It Is NOT About the Sex

One of the jarring things about early recovery was how often people wanted to talk about my feelings. First of all, my wife and kids were in a different state, my employer was threatening to fire me, and I had been very publicly humiliated—how did people think I was feeling!? The only way I could describe my feelings at the time was “shitty,” but apparently that isn’t on the feelings wheel.

Nevertheless, therapy appointment after therapy appointment and meeting after meeting people wanted to talk about feelings. And the more people wanted to talk about them, the more I began to see that I was fundamentally incapable of having that conversation. I had no idea what was going on inside of me, and I had no idea how to talk about it. As I would come to learn, this was a big part of my problem.

The simple fact is that it is NOT about the sex. Yes, my addiction manifested itself in sexual obsession, compulsive masturbation, pornography abuse, and a myriad of other destructive sexual behaviors. But, there was something underneath it, something driving it.

Sex addicts do not know what to do with emotions. We have failed to develop the basic human skill of processing emotion in a healthy way. Instead, when others were learning that skill, we learned how to numb our emotions, usually with sex. It became our only tool.

Feeling stressed at work? I can make that feeling go away by looking at porn.

Feeling  more stressed at work after having wasted an hour looking at porn? I can make that feeling go away by looking at porn.

Feeling shame about looking at so much porn? I can make that feeling go away by looking at porn.

Does this cycle of insanity sound familiar? We will discuss the unique aspects of The Shame Cycle in another post, but the experience of having a single solution to every emotional problem is a universal one for those dealing with sexual addiction, sexual brokenness, and other destructive sexual behaviors. Whether you feel bored, lonely, angry, depressed, afraid, or even joyful, the inability to deal with these emotion leads you back to acting out over and over again.

This is why everybody wanted to get me talking about my feelings. Talking about (i.e., processing) emotions is blocking-and-tackling in recovery. It is a basic skill that must be learned. This is also why so many individuals in addiction recovery trade one addiction for another—they find sobriety but not recovery (“the dry drunk”). They just found a new way to numb out.

Why would someone do that?

One of my counselors described our feelings like dashboard warning lights. They point to something. They guide us. If we dig into them, there is usually more going on underneath the hood. This is why the journey of recovery involves digging into our own story, our own internal messages, and our own trauma. This is heavy and difficult work—the heart of the wilderness—but it is necessary. We will talk more about trauma in another post. You have to walk before you can run. Before you can begin to dig into your story, you have to first learn what you are feeling.

When dashboard warnings lights come on, you can ignore them and for a long time you may not experience any consequences.  But, if you ignore them long enough something will blow up. That is what is happening when you act out. The time has come to ignore the dashboard lights no more.