When relationship dissatisfaction turns out to be sex addiction

Psychologists say: if there is dissatisfaction in a relationship (in sex), then this overrides all the good that is in the relationship.

The problem comes to the fore and becomes the main one. In the classical approach, it is as if the partner’s right to be angry at everything and everyone is “legitimized” just because he is not satisfied with any aspect of intimacy with a loved one. At this point, even the words “only” and “only” can cause resentment. And, although each person will agree that everything is important in a relationship, and sex is just one component of many others, it is still considered the norm to exalt a known problem to universal proportions.

For some reason, everyone seemed to have forgotten that harmonious interaction of people is possible if there are many uniting sides, such as: interests, goals, worldview, life priorities and views, striving for each other, mutual warmth and love, and, finally, the ability to love save. In a healthy marriage, it’s not all about sex. And if someone alone really wants intimacy, but it does not happen, he is able to go further and not get stuck in it.

Thus, it turns out that psychologists, sexologists, and society consciously or unconsciously maintain in a person a painful perception of the lack of desired intimacy. Soreness seemed to be the norm.

However, you need to understand – where there is pain, there is a problem. And this pain is yours – and, therefore, your problem too. Thus, the primary source of experiences is not external circumstances, as we used to think, but our own perception. Having healed the disease within himself, a person is able to adequately solve the problem outside.

In turn, healthy perception does not cause unbearable suffering. Adequate feelings in response to undesirable behavior of a partner can be: bewilderment, sadness, frustration, a desire to step aside (and not impose oneself). Only in an unhealthy, too overwhelming perception are there such strong emotions as: hatred, anger, an obsessive desire to get the desired behavior of a partner.

For reasons that society does not understand unhealthy emotions, as well as for the unwillingness to know their problem, a person often does not even realize that he is sexually addicted. – In the available sources, she often has a different description than what he notices for himself! Moreover, as a rule, the topic is shrouded in a whole tangle of others, indirectly affecting the main, minor complications, which for the most part “weigh” no less than what they are generated around. All this undoubtedly makes it difficult to diagnose and find the most important thing behind all this.

Meanwhile, the leading signs of sexual addiction are not always “thoughts only about sex” or an irrepressible need for an understandable kind of entertainment. A difficult situation can make itself felt in ordinary, no different from other relationships, where, for example, the wife suffers from insufficient attention from her husband. They are already used to living together like this. And they perceive each other as enemies. But since the general way of life is familiar and comfortable, everything else is almost okay, then you have to put up with the neighborhood of the “enemy”.

The heroine of the series of books “People from the closet” , who immediately declared her desire to “be desired by her husband”, was completely unaware that she was just a sex-addicted woman!

An analysis of the history of the famous heroine made it possible to clarify the symptoms, according to which one can reliably indicate the presence of a known problem.

1. For an addict, sex is a very important part of a relationship. So, the prototype of the heroine of the series of books “People from the closet” always had a fad in her conscious life. She considered the main principle of her life: “My partner must satisfy me.” And the man for the relationship was chosen in accordance with this point. If this is not present in the relationship, then there can be no loving relationship in her understanding. As often happens in life – at first it seems to us that the partner meets our wishes, and then everything changes dramatically.

In contrast to the described perception, a healthy person does not think about it at all. He has no special fad. This does not mean that this area is not important to him. But this means that she is equal to other aspects of the relationship between a man and a woman. A healthy person forms his or her opinion as a whole, and not according to only one “most important parameter”.

2. The dependent person lacks the ability to live fully outside of close relationships. A temporary or permanent absence thereof gives rise to a whole complex of experiences. It really seems to him that he knows how to wait. However, in the process of waiting, he can, for example, count the days on which there was nothing and when there was.

A healthy person does not wait. He is able to switch to other areas of life and receive full-fledged emotions and pleasure from them. He is even capable of sometimes forgetting about sex, which is absolutely impossible for others.

3. The most important and noticeable experience of an addict is pain from the lack of the desired action, and it is really so strong that it can overshadow everything. In moments of the highest desire, pain is not drowned out by anything. As a result of excessive experiences, responding uncontrollable emotions are born, such as hatred, anger, mood loss, perception of the whole world in a dark light. At this moment, the loved one becomes the main enemy. But along with inappropriate behavior, the hero, however, more than anything else wants to be paid attention to him and drown his pain with the desired actions.

A healthy person has no pain. We can say that the presence of mental pain is the most remarkable sign of your own psychological problem, which must be dealt with.

4. The addicted person is not able to step aside or leave. After all, only a loved one can bring him the necessary joy. And since it is impossible to live without the necessary joy, it will not work to part.

