nothing for me really,” he said.
Treating addiction at SA comes down to surrendering yourself to a power greater than yourself. For many members, this is a spiritual path, but Robert stressed that SA is completely open to sexaholics from all walks of life, whether religious, agnostic or atheistic. A greater power, therefore, could be a deity or simply your fellow SA members – whatever works, as long as it is something outside of yourself.
As to the mechanics of treating addiction, sharing stories and finding common ground is the foundation on which weekly SA meetings are laid, but the act of surrendering lust can take many forms. At the more extreme end of the spectrum, lust can be ‘cast out’ with a physical motion as if pushing out a foreign entity. But for the most part, treatment is more a process of changing the way you think about the objects of your addiction.
“You can do a simple prayer for help. You say, ‘I can’t manage this on my own’. Because the whole thing about an addiction is that you can’t manage something like this on your willpower alone, which is why you need a power greater than yourself to treat addiction on a daily basis.” One of the greatest powers for members of SA is the institution of marriage itself. “Since SA was founded, people have found in their own experiences that sex in marriage works, but noncommittal relationships for sexaholics doesn’t work. We use the situation for sex and gratification, and twist it towards the abnormal.”
PEOPLE DON’T WANT THE GORY DETAILS
This view of marriage has fundamentally changed Robert’s view towards sex and relationships.
“The whole thing of sex outside of marriage for me is shameful now – it’s like voyeurism to look at magazines or people in the street or life in general. It’s like you’re stealing something from them.” He explained that he has long wanted marriage for himself, but that it hasn’t happened yet. “Towards the end of my acting out, I imagined I could go on dates with women, but my illness was so far gone that as soon as the woman asked me out on a date, I couldn’t wait two or three days for the date to happen, so I needed to act out with a prostitute who looked like that woman. So then I would be too ashamed to go on the date in the end,” he said.
Having been six years sober, Robert now feels in a much more stable place from which to consider marriage and, given he has approached his treatment within a Christian framework, he is ideally seeking a partner who shares his faith. As with many forms of addiction, being a sexaholic is something he feels he must be mindful of at all times, and where appropriate, open about. Only his brother, parents and fellow SA members know about his addiction, but should a significant other come into his life, Robert feels responsible for at least offering the information up to her.“It’s such a large part of my life that a marriage wouldn’t work unless [a partner] knew,” he said.
“I have been advised by a sponsor of mine to explain that I’m chaste until marriage, and then say, ‘I have a chequered past and have been involved in this and that and the other. If you have any questions, ask me’. Because people might not want to know, they might want to walk away there and then, or they might be very interested or only lightly interested. Sometimes it’s enough to say ‘I’m in recovery’. Some people don’t want the gory details of your past life. Because that’s what it is – in the past.”
A DISEASE OF DENIAL
Sexaholics come from all walks of life, Robert added, and so he was naturally not keen to disclose any details about the current roster of members. Anonymity has to be king if members are to feel truly open to share their experiences.
But what about criminality, I wondered? With some aspects of sex addiction being linked closely to criminal acts, how does this affect the group’s responsibility of maintaining each other’s anonymity?
“We’re not policemen,” Robert stated, but added that if any new or current member were to indicate they had engaged in dangerous or illegal activity, the group would first and foremost try to persuade them to turn themselves over to the police.
“We are a last chance saloon for these people. But at the end of the day, we are human beings living in society, and if someone tells us they are going to murder or rape their wife after the meeting, we have to do something about that.”
Thankfully the group has never been given cause for concern. A bigger problem by far is trying to reach out to addicts who may be in need. The Aberdeen group hosted a series of open meetings recently, but were unsuccessful in bringing new people into the fold.
“Only existing members showed up which is disappointing. We know this is a disease of denial, and that people are often comfortable with their addiction because they are getting it and don’t want to give it up, or they don’t believe they have a problem, or that there’s a solution. The idea of agreeing to this article is to show that there is a solution.”
Sexaholics Anonymous is a self-supporting and non profit group. The Aberdeen group meets weekly. For further information about Sexaholics Anonymous, visit www.sauk.org
SEX ADDICTION
Sex addiction can be expressed in myriad ways. In the digital age, many addicts play out their urges purely online, with many actually being virgins. For addicts who act out sexually with others physically, promiscuity may not even be the issue. Sex addiction is equally possible in monogamous relationships.
ST, a Londoner, visited Aberdeen recently to share his story at the open meetings. Unlike Robert, ST – as he chose to be referred to in this article – carried out his addiction purely within the boundaries of a relationship.The problem started in his youth.
“I was obsessed with sex. Not in the sense of doing it, but in that it became too important. I was like this over-awing thing. The panacea of everything, rather than just part of growing up,” he explained.
“Everything that I think about in the sexual arena is an abnormal reaction, and it’s taken me a long time to realise that. For me, it became quite a strong part of my obsession with individuals too. I can look back now and what I used to think was unrequited love was effectively stalking somebody. And that’s something which we call ‘an instinct gone astray’, something which is quite sick, really.”
Despite his obsessive tendencies, ST had a series of long-term girlfriends, and even a three-year marriage. But each time, sex became too important to him, and it warped the relationships.
“My problem was I was worried people were going to leave me. I clung on, but I was still a sexaholic. In those relationships, once sex came into it, I stopped seeing the person. The sex became the driving force. With my marriage, I didn’t think, ‘what’s best for us?’ It was ‘how can I manipulate my wife to have sex with me next?’”
The only thing that helped was joining SA, though it took time to feel a kindred spirit with his fellow members.
“When I first came in, I thought, ‘these are very sick people, not like me’. I focused on what they were doing. But I was just looking at the differences. I would hear about people using prostitutes, and I wasn’t like that. But the more and more I listened, I realised what they were really after was a connection with somebody, and sex was the wrong way of doing it, but that was the only way they had – their obsession.”
Moving forward, ST is resolute on his position on relationships. He would rather be single and happy than return to the unhealthy relationships he once had. “I would want not to be dependent on that person. I would want to be my own person, and feel comfortable in myself,” he said. “In the programme, we say we don’t have relationships; we take ‘prisoners’. Because the person is hooked in to our illness. So now, for me, the ideal thing would be to have that kind of healthy respectful relationship, one built on compassion and kindness.”