sex and love addiction

… a woman's search for self-love

“… If you struggle too much to penetrate into another person, you find that you have thrust him into a defensive position, and resistances develop because, through your efforts to penetrate and understand, he feels forced to examine those things in himself which he doesn’t want to examine. Everybody has his dark side which - so long as all goes well - he had better not know about.” ~ Carl Jung on sex, love and intimacy

Image borrowed from https://www.loveschool.me.

As Jung well pointed out, “The problem with the unconscious is that it is unconscious.” In other words - it’s not about what it is about. The same is with sex and love addiction - it is not (solely) about orgasms, pleasure, instant gratification, variety of partners, thrill, porn, adrenalin, dopamine and oxytocin, intimacy issues, or being high on love. It is also about a certain lacking in the soul. It is about an old wound that keeps hurting and bleeding, and, since we don’t have any other tools and it is way too painful, in order to take care of ourselves we need to self-medicate. That’s where another sexual partner and/or yet another romantic relationship come in handy. Sex and love offer us relief and comfort, and bring us (unfortunately) a very temporary break. Or, focusing on another and being hypnotized, bewitched and infatuated by them - essentially distracted - instead of looking deep down in our own soul. And, if we are not familiar with our wounding - if it is part of the unconscious - there is nothing much we can do with it but continue to self-medicate in those ways that are familiar to us.

The thing with the unconscious is that it is not known to us. We don’t get up in the morning saying that we will purposely repeat the mindless, foolish, unhealthy, things and habits we have been doing in the past - but with the great certainty we can say - chances are we will. James Hollis suggests that one of the ways to talk about the unconscious is to start from the concrete example - tangible and existing - and work backwards. What this means is to take a good look into what kinds of energies, issues, scripts and narratives have produced this kind of behavior in our lives. When we do this, however, we need to be ready for the turmoil and turbulence that most certainly will begin once the things have been stirred up. Best example of this are past (and current) relationships where we have similar dynamics, over and over again, regardless of who we are partnered up with. It’s a repetition of a pattern. There is a rich history behind it. And it will not stop repeating - no matter how many times we switch partners or jump relationships - unless we pause, take some time to be alone, and look at ourselves deeply and honestly. Therapy significantly helps here, as we can rarely do this work on our own.

I am personally familiar with sex and love addiction. Maybe more with sex addiction, but still, sex and love are intertwined anyways, and often go hand in hand. Love was scary and unfathomable for the most part of my life, and I have mostly avoided it. Fear of real intimacy, fear of being seen and vulnerable in front of the other human - these were real fears for me. I would continually find myself in situations where I would be quickly falling for someone, burning up very fast and very intensely - like a match stick, move to quickly through a relationship only to burn out even quicker, and shut down completely and suddenly. It took me decades to come to the core of this issue. Just like many, I would often wonder why I choose people that I choose, and what is wrong with them (sometimes I would also wonder what is wrong with me, but not often enough). And sex - sex was always easy and, for the most part, the only way for me to establish intimacy and connection, without a risk of getting hurt (or so I thought). And, please, don’t get me wrong, sex IS one of the most wonderful ways in which we humans get intimate and connected with the other. However, when we engage in it in a mindless way, under the influence of mind altering substances, without a care or respect for the other (or ourselves, for that matter), without a proper consent and responsibility, because we can’t be alone, because we need someone to fix us and repair our childhood for us, or for many other reasons that are unknown to us - it becomes rather disconnecting and, often, hurtful and harmful behavior and activity instead.

For various reasons that I won’t be discussing here in depth, I was unable to emotionally connect to my mother as an infant. No matter how much she tried (and, believe me, she did), I would always feel this void, this empty space, inside of me, and inability to be close to her in our relationship. The two of us have been tending this wound for the past several years, but as a child, I often felt anxious, detached, misunderstood, unseen, alone, and unable to express myself and my feelings, and this created a disconnect between me and my mother, me and the world around me, as well as me and my inner (true) self. This is mostly known in psychology and therapy as relational trauma and it is more common and present around us than we think. It is not what is considered to be a “big “T” trauma”. However, when chronic and persistent - which it almost always is - it most certainly leaves significant wounding in a person that can (and mostly likely will) continue throughout their adult life. More precisely, as adults, these individuals have problem being close and intimate with others, they struggle with opening up in relationships and with being and staying in them, in general. In a way, they are afraid of being themselves as they fear that this may cause others to reject them, dislike them, and/or abandon them, and so they protect themselves by not showing up as they truly are and by avoiding intimacy. The opposite is also the case - some people can be extremely focussed on the other person and the relationship itself - desperately wanting and needing love - and regardless of circumstances try to maintain relationships even when they are obviously unhealthy, dysfunctional and, even, toxic.