This is how the most important conflict in the mind of the hero of the story is born. He does not want to live with someone who does not satisfy him. But he cannot part, because there is at least something with the existing partner, and there will be nothing in parting. Or you will have to search for something worthwhile (and suffer). Therefore, the main “weapon” in such a relationship is threats, tantrums and manipulations, in which one tries to force the other to do what the first needs.

A healthy person can part. But he will not do it in a storm of emotions and hysterics, as the addict regularly tries. And in a sane cold mind. In the understanding that there is nothing good for him here. And ready to be left without anything at all.

5. In the perception of a dependent person there is a significant part of servility towards a partner. The hero can often catch himself thinking that he wants to obey his beloved or beloved. It was on servility that the heroine of the books “People from the closet” caught herself at the moment when she was able to take the last step to get rid of.

A healthy person is free. His mood, his feelings do not depend only on sex. He will not impose himself when he is not wanted. He does not have an eternal “humiliated request” inside. He does not look like a homeless and submissive dog in the eyes with a request or with gratitude. And he does not cry bitter tears from happiness that he was finally possessed.

6. Intimacy is associated with a whole complex of psychological “clues” – this is both warmth and love (literally means – if there is no sex, then there is no love),…. Undoubtedly, all of this matters in the context of intimacy, but in dependent perception, the scale of “no love” or “no warmth” along with sex is raised to the level of heaven. Hence the mixed suffering – they are about the absence of everything.

A healthy person perceives the absence of sex as the absence of sex and nothing more. Of course, he will be puzzled if the relationship does not appear for a long time. But it is unlikely that he will immediately rush into suffering that “they do not want and do not love me.”

7. An addicted person does not know how to refuse sex. Moreover, he believes that this is not necessary. And a woman in general “is difficult to tolerate something.” By the way, women addicted to sex do not tolerate. Each act for them is a reason to feel like a “single whole” with a partner – in the end, this is what the dependent person needs most of all.

A healthy person sometimes doesn’t want sex. A healthy woman can refuse even a beloved man. A healthy man can refuse his beloved woman. And no one will take it as a personal insult. They have no need for intimacy. They have a need (sometimes) for the integrity of their own bodies and for distance.

8. A sex addict really “always wants”. He wants it even when it’s wrong and inappropriate. In his writings, the famous American psychotherapist, Irwin Yalom, mentions how a patient with a heart attack, being in an ambulance, manages to touch his wife in different places.

In making contact, a sex-addicted woman has no desire to keep her body intact. She lacks the period that other people need to “ripen readiness.” She does not need readiness – she is always ready.

The other side of the question is that the hero’s desire may seem to be the norm, as it happened with the heroine of a famous work. “I don’t always think about it,” she thought.

In fact, she unconsciously thought about it always when there was someone to think about it with. This moment is very difficult to grasp. You understand such things only when you recover from an illness.

What features of getting rid of sex addiction are described in the People in the Closet series?

1. Any change in established patterns of behavior consists of constantly repeating stages: awareness of your problem (recognition of feelings that work in it) – acceptance of yourself and your feelings in this problem (and getting your own resource) – a conscious change in habitual behavior (provocation of pain) – receiving pain (which is logical, since it is provoked) – living strong feelings. The result should be the ability to calmly relate to a situation (we will call this healing), which caused suffering in the past. Having passed the circle once, a person realizes that he has freed himself only from a small fraction of what lives and suffers inside him. And then he continues on his way and complicates the task – takes the next step in the painful direction. He again receives suffering, then a new awareness of the harmfulness of past patterns of behavior, and even self-loathing (always an obligatory stage – self-acceptance), working through experiences – and so on until the problem completely disappears. (The path of a person who wants to get rid of his addiction is described in detail in the book)
2. As mentioned above, each problem is a tangle of difficulties, which together form one huge unbearable wound. It is necessary to “unwind” this tangle and go through the circle described above for each item – and so on until the identified problem is solved.
3. In working on oneself, it may seem that the person does not move, but stands still. The main characters of “People from the closet” constantly have a question: “Where did I come?”, Implying “What have I achieved and what have I received as a result?” These doubts arise at the moment when the participant again comes into contact with events that cause intolerable emotions, and realizes that he has not yet been cured. He wonders: “I tried so hard, lived what seemed impossible to survive, and again ended up where I was”.

The answer lies in the fact that the main problem is so strong, so complex, that it is simply impossible to pass it one or even two times. Each time the participant in the events will return to the source again and again, stumbling over it – exactly until he develops inner peace in himself in response to all the components of the main problem. With each step a person gains in himself the psychic strength necessary to meet his “inner beast” – or rather a very terrible and strong, incredibly sick feeling.

