Since then, all I can think about is repeating the experience. In fact, my anxiety increased to the point where I found a rub and tug here in Toronto and the only thing that kept me outside was a police raid. If I were a minute earlier, I would’ve been charged with being found in a bawdy house. I travel quite often for work (once a month) and I don’t want to make the same mistake on my next trip. I’ve talked about the issue with my therapist, who says that anxiety can lead to sex addiction, but nothing she’s suggested to curb my urges has worked. Do you have any advice?
Holy Bright Lights, Big City meets American Psycho.
Okay, so first things first. You say you were recently diagnosed with this disorder and are being treated pharmacologically. Without knowing the specifics of your prescription, it can sometimes take a couple of months for meds to kick in so you may not feel the calming effects for some time. This may also not be the appropriate scrip for you. Sometimes it takes a little trial and error to get the right brew.
You also say that you’re doing all you can to keep your anxiety in check—exercise, meditation, breathing and so on. What it seems more like to me is that you are keeping a ledger and checking off your efforts not as a means of managing your behaviour but as incentive to act out, proof that nothing is working so you may as well just hit rock bottom. A form of therapy that seems to help a lot of people who suffer from this kind of self-defeating behaviour is CBT—no, not cock and ball torture—cognitive behavioural therapy. If you’re not doing it already, you may want to look into it.
I think you should do some research into sex addiction before you let your therapist talk you into believing that this label is legitimately applicable. A good place to start is Cory Silverberg’s column on About.com, specifically this one: sexuality.about.com/b/2008/10/08/i-am-a-sex-addict.htm. As Silverberg says when referring to the hype surrounding this diagnosis, “So what have most of the major news organizations done when called to report on a concept that still hasn’t been accepted into either of the bibles of world mental health professionals? Well they go right to the people who invented the term—the sex addiction and recovery industry. Without agreement from mental health professionals, without a solid basis of evidence-based research, and in many cases without a grasp of sexological research, the sex addiction industry has established itself as a necessary body to treat an illness that only they agree exists.
“This is not to say that there aren’t people who struggle with out of control sexual behaviours,” Silverberg continues. “People lose relationships, families, jobs and more because they feel like they can’t control a particular behaviour. The problem is not that the sex addiction industry is making up the pain, the problem is that by mixing morality and ambiguity into their theory, they actually reduce their chances of helping people in pain deal with their problematic behaviours.”
Another excellent article on the topic is by sex therapist Marty Klein and you can find it here: sexed.org/archive/article08.html.
As Klein says, “Professional sexologists should reject any model suggesting that people must spend their lives 1) in fear of sexuality’s destructive power; 2) being powerless about sexuality; 3) lacking the tools to relax and let sex take over when it’s appropriate.”
Could be time you found yourself a therapist who doesn’t use terms that aren’t generally accepted by mental health professionals—one who might also see you and your wife together.
