A Couple's Guide to Sexual Addiction (22 page)

Steven and Emily’s Discoveries

Individually, as Steven and Emily began to take 100 percent responsibility for the dynamics of their relationship, they began to be able to soften to the other. The first big breakthrough came when Emily suggested that she accompany Steven on one of his golfing trips. In the past, she had not wanted to go on these trips. She felt left out when Steven went to play golf, but she decided she would go along and enjoy herself by sitting by the pool and doing something she loved to do—read. Because the golf courses were located at lovely resorts, she could even treat herself with a massage.

In the evenings, they went for quiet dinners together. One night, Steven began to talk with Emily about their mutual investments. She felt included. In return, Steven began to feel her acceptance of his special skills in being able to make and manage money. They both began to understand how they had been able to bring the past into the present in a way that healed old patterns and replaced them with care and kindness for each other.

You Can Limit the Scope of Your Investigation

If your view of the present is being obscured by past assumptions or scaffolding from your history, it will leave clues that you can recognize. This is another helpful time to think like a detective, to round up your clues. Look for patterns. Pay particular attention if you find that more than one person has a similar suggestion, complaint, or piece of advice for you. Notice if you are having an experience that feels like a repeating pattern. Check to see if, over and over again, your life seems to be a story with a vaguely familiar plotline or ending.

It may help to imagine that your clear experience of the present moment is like standing in a beautiful field. If you somehow find yourself in a dense forest, with the trees being the influences from your past that are blocking your clear view, you still know the sunny meadow is out there somewhere. However, the only way to reach the clarity of the beautiful field is to travel through the forest. The only way out of the forest is through it.

This doesn’t mean you need to stop and investigate every tree in the forest. Your investigation of the past does not need to be a major research project. You don’t need to uncover your entire past or every incident that may be impacting you today. You don’t need to move boulders, when all that is required is to move a couple of stones. If you have a leak in your bathroom, you don’t need to tear up your entire house.

In looking to the past, start with the present. What in the present is creating difficulty? From that point of entry, you can begin to ask yourself how you may be making assumptions and conclusions in the present that keep you reacting in the same old ways, rather than creating a fresh moment for you and your partner.

Exercise: Blazing a Trail Into the Past

To discover the most pertinent influences from your past, the best place to start is with whatever is troubling you in the present moment. In particular, bring to mind the thing about your partner that is the most troubling to you. As an example, “I feel like my husband/wife is not willing to take responsibility.”

Now take that particular problem or issue and turn it around. Make yourself the problem; make the complaint about you. We recognize this will probably seem like the last thing you would want to do, but you won’t have to tell your partner or anyone else how you have tried to explore this issue by turning the complaint back around to you.

As difficult as it may seem, this technique is invaluable in revealing a view of the world that you might not be able to see in any other way. As unlikely as it may seem to you, much of the time, a complaint you have about your partner is in some way similar to a complaint your partner has about you.

In the example above, you might attempt to turn this complaint around in a couple of ways. You might contemplate (as impossible as it may initially seem) a thought like, “I do not want to take responsibility for something I have done.” You also might find that the reflected feeling on the other side of this complaint might be something like, “I haven’t been able to see how I feel responsible for something my father/mother did to me.” Or perhaps, “I haven’t been able to see how I feel responsible for how my father/mother felt about me.”

What we have seen, again and again, is that a shortcoming you perceive in your partner that continues to irritate you is generally a clue that an assumption from the past is affecting some part of your view of the present. Let’s take another example. Say your complaint with your partner is, “My partner does not meet my needs.” To flip that around for further investigation, you might ask yourself, “How do I not meet my partner’s needs?” Or you may ask yourself, “How am I not willing to pay attention to or provide for my own needs?” Again, we recognize that it will not feel natural to look at the opposite side or the flip of your complaint. It is much more natural to want to stick with your ordinary view about this complaint about your partner. But because this is an investigation designed to reveal how the past is playing in the present, it will be extremely helpful for you to put aside your natural defenses.

Let this grievance in the present lead you into your past. Does this thought, this way of thinking remind you in any way of something familiar? How does this remind you of how you felt when you were small? If an answer does not immediately come to mind, don’t force a conclusion. Allow yourself to come back to this investigation as many times as you feel may be necessary to allow your native intelligence to provide the information that will help you see what you need to see.

Finally, whether or not you have found some clue to the past, take your complaint about your partner, as well as its reverse, and just for this moment allow all of these hurts and complaints to dissolve into nothing. Give yourself and your partner just a momentary reprieve. Let all those hurts and accusations turn into smoke and be blown away with the wind. Anything that needs to return will come back when required. We promise, you will not need to go looking.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Your past is impacting your present. When you experience something new or different, you naturally attempt to classify the new experience based on what you have previously learned.

• The origins of many behaviors that show up in the present, including sexually compulsive behaviors, can be found in the past. In the same way, you bring everything you have learned about love and relationship both consciously and unconsciously with you into your relationship.

• A relationship is a dance in which the movements of one partner influence the movements of the other. As a couple, you are both part of the system. The healing of difficulties will come at least partially through this relationship system, through the dynamics of the two of you together.

