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Understanding Love and Romance Addiction: Part One- By Robert Weiss,LCSW, CSAT-S

Welcome guest blogger, Robert Weiss and this two part series on love and romance addiction. Robert is the Founding Director of The Sexual Recovery Institute and Director of Sexual Disorders Services at The Ranch Treatment Centerand Promises Treatment Centers. These centers serve individuals seeking sexual addiction treatment and porn addiction help. Follow Robert on Twitter @RobWeissMSW. Enjoy his blog:  Sex and Intimacy in the Digital Age at: http://blogs.psychcentral.com/sex

Understanding Love and Romance Addiction: Part One

When love and sex become a means to distract or escape from emotional pain, partner choice becomes skewed. Compatibility becomes based on “whether or not you will leave me,” “how intense our sex life is” or “how I can hook you into staying,” rather than mutual compatibility or whether we might truly become intimate and healthy peers, friends and companions.

It can be difficult to understand how the gifts of love and romance can evolve into painfully destructive and compulsive patterns. Yet for the love addicted, romance, sexuality and emotional closeness are experiences more often beset with painful emotional highs and lows than graced by genuine intimacy. Living in a chaotic, desperate internal world of need and emotional despair, romance addicts –these men and women, straight and gay – fear both of being alone and rejected or trapped and stuck in an unhappy relationship.

He or she lives in fear of never finding the one or worse, afraid that when they finally do meet, they themselves will be found unworthy of love. No matter how clever, how smart, how physically attractive or successful, the love addict feels incomplete and haunted by a desire for a fantasy partnership that if fulfilled, would make them complete. In order to achieve their goal relationship addicts will seduction, control, guilt and manipulation to attract and hold onto a romantic or sexual partner, even when unsure whether it is a good match.

Janis, a 27-year-old film student had this to say about her desperate search for love –

Eventually I began to hide my dates. I didn’t want friends to know that I met someone new because so many past times I had said, “he’s the one” and had it not work out that I thought they would laugh at me if I brought yet another guy to the table.

In my desperation I tried dating clubs, speed dating, Internet dating and church dances. Just like the dating books say-I asked everyone I knew to introduce me to someone they could see me dating. And then there were the hobby and recreation groups I joined, ones I didn’t even like, desperately hoping to find him making ceramics, hiking, welding or playing tennis.

When I found someone who felt right I would either have sex right away hoping that would bond us more deeply or avoid sex until we knew each other better thinking that would keep them around. For a while I thought maybe I wasn’t cute or smart enough, later I just blamed the men I dated for being too screwed up. Ultimately it seemed no matter how hard I tried or where I put the blame, I ended up alone.

Over time, my life became more and more about looking for the right guy and less and less about enjoying myself and doing things to make me happy.

Caught up in a constant search for someone to love, the addict’s endless intrigue, flirtations, sexual liaisons and affairs often leave a path of destruction and negative consequences in their wake. Ironically many love addicts have likely already had more than one opportunity for the love and commitment they claim to desire, but in their desperation and narcissism will mistake the intensity of “falling in love” or the drama of problem relationships, for love itself.

Even when dating someone who is safe, stable and appropriate, love addicts can become dissatisfied and anxious.  Appearing bored or unhappy but underneath fearful of an emotional trap, he or she may shove aside a perfectly acceptable mate and/or or start cheating while in perfectly good relationship – looking for yet another new intensity or “love” experience. Therein lies the addictive component of their problem. Struggling to have the relationship that everyone else seems to have and he or she does not, love addicts attempt to resolve these painful circumstances by engaging in even more searching dating and sex.

Addictive relationships are characterized by unhealthy dependency, guilt and abuse. At times despairing of her cycle of unhappy affairs, broken relationships and liaisons, the romance addict may try a “swearing off” period, not unlike the anorexic stage of an eating disorder. She may for a while decide that “not being in the game at all” will solve the problem, only to later find the same issues reappearing whenever reattempting intimacy.

Her denial of the problem can be seen her externalization of the problem, blaming boyfriend after boyfriend for being problematic rather than looking at herself. Like the alcoholic who offers up stressful jobs or financial problems as justification for his excessive drinking, the love addicts’ cycle of dramatic and empty relationships keeps them ever distracted from really taking stock of themselves (or potential partners), making it impossible to gain the insight required for change.

The next part of this blog will be published on Saturday, February 11, 2012

Robert Weiss is Founding Director of The Sexual Recovery Institute and Director of Sexual Disorders Services at The Ranch Treatment Centerand Promises Treatment Centers. These centers serve individuals seeking sexual addiction treatment and porn addiction help. Follow Robert on Twitter @RobWeissMSW. Enjoy his blog:  Sex and Intimacy in the Digital Age at: http://blogs.psychcentral.com/sex

 

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“Gift of Desperation or G.O.D.” A guest blog by Janet Surrey, PhD

Janet Surrey is a clinical psychologist and lecturer at the Harvard Medical School, she is a founding scholar and board member at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College, in Massachusetts. Dr. Surrey is a co-author of Women’s Growth in Connection and the Psychology of Peacemaking. She is co-editor of Mothering Against the Odds: Diverse Voices of Contemporary Mothers. Along with her husband, Stephen Bergman and Samuel Shem, she has co-authored the book “We Have to Talk: Healing Dialogues between Men and Women”. Dr. Surrey is the author of numerous articles and papers. She has written and spoken widely on many topics, including gender issues, mother-daughter relationships, addictions, couples therapy, empathy, adoption, and peacemaking.

