When Sex Becomes a Hiding Place
At the center of every addiction, as at the center of every cyclone, is a vacuum, a still point of emptiness that generates circles of frantic movement at its periphery.
—Peter Trachtenburg
SEXUAL ADDICTION is a misguided attempt at separation and definition of self for a covert incest victim. It becomes a perceived gateway to feel separate from the opposite-sex parent and experience an autonomous sense of self. Not all victims of covert incest become sexual addicts, nor are all sexual addicts covert incest victims. Nonetheless, sexual addicts often played the role of a parent’s surrogate partner in their own childhoods. The entrapment inherent in this covertly incestuous relationship leads to a pattern of addictive pursuits of sexual and romantic highs. These highs offer the covert incest victim an escape. The temporary escape creates an illusion of freedom, which helps fuel the intensity of sexual pursuits.
Sexual addiction is a compulsive drive to act on one’s erotic feelings as the only solution to the entrapment inherent in being a covert incest victim. Sexual addiction feeds on itself, with each sexual act leaving a hunger for more. For the addict seduced by the illusion that sex will fill the emptiness of a lost childhood or offer an escape, the most natural of all human desires becomes a source of desperation and its own entrapment.
In its extreme, sexual addiction is life-threatening. Pursuit of new sexual highs becomes the primary purpose in life, although the experience of feeling alive progressively erodes. One is imprisoned by one’s own desires. Each attempt at sexual pleasure brings hope for freedom. As the search continues and the risks increase, hopelessness grows. Locked away, the spirit withers and dies. Such is the plight of the compulsive masturbator who risks autoerotic asphyxiation, the womanizer who wakes up next to his best friend’s wife only to consider suicide as an option, or the seducer whose string of one-night stands leaves her the victim of a deadly attack by a man she barely knows.
The addiction need not be at these extremes to cause deep suffering. Early on, the addict regards excessive sexual appetite as a way to self-definition. Soon, sexual activity becomes a hiding place rather than a source of genuine love and intimacy. Sexual addiction insidiously depletes self-worth, integrity, and hope. In the wake of its destruction lie despair, confusion, anger, guilt, and shame. Addicts are emotionally unavailable to themselves and to those around them. Relationships with significant others are distant and strained. Work, the one place addicts usually seek refuge, eventually becomes disrupted as well.
Sexual addiction has many forms and does not discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, race, class, or occupation. It can be as natural and seemingly benign as masturbation or sex within a marriage. Or it can be as damaging and victimizing as incest or rape. Not all rape and incest are committed by an out-of-control sexual addict, yet some sexual addicts commit incest or rape. Conversely, not everyone who masturbates, has an affair, engages in one-night stands, or uses sex to avoid conflict is a sexual addict. However, sexual addicts can and do engage in some or all of these behaviors. A sexual addict can become a prisoner to masturbation, pornography, multiple relationships, anonymous sex, affairs, prostitution, cross-dressing, voyeurism, and exhibitionism. (See bibliography for books on sexual addiction.)
The public is more than willing to label the incest perpetrator, voyeur, or exhibitionist as perverted and sick. The prostitution or pornography junkie is condemned as weak-willed or amoral. But patterns of affairs, multiple relationships, and sexual conquests may not raise an eyebrow or be equally condemned. In fact, they are often normalized and romanticized; yet many of the normalized and romanticized sexual behaviors in our culture have the hallmarks of sexual addiction. These include:
Secrecy
Sexual obsession (for example, a constant fantasy-filled stream of consciousness)
Ritualistic behavior (for example, a certain style of dress) used to enhance sexual excitement or conquest
Sexual behavior used to avoid reality and feelings (or used to create feelings when there is an absence of feelings in day-to-day living)
Tolerance to original stimuli with need of increased risks or stimuli to achieve the previous level of sexual excitement (In some cases, tolerance may not occur and the addict may have a stable baseline of addictive behavior.)
Tolerance does explain an escalating pattern of sexual addiction. Tolerance occurs in either fantasy or behavior. For example, an addict using benign fantasies to become sexually aroused may progress to needing sadomasochistic fantasies. Or the addict may switch from fantasies to behavior when the addict reaches a level of tolerance to fantasies alone. The adulterous spouse, for whom sex with a partner across town no longer gives the kind of risk and excitement it once did, might bring it closer to home by becoming involved with a good friend’s spouse. When the excitement of the risk wanes, the addict may become careless in keeping the affair a secret. Examples are endless, but all share a common thread of tolerance that drives addicts to violate values, convictions, and promises. The end result is one of destruction and pain for both addicts and their loved ones.
