Dark Side of Intimacy
Love and sex are healthy parts of being human. In fact, intimacy makes life rich and worthwhile. However, for many, there’s a dark side to the search for intimacy. Love and sex become distorted. Relationships that could once bring joy and pleasure now bring pain and despair. You feel defective. You wonder how you got here. You may attempt to re-create a particular relationship only to find yourself miserable and lonely again.
One client described her despair this way, “I just thought I was broken, that something was wrong with me. I had no idea there was a name for what I was doing romantically and that there might be a way to change. I desperately didn’t want to continue hurting myself and others, but I just thought it was my personality.”
When Relationships Cause a Painful Double Bind
Research shows that women develop an identity and self-awareness in relationships, not separate from them. Women need relationships to be whole. This is not a sign of weakness. It’s healthy to desire intimacy with others. In fact, it’s hardwired into the female brain to thrive in connection to another person.
Confusion comes when a relationship, necessary for self-awareness, breeds chronic pain and isolation. You may feel lost, disoriented, and unable to identify why the relationship hurts. Maybe it becomes impossible to be in the relationship, yet impossible to leave. In other words, the very thing you need to thrive and be happy causes you shame and pain. If this happens over and over again, the thing you most need in life becomes impossible to capture. And that creates a double bind.
Love and sex addiction is a double bind. If you seek a relationship, which you’re designed to do, you’re going to experience pain. If you avoid relationships, which you may try to do, you will experience pain too. There seems to be no right way to be … no way to find comfort and happiness. The relationship (or person) you are hard-wired to need repeatedly betrays you. As a result, you may recognize the following feelings:
•I am not at “ease” or at peace.
•I rarely know a moment of comfort in solitude.
•I have difficulty being alone or still.
•I have disordered eating, sleeping, and/or spending patterns.
•I grow increasingly confused and tired.
•I have difficulty trusting people.
•I become more isolated while pursuing sex or romance.
•I lose interest in friends, hobbies, family, and work.
•I can’t seem to identify or live within my value system.
•I experience more and more episodes of irritability, rage, and restlessness.
Giving the Problem a Name
For some of you, it may seem that there’s no way out of destructive relationships. You feel stuck. To begin healing destructive romantic patterns, it’s helpful to name the problem. Referring to problematic sexual and romantic behavior as love and sex addiction is the first step to regaining control; however, it’s complicated. Women have been called many names for their sexual and romantic choices. If she enjoys sex, she’s “promiscuous” or called a “whore” or a “slut.” On the flip side, if she lacks sexual desire, she’s “frigid” or “cold.” How do women reconcile these two extremes? Is it even possible?
Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, argues that our culture asks women to apologize for being female. (1) Shame is the result of this painful message. Shame causes women to hide. Shame breeds secrecy. Secrecy breeds addiction. When relationships become addictive, love becomes a struggle for power rather than an experience of intimacy. Painful patterns of thinking dominate the romantic experience. Four examples of distorted thinking follow:
1.Secrecy is better than honesty. In many families, children grow up learning to protect family secrets. Certain painful issues are kept behind closed doors. Families adopt a “don’t talk” rule. As a result, a child internalizes the need for secrets. She learns that honesty is dangerous. If she speaks about certain issues or emotions, she risks anger and alienation from her family. Therefore, as an adult, she finds herself automatically telling lies, keeping secrets, and being dishonest. Telling the truth is too difficult.
2.It’s not possible to be angry and be loved. Children learn to hide anger or express it in indirect, destructive ways. When we’re adults, not being able to feel or share anger in constructive ways damages intimacy. Anger is a normal part of being alive and being in a relationship. When it’s denied, the potential for authentic intimacy dies.
3.Compromise means loss of power. In families where an authority figure dominates the household, compromise doesn’t exist. Children learn that there is only one right way. And being right is most important. They also learn to sacrifice their own needs and desires to please the authority figure. As a result, when they become adults they hunger for control and have many unmet needs. In relationships, it feels more important to be right than to find mutually agreeable solutions that may require giving up something desirable. It’s more important to win, because in the unconscious mind losing represents a total loss of self.
4.People will always leave me and can’t be trusted. Adults who find themselves repeatedly in addictive relationships have a profound fear of abandonment. This fear can masquerade two ways: extreme dependency or fear of suffocation. Dependency can appear desperate or empty. A woman feels a frightening void when she’s alone. She avoids this feeling with constant activity or romance. In the case of suffocation, a woman feels she will be used and smothered if she lets her guard down. She builds emotional walls to keep her at a safe distance from others.
Secrecy, shame, and addiction are part of a dreadful cultural inheritance for women that provides a stage for addictive relationships. Addictive relationships leave you determined to build a wall that will protect you from further hurt. Hopelessness and despair become constant companions.
Maria
Maria learned to get attention at a young age by being flirtatious and sexual. She had a series of intense relationships in adolescence and college. In her first marriage, however, she lost desire for her husband. Each attempt she made to re-create the initial intensity she felt for him failed. She grew depressed and fearful. Maria had difficulty finding help because she didn’t understand her behavior, and the professional community didn’t offer her much clarity. One therapist pushed her to be sexual with her husband, but when she tried, she felt repulsed. She internalized that the problem must be her. When Maria came to see me for therapy, she described her romantic patterns in the following way.
“I was convinced that being myself would never get me love and attention, so I became desperate and did everything I could to be whatever anyone wanted me to be. I could be sexy, strong, sweet, or mean. The more attention I got from guys, the more I wanted. But when I got it, I didn’t trust it. So I craved more reassurance and grew more needy. I pushed away the very thing I needed and I didn’t know how to stop. I felt lost and hopeless. That’s when I met my husband.”
How Addiction Causes Dis-ease
Maria’s words illustrate the restlessness, confusion, and cyclic nature of addictive love and sex. It became like a disease. Disease is a
