The Last Addiction
Page 9
My counselor interrupted me. “You’re speaking as if you were ‘drunk Sharon.’”
I didn’t see what he was talking about.
“What does ‘drunk Sharon’ really want?” he asked. Every time he used the phrase “drunk Sharon,” I cringed. I felt shame and embarrassment, and I wanted more and more to hide this part of me from the rest of the world.
I tried to ignore my shame and answer his question. “I guess she wants love and acceptance, no matter what.”
His eyes shone with warmth. “Yes, that is why I love ‘drunk Sharon.’”
I looked at him for several minutes. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. Didn’t he understand? This was the weak, despicable part of me that needed to be punished and hidden. But I couldn’t dismiss the love in his eyes. It was as if my reality, my aloneness, my shameful behavior, and my hopelessness (all the evidences of my addiction) had run into something stronger—Love. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Everything terrifying is, in its deepest being, something helpless that wants our help.”10 Perhaps the only self-help that means anything is receiving love. And perhaps that means everything.
6
DAVID’S STORY: SEX APPEAL
The key to our sexual healing, the key to all healing
is to surrender our shame to the Lover of our souls.
—PETER HIEIT1
David, a well-respected professional, came to see me for counseling when his twenty-year marriage was falling apart. Over thirty-five years of secrets were starting to slither through the cracks of his marriage. His wife had learned of an affair, which opened the door to David’s confessing more than ten affairs in twenty years of marriage, which prompted David to examine for the first time the years of childhood sexual abuse that he had suffered.
Sex addicts are confusing to many of us and enraging to others. What would make a successful man, one who loved his wife and children, engage in such outlandish serial infidelity? What would make a respected businesswoman, a committed mother, masturbate five to six hours every day? Why would an upstanding man in his community walk behind a local business and expose himself? Are these just sick people who can’t control their private parts? This chapter concerns the way our private parts are connected to our hearts. When that connection is misunderstood, abused, or violated, a cavern is carved into our souls, setting off a craving that feels insatiable. I will tell you David’s story of self-discovery, self-disclosure, and self-abandonment. David found himself to lose himself, and his is an amazing story of redemption.
SEXUAL ADDICTION DEFINED
Sexual addiction may be difficult to define in a day when pornography is touted as every man’s battle and its use is sometimes even encouraged to “spice up” marriage. In America, we spend more on pornography in one year than the annual sales of Coca-Cola, and almost two-thirds of all visits and commerce on the Internet involve a sexual purpose.2
Unlike substance abuse, a problematic relationship with a mood-altering substance, sexual addiction is a problematic relationship with a mood-altering experience. For the sexual addict, pornography, sexual chat rooms, engaging in sexual encounters, or almost any sexual activity becomes increasingly important, taking over the person’s time, other priorities, and relationships. Like a drug addict, the sex addict becomes less and less interested in the real relationships and experiences that make up a healthy life.
In biological fact, sex addicts are drug addicted. Rather than introducing an external source, like drugs or alcohol, to change brain chemistry, they have found a way to induce the chemical release of certain brain chemicals within their own systems. As with other addictions, there is a pattern of out-of-control behavior, an inability to stop despite adverse consequences, and a need for escalating sexual experiences to achieve the desired high. The question is not how many affairs you must have or how many Internet sites you must visit before you are a sex addict. These questions parallel the question of how many drinks it takes to make you an alcoholic. The right question concerns not quantity but pattern. Once an alcoholic takes a drink or a sex addict begins to fantasize or surf the Web, the behaviors take on lives of their own.
One of my friends, a fellow counselor, explains that a childhood experience led to his pattern of behavior:
As a young boy I was regularly exposed to pornography. At a time when my childhood passions should have been directed toward stuffed animals and superheroes, my heart and mind became obsessed with erotic images. Lust became my preoccupation and shame became my identity. For nearly three decades I lived in a secret prison. But after years of lying to myself and to others, I was “found out” and healing could finally begin.3
Sexual addictions are connected to relational addictions, which might not have an overtly sexual component. Flirting, emotional bonding, and fantasizing about romantic entanglements can be addictive as well. Men and women who are needy and are looking for other people to make them feel whole are particularly vulnerable to relational addictions. As in other addictions, the addict seeks a pleasurable high or focus that temporarily obliterates all problems. These behaviors and obsessions can have the same costs as any addiction—eroding other relationships, consuming time, and kidnapping the heart and soul. Any of these central activities can destructively impact family, career, ministry, health, and finances.