Sexual addiction offers the covert incest victim a sense of freedom from the weight of the guilt and lack of freedom inherent in the caretaking role of being a surrogate spouse. They are burdened with a sense of never doing or being enough, and are removed from the real or true inner life of who they are. They realize early on that their only source of self-worth rests in sacrificing their own needs and feelings to the emotionally vacant and seductive parent. For a child, there was no choice—it was a matter of survival. Not surprisingly, anger and rage toward the parent festers. Occasionally, when the anger grows beyond tolerable levels and the ego boundaries collapse under the strain, the sexual addict may become victimizing.
When Ray was charged with date rape, his neighbors were shocked. The newspaper article about Ray included a comment by a disbelieving neighbor: “I’ve known Ray and his mother for a long time. I can’t believe this. Ray has always been a good boy. He lives with his mother and takes good care of her. He is always by her side. They must have the wrong man.”
Perhaps Ray’s relationship with his mother was too close. The more seductive, entrapping, and violating a mother’s relationship with her son, the more likely that son will displace anger meant for his mother onto other women. The more a man feels unable to separate from a covertly incestuous relationship with his mother, the more likely his sexual behavior will become addictive and victimizing. Such was the case with Ray.
The remainder of this chapter takes a look at the lives of three sexual addicts whose stories are less extreme than Ray’s. However, they clearly highlight the role of a parent’s seduction in developing the pattern of sexual addiction. Further, the stories demonstrate how covert incest contributes to the double or “split” secret life of sexual addicts. These men and women often hide behind a public life of success and high achievement; they appear to have it so together on the outside, yet they actually have a secret sexual life. The following stories describe a politician, a minister, and a corporate businesswoman.
Will, Age Forty-Seven, Politician
Will was a man who had it all—at least it appeared that way on the surface. His political career was taking shape. His hard work in state and local politics was paying off. His campaigning had led to national office and the likelihood of reelection. He had a successful, growing career, a warm and loving wife, and three wonderful children.
To friends and family who knew his childhood, Will seemed a miracle. Although he came from a successful upper-middle-class family, his growing-up years had been filled with strife and neglect. Among the family Will’s father was known to “like his bottle and his women,” and his mother was seen as bitter but forgiving. Will vowed early on never to be like his father and quickly filled his father’s shoes by being at his mother’s side. Family members often commented on the way he was always the “politician” of the family, and how strong he was because he weathered his parents’ troubled marriage so well. Will’s career, wife, and children were proof he had survived the hidden inner struggles of his early family life. In fact, friends and family privately commented, “He has risen above it.”
Then one morning when Will picked up the paper, the headlines and a front-page photo were about him and his lover. Will was filled with rage and shame. He had been involved for months in an affair with a woman he’d met at a political function. Will thought he had kept it secret enough so he wouldn’t get caught. After all, his wife, Mary, said she would divorce him if he had another affair. This was not Will’s first affair, and he had a reputation as a womanizer and a flirt. As he sat and stared at the paper, Will couldn’t believe he had been photographed with his girlfriend in front of his apartment in Washington, D.C. He had forgotten that visit; taking a woman to his apartment was something he always avoided with his new and previous girlfriends. Stunned, he didn’t understand why he had taken that risk. Maybe I wanted to get caught, he thought.
Will’s disbelief and questioning quickly turned to anger and blame. Someone was trying to ruin his career. Besides, he figured he wouldn’t have to become involved in affairs if he and Mary were more compatible. Will frequently accused Mary of not being sexual enough. It was his reason for becoming involved with other women. The morning his latest affair was revealed was no different. After briefly expressing remorse and shame, Will launched into a tirade of blame, then pleaded for her forgiveness. Although Mary had heard it all before, she couldn’t separate herself from her husband’s accusations. As she always did, she believed his blaming and felt sorry for him. Mary wanted to demand that he leave, but her own shame paralyzed her and left her unable to act in her own best interests. Instead, she agreed to play the role of the dutiful wife at her husband’s side the following day when he would have to explain himself to the press. This cycle of shame, blame, and minimization is common to sexual addiction.