Janet was interviewed by Christopher Kennedy Lawford for Mr Lawford’s book “Moment of Clarity”. In this book Janet describes her moment of clarity and calls it her “gift of desperation” or G.O.D.

Who knows why those moments come when they do? Or why they come at all? It’s a mystery. I remember seeing this with an anorexic I was treating. She’d look in the mirror a billion times and saw herself as fat, and suddenly she looked in the mirror and saw she was thin, and everything changed. I’ll never forget that. I saw before me the mystery of that moment when something important gets reorganized, and it’s not under our control. It’s just a complete mystery, and it’s transformative. And it’s also truth.

That’s the gift of desperation. Where you are is so bad, you have nothing left to loose, so why not try recovery? People tell that it will be hard, but you can get through it. People try by their human example to show you that you can lose and you gain things beyond your wildest dreams.

When someone needs help, I tell them my story. I try to get them to talk with someone. If not me, then someone else. And I try to carry the message in a quiet way. It doesn’t always work, so I have to be very humble and not push. I have to find the right way to share and try to be sensitive, but not to expect much. Just trust you don’t know where the seeds are going.

And if it helps, I tell people not to worry about “God.” I mean I have so much trouble with the word God. So I think of it as G.O.D., the gift of desperation, because desperation brings us to the point where we can relate to the universe in a different way. It pushes us out of ourselves, makes us ask for help in a really fundamental way. Ask for help, and have something answer you. I don’t believe it’s a being, but I think you experience the aliveness of the universe in that moment.

 

Reprinted from:  Christopher Kennedy Lawford’s 2009 book, Moments of Clarity, published by Harper Collins Books, NYC, NY, this excerpt is found on page 97

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Can Women be Sex Addicts?

 

Can Women be Sex Addicts?

Guest Post By Robert Weiss LCSW, CSAT-S

Robert Weiss is Founding Director of The Sexual Recovery Institute and Director of Sexual Disorders Services at The Ranch Treatment Center and Promises Treatment Centers. These centers serve individuals seeking sexual addiction treatment and porn addiction help.

From what the media tells us, sexual addiction is a strictly male problem or least that is all we seem to hear. Men cheating on their wives, men seeing prostitutes, men going to strip clubs, massage parlors and of course, male politicians sexting online. Does this mean that there are no female sex addicts? If there are women out there who are acting out with sex, where are they and why don’t we hear more about them?

The news media gives endless examples of famous husbands who betray their wives in ways that often result in public humiliation for them both (Clinton, Sanford, Tiger, Weiner, etc.). But what about women who ‘act out’ with sex and romance? While we know that women act out additively with food, drugs, alcohol, gambling spending and caretaking, the truth is that there is little to no research on female sex and relationship addiction. What we do know today is that approximately 8-12% of those seeking sexual addiction treatment are women (which interestingly more or less mirrors the numbers of men entering eating disorders treatment), but it is highly likely that many women struggle with compulsive and impulsive sexual and relationship disorders. A woman is less likely than a man to seek help for her problem sexual behavior for a variety of reasons – mostly related to shame.

Emblematic of this problem is our cultural reference for the man who is generating a lot of sexual contacts “stud”, whereas a woman engaging in the same types of activity is referenced as “slut” or “nympho”. This kind of prejudice leaves those women with sexual and romantic behavior problems more highly subject to shame and prejudice – and therefore less likely to get help.  Even the woman whose sexual and romantic behaviors are causing her profound problems  (health, family, relationship, career, etc.) is not likely to identify as having a sexual problem, she is more likely to use terms like, “I have relationship issues” or “I tend to pick the wrong partners”. Because women more often see and experience sexuality in more relational terms then do men – even when a woman is having sex in the same ways and frequency as a male sex addict often won’t identify as having herself as having this problem.

While the primary etiology of male sexual addiction is mostly based in early emotional neglect, covert parental incest and early attachment deficits – female sex addicts report much greater incidences of profound, overt childhood abuse, physical neglect and trauma – often sexual, which leads to sex addiction and intimacy issues in later life. Some of these women unconsciously live out their early abuse by becoming sex workers (i.e. prostitutes, strippers, involved in porn, sensual massage, etc.), attempting to give themselves a sense of ‘control’ over early out of control experiences. As their adult lives are dominated by exchanging sex for money and the feelings of control and power that sexual behavior offers them, these women have little access to outside support or role models toward change and self-examination.

