When Sex Is Not the Answer

I'm as pro-sex as they come. I'd rather sing its praises than be the guy talking it down.

However, there's a painful, out-of-whack theme I see in the lives of men I have the privilege of chatting with for several hours a day.

Partly it's a guy thing. Even those of us who have never been addicted can get pretty needy when it comes to sex. Rather than face our everyday hurts and heartaches, we want sex to be the ultimate nightcap that just soothes them all away.

When our advances aren't accepted, no wonder our emotional world crumbles. We're not just missing the warmth of skin-to-skin contact, the pleasures of intimate engagement, and the ecstasy of sexual release. As much as we may miss those, that's not the real kicker. After all, we can have that all again sometime soon. (As wonderful as Disneyland is, we don't mourn that we can't go there everyday.)

The real bite is this: when we don't get sex, we are at risk of being left in emotional limbo--purgatory even. We have to face our demons without a narcotic.

We may go to all ends to try to avoid facing what we feel inside when we want sex and can't have it. We may pressure our partner. Women love feeling wanted and needed, but nothing turns her off sexually like suspecting that she's not much more to him than a live human masturbation aid.

Women who keep succumbing to the pressure to have sex typically become emotionally disengaged--not only during sex but from their husbands in a general way.

On the other hand, she might become less willing to have sex. Then he feels an even greater hunger and applies more pressure. Which in turn makes her even less interested. Actually, she's not just uninterested, she's actively avoidant. This is a cycle we can get stuck in, an amusement park ride that's easy to get on and hard to get off. 

Some men then look outside the relationship for gratification, which is like planting dynamite on the merry-go-round to get it to stop.

Fortunately, there's a healthier way out of this struggle.

Look at it as an opportunity. When we're not able to have sex, we get to face some of our demons.

I suggested this a couple of weeks ago to Jonathan, who was so sexually frustrated that he was considering chemical castration as a solution. He laughed when I talked about this "opportunity" to become more enlightened and thus freer from his impulses.

His usual approach was to keep turning to her, pleading that she read another blog on the benefits of sex, emailing her a link to an online Christian program that discourages abstinence, offering to give her a massage that he would try to turn into an opportunity to make love.

His homework from me was to go sixty days without sex.

He admitted to me this morning that he left that last session angry. He felt like his wife, who was there to hear the assignment, would take it as a justification of her position. He feared that if he took the pressure off her that they may never have sex again. "She has everything she wants. I take care of her financial needs and our kids all still live in the area." He didn't have any confidence that she would actually choose sexual closeness with him, if given complete and utter freedom to choose for herself.

How sad for Jonathan! He deserves more love and affection than that! But I don't think he had any confidence that my approach would help him get it.

I had a more confidence in her. Not because I know her very well yet, but because I've seen many women like her before. It's amazing how their sexuality can awaken once it's no longer being smothered by his.

I encouraged Jonathan to talk to Michelle about how he felt emotionally when he wanted sex but knew he wasn't going to get it (which would be every time over the next couple of months if he followed my suggestion).

"However, before you can talk with her about all the emotions that come up for you then... you have to become more aware of all the emotions that come up for you then." To do so, I encouraged him to:

• Stay with the emotions that come in the wake of realizing you're not going to be sexual.
• Pay attention to the physical pain. Where is it? Exactly what does it feel like?
• Keep breathing. Nice and full. Slow and easy.
• Accept that you feel this way.
• Let yourself feel this way.
• Give yourself permission to feel this way.
• Remind yourself that no one died from not having sex. (Not that a coroner has confirmed, at least.)
• Notice where you feel the emotional discomfort in your body.
• Stay with that.
• Keep breathing.
• Let your mind float back in time. Keep attending to the feeling in your body but let your mind drift from the current situation and back over time. Maybe even way back. What memories come to mind? When else have you felt these feelings in your body? 

Often, the memories that come up have nothing to do with sex. Homesickness during my first summer camp. The day I discovered dad's model train table gone from the basement and realized that it meant my parents were getting divorced. Feeling rejected by the group of kids in my neighborhood because they thought I had a funny name and skin color.

Take those feelings to your wife. You know what you'll get? Her heart will go out to you. She'll want to hear more. She'll stay with you through the thick of it.