As the press fired questions, Will denied the affair and Mary claimed he was a faithful husband. As the days passed, however, more evidence surfaced, including an admission by Will’s lover. Since the truth could no longer be denied, Will attempted to minimize its significance. But the damage was done. Will’s political career was over.
Tolerance and progression help explain why Will risked bringing his lover to his apartment, where he must have been aware he could be watched. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to get caught, as he initially believed (addicts try to cover up and hide their behavior, not reveal it), but the insatiable appetite of the addiction drove him to seek riskier situations to increase the high of the experience. Sexual addicts are addicted to the mood alteration that the high offers, rather than the actual sexual behavior itself. The need to feed the addiction interferes with any conscious awareness of the consequences of the action. When consequences surface, the addict uses a mechanism of denial to circumvent the awareness. It might not be far-fetched, for example, to imagine Will thinking, I won’t get caught. I’ve got my tracks covered, and What my wife doesn’t know won’t hurt her anyway.
For years, Will kept his affairs, one-night stands, and visits to old girlfriends a secret. Mary knew of some of them and suspected others. Friends and coworkers knew Will strayed from time to time. Before marriage, he had a reputation for womanizing and was regarded as a Casanova. He believed his major identity and purpose was to be a womanizer. At some remote, unconscious level, marriage represented a chance for Will to end this boastful yet painful identity. Much to his surprise, marriage did not curtail his sexual pursuits. Instead, it caused him to keep secret what he had at one time held out as a badge of pride and manhood.
Paradoxically, Will’s sense of manhood was inseparably tied to the experience of being romantically and sexually connected to women. He desperately needed the admiration, attention, and company of women to feel adequate. Without them, he felt like a little boy. In fact, Will still was a little boy in the sense that he never emotionally separated from his mother. His romantic and sexual encounters offered him a brief freedom from his mother’s grasp and a chance to experience passage into manhood. Will described his childhood.
I never received the support I needed from either parent. My mother’s relationship with me kept me trapped. My father was never around; he was always drinking or chasing women. I felt I had no choice but to please my mother so she wouldn’t leave me. The opportunity to be close to my father was never there. I was my mother’s hero and golden boy. Even today, I still feel I’m trying to be her hero.
In the relationship with his mother, Will learned early on that his self-worth resulted from pleasing others, sacrificing his own needs, and creating a public image of hero or savior. A life of politics was a natural place for Will to act out this role. It was a way to please his mother, feel good enough about himself, and make the statement, “I am a much better man than my father.”
Covert-incest victims look to places and circumstances in life where they can overachieve and attempt perfectionism. But they never feel adequate. They are ridden with guilt that they haven’t done enough, shame that they “aren’t enough,” and anger that their needs are not met. The sexual arena offers a place to get a quick fix and be relieved of the burden of the covertly incestuous trap. Sexual acting out allows the covert incest survivor to feel temporarily free from the need to please others as a way to feel loved and valued. But as the strive for perfection grows, the hunger for adequacy and conquest in sexual encounters escalates. A double life is created, and one begins to feed the other. As the shame of the sexual addiction increases, the striving to accomplish increases as well. This increases the very guilt, shame, and rage that drive the addiction. It’s a vicious cycle that feeds on the illusion of freedom and power that the double life creates.
Will’s political career was over. He had lost the respect of his wife, friends, and family. Yet, his mother continued to defend her “wonderful son.” Most important, Will lost respect for himself. He spent many days trying to bolster his damaged esteem by proclaiming, “I will make a comeback.” He even gave a public apology in the hope of diminishing the public’s mistrust. He vowed to himself and to his wife this would never happen again; he had learned his lesson.
The true extent of the damage from his behavior was not yet realized. Will’s relationship with his wife and family was tense, shame-filled, and combative. “Life at home was miserable, and I still blamed Mary,” he admitted. “When I realized a political comeback would never happen, I became depressed. I felt inadequate and ashamed. For the first time in my life, I thought seriously about suicide.”
Since Will’s political career was no longer a refuge from his inadequacy, he thought about returning to his sexual pursuits to get some relief. “I couldn’t believe I was considering getting involved in the very behavior that brought me down. I felt like an alcoholic who drinks to drown his sorrows from his drunken behavior the night before.”
