At Ben’s next session, Harold dropped a bomb on him. He said Ben had to leave town immediately and enter strict in-patient treatment. He said Ben was out of control and needed immediate, serious help. He didn’t even want Ben to return home to pack his bags. He said he’d prefer me to drop a bag of essentials by the office. He wanted to put Ben on a plane that night! Yikes, I thought to myself, this sounded really drastic. But Harold was the expert, and he felt it was necessary. At the time, I didn’t know everything Ben and Harold knew.
Harold had recommended that Ben attend Sierra Tucson for his in-patient treatment, but after doing some research on his own,
Ben instead chose the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. Ben later told me that he knew the time had come. The jig was up, and Harold helped him see that he needed help.
A few days later, I put Ben on a plane to Kansas, not knowing what was going to happen next. He packed for a two week stay. We thought that was how long it would take to figure out what was wrong with him, then he could come back home and work on himself here in town. I immediately began avoiding people and friends as much as possible, as I would be asked the inevitable question, “Where is Ben?” I told everyone he was in Connecticut to spend time with his sister. I settled in with the kids and waited to hear from Ben.
Chapter Two. The Disclosure
August 3, 1997
…This is not fun. My life is on hold while B. reckons with his demons. I am filled with self-doubt and guilt about him going away. Have been through so much this week with B. being away in Kansas. Trying to keep up with his absence to everyone is very hard so I try and avoid everyone and don’t answer the phone. Haven’t even told my parents and siblings. I am really hopeful and pray that Ben is seeing how incredibly destructive he has been to himself and us. The kids are fine but I know they miss him. Ella came home from camp yesterday. She grew taller. She seemed depressed when she came back to the house. I think it is because B. is away—she denies it. I have been having good runs since B. has been gone.
One of the first nights that Ben called me from rehab, he asked me to read a book called Out Of the Shadows, by Dr. Patrick Carnes. I read it and was absolutely shocked. It was a book about sex addiction. I had never heard about such a thing. I couldn’t imagine why he wanted me to read about something so dark and sick. I called my brother David.
My younger brother lives in New York City, and he has for quite a while. He is a documentary filmmaker and college recruiter for a major university, and he happens to be gay. I vaguely remember the day he came out to me, telling me he was more attracted to men than women, that he was pretty sure he was gay. I can remember having my suspicions but dismissing them because of his popularity with girls in high school. He even dated girls in college. Girls loved him. When someone finally comes out and admits something like that, it is a bit like dropping a bomb.
For my sisters and me, it wasn’t a bomb at all, just a firecracker. It almost felt like we had known all along. For our father, however, it was an atom bomb.
David came down from New York to tell my parents that he was gay. This must have been the summer of 1986. After pretending and giving excuses for such a long time as to why he didn’t have a serious girlfriend to bring to family functions, he finally was in a relationship that he really valued. David was simply tired of living a lie to those who mattered the most to him.
The bomb, then the fallout and concussion of the announcement to our parents, rattled the house. My father was old fashioned and religious. He was not the type to quote a particular Bible verse to a specific situation, but he knew what he believed to be right and wrong. Faced with the thought that his only son was, in his mind, no longer a man, Dad absolutely exploded.
“It’s disgusting. It’s a sin!” he bellowed from all around the house. His tirade lasted nearly half an hour—this full-throated appraisal of sinning and homosexuality, and most important to him, the “death” of his son. David suddenly no longer existed to my father.
In a rage, he ripped pictures of David from the walls, stomped around the house hollering about not having a son, about men having sex with other men. My mother had no idea what to do, so she and my brother sat at the kitchen table in stunned silence.
It was absolutely awful.
My mother, who usually deferred to my father in moments of decision or strife, said nothing. When he continued removing photos from the walls of the house, David had had enough, and he walked out the front door.
Their relationship never rebounded. My brother had been the apple of our father ‘s eye, the sole heir to carry on the family bloodline. After that night, the only thing my father could see was an abomination and a sinner.
My father kept good on his promise of disowning David. We would talk about David when we were all together but nothing more than information of the week and quick updates. As soon as my father entered the room and realized the topic of conversation, he would try and silence us, as if information about my brother, his only son, physically hurt his ears.
I called my brother the night before Ben was scheduled to contact me, after I read Out of the Shadows. I picked my brother and not my sisters because I remembered once David telling me he had some friends in recovery, and I thought he might have heard of this addiction.
“Why do you think he wanted me to read about that? Have you ever heard of such an addiction?” I asked David.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of it,” he said.
“Listen to this,” I told him. Then I read David excerpts I had marked with a yellow highlighter. “There are three levels of sexual addiction divided by behaviors, legal consequences, and victims.”
I continued reading. “Level one is masturbation, compulsive relationships, pornography, prostitution, strip clubs, and anonymous sex with women, men and both men and women.”
“Level two deals with exhibitionism, voyeurism, indecent phone calls, and indecent liberties, whatever that means. There is no way he is doing anything in level three.”
“It’s probably just level one, the masturbation thing,” David said. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Call me after you talk to him and let me know what is going on.”
I immediately felt better when he said that. “I guess I’ll find out tomorrow night when I talk to Ben,” I told him.
After I hung up with David, I thought back and the only thing I could connect to Ben in the realm of sexual deviance were a few occasions of masturbation. OK. I think I can deal with that. Immediately, I could recall instances of him and his friends making jokes and references to masturbation. But what did I know? I’d even caught Ben a few times in the middle of “pleasuring himself,” as he liked to call it, and even then I’d thought it simply embarrassing and nothing else. I certainly did not view it as a “dangerous addictive behavior.”
About a week and a half into his treatment program, my husband called me around 10:30 at night. Our kids were in the living room a few yards away from my closed bedroom door, watching a movie. At that time, Ella was tall and thin at twelve, Henry was ten, Harper was nine and still wearing her gymnastics leotard from practice that night, and little Olivia was just six.
I can still remember