4. What is it – walking in a circle or moving forward? The peculiarity of psychological changes lies in the fact that before the completion of each stage, a person seems to “pass an exam” in front of him – he leans back in his experiences and plunges into them with renewed vigor. In order to move forward, it is necessary to “roll over and release” the experience again, using the acquired skills. One gets the impression that everyone must finally “close the door” to the past pain. And only after that will he take a step towards new tests. – Nietzsche also mentions this mechanism in his works. The philosopher notes that a return to past experiences that seemed complete occurs with each new test.

Thus, change is not at all in a straight line. They go in a spiral – where the owner overcomes new difficulties at every turn of events. And then it returns to the same starting point. Exactly until he realizes what exactly is happening to him at this point, and finds the strength to overcome it.

5. In order to come closer to the most important source of all suffering, the heroine first learns to overcome the “little” that comes her way – this is how she gains strength in order to “dig” the next layer. Thus, each subsequent layer is more difficult than the previous one. Gradually, step by step, a woman is getting closer to what is behind the first visible need to be desired.

As mentioned earlier, the final realization of the main character was the understanding of her own slavery: “This is your voluntary submission to his power, which you gave him. And your whole life – it is about how the ruler satisfied you – and then happiness, or how he did not pay attention to you – and then life was covered with darkness. ” – At the moment when the past behavior and past feelings become unacceptable and even disgusting for the owner, he gets rid of them with relative ease.

What constituents of the main problem are revealed in the process of deliverance?

1. The main character has no personal space. She is in the “we” state all the time and really needs to continue this feeling. At the same time, the necessary separation, the creation of personal space turns out to be very painful for her – practically the same as dying of the past and being born again.

However, a break is required for a break. Here it is important for a person to realize that he can fully exist only as a separate person. In this sense, the opposite is true – death is not feeling yourself, not separating. The heroine of the work is pushed to a breakaway by the constant feeling of being a “prefix”. – She’s tired of being part of someone. She wants to be herself. And she achieves the birth of herself.

Together with awareness, the self-programming technique is applied: “I am me, he is he”, “He, his desires, aspirations, priorities do not depend on me. It is his own choice ”,“ This is me, I am walking, I am living, I am moving … ”and so on. And the figurative experience of death, used in the third paragraph, makes the breakaway for the heroine less painful.

2. Devaluation of personal interests. Which logically follows from the first paragraph. If a person does not feel himself, then he does not feel the value of everything that belongs only to him. To resurrect the lost values, the heroine regularly undergoes the self-hypnosis technique: “This is me, this is mine, all mine is valuable,” she repeats to herself and, by strengthening the perception of the narrative part of the book, she maximally feels the belonging and value of her own space. In the future, this creates an inexhaustible resource that does not need third-party support and is replenished only on its own. That is, it is an important element of self-sufficiency.
3. As in any case, excessive emphasis on something, the main characters deny that part of their lives in which there are no desired events and emotions. In the process of getting rid of harmful emotions, the author provides everyone with the opportunity to feel the alleged prospect of death, or even death itself. And after that he asks: “Do you continue not to want to live?” So gradually the hero learns to see small joys around and, finally, is saturated with them, realizes that reality, even without the desired emotions, is beautiful and attractive. In addition, through the passage of figurative death, the hero is approaching an important stage of self-acceptance and unification with himself.
4. Self-acceptance – another important stage in any work on yourself, is achieved through the complex efforts used in all the previous paragraphs.

And the most important question – how does the heroine manage to live her intolerable, huge, sick feelings, listed earlier and associated with the lack of that desire, which she so badly needs?

The People from the Closet series is a collection of surreal stories that seem to be unrelated. Through his own experience of stories about feelings, the reader gets the opportunity to practice work on himself through the method known in psychotherapy called fairy tale therapy. However, in contrast to the familiar methods of fairy tale therapy aimed at softening the feelings of a child, this book reveals to an adult the inner passions “in all their glory.” The author adheres to the point of view that in order to completely get rid of the problem, to solve it at the root, it is necessary to live with all the strength those feelings that provoke it. The principle here is simple: having learned not to pay attention to what previously ruled you, you begin to control yourself. In this way, you can become stronger than your feelings.

Of course, you need methods to cope with your worst pain. And here the author successfully applies the philosophy of Zen Buddhism: if you don’t think about pain, then you don’t feel it (or you significantly reduce the power of its effect on you).

A participant in the events learns to live, despite the fact that he vomits and rushes inside: “Without peace and sleep, a person continues to walk. He lives no matter what. He does not ask anyone for anything. It only overcomes itself. Through darkness and jungle, through gray mists, he inexorably approaches his own freedom. Death erases all joys, and he sees happiness through tears. Melancholy tortures the soul, and he creates warmth in it. Mist covers his eyes, and he sees the sun. Grief covers his head, and he feels the ground with his feet. The pain squeezes the chest, and he pushes the blood with his heart. ” (An excerpt from the third part, entitled “Your