I am a sex addict. These are not easy words to write. I imagine that many will ignore me or count me among the perverts now that they know. I understand sex addiction is not a socially acceptable problem like drug addiction or alcoholism. Mine is not a disease like tuberculosis or diabetes. My addiction is more like gambling. I have found it, cultivated it, nurtured it and allowed it to take over my life. It is a compulsion. A set of obsessive behaviors that have served to separate my head from my heart. It is an addiction that has tortured my soul and deeply injured those with whom I am close. My actions have led me to beat myself mercilessly and create relationships and situations where I hurt others and allow others to do the same to me. And I really have no one or nothing else to blame.
I couldn't tell you before. This entire time I was hiding: from my wife, from my friends and acquaintances, from all those who knew me professionally, and mostly, from myself. I couldn't let anyone know the whole truth, much less part of it. I knew, if anyone found me out, I would have been despised. Knowing the truth would have made you run from me screaming like so many villagers from all of those B movie monsters. At least, that is what I imagined. I feel differently now. Run screaming if you must. Hate me publicly or privately if that is how you feel. I don't care anymore. My secret is out. My wife knows everything.
She found my first step. Maybe I subconsciously left it out for her to find. In any event, she read it. This first step was my written account of every action that was my sexual compulsion, as well as memories of all those events and relationships that I believe led me down the path of sex addiction. As I am writing this, I do not know whether my marriage and my family will survive. My worst fear, the loss of the family I cherish, is staring me in the face. I am frightened. I am saddened. I feel terribly for my partner for what she has had to find out and experience. Yet it is all right. Whatever the cost, being freed of the secret I have been shamefully holding for the past decade, it is worth it.
I imagined telling you all about my childhood. Poignant anecdotes would let you in on my pain. You would see my confusion and the mixed messages I was given. You would know me as a child; understand me as an adult; sympathize with my addict. But I won't do that. I cannot do that. In reality, my childhood was pretty damn easy. I had success in school, in sports and with friends and family. My mother and father provided me with everything I needed and quite a bit I wanted. To this day, I remember the first years of my life as being happy and easy. My family was not perfect, of course. Yet I don t blame my sister or parents for my problems. Until recently, I felt differently. I wanted to blame the women in my family for this and the men for that. Not any more. I did this. I chose it. My wife knows. I am responsible.
Anything less than being able to fully appreciate, understand, be equal with, support and take care of every woman I ever came in contact with was not acceptable to me. By the time I was 14, when I experienced my first wide-awake, woman-induced hard-on, I believed it only proper to be ashamed and embarrassed by my sexual feeling. I was watching "The Groove Tube" in a dark movie theater with my father. I never told him. To this day, I don't think he knows.
When I started dating Julie in high school, I was breaking an already well established pattern. I rarely went out with girls. Generally, I made them my best friends. I didn't like many men. They were such pigs. I knew this because I was the one my girl-friends confided in when looking for a sympathetic ear. I knew all of the horror stories of boys who wanted only one thing. I was the one who could empathize that men couldn't share their feelings or listen well. I was the first, last and only good man. And to maintain the title, I put my sexuality away. Not completely, but I knew my limits. I always kept my dick in my pants. Three weeks into dating Julie, I had fallen for her. She was smart, fun and beautiful. It was a Friday night. Full moon. We were alone at her house on the beach. We had walked along the sand holding hands. We were back in the house in front of the fire. We were kissing. I was very excited. I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I was horrified and embarrassed. I couldn't believe that I was sporting one of those sixteen year old hard-ons that stretched my khakis to their limit. I couldn't be like every other boy! So I left. Not immediately, but shortly after. I didn't call Julie for a month. We never went out again.
And so it went. Through college and beyond, I had the most beautiful, sexy, smart women friends and never, ever thought of them as anything but friends. When I met Barb at 23, I was no longer a virgin, but in my mind I was still the undisputed heavyweight champion when it came to sensitivity. I fell in love. I knew almost from the moment I met her, we would be together. An ironic thing then happened. I started buying pornography. For the first time in my life, I went into an adult bookstore. I rented porno movies. What is most striking is that I was living alone, yet I still hid the magazines under the mattress and the movies out of sight. I guess I was afraid of catching myself being sexually perverse.
Certainly, we are all sexual beings. We are taught to behave and believe certain feelings through our relationships with our family, our peers and society. The way we learn and teach about sexuality in this culture is, to say the least, screwy. I came to know my sex addiction learning mostly from the interactions with my father, my mother and my older sister, as well as by participating in a culture that teaches men to be sexual animals and objectifies women. Falling in love with Barb simply opened the door to my sexual compulsivity. Why? Without digging too deep, I became terrified of losing this women I was falling in love with almost as soon as I met her. I wanted her in every way, even sexually. As I became closer, the confusion of staying ""the good guy" and being with her became too painful. It opened up in me a schism which was the only way I could figure out to allow me both beings.
