the life you want and deserve.
1 Therapeutic separation is a planned period of time for the couple to focus on individual work, learn new skills, reevaluate the relationship, and potentially recommit with healthier boundaries and agreements.
Not All Forms of Addiction Are Created Equal: What You Need to Know about Sex Addiction
Addiction is a pernicious, crippling, lifelong condition. Addiction is deadly and has an arsenal of means with which to kill. The actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in early 2014 in his apartment with a needle in his arm—the result of a heroin overdose. It would be more accurate to say that he committed suicide. He had relapsed about a year earlier after twenty-three years in recovery. One of the many problems with addiction is that when you relapse, you don’t start over as a first-time user. You start where you left off.
According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), addiction is characterized by “an inability to consistently abstain, impairment in behavior control, craving, diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors and interpersonal relationships, and a dysfunctional emotional response.” The “inability to consistently abstain” is a concept that sometimes confuses loved ones and family members close to the addict. They wonder, “How is it possible for the addict to abstain if addiction means that’s something they can’t do?” The confusion is understandable. On their own, addicts lack the ability to consistently abstain without help. Most would stop their compulsive behaviors on their own if they could. It’s just that most can’t do it alone.
An addict’s inability to consistently abstain or practice behavioral control manifests in many ways. He may make promises to himself that he won’t engage in a particular behavior again or he may tell himself that after a certain date in the future he’ll quit. Of course, these promises are rarely kept.
The craving for the addictive substance or behavior grows over time and the addict needs more to get the same effect. If he’s an alcoholic, he will require more alcohol to get the same level of intoxication. In sex addiction, the addict may increase the time spent engaged in a particular sexual behavior over time, or engage in increasingly risky behaviors to get the same level of intensity or “high.” “Acting out” is a commonly used expression to describe the addict’s compulsive behaviors.
Because of an inability to recognize the extent of the problems related to their behavior, addicts usually experience serious life consequences. They have chronic feelings of low self-worth and shame due to the secret double lives they lead. They often suffer from underperforming at work due to preoccupation with the substance or behavior, or a “hangover” effect from having recently acted out or binged. They may even lose their jobs because of poor performance or violating company policies. Addicts suffer financially because of work-related issues or spending large sums of money on the addictive substance or behavior. Some addicts manage to avoid financial or career consequences—but their close, intimate relationships are almost always negatively impacted.
There are two primary forms of addiction: substance addiction and process addiction. Substance addiction includes alcohol, prescription medications, and/or illegal drugs. Process addiction is different from substance addiction because it involves a set of behaviors rather than the ingestion of a substance. Examples of process addictions include gambling, food disorders, and sex addiction. In many ways, process addiction (especially food disorders and sex addiction) is more challenging to overcome because it involves normal, healthy activities, when done in moderation. In alcohol and other drug addiction treatment, abstinence is defined as simply stopping the consumption of the substance in question. However, it’s not realistic to abstain from food or to choose not to be sexual for the remainder of one’s life.
Addiction is considered a lifelong, chronic issue similar to medical conditions that require sustained and continuous behavior modification. There is general consensus among mental health and other professionals who work in the field that addiction is never “cured.” However, addiction can be well managed with guidance and support, usually in the form of counseling, psychotherapy, twelve-step groups, and—in more serious cases—inpatient treatment.
Today’s misconceptions about sex addiction are sadly similar to how people thought of alcoholics in the 1930s and 1940s. At that time, the common view was that if you were a “real” alcoholic you would be homeless and lying in a gutter somewhere. We now know that many high-functioning people can lead what appears to be a normal life while active in their addiction—whether to alcohol, other drugs, gambling, or sex.
The addict’s recovery process and the ways in which sex addiction impacts partners are different from other forms of addiction. Five major factors distinguish sex addiction discovery and recovery:
1. Sexual betrayal is experienced as a personal assault by the partner. If the addict in your life abuses alcohol and other drugs you may be frustrated and angry about his behavior. You may even be hurt by the thought that he seems to care more about alcohol than he does about you. On the other hand, if the addict spends hours a day looking at pornography, frequenting adult bookstores, having affairs, or hiring prostitutes for sex, the level of betrayal and hurt experienced is multiplied exponentially.
2. Sexual betrayal creates serious health risks for partners. If a sex addict has unprotected sex with anyone other than his partner and hides this information from her, the consequences may be deadly. The risk is compounded by the fact that she isn’t aware that she may have been exposed to a sexually transmitted infection and/or disease.
3. Abstinence from sex is not the goal. For most forms of addiction, the simple (but not necessarily easy) solution is to abstain from the substance or the behavior. Defining abstinence in sex addiction is more complex because sex is a pleasurable and evolutionarily desirable behavior fundamental to human existence.
4. Slips and relapses are often more common in sex addiction recovery. This is difficult for partners to accept, and rightfully so. But the truth is that, for a variety of reasons, people who attempt to replace compulsive sexual behavior with healthy sex generally aren’t able to simply make a decision to stop all unhealthy sexual patterns and never repeat them. The addict’s sobriety plan may change over time depending on his particular set of behaviors and issues. There can be several—or even many—setbacks along the way. Depending on the behaviors involved, these “slips” may be deal-breakers for partners.
5. Need for more intensive accountability. If your partner is drinking or using other drugs, it’s hard not to notice even if he’s a master at avoiding detection. The odors and/or unusual behaviors of people when they’re using substances are difficult to miss. However, it’s entirely possible for someone to engage in sexual behaviors either alone or with another person during the lunch hour, on the way home from work, while running errands on the weekend, or at home in the middle of the night, without any evidence or clues. This is one of the reasons why formal