Will’s story is typical of the life of a sexual addict. He struggled with being in therapy and wanted to try to do it by himself. Covert incest victims resist seeking help because they experience it as a sign of weakness. They often offer help, but seldom are able to receive it. The next story illustrates this more fully.
David, Age Forty-One, Minister
David is a charismatic fundamentalist Christian minister who sought professional help as the result of an order from his superiors. He had made a pass at the wife of a church board member and was accused by another member of seeing prostitutes. His superiors were concerned and did not want a public scandal. They gave David a choice of either losing his ministry or seeking help. Reluctantly, he agreed to counseling.
During the weeks David was relieved of his duties, rumors persisted among the congregation. Accusations increased. A number of women approached church board members to tell their stories. All of them said the same thing: David had attempted to kiss them or coax them into having sex when they counseled with him regarding personal problems.
One woman said she had an ongoing affair with David. She tried to break it off many times, but he found ways to coerce her to remain. With all the rumors circulating about David, she was relieved to have a chance to clear her conscience. The financial secretary also came forward to report large amounts of missing funds that he suspected David had used to support his prostitution habit.
Other members of the congregation couldn’t believe it. They thought David was God’s messenger and could never commit sexual indiscretions. After all, he preached frequently about sexual promiscuity and spearheaded groups that fought against abortion and pornography.
“Sex,” David often preached, “is a sacrament between a man and his wife and a sin between everyone else. Unrepentant sinners will surely perish in the fires of hell.” In fact, David’s most recent sermons were filled with damnation for sexual sinners.
David’s family life was also cited as evidence that the accusations were false. His wife and daughters were never allowed to discuss sexual matters or dress in a provocative way. David was always on the alert for his daughters showing signs of interest in boys or doing provocative things, such as wearing earrings or lipstick. He would correct them and, at times, go so far as to accuse them of being “whores.” David was making certain his daughters did not grow up to be loose women. Although David’s wife went along with him, she, too, took the opportunity to confide to a church member that he was becoming obsessed with sex. He always talked at home about the sins of sex or raged at her with sexually abusive language. Lately he had begun accusing her of having affairs. She confessed she was beginning to feel battered.
Other church members said David was no different from other men and should be forgiven. “After all, God forgives him, so why shouldn’t we? Just forget about it.”
It isn’t that simple. David is a sexual addict and to “just forgive and forget” helps perpetuate the addiction by not holding him accountable for his actions.
In initial therapy sessions, David was guarded and he denied the reports from the church. After a time, however, he began to confide his story.
I began masturbating at the age of seven to calm myself while my parents fought at night. My father was an alcoholic and often abused my mother. After he abused her he had sex with her, sometimes forcefully. I couldn’t understand this. I hated my father and vowed never to be like him. In the morning, after my father left for work, I would go into my mother’s room and lie with her. I comforted her while she sobbed. She would say how sorry she was I had to hear the argument the night before and ask me to forgive her. Together, we discussed how terrible my father was. I felt powerful when my mother assured me I was her savior and her only support through the rough times with my father.
David’s close relationship with his mother continued, and his contempt and disgust for his father grew. David’s own secret life with masturbation also progressed when he discovered his father’s pornography collection.
I began mutual fondling with boys and girls in the neighborhood. By the time I was an adolescent, I was obsessed with sex. I was also active in the church and often preached to my father about immoral behavior. Church was a place my mother and I went together without my father. The anticipation for me almost felt like an adulterous romantic rendezvous.
Just before David was to go away to a Christian bible college to study to be a minister, he was accused of getting a high-school classmate pregnant. He denied it, but she insisted. David’s parents met with the girl’s parents, who said she was going away to have an abortion, and David was forbidden to ever see her again. David’s father was enraged, but his mother protected him and claimed the girl must be lying.
Privately, David knew the girl had told the truth. Both he and his mother were relieved he would be going off soon to college. With a deep sense of shame and disgust for himself, he vowed he would never do that again and began faithfully to “serve the Lord.” He was a model student, and his instructors assured him the ministry was his calling. For a while, David refrained from his sexually addictive behaviors with the exception of compulsive masturbation, which he decided didn’t hurt anyone. Before long, because his masturbation fantasies no longer entertained him, he smuggled pornography onto campus. The urge to approach women sexually on campus grew. He worried that if he got into trouble at school, he would ruin his chance for the ministry, so he began seeing prostitutes off campus. “I reasoned this was okay, because they were just whores and didn’t interfere with my work at the school,” David explained.