Jonathan didn't make any intriguing discoveries by trying this out. But something else happened when he followed my directions to not pressure his wife for sex. (Actually he did "invite her once in a very easy-going way," but then she just reminded him about the assignment.) Even though Michelle had to remind him that once, guess what happened? I haven't spoken to her yet about it, but perhaps because of the easing of external pressure, she had the opportunity to listen to her inner desires. Guess what they told her. After a week and a half, they prompted her to initiate lovemaking. For the first time in a long time!

Amazing things can happen when sex is a choice, and you feel free to have it--or not--rather than feeling like it's the intravenous line through which your partner is receiving their emotional life support.

Porn Used to Numb His Need for Her

It’s a thing of beauty to see a man who has been addicted to porn finally let his wife in emotionally. When he does, she can finally see how much he needs her.

I wish I had a plan that predictably helped couples get there. Then again, maybe that would detract from the miracle of it.

In Trent and Stella’s case, a little reading went a long way. I encouraged Trent to read Terrance Real’s book, I Don’t Want to Talk About It: The Hidden Legacy of Male Depression.”

“I was a basket case all week,” he reported at the beginning of our next session. “I read and cried, read and cried.”

Stella nodded. “After I held and comforted him one night, I had to turn my pillow over before I could go to sleep. It was soaked with his tears.”

This was different for Trent. He didn’t usually cry. In fact, he didn’t usually feel. At least he thought he didn’t. Underneath his calm exterior he had always been feeling. Feeling so regularly, in fact, that he had to go to porn to escape what he would otherwise have had to keep feeling.

For a week he had been feeling and voicing it instead.

It was helpful for both Trent and Stella to see some of the history behind his habit of escaping feelings rather than reaching out when he was in need.

That had been a part of those crying sessions throughout the previous week. Trent had talked about his dad leaving their little family when he was four. And he had cried. Trent had talked about banging on the door to try to interrupt the arguing and slaps and knocks he heard coming from behind his mom and step-dad’s bedroom door. Telling Stella about it, he had cried and yelled and pulled at his hair and wrenched into a fetal curl.

Trent had talked about “horrors” and his “nightmares.” Like the kid who waited to beat him up as he walked home from school in fifth grade. Taking a different route some days, running really fast some days. And then there were the days when his buttons got torn from his shirt and the raspberry streak on his face stung from being ground in the dirt and his ribs ached from being kicked. He hid in his room instead of coming out for dinner because he was ashamed that he’d gotten beat up.

Trent talked about feeling alone through all that, but now he wasn’t alone. This was the first time he’d let these things out in anyone’s presence. It was the first time he’d cried like this in front of anyone.

By the time they were back in my office, the tears had dried. He had started calling the bullying “a stupid little thing” that had happened to him. He’d been bothered by hearing mom in her room with strange men, but now he said “funny little things like that got to me back then.”

“I know you want to shut off that pain and put those things back in the box they’ve been in all these years,” I said. “But you don’t have to. You don’t need to minimize it anymore. Being real about your pain makes you more real to Stella. To be able to stay with you, she needs you to stay real.”

His sexual addiction has been so bad, Stella sometimes considered leaving. That week, she said, she’d found an apartment that might work.

Her own apartment?! Dang! didn’t she see that Trent was doing better? Wasn’t she feeling closer?

“How did it feel to you when Trent opened up about what he feels. When he allowed himself to talk to you about the pain he’s been through and cry with you?”

“I felt so sad for him. Intimate and close--not sexually, but emotionally. When he talks to me, I feel at ease. It’s when he closes off that I feel my rage over what he’s done.

“When he cried and I held him, it was amazing. Like nothing could get in our way. Like we’re going to get through this and I can be here for him. It even felt like we’ll be able to get the passion back. We could have fun being around each other and doing things together again. If I had my way we’d talk like that all the time.”

“And yet, as close as that felt, you hurt so much that you’re still thinking about leaving.”

“I told Trent I’d found a place that might work, but it won’t be ready for a couple months. Do you know what he said? ‘I’ll try to help you.’ I don’t need his financial help! I don’t want him to help me pack! I just need to know whether he even wants me to stay, whether he really wants me.”

“Trent, what happened inside when she said she’d found a place?”

“Oh, it killed me. But I know it’s because I’ve hurt her so badly. I have nothing to whine about. It’s my own fault.”

“But what happened inside? Where did you feel it in your body?

“Oh, my gut. Sick. Ugh. I can feel it now.”

“You’re sick about the idea of losing this woman who means so much to you. But you couldn’t tell her that.”