Addiction is a common response to this childhood experience. Especially sex and love addiction. I wasn't aware of this being the case with me at first, as my focus was mostly substances - alcohol and drugs. But, once I started my recovery - once booze and drugs were removed from my life - I very quickly realized how messed up and dysfunctional all of my romantic relationships were. As an addict, I was always attracted to intense and, often, risky experiences and situations, and sex with random strangers, as well as those who were unavailable, was a thrill for me. And, just to be clear - I don’t mean that there is anything inherently wrong with occasional sex with other consenting adults; not at all. But if a woman engages in it in order to receive validation, acceptance, affection, and appreciation, to confirm her value and be reassured - because she is unable to give all this to herself - then it is certainly not the most efficient and healthy strategy. It will end up hurting her (and others) and it won’t be a sustainable way of connecting and being intimate. In rare cases when I would end up in a relationship with someone, that would almost always be with a person who is emotionally unavailable, or in a committed relationship/marriage. We need to understand this. It is easy to establish relations with those who are unavailable physically or emotionally - this doesn’t require of us to be our true selves, we don’t need to be honest, open and vulnerable as we know that these relationships would not last long, that they basically don’t stand a chance. For me, as it is for most people, it was an unconscious pattern that would protect me from getting hurt, while at the same time desperately wanting to be close to another human being. This happens to many people. In order for me to see this pattern and really understand it - I needed to be in recovery - with a clear state of mind and somewhat emotionally stable - and I quickly realized that I am choosing (unconsciously) those kind of partners. At the time, I couldn't possibly choose someone who is aware, conscious and available - firstly, because they would not want to be with me, and secondly, because in that case I would need to face myself and my patterns. And I wasn’t ready for that.

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“We understand another person in the same way as we understand, or seek to understand, ourselves. What we do not understand in ourselves, we do not understand in the other person, either. So there is plenty to ensure that his image will be for the most part subjective. As we know, even an intimate friendship is no guarantee of objective knowledge.” ~ Carl Jung on sex, love and intimacy

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Image borrowed from https://www.ignitecounselingcolorado.com.

Sex and love addiction - especially love addiction - in women is usually so very complex. Because we feel so disconnected from ourselves, we would cling desperately to our relationships with others, and some of us soon become increasingly dependent on these - rather codependent. Instead of taking care of us, looking deep down inside for what we need - we tend to become overly protective of the relationship itself, and overly focused on it, as well as our partner(s). But, in order to find her inner voice, a woman must recognize her need for self-nurturance and care, need for affection and attention, for a period set aside for quiet reflection - she must truly love herself first, before being in a relationship with the other. To be in a relationship with another human in a way that feeds her, rather than depletes and drains her, a woman must be able to listen to others without losing her own voice. And, really, we first need to wake up and become aware of the fact that we don’t fully own our voice, that we are rather disconnected from our true selves, our history, our pain, our needs and wants, as well as our desires.

Dr. Anita Johnston, an expert in disordered eating in women, speaks beautifully about this in her book “Eating in the Light of the Moon”. She states that female sexuality, as seen through the eyes of the patriarchy, is equated with lust and women are portrayed as sexual objects, trophies, or prey. This, additionally, messes up our sexual and relationship compass. Instead of receiving messages that would inspire us to look deep down into our soul and find our voice, messages that would inspire awe, respect, and high regard for our sexual nature and desire, we are exposed to messages that often can be degrading and disturbing, and may provoke fear, guilt and shame. Unfortunately, we may not be able to control and manipulate the society and culture we live in. Thankfully, we can, and must, take responsibility to do our own inner work by ourselves if we are to change our own reality and live healthier relationships with others.

I find it very interesting how Jung pointed out that we rarely can solve problems, but we can grow beyond them instead. This would mean that it is not about solutions - but it is about the frame of mind, ways of behaving, and routines and practices that shift us toward expansion and wholeness, toward folding our tiring and worn out history into a journey that is more fruitful, healthier, more hopeful, and clearly more our own. When it comes to unconscious, Jung also observed that whatever is denied within us is likely to come to us in the outer world as destiny, fate. If this is the case, we are called to an important task, one that requires curiosity and good sense on our part. Asking ourselves “Does this principle, this habit, this projection, or this belief take me deeper into life, does it open new and fresh possibilities for my relationships, and is it in agreement with the deepest tendencies and wishes of my own soul?” Jung says that if this is not the case, then it is toxic, no matter how benign it may seem. Answer to this question needs to be our own. If we decide to show up, we must start making choices and stop complaining. If we genuinely show up, something will shift inside. We might just experience ourselves and our life as more fully alive than it has been at any other day, hour or minute. We might even realize that we cannot remain bound by fear, convention, or adaptation; that we have to set ourselves free. Possibilities are endless.

Liza to her inner child: “I love the way you look at me. How your eyes, like get so big. And your lip kind of curls, when you think I’m about to say something funny. How you laugh with your whole body. How no one is taken that from you yet. Made you feel embarrassed or … Like it’s uncool. I love how weird your walk is. Man, like … How big the steps you take are. Like you have no uncertainty that you’ll get there. How you just keep showing up everyday. To tell me to keep going even when I don’t know how to. I have never been loved by anyone the way you have loved me. And I am so sorry that I haven’t known how to love you back. When I say you don’t count, I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to me. I always forget that … it’s the same thing. You do count. You count more than anyone. You count more than me.” ~ From the movie How it Ends (2021)

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Stay safe.

Marina