• When you can see how the past is impacting your present, you have a chance to rebuild your structures of trust, control, and self-esteem. Your intimate relationship is the place you can rebuild, cooperatively, as loving witnesses to each other.

• One way to stop repeating the past is to uncover, acknowledge, and embrace whatever has happened in the past as well as what is happening now. This is how you can be truly aware of your feelings and thoughts as well as your impulses to sexually act out, feel shame, and shame others.

Looking Forward

Now that you have begun to take the necessary steps to rebuild your relationship, we begin Part 3, “Moving Forward,” with a look at strengthening your intimate connection. In the next chapter, we explore building sexual intimacy by developing skills of intimate communication.

PART THREE

MOVING FORWARD

CHAPTER 10

Building Intimacy

The desire for intimacy is a basic human longing. We yearn to belong, to love, to be connected with another. It’s no accident that songs, films, and photos depict stories of love. We are all pulled toward that amazing connection with another human being. And intimacy can be a truly joyful experience beyond anything typically depicted on the screen.

However, in the media that influences us, there has been a blurring of love with sex, and intimacy has been used euphemistically to speak about sexual contact. In this chapter, we are talking about intimacy more fully—as the capacity to reveal ourselves, as the willingness and desire to be completely real with another. The point is that the experience of real intimacy is better than anything you could have ever imagined.

Revealing our hidden inner influences, being real and undefended, can be tricky because we can only be as true with another as we are undefended with ourselves. In addition, to the extent that we allow ourselves to be impacted by our partner, to be more fully aware of our inner workings, we allow ourselves an ever-deepening experience of intimacy. It is a cycle that builds on itself. The willingness to be exposed, to see, builds even greater intimacy both for our own inner workings and with our beloved.

Collusion, Collision, and Collaboration

The vast majority of relationships never attain true intimacy. For many people, the unhappiness they feel about their relationship is similar to having a small pain in the ankle that is not really hurting enough to do something about. Instead, they live with it. However, if the ankle was broken and the pain was excruciating, they would need to address it. Because your relationship has been “broken,” and you are addressing it, you have the wonderful opportunity to rebuild it in a new way, to attain true intimacy.

The collision caused by the revelation of the sexually compulsive behavior has the capacity to lead to a deeper level of collaboration, which can lead to greater intimacy. Each partner will participate in one way or another in the ultimate outcome of the life of your partnership. Moving into deeper cooperation with your partner requires that both of you take full responsibility for yourselves and for the relationship. In a codependent relationship, one or both partners collude by keeping their focus on changing the other rather than on changing themselves and thus changing the nature of the relationship itself.

If your partner is not showing up to take responsibility or to engage with you, you cannot use coercion, or begging, or crying. To attempt to force the collaboration of your partner when he or she is unable to take the step into the realm of collaboration is not a path that will lead to greater intimacy. Greater intimacy requires the willingness of both partners to move into areas that have up to now been hidden.

Collaboration requires commitment from both partners. Although each partner may, from time to time, waver in their desire to remain in the relationship, in order to move past the impasse of a difficult time, both partners need to remain committed to full participation. Although there can be unbearable pain in the process of deepening intimacy, this crisis is transforming both you and your relationship.

Merging and Independence

At times, each partner must leap into new and unknown territory of yielding to the other. Both surrendering control and taking full responsibility are required. It may seem like a paradox, but the two qualities work hand in hand. Intimacy is built through the capacity to maintain a sense of yourself while at the same time being able to have compassion in an undefended way for your partner’s needs and wants. The capacity to reveal the parts of yourself that feel the most ugly, weak, or vulnerable requires inner strength.

Part of the inner sturdiness required is knowing that you are going to be disappointed by your partner and that you can bear the disappointment. Intimacy can be built even in those times of disappointment—if you are able to fully express your hurt and your partner is able to show empathy for your experience.

If your sense of independence is overly threatened by getting close to your partner, then intimacy will suffer. For example, one client reported that he felt that he was “doing as he was told” (and that seemed dangerous) when he experienced that his wife was asking too much of him. He felt like a powerless child who was in danger. In these moments, he would become angry and push his wife’s needs and requests away because his own sense of individual identity or autonomy felt threatened. As he was able to strengthen his own inner sense of satisfaction, safety, and peace in the world, he found he did not need to crumble when he sensed he was disappointing his wife.

The deepening of love and intimacy requires the willingness to make the needs and wants of the other, and of the relationship, just as important as your individual needs and wants. The capacity of surrendering self to other brings with it the benefit of intimacy. We bask in those unguarded moments of sinking into intimacy. We all want to merge, yet we fear merging.

It can be helpful to visualize yourself and your partner as two stable buildings standing side by side, firmly planted in the ground. If one of the structures becomes shaky or destabilized in some way, but the other is still standing firm, it can even prop up the wavering structure temporarily until stability can be re-established. If, however, the two structures have been set up to remain standing by leaning on each other (resting on the ground at the base, but propped against each other at the top), and one structure goes down, then they both go down. Intimacy is enhanced when you know you are firmly supported internally (an inner sense of independence and strength) and you can remain open and supportive to your partner. A sense of independence (I can take care of myself) and a capacity to merge (I can allow myself to feel helpless) are both required for intimacy to bloom.