By the time he was twenty-one, David was firmly entrenched in a double life. He had two worlds and was convinced that they did not affect one another. When David’s two worlds intersected, he panicked and briefly became conscious of his desperate sexual drive. In one of these moments, he decided he needed to marry a good Christian woman to “put this all behind him.” By the time he graduated from college he was married. He promised himself and the Lord—again—that his secret sexual life was over. He had a wife, a clean start, and was about to be appointed minister of a new church. David was certain things would be all right now.
Soon, David was back into pornography and shortly thereafter, prostitution. Another promise and set of convictions had been lost to the addiction. When money ran out, he “borrowed” from church funds. Although they had two daughters, his relationship with his wife had eroded. For years, David kept both lives going. He began feeling tempted by the women he counseled. He was appalled and vowed to never act on this temptation. But as with so many promises before, his will was no match for the “sex-at-any-cost” drive of his addiction. Eventually, he made a pass at the wrong woman, a church board-member’s wife, who did not hesitate to confront him and make his indiscretion public. David’s double life came to a screeching halt.
Although David did not see it at the time, that woman was a blessing. There comes a time in the life of all sexual addicts when they reach a point of “hitting bottom,” that is, coming face-to-face with the unmanageability and pain of the secret double life. It is at that moment that the addict is offered the chance to choose recovery and sanity. The only alternative is to go back into the denial and rationalization of the addiction and once again hit bottom. Because of the characteristic of tolerance, the next bottom will be more painful and unmanageable than the previous one. For some, however, there are no second chances. Sexual addiction can eventually kill.
David’s story has all the characteristics of sexual addiction: secrecy, broken promises, denial and rationalization, tolerance and escalation, and violation of significant core values. David’s addiction began, as many do, as a way to medicate feelings—the pain, shame, and rage of witnessing his father’s abuse of his mother. The covertly incestuous relationship with his mother began a lifelong emotional bind that left no escape except for the illusion of freedom the addiction offered. The contempt and splitting off from his father and the joining sides with his mother began the development of David’s capacity to live in two worlds.
One important aspect of David’s recovery was to heal the split he had with his parents. This entailed David’s searching his feelings to find compassion for his father, as well as finding the anger and hurt caused by his mother. David could more easily forgive his father than be angry at his mother; it was hard to be mad at a woman who took so much abuse. Yet he willingly acknowledged the rage and shame he felt for being his mother’s confidant. He also felt tremendous abandonment from always sacrificing his needs to take care of her.
“It was no accident,” David later commented, “that I became a minister.” It was a role where he perpetuated the abandonment he felt early in his life. The caretaking of others left him feeling empty. The addiction was an attempt to fill up the emptiness. Abandonment is one of the most significant consequences of the covertly incestuous triangle and one of the main forces driving a sexual addiction.
Another important aspect of David’s addiction was the deceptive nature of his public life. His preaching against sexual sins and his activity in antiabortion and pornography crusades was no accident since pornography and abortion were significant sources of shame and guilt in the history of David’s addiction. Talking a polar-opposite position such as this is a common psychological defense against shame and anxiety. Freud first referred to this type of human defense mechanism as reaction formation.
It is easy to see how this defense contributes to the double life of a sex addict. Another example is the adulterous spouse who always harshly judges and holds in contempt those friends or acquaintances who have affairs. As the shame, guilt, and anxiety of the secret sexual life increases, so does its opposite behavior. The more extreme, rigid, and self-righteous one is about an issue of morality, the more likely it is that one has something to hide.
David and Ed are high-profile individuals who received immediate public attention for scandalous behavior. This is not to suggest all people with high-profile, public positions are sex addicts and covert incest victims, or that there aren’t sex addicts and covert incest victims with ordinary jobs and occupations. Certainly there are.
However, it is important to recognize that the helping and public professions (such as doctors, lawyers, therapists, teachers, clergy, and politicians) do draw covert incest victims into their ranks. After all, these individuals grew up honing the skills that easily transfer to occupations in which giving, saving lives and souls, helping, and achieving are highly valued and rewarded.