Not all women who are sex and relationship addicts are prostitutes however, many are housewives, single women and even teens, who utilize sex and romantic intensity as a means of self-stability and comfort, despite the various risks and dangers associated with addictive sexual relationships. In terms of risk taking and out-of-control behavior, female sex addicts are very similar to male sex addicts.

Mary S. presented for treatment in an acute crisis when her husband Jeff learned about her having multiple affairs and was threatened to leave unless she got help. Mary is 38 years old with two children ages 4 and 7. In addition to the affairs and anonymous sexual liaisons both before and throughout her marriage, Mary also disclosed “losing myself on a daily basis” to 30-40 minutes of porn use with masturbation, “to help calm me down or as a way to get to sleep” for nearly all her adult life.  She simply reported this as “what I do to relax” but she also keeps this secret from her husband.

Though Mary had a highly physically and emotionally abusive home environment, she had not previously sought out treatment or therapy nor did she relate her problem adult sexual and romantic history to early childhood abuse. She told her therapist that she had always believed that “by marrying the right guy, I could just put the past behind me, when Jeff came along – I thought I was safe” Just after her first child was born, Mary began sexual/romantic affairs with both a neighbor and separately, a co-worker, believing then that her marriage had become boring and she needed these other experiences to feel “more alive”.  In addition to the stated ongoing sexual and romantic liaisons over the past several years, Mary has been signing onto Craigslist in search of other lovers and casual sex whenever she or her husband are out of town for work. Despite her sexual acting out history – Mary was highly motivated to make her marriage work and keep her family together.

Today there are a few precious resources for female sex and love addicts include the recent book, “Waiting to Heal” by Kelly McDaniel MFT,  “Women, Sex and Addiction” by Charlotte Kasl. SLAA, Sex and Love addicts Anonymous is a 12-step sex addiction recovery program that encourages female participation and offers many gender separate meetings. The Ranch, a residential treatment center in Nunnelly Tennessee offers private, gender separate residential treatment for female sex addicts.

The most important step a female sex and love addict can take toward recovery is to openly and honestly bond with healthy adult women, not for sex – but for recreation, friendship and mutual support. Sharing their sexual past in detail (non-graphic) with other women helps to reduce shame and non-sexual bonding with supportive women helps alleviate the need to use men sexually for self-soothing and self-stability.

Below are is an abbreviated list of 20 key “questions” adapted from the Sex and Love Addicts literature that might help a woman self-determine if she has this type of problem. More about SLAA can be found at:  http://www.slaafws.org/

Am I a Female Sex and Love Addict?

1.) Do you feel that your life is becoming or is unmanageable because of your sexual and/or romantic behavior or your excessive dependency needs?

2.) Do you find yourself unable to stop seeing a specific person even though you know that seeing this person is destructive to you?

3.) Do you feel that you don’t want anyone to know about your sexual or romantic activities? Do you feel you need to hide these activities from others – friends, family, co-workers, counselors, etc.?

4.) Do you get “high” from sex and/or romance and then crash when the act or experience is over?

5.)  Have you had sex at inappropriate times, in inappropriate places, and/or with inappropriate people?

6.) Do you make promises to yourself or rules for yourself concerning your sexual or romantic behavior that you find you cannot follow?

7.) Have you had or do you have sex with someone you don’t (didn’t) want to have sex with?

8.) Have you ever thought that there might be more you could do with your life if you were not so driven by sexual and romantic pursuits?

9.) Do you feel desperate about your need for a lover, sexual fix, or future mate?

10.) Have you or do you have sex regardless of the consequences (e.g. the threat of being caught, the risk of contracting herpes, gonorrhea, AIDS, etc.)?

11.) Do you find that you have a pattern of repeating bad relationships?

12.) Do you feel like a lifeless puppet unless there is someone around with whom you can flirt? Do you feel that you’re not “really alive” unless you are with your sexual/romantic partner?

13.) Have you ever threatened your financial stability, career or standing in the community by pursuing a sexual partner?

14.) Have you ever had a serious relationship threatened or destroyed because of outside sexual activity?

15.) Do you feel that life would have no meaning without a love relationship or without sex? Do you feel that you would have no identity if you were not someone’s lover?

16.) Do you find yourself flirting with or sexualizing someone even if that was not your intention?

17.) Does your sexual and/or romantic behavior affect your reputation?

18.) Do you feel uncomfortable about your masturbation because of the frequency with which you masturbate, the fantasies you engage in, the props you use, and/or the places in which you do it?

19.) Are you unable to concentrate on other areas of your life because of thoughts or feelings you are having about another person or about sex?

20.) Do you find yourself obsessing about a specific person or sexual act even though these thoughts bring pain, craving or discomfort?**

**excerpt from © 1985 The Augustine Fellowship, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Robert Weiss is Founding Director of The Sexual Recovery Institute and Director of Sexual Disorders Services at The Ranch Treatment Center and Promises Treatment Centers. These centers serve individuals seeking sexual addiction treatment and porn addiction help.

Follow Robert on Twitter @RobWeissMSW

 

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