Trent shook his head. His eyes were getting wet.

“You felt sick, but frozen by it and like you deserved it and the best you can do is help make her move easier. You couldn’t tell her what you were feeling inside. Can you tell her now?”

“Not without bawling.”

Trent laughed. I could see the realization in his eyes as he remembered what Stella had just said about his tears and they way they had drawn her to him and how much closer she felt when he let her see that he was in need.

He reached out and patted her hand, then gripped it. It took him a while to speak. I could see his knuckles whitening. “Don’t…” Without letting go of her hand Trent bent all the way forward like he might be about to get sick. He sat back again, took a breath, and turned to look at Stella. His tight throat barely let his voice rasp through. “I don’t…” He wiped is eyes with his other hand. “I hope…” A few more breaths. “I‘m not...”

He hadn’t made any sense at all. Stella knew exactly what he meant. She stepped over and bent down and embraced him.

Human Connection is the Best Relapse Prevention

Troy had been sober from porn for 40 days. When we talked yesterday, he was so delighted: "Life's better. I can sit and read to my little boys--sometimes two or three books--without feeling so impatient. Celeste and I go for walks and it feels good to just hold hands."

What surprised Troy most is the improvement in his sexual relationship with Celeste. "What we both feel when we're together has been electric. Of course the whole package is better than porn because I'm living with integrity now. What blew me away is that the intensity of pleasure is reaching a level almost as high as what porn was in its best moments."

I remembered back to a few months ago when Troy talked about "porn at its best." Part of his motivation to get sober was that he was devoting more of his time and energy and receiving less and less in return. When he was craving, he might recall the most euphoric incidents of porn consumption, but once he gave in to the craving the actual experience was rarely living up to those memories.

Troy wasn't alone in this. It's porn's law of diminishing returns. Another word for it is tolerance, and it's a fixture on the landscape of all addictions.

Now he was experiencing one of the sweet laws of recovery: human connection is the best relapse prevention. Here are a couple of reasons why:

1. A committed relationship is porn addiction's nicotine patch. The chemical oxytocin is a source of natural biological bliss. It calms anxiety and makes us more easily satisfied. It's released in our brains and bodies when we spend time working beside, caressing, conversing with, resting a hand on the shoulder of, or even touching base by cellphone with our beloved.

This "cuddle chemical" has also been found to diminish addictive urges. In 1998 G. L. Kovacs and colleagues administered to rats regular doses of heroin, cocaine, and morphine in order to develop dependence. Then they gave half of the rats oxytocin. Those oxytocin-dosed rats opted for less of their "drug of choice" when they had unlimited access and also showed fewer signs of withdrawal. In 2006 Billings found that oxytocin had the same effect on rats' cravings for sweets.

2. Oxytocin makes commitment more appealing. Scientists didn't have to dose up any rats to discover this; nature had already done the experiment for them on some other rodents. All they had to do was compare the "Family Values" of Mountain Voles to those of Prairie Voles. These cousins are biologically similar in almost every way, but the brains of Prarie voles produce and release more oxytocin and have more receptors for the chemical in key areas. The effects of this difference? Prairie voles are more sociable, they mate for life, and both parents care for their young. That's a far cry from Mountain Voles, which are promiscuous, solitary, and the dads of the species are deadbeat, leaving the mothers to care for the young on their own.

Some have wondered whether philandering humans have brains more like these promiscuous rodents. I think a different implication of this research is more interesting: As humans, we can influence our own oxytocin levels. Why not do the things that lead to the production and release of oxytocin rather than remaining victims of our original set point, whatever it happens to be?

Couples who are the happiest and most satisfied touch and talk to each other more. But let's not assume that the causal relationship just goes one direction. Sure we can respond to feelings of contentment in our relationship by connecting physically and verbally... but we can also make an effort to touch more and talk more. When we do we're dosing up with oxytocin, which in turn makes us more satisfied with our partner and less likely to even want to wander.

It was fun to see Troy's face light up as we talked about this miracle chemical. He was understanding more about what he'd already been enjoying in his life. I could tell how good it felt to be in the driver's seat of his life--so much better than his former enslavement to porn.

[Just a brief final note to twelve-step adherents: By calling human connection the best relapse prevention, I'm not trying to diminish the role of our Higher Power in recovery. After all, who else would get the credit for having put these loved ones in our lives?]