The next story is about someone who does not hold a public position, but who is equally invested in the image of high achievement seen in the previous two stories.
Ann, Age Thirty-Eight,
Corporate Businesswoman
In the business world, Ann was independent, self-assured, and competent. It was rumored that she was soon to be one of the vice presidents of her corporation. She was always careful never to mix business with pleasure; she never dated anyone from work. Ann was viewed by coworkers as a strong woman. Even though they knew of her three marriages, they saw them as a sign of her independence. She was either envied or held in contempt by the women she worked with, while the men either sought her sexually or were intimidated by her. But no one suspected she had a secret life.
Ann entered therapy because her third marriage was failing. Her husband left her because she was having an affair with a business associate from a different city. This was the second affair her husband had discovered in their marriage. He had had enough.
Ann had never sought professional help before, but said:
Maybe I have a problem. I can’t seem to be satisfied with just one man. I thought by marrying Gary I would never have to be with another man. He seemed perfect for me, and we had great sex. I can’t understand why I did what I did. When I met Gary, I knew he was the one for me. The terrible loneliness that plagued me all my life . . . I was sure it would come to an end. Although I liked being with a lot of men, I was sure I’d be faithful to Gary.
As the weeks passed in therapy, Ann’s story unfolded. And Ann did have another life. Though she had a clear rule of not dating the men at work, she actively sought out men who were briefly in town on business. She reasoned they had little or no direct impact on her day-to-day work at the office. She described a recent incident when a man from out of town who was doing business with her company approached her and suggested he had heard she “liked a good time.” Ann was appalled. She realized even though she had one image at work, she was developing a different reputation elsewhere. She became paranoid and vowed never to see other men who were doing business with the company. “Besides,” she confessed, “I’m not giving my marriage with Gary a chance.”
Her resolution didn’t last long. Ann met a man she couldn’t resist. She reasoned it was safe, because he had done business only once with the company and would not again. Ann also claimed this was different. “He was somebody I really liked. It was more than just an affair. We really experienced intimacy together. I began to feel torn as to whether I should divorce Gary and be with him.”
After a while, Ann became careless. She permitted this man to call more frequently than she felt was safe. Gary soon caught on and left her. Ann felt ambivalent again. “Maybe I really want Gary now. I don’t know what to think,” she conceded.
Although she was independent at work, her history revealed her dependency on men. Her three husbands, she claimed, said her dependency was like that of a little girl. She hated to be apart from them and became extremely jealous when they wanted to be separate from her. Other times, she accused them of having affairs. She demanded constant attention and love.
Embarrassed, Ann confessed:
I wanted them to love me like my daddy loved me. None of them did. I feel like that’s why I’ve been so disappointed in my marriages. And that’s the reason I have affairs. If they had loved me more, I wouldn’t have had to see other men. But I always felt disappointed, so I sought other relationships to fill up the emptiness.
As a child Ann had been “Daddy’s little girl,” and she still was. She adored and admired her daddy and was adored and admired by him in return. Their relationship was special. Ann admitted she couldn’t seem to love anyone like she loved her daddy. She was the oldest of four girls who grew up in a family torn by alcoholism and drug addiction. Her mother was an alcoholic and addicted to prescription drugs.
My mother was a Valium junkie who always seemed depressed and was overly dependent on me and my daddy. I had to take care of her and my sisters. I hated my mother. At other times, I felt sorry for her, but not as sorry as I felt for my daddy. I knew he could never depend on her, so I always took special care of him. I filled in for my mother.
I remember he took me on his business trips out of town. He was a chief executive for a big corporation and needed to go on business trips regularly. I stayed in the same hotel room with him and even slept in the same bed at times. But nothing ever happened. He never touched me except maybe to hold me sometimes. I got to go to some of his business meetings with him. I felt so special. I felt he loved me more than my mother. If it weren’t for my daddy, I never would have had any love.
This went on until I was an adolescent, and then it stopped abruptly. I felt so abandoned and lonely. I thought my daddy didn’t love me anymore. I tried so hard to please him after that; I made sure I got good grades and always dressed up real nice for him when he went on his business trips. But I never got to go again. At the same time, my mother got worse, and our family became more distant. I felt so alone and frightened. I started having boyfriends and being sexual with them by the time I was thirteen. That seemed to be my escape from the loneliness.
