Archive for the sexual addiction Category

Conversations with Myself (Why I Am Ridiculous)

Posted in Dating, Relationships, self-esteem, self-improvement, sexual addiction with tags , , , on November 5, 2013 by sexandthesinglesoccermom

It’s been over a month since I spoke to J, the man who made me feel like a giddy teenager for an intense two months, then professed to me he was a sex addict that needed to go into treatment. It was only 6 days after that surprise announcement that our short relationship fell apart.

His birthday is in 2 and 1/2 weeks. For the last 4 weeks I’ve been having an on-going argument with myself. It goes something like this:

Emotional, rationalizing self (ERS for short): “I think it would be nice to send him a happy birthday email.”

Logical, sensible self (LSS): “Why? What possible reason could you have for wanting to do that? You’re crazy.”

ERS: “Well, I still care about him as a person! I want to show some support and love to let him know I’m thinking of him. Can’t I just have pure motives and try to reach out on a human level?”

LSS: “Jesus! You are so completely deluded! Pure motives, my ass! You mean you want to test the waters and see what happens. Haven’t you had enough of doing that with people who are all wrong for you? Do you like being tortured? Are you really that masochistic? You make me kind of sick!”

ERS: “Shut up! You’re such a heartless bitch! I’m just trying to be nice. I care about him and I just want him to know. It’s totally innocent and you’re just cynical. Afterall, it’s not like I expect anything from him. It would be for the thought alone, not for him to reciprocate anything!”

LSS: “You are a total liar. If he didn’t write you back, you’d be crushed. You’d go home and curl up in a little heap and watch back-to-back episodes of Vampire Diaries, alternating between guzzling wine and inhaling chocolate. Totally innocent? Do you forget I am able to see inside your dirty little fantasies? Don’t I already know he’s the star in the porn movie inside your head? There are only two reasons you could possibly have for writing him and both of them will only lead to more misery! Why don’t you try letting me run the show for awhile? It’s not like you’ve been doing such a bang-up job, now is it?”

ERS: Crickets

Yeah…I’m struggling. I still have two of his voicemails on my phone and yes, I have listened to them several times. I’ve gone back and read his bizarre poems repeatedly. I’ve looked at the picture of us on our first date over and over. I’m distanced enough after five weeks to realize it wasn’t love, by any means. So why am I still thinking about him? Three reasons: A.) Pure, intense lust (Can I count this reason twice?) B.) I got naked emotionally with him in a way I rarely do. C.) I’ve not felt that way with anyone in…years. Possibly never.

Of course, the admission of the sex addiction and the subsequent abrupt ending would probably color all of those reasons in a negative way . Hard to feel unguarded and intense about someone who’s not only verbally admitted to using women for years, but actually shown signs that despite the desire to love you, you’re really just an interchangeable vagina. Although, my vagina seems to think she has a voice in all of this and she is feeling quite frustrated at the thought of never seeing him again and thinks she might be okay, at least  a few more times, of being in the rotation. She’s being very unreasonable.  An unreasonable,  angry vagina is a bad thing. She’s scoffing when I try to offer her substitutes and, frankly, she frightens me a little.

Although my friend and I have both decided that “Interchangeable Vagina” might make an awesome punk band name.

Sigh.

I think it’s for the best if I leave this alone. If you have to tick off the days since contact and you have multiple voices in your head (one of them your vagina) arguing over what the right decision is, that’s probably a sign.

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The Love Drug

Posted in anxiety, Dating, depression, Relationships, sexual addiction on September 25, 2013 by sexandthesinglesoccermom

It’s been four days since my lover told me he couldn’t handle dating me while trying to achieve sexual sobriety. The couple of people I’ve talked to about this (and I’ve kept it limited) have essentially said: “Sorry, that sucks, but you clearly dodged a bullet.”

I hate that phrase, even while I understand what they mean by it. I escaped the extended heartbreak and risk that by all probability would have come along with loving someone who is deeply emotionally damaged. I’ve avoided pain resulting from being in relationship with someone who has alternated between alcohol, drugs and sex to escape his pain and who has not been able to sustain a loving, intimate relationship with anyone. I’m relatively unscathed.

Relatively.

I’ve spent the last three days sobbing off and on, with my brain circling around like a caged animal, snarling at the idea of losing this person I’ve fallen for. One moment convincing myself to just let it go, be thankful it wasn’t for longer and accept that trying to make it work would be even more heartbreaking. The next trying to think of reasons it would work and why I should contact him just to stay in touch. You know…stay connected so that once he’s healthy we can try again. Betwixt it all, the fragility of my self-esteem runs like a thread of darkness, whispering, “Here’s another man who is willing to give you up because you’re incapable of inspiring love or loyalty”. Common sense pulls me away from that chasm to smack me upside the head: “Really, you crazy bitch? A former junkie alcoholic who is just now entering a 12 step program for sex addiction, who can’t even be around you after 12 days of celibacy for fear he’s going to completely lose it, and you want to make this about YOU?” Then I think about him holding my hand in the park, pulling my head to his chest as we cuddle, teaching me how to swing a golf club at midnight, or kissing me until my legs tremble and I break down sobbing all over again, terrified I’ll never feel this way about someone ever again.

And there’s the crux of it. I’ve felt something that I don’t want to lose; the thought of going without it makes me feel bleak. How can I go back to dating and trying to see who ticks off the appropriate items on my list? I’ve spent two months barely able to think about anything but him, feeling something extraordinary. I found myself watching the way he moved his body and hearing the inflection in the way he said my name and thinking how beautiful he was, like some love-struck teenager. Yes, I tried like hell to insulate myself with all the arguments against it. I tried to date other people, hoping it would stop the head-over-heels fall into insanity. None of it worked and finally I had almost managed to convince myself I didn’t need to worry. It would all work out.

Logically, I know this is infatuation. The only way forward is cold turkey, right? No contact, no reaching out to find out how he is and trying like hell to stay busy. I’ve made the mistake over and over of not moving on and I don’t want to keep doing it. Between my propensity for extreme sensitivity to emotion and the already compromised and barely healed state of my emotional health, I’ve got to keep moving forward. When I made the decision to live nearly 6 years ago, it was with the knowledge that the consequences of giving into my depression are too severe. Becoming immobilized is not an option.

But this fucking sucks and I want to scream and cry. I want to not feel terror claw at my throat when I think of trying to date again, because this feeling is so awful and wrenching that I wonder if it’s easier to just give up on love completely. I’m really close to saying “Fuck it” and just not trying anymore and I’m cursing myself for being fool enough to be in this situation, when I had reservations from the beginning. The phrase “the heart wants what the heart wants”, that I’ve always thought was complete self-indulgent crap, is making sense to me right now.

And there’s still this self-mocking voice that can recognize that the detox I’m going through and all the analysis and strong emotion that its eliciting is probably similar to what he’s going through while trying to be celibate. This feeling is like a drug and it’s going to take time and removal from the source to get sober. I guess I need to settle in for the mood swings, tears, anger and railing against fate that I’m in for while the drug leaves my system; hopefully it will be a short period of time.

Because you can’t love someone after two months, right?

Right.

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