Sex Addiction

Okay, I'm on fire today and the fingers are flying across the keyboard. There is so much to write about! I love CBS News Sunday Morning. I DVR it so I can fast forward through the commercials. The first segment today was on sex addiction. This is a subject that fascinates me after the John nightmare. I've read quite a bit about it. Right after I had moved out, I sent John information on SCA (Sexual Compulsives Anonymous). I deleted all his emails during the Great Purge of December 2009, but there was one where he apologized to me when we were writing back and forth. I can remember the exact quote of a sentence he wrote (I had read it over and over), "I have a problem and I know I need to get help." When I saw him at our company meeting, I asked if he had gone to a counselor. He wouldn't answer me. His body language told it all. His shoulders slumped and he looked down. He didn't need to answer. I knew he hadn't gotten "help". Go with me on a sidebar--while we were dating John went on a 3 day fishing trip. He called me before the boat headed out and he would not have cell service. He said he wanted to tell me about his childhood. I listened as he told me that his Mother had gotten pregnant with him out of wedlock and his biological father left her. His Mother met the man that would raise John and they got married. John's last name is the name of the man that married his Mother. John's middle name is the last name of his biological father. His Mother's sister (his Aunt) married his biological father. Have you followed all that? It gets worse. John learns the truth about who his real father is while he is middle school age. He notices at family functions that his cousins look just like him and he is the spitting image of his uncle. To make it even uglier, the man that is his "father" at home gets drunk often and says things like, "you aren't my boy."  Nice. It took John about 45 minutes to go through the whole story. I listened quietly only speaking to ask questions when I got confused. I wanted to know if his biological father acknowledged him--the answer was "no". I asked if his cousins knew--"no". It was time for the boat to take off and John had to end the call. I sat on the edge of my bed and felt really bad for John. I could tell this really damaged him. I asked if he ever went to a counselor to talk about it. I could tell it hurt him deeply. He said "no", that he could deal with it on his own and it didn't bother him. This was before we had gotten super serious. We hadn't said "I love you" yet. I recall feeling like I needed to run. Something deep inside told me this guy is really damaged. Another voice inside told me that we are all damaged and that I couldn't desert him just because he had a fucked up childhood. He appeared to be so confident and put together. When I listened to the story of his childhood I heard a scared little boy that was emotionally abused by the man that raised him. I tell you all this as background. Getting back to sex addiction. I am a cause and effect girl. if something happens I want to know why. I looked at our marriage like this--we loved each other, we had a good sex life, we had fun, we both had good jobs, we gave each other space to do things independently...why did he cheat? Why would he throw away everything we had together? How could he hurt his boys so bad?  Also, it wasn't just cheating for sex. It was obvious by the texts that they felt they had a deep emotional bond. I knew it was a much deeper problem as I started to piece things together that night along with things I had seen/known over the past few years. There was the hook up websites, I found New Orleans escort sites on his work computer, sometimes I would come home from work and find porn DVDs in the bedroom. I would ask about them and get smooth answers--"just passing the time while I miss you baby."  The show I watched had an interview with a sex addict. He described having to look at sites during the day while he was at work. He had 2 failed marriages because of his sex addiction. My mind went  back to all the times John would be in New Orleans for a work. He would always call me around 10 pm to say good night before everyone went to Bourbon Street. He would say "I love you" and I'll call you in the morning. I can not tell you how many times I would not hear from him by 0900. I'd call his cell and hotel number and get no answer. I would worry that something happened to him while he was walking back to the hotel the night before. I would always hear from him around 11 or 12. I would get various stories--I was at breakfast, I slept in because my head hurt, I had the phone on mute...the last time it happened I told him that I was not stupid and I wondered what he was really doing. This was about a month before the text incident. Sadly, I was talking about gambling. John could stay up all night at a craps table. Harrah's is in New Orleans. We had a big walk in closet with dressers on each side. John would pile all his receipts on the dresser. After we were married for about a year, John was doing an expense report one night. He asked me to grab his receipts. They were a crumbled mess. I put them together and smoothed them out as I walked up the stairs. I noticed 3 from various casinos in the area. I asked John about meals at the casinos. He said they were all in his territory and he would stop and play a bit on the way home. Say it with me in a tired, oh shit, I already married this guy voice..Red Flag. Isn't it sad I never dreamed he would cheat? It was the gambling that I was worried about. On the show, the subject of having several addictions came up. I started to think about John with the sex and gambling. It all made sense. There is also alcohol, but I think I will table that for another post. This was a man that could go for days without anything to drink but when he did. Ugh. I've watched Dr. Drew and his sex rehab show for answers. I get that the person is trying to numb the pain. It is like any other addiction--alcohol, food, shopping, sex...they are always ways to numb pain.

There is the reference for mental health workers called the DSM IV. It has all the diagnoses listed in it. I just learned on the show I watched that sex addiction was in the DSM IV but it has since been removed since there is not enough scientific data to support the existence of a diagnosis. Shit--I got a patient for you to get your scientific data from!

One of the things I have really worked on in therapy is getting that what has happened has happened. It could not have happened any other way. I used to get so angry that John didn't have the power to not screw Pao. I thought he should know the difference between right and wrong and make the "right" choice. When Pao and I spoke on the phone she told me how aggressive he was in getting her to go to lunch with him. It made me so mad at the time. Now I just look at John with a kind of detached observation. He really needed to be with her. It had nothing to do with me. I just looked out the window and thought about the call with Pao and how I felt when she told me how he would call her and go see her at the hospital where she worked. I don't get the fast heart rate, sweaty hands or burning cheeks like I used to.

Should I have run when John told me the story of his messed up childhood? The question really is could I have run? What happened is what was meant to happen.