Even in nonsexual relational addictions, the flirting and fantasy release naturally occurring endorphins in the brain that result in a high. Some researchers suggest that these electrochemical interactions in the brain parallel the molecular structure of morphine but are many times more powerful. Researchers have studied rats that are habituated to morphine or heroin and have learned that the rats will go through pain in order to obtain more of the drug. The scientists then discovered that the rats would endure even more pain to receive sexual stimulation than they endured merely to receive the drugs.4 Ask any man who has decided he will no longer surf the Internet for pornographic Web sites or a woman who has begun obsessing about an office romance, “How easy is it to just stop?” The momentum of addiction has hijacked the heart and mind, just as it does in substance abuse. But there is a difference in sexual addictions. Sexuality is not merely something that we do, it is part of who we are. So when sexual addiction becomes the central activity, trying to change that behavior feels like cutting off a part of yourself.
Ask David. For all of his adult life, he had been constantly engaged in some sort of hidden and forbidden relationship. When he began counseling, he had been caught by his wife in one affair. What she didn’t know was that he was simultaneously engaging in two more affairs and had a history of serial affairs throughout their marriage.
UNDERSTANDING IN THE MIDST OF CRAZINESS
David’s wife certainly didn’t understand what was going on, and David didn’t either. To begin to speak the truth of his sexual addiction seemed to him like opening a door to such disgusting darkness that no one could bear to look at it. In his wonderful project dedicated to sexual addiction, lyricist and musician Steve Siler describes the fears of a man caught in sexual addiction:
I’m in the church on Sunday morning
Got the family and the new SUV
Your co-worker and your neighbor
I’m exactly who you think I should be
But my eyes feast where none can see
On visual profanity
I’m a traitor
A betrayer
A double minded-man
I’m a liar
A decay-er of everything I stand for
A voyeur in the dark
An adulterer of the heart
A betrayer
A traitor …
I feel like I’m drowning
Out of control
Like an addict who needs a fix
Selling my soul for the counterfeit high
In these pictures and pixels
But it feels like you wouldn’t want me to.5
David soon acknowledged that he was an addict, using fantasy, flirting, risk-taking behaviors, and sexual encounters in a repetitive, degenerative, and eventually unmanageable fashion. He knew that he was trying to medicate something, but as is often the case in addiction, he was so consumed with the intricacies and shame of his behaviors that he didn’t think about why he was stuck in such a destructive pattern.
As David and I began talking about his childhood, never-before-told stories of patterns of sexual abuse came out. When he was about eight years old, David participated in a recreational sports program in his community. The leader of the program was a charismatic, fun young man. At the end of every day of activity, the leader picked one child to sit on his lap while he told stories to the others. Everyone wanted to be the favorite. David learned about all that went with being the leader’s favorite the day that he got picked. While sitting on the leader’s lap, covered by a blanket, he was sexually abused.
As an eight-year-old, David did not have the capacity to understand this hidden, physically arousing, and confusing experience of being chosen. He never told anyone about the experience. The pain that David recalled most vividly was that he was never chosen to be the favorite again. He wondered why, what he had done wrong, and what he could do to gain the attention of the leader again. He recalled being a few years older and hearing his mother talk about a sports coach that had been arrested for sexually abusing some of his players. His mother talked with disgust about the coach and his victims. David knew that he would never tell his mother what had happened to him.
From that time on, these themes were woven into David’s life, the themes of hiding, sexualizing otherwise nonsexual relationships, and being good enough to be chosen. David carried a weight of shame that he believed could be alleviated only in the thrill of a new, clandestine relationship. As David talked about his life, past and present, his shame was palpable. He sat on my couch with shoulders slumped. He rarely made eye contact. It was as if a three-hundred-pound gorilla was on his back, constantly demanding his attention.
What we do know … about child abuse [is that] … some of these children grow up impelled chiefly to contain rather than repeat the trauma …. They act as if they were psychologically healthy, presenting a facade of normality that covers an essential hollowness of soul.
—Leonard Shengold, MD, Soul Murder6
The Gift of Shame
Shame could be called a violation of die self, exposing die self as foolish. Guilt says, “I have done something wrong.” Shame says, “I am wrong. I am a fool.”
What do you say to someone who is steeped in shame? What do you say to a man who believes that he has responded to being sexually abused by becoming a monstrous perpetrator of hurt and harm against his own family? If I said to David, “I assure you that you’re not that bad,” the words would have only bounced off his armor of shame.
Nevertheless, shame can become a gift. It can reveal something that is core to the soul; it can expose a part of us that has foolishly aligned ourselves to a god that is not God. I knew that healing could not begin for David unless he could see that he had trusted a pattern of behavior that was violating the good intent of relationships and that was violating him so that neither he nor his relationships were what they were intended to be.
All addiction comes from trusting something or someone, making that central activity god, and discovering that we violate it and it violates us. This discovery is debilitating and horrendous. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre calls it the “hemorrhaging of the soul.” There is no experience so awful as shame, and yet it seems that the addict chooses a pattern of behavior that only intensifies shame. Why? Understanding the answer to this question can actually transform shame from a curse into a gift.
In shame-there is relief from the desire for intimacy. When I am nothing but a failure, when my inner life must be hidden from everyone because it is too dark and dangerous, and when my behaviors are unspeakable and inexplicable, then I am not worthy of true intimacy. This is the trap of addiction. Addiction initially sends us into a pattern of living that promises relief from the pain and sorrow of relationships, and then it seals our fate by guaranteeing that no one would want to be in relationship with us if they really knew us.
When David was sexually abused, part of the insidious reality of the abuse was that it awakened something good in him: a desire to be chosen, to be close, and to be touched. Tragically, all of these good things were stirred up in the context of something perverted and evil. As a child, David did not have the capacity to sort this out, and because he was isolated from others with this story and in much of his life, all of these desires went underground. His normal desires were distorted into choices that promised elements of what he was made for, but in a pattern of behavior that guaranteed he would not get what he really wanted.
Understanding this process allowed David to identify his addiction and all of its ensuing shame, which brought to the surface a gift of understanding in the midst of all this tragedy—a commitment to love and not love. David began to understand that even as a child, he was full of passion that he didn’t know what to do with. His mother made him believe that his questions, exuberance, and emotions were a burden, or even disgusting. His father was consumed with work and was never available. He did not play with David, pay attention to David’s accomplishments or needs, or express any curiosity about David’s life. After his experience of sexual abuse had aroused passion in David, it went unexplained except for the shame of his mother’s comments. David concluded that passion, really anything connected with relational life, only resulted in shame or dismissal. The problem was that the passion for relational connection did not go away. David learned to channel that passion into underground relationships that would make him feel in control and keep his desires out of the light, where they risked rejection or refusal. His bondage to illicit relationships left little passion for legitimate relationships. Addiction has the effect of consuming true passion and shutting you down.
If you or someone you love is struggling with sexual addiction, the greatest gift you can receive or offer is to look for what is beneath that great weight of shame. It might surprise you to learn that one study of men who were sexually addicted revealed that beneath this addiction was a desire for real relationships. Two groups, the addicted men and men who didn’t struggle with sexual compulsion, were shown pornographic images. The researchers discovered that the men who acknowledged a struggle with sexual addiction spent most of their time looking at the women’s eyes, while the other men did not focus on any specific area of the image. The addicts’ focus on the eyes gives a clue as to what they were really seeking. Although they got lured by the body parts in the pornographic images, their focus on the eyes suggests wanting to find a real woman behind the unreal image.
We were created to be in relationships, so the soul was created to be in motion—active—with respect to passion. Remember, addiction is momentum that kidnaps the brain and stops the motion of the soul. We were designed to be searching, seeking, knocking, and constantly moving toward that for which we were made. Addiction shuts down passion and kills the soul.
Slowly, David began to confront that gorilla that was on his back. He acknowledged that what he really wanted was good, but he was trying to fill himself with what he didn’t really need (extramarital affairs) in order to distract himself from what he wanted most but didn’t feel competent to handle.
David and his wife set out on the long, long journey of looking at their relationship and seeking true intimacy. This book cannot tell all of the ups and downs that they encountered during the next few years. This was tough work. There were bad days when David’s wife was overwhelmed by learning of his affairs and the details of how she had been betrayed. David learned to go to his wife on these days and on good days too, and to not a
void the subject or hide. He has said to his wife thousands of times, “I know that I hurt you terribly, and I don’t want to ever do that again.” His simple acknowledgment of the pain he caused and what he desires in their relationship reminds him of what he really wants—intimacy with his wife—and his determination to do the long, hard work of a real, growing relationship.
COMMUNITY IN THE MIDST OF ISOLATION
David didn’t have friends. He had co-workers and acquaintances that he might go for a bike ride with, but no one really knew him. As David and his wife journeyed along the difficult path of transforming their relationship, it became apparent that David needed other companions. He got discouraged. He got angry. He felt ashamed. And his old pattern of behavior still beckoned him, with the promise of relief from everything that he was in the midst of. I encouraged David to find a group of men who might understand what he was going through. David didn’t believe that there was such a group. He still suspected that his addiction was so dark and dangerous that no one would be able to understand him. The “tapes” of his mother’s expressions of dismay and disgust still played in his head.
Though he doubted, David was willing to do whatever I suggested. Real relationships and healing in his family had become his reward, far more meaningful and sweeter than any secret affair might be. He attended a new men’s group in our area, beginning with a weekend retreat. When David returned from this retreat, I knew that something had happened. He sat up straight on my couch. He looked me right in the eyes as he talked. The gorilla was gone.
David told me of a weekend like nothing he had ever experienced before. All the men told their life stories. David explained that he waited to go last, still fearing that his story was the worst. However, as he heard the other men’s stories of addiction, he realized that they all suffered from the same condition. They all wanted meaningful relationships and had been ensnared by behaviors that kept them out of the very relationships they really wanted.