Ann began a desperate search to fill the vacuum created by the seduction and abandonment by her father, as well as the neglect from her mother. Here is where Ann’s double life and the split in her personality (between being overly independent and dependent) had its beginning. She tried desperately to please and recapture the attention of her father. High achievement in school and dressing like a good little girl didn’t work. Her feeling of abandonment grew, and her desperation to find that special love to fill the emptiness escalated. Ann’s secret romantic and sexual search began its painful course at the age of thirteen. Even then, she had little control over the direction of her desperation. Any opportunity for innocence during her growing womanhood was robbed from her by the seductive, covertly incestuous relationship with her father. The only attention she ever felt from him was seductive in nature; thus, she acted out overtly what was transmitted covertly at an earlier age.
Ann’s story has themes similar to those previously discussed. For example, the nature of her secret life closely resembled the seductive relationship she experienced with her father. Ann became a corporate executive herself, engaging in affairs with men from out of town doing business with her company. The most seductive aspect of the covert incest with her father occurred when he took her out of town on business with him. This is more than coincidence. Again, it is the psyche’s way of healing—re-creating similar circumstances in adulthood in an effort to correct the experience and to get the needs met that were unmet in childhood. However, without conscious awareness of the abuse, patterns repeat and repeat.
The pattern that developed in Ann’s situation was one of sexual addiction, or more accurately, sex and love addiction. As mentioned previously, this difference is sometimes a matter of semantics. In Ann’s case it warrants clarifying.
One way to distinguish between sex addiction and love addiction is to observe that the use of sex by sex addicts is a method to get high or alter mood. The sexual act is a fix for the sex addict, just as taking a drug is for the drug addict. In contrast, someone addicted to love is compelled to pursue intrigue and intensity in the search for love. Being sexual may or may not be part of that pattern. Although there is certainly mood alteration in love addiction, the motivation behind this type of sexual pursuit is to attain love rather than to get high. As already noted, both love and sex addiction can occur in the same person.
Certainly this was the case with Ann. At times, she seemed indiscriminate in her sexual pursuit. At other times, it became her gateway to intimacy. Additionally, her extreme emotional dependency in her marriages and in her romantic illusions reflected her love addiction. Her romantic illusions have their roots in the seductive relationship with her father. Ann was always on the lookout for someone to “love her like her daddy did.” She searched for the perfect partner to fill the extreme neediness and emptiness of the lonely little girl inside of her. Ann consequently remained ambivalent regarding intimacy and commitment.
Ann’s ambivalence is most apparent in her indecision about whether she should stay in her marriage or in her affair. She believed she was creating intimacy in her affair, which added to her confusion. Although there probably was some degree of intimacy in the affair, it evolved within an illegitimate context, shrouded with secrecy and shame. This added to the bind of ambivalence for Ann. When relationships have their roots in deceit, secrecy, and shame, addicts remain ambivalent and in conflict with themselves. Such relationships have little possibility for healthy growth due to the chronic ambivalence and shame inherent in their secret beginnings.
It is not uncommon to see people leave marriages or relationships for affairs, only to find themselves faced with similar circumstances in the new situation. Only the names and faces are different. In the recovery process from sexual addiction, it is important for the addict to have honest and legitimate beginnings in new relationships. If an addict has to leave a relationship, it is crucial that he become certain that it is the relationship he must separate from rather than his own inner conflict. Otherwise regret, shame, and confusion prevail.
Another aspect that contributes to the ambivalence of commitment is the unresolved grief from previous attachments that is carried into new relationships. This unresolved grief becomes a source of conflict because it inhibits new beginnings, never allowing a legitimate chance for intimacy.
Ann has to resolve her grief and shame before she can be clear about her commitment in her marriage. She will also need to become willing to end her affair, which is bringing her shame due to its illegitimacy. Ambivalence regarding commitment is a common struggle for covert incest victims.
For the covert incest victim, sexual addiction offers the illusion of escape and separation from the seductive parent. Ultimately, the addiction becomes its own trap. The experience of being sexual is one more aspect of their life not in their control. Covert incest victims must first separate emotionally from their parent before sexuality is integrated as a choice rather than a compulsion.