I have always said, "If you want to become alcoholic or drug-addicted; practice, practice, practice!" I took my own advice. Within a year of our marriage, I discovered phone sex. As much as I can remember, I was going to adult bookstores and picking up a sex newspaper. There were hundreds of ads offering me every fantasy and fetish I had ever imagined. There were hundreds more offering everything I never thought of. I started calling a sex/party line for $1 a minute. Before that first phone call, I couldn't have imagined the rush. Afterwards, my addict was born. I had stumbled upon something that would become my drug of choice for the next decade. It was my heroin. I would disappear inside the call completely. On the phone, I disassociated from my life. I became confident, bold, sexy. I didn't have to be a nice, sensitive guy with phone sex. I could have anything and anyone I wanted. I forgot about my wife, my work, my life. I was lost, and it was great.
Then I would hang up. Immediately, withdrawal awakened me. Like the junkie, I felt sick, but with shame, guilt and the fear of being found out. I hated myself, but no one, not even me, knew. I pushed the feelings down and did two things. First, I would be the most perfect, loving husband I could be. I became my wife's best friend and confidante. I worked on creating the perfect relationship.., at least it seemed that way. Second, almost anytime I could find time alone, I got back on the phone. And so it went: sex call after sex call. I would get "high", disappear, reappear, try to make everything better than it was and then make another call. The shame and guilt grew. The self-hatred intensified. My lies multiplied. The separation that neither my wife nor I would admit to slowly built its walls between us. The only way out I could figure was deeper into the schism.
I have never been a masterful liar (though my wife would disagree with me). I was found out on more than a couple of occasions. When this happened, I would cry with shame and guilt, minimize my behavior through even more lies, then slightly adjust the trajectory of my addiction to avoid radar. I would stop for a short time. About five years ago, I went for more than a year without giving way to the compulsion. But I never really stopped. I never was honest about it; not with G., not with my therapist, certainly not with myself. If I couldn't make more phone calls because of the hundreds of dollars I was spending, I found free numbers. When that didn't disassociate me fully enough, I turned again. I found women in the flesh.
I started frequenting strip clubs. Titty bars a friend calls them. I never went to the clubs in my town. No, that was much too dangerous. I might have seen someone I knew. Anyone. If they found me out... I couldn't let that happen. So I drove to the next town. If I would be in the city for any reason, I would search out clubs. They were not hard to find. Usually, I would fixate on one of the exotic "dancers". She would become my fantasy and my obsession. After a number of visits to a particular club, I would work up the courage to talk with her. I would even try to get a date with my fantasy. It never worked. And I never touched what I was obsessing about. So I would go back to the phone. In no time, I was gone.
I only wish my nightmare was this linear. During the "beforemy" marriage I was with another women, a friend. I got to "third base" with her. Third base; what an adolescent phrase. Still, it is accurate. Sexually, I was nothing but a frightened teenager. In my day to day existence, I was still the sensitive man. My addict couldn't understand commitment. Neither one of me acknowledged the other's presence.
As the years went by, there were other women. Six others to be fully honest. With five of these women, I maintained my modus operandi. I would pleasure them to third base. I would not let them touch me. It was what I could justify. It might also have been a peculiar form of self-punishment. The reasoning was, if I would have allowed myself to have sex with them, I would have lost the championship of sensitivity. This way, I made a deal in my mind to pretend it had never happened. The other women, the seventh women, I met on the internet in a chat room. I drove twenty-five miles to her office. We went looking for a hotel. After the third hotel was full, I remember thinking, "Everybody must be screwing!" We finally found a room on the fourth try. I lost my nice guy title. I couldn't tell you her name if you paid me.
I am not proud of what I have done. I am not proud of what I continued to do. I went back to phone sex. For another three years I continued to lie to everyone. My compulsion became more regular. I ran up phone sex bills at my business. I sneaked into friends and neighbors houses to charge calls there. I hated myself more and more. I could not imagine going anywhere but deeper into my obsession. My therapist laughed one day and told me that I had the most remarkable memory she had known, except for when it came to sex. Best I can remember, I have wasted over $3,000 attempting to alternately feed and quiet my demons. Not one phone call nor any sexual encounter ever worked. My demons grew hungrier and louder.
Telling you all of this is, primarily, a selfish thing to do. My sensitive guy title is gone. I'm not even a contender anymore. I have come to realize I cared too much that everybody liked and loved me. Because I am not nice anymore, I don't care what you think. It doesn't matter that I tell you. My only hope is total honesty. I will never again hide or pretend. And the only people I had left to tell was everybody. I pray I continue to heal through this story.
Over the past two years, I have started that process. It took a depression which kept me out of work for two months, the slow act of getting honest (first with my therapist, then with myself), the help of a group of men and women struggling gracefully with the same types of issues and, finally two weeks ago, facing my worst fear --my wife finding me out-- to begin to truly understand the scope of my problem. I now know what I am dealing with. I now know who I am dealing with. I now know who I have wronged. I now know who I have hurt more deeply than I ever wanted to admit. I now know who must be forgiven. With all my heart and soul, I hope that my wife can recover from this discovery. I hope that she will be able to forgive me the way that I have begun to finally forgive myself. I hope that she can learn to love me, not the way she once did, but the way it should have always been. After all that has occurred, I am finally here. I now have the ability to be with her the way I dreamt of.
We live in a crazy society. Sex is something that means way too much and way too little to most of us. I am not the only one struggling with these issues. Not all of you are sex addicts, but I will bet that few of you are truly at ease with your sexuality and have any ability to share your vulnerabilities with a partner. Maybe this will give one of us a chance. May the truth set us free.