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Key points
- When people act out sexually, it's often a clumsy way of meeting emotional needs.
- Curiosity is an essential part of reestablishing intimacy.
- Labelling someone a "sex addict" can increase their shame.
This post is part one of a two-part series.
Jonas and Marge have been married for 17 years.
This week they had sex for the first time in 10 years.
They stopped when she found out he had been seeing prostitutes all over the country while he traveled for business. She was too angry and hurt to let him touch her.
He said he would stop, and he did—for almost a year. Then he started again and eventually got caught again. Marge was bitter. “I don’t know if we’ll have ever sex again,” she said.
He kept traveling, she kept saying no to sex, and he settled into a routine of masturbating—with porn, of course—every morning after she left for work. Then he started doing it at his office. Then it was with camgirls, young women who danced naked on the internet just for him while he masturbated.
Her not-so-secret weapon
The distance between Jonas and Marge grew. It didn’t help that they quarreled frequently—about her mother, about her volunteer work, about their inept housekeeper. The fight was always the same: He was always feeling bossed around. Micro-managed. Unappreciated. She felt he was unreliable. Unimportant to him. And whenever she wanted to, she’d pull out her not-so-secret weapon: how he had traumatized her with his repeated infidelities.
Each fight would reset their marital recovery clock backward by months. Seven years later, they had made virtually no progress in reconciling. Sex? Forget it.
He couldn’t.
Eventually, all that masturbating with all those camgirls—combined with the coolness and barely hidden disdain of his wife—made him decide there was something wrong. He got into therapy with someone who believed in sex addiction. And before you could say “sexaholics anonymous,” there he was—in Sexaholics Anonymous. This therapist was a perfect example of “when your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like nails.”
Jonas eventually washed out of SA. They seemed almost anti-sex (certainly anti-lust), and were too rigid. And if he felt bossed around at home, he really felt bossed around at SA. When his therapist told him “recovery” required him to tell his wife about every camgirl he’d ever stroked to and every porn film he’d ever watched, he quit both SA and the therapist.
He floundered around for a while, periodically going to this or that massage parlor, although his heart wasn’t in it quite as much as before. Eventually, he came to see me, days before the COVID lockdown of 2021.
“My wife won’t have sex with me, and I can’t stop seeing prostitutes,” he said at our first meeting. As it happened, it was the only time we met in person. “I’ve tried therapy, SA, a self-help book, and willpower—not to mention reasoning with my wife—but nothing works,” he said. “You’re supposed to be the best. What can you do for me? And how long will it take? And why are you so expensive, anyway? By the way, I’ll probably be late for some of our sessions; I’m very busy.”
He was already showing me how he thinks about relationships: Let’s get this project moving, and here’s how it’s going to be. I sat there thinking, "I’m minding my own business when he walks in here demanding to know what I can do for him and telling me his terms. No wonder his wife doesn’t want to have sex with him."
Discovering a different kind of therapist
And so our dance began. He wanted to tell me his story; I said I first needed to know what he wanted from the therapy. He wanted a quick fix; I said there wasn’t one. He wanted to know why he couldn’t stop paying for sex; I said I’d help him find the answer to that. He wanted to know why he had to stop paying for sex; I said that I’d help him to decide if it were necessary.
“Maybe you’re not the right therapist for me,” he said in frustration. He’d say it again in the following session, and in the one after that. “I’m very sympathetic,” I replied. “You’re shopping for a product that’s totally intangible, from a vendor you don’t know, with no guaranteed outcome. And I don’t even answer half of your questions. Who would buy such a thing?”
He was intrigued. I sympathized, but never apologized. I was warm but firm, firm but relaxed. I didn’t push him to hire me or continue with me. “You’re not what I expected,” he said. “What did you expect?” I asked. “Someone who would give me advice, tell me what I had to do.” “Would you accept such advice?” “No,” he smiled. “Then I guess it’s good that I didn’t do that.” He smiled again. “OK, what is your therapy like?” For the first time he seemed genuinely curious. I told him so. “Yes,” he said, a little abashed—caught at being an ordinary human.
“You’re a lot more interesting when you’re curious,” I replied. And then I told him a little about what we were going to do. “Mostly,” I said, “we’ll talk about how you feel, what you want, and how you deal with not getting it.”
“No questions or lectures about sex? Isn’t that why I’m here?” “We’ll know why you’re here in just a few sessions,” I said. “I bet the reasons will be much bigger than sex.”
***
We wrestled every week for months, getting to know each other. In the rare moments that he didn’t try to impress me, he was actually quite likable. Every session he’d veer off into some long story or other, and I’d interrupt and bring him back: “Jonas, what question were you just answering?” He usually had forgotten—that is, he wasn’t really listening, to me or to himself. He eventually noticed the pattern, and began to apologize when busted. I interrupted this, too—“that’s not necessary,” I’d say. “I’d rather you be curious about what you’re doing.”
And gradually, he did become curious. That’s when the work accelerated...
Part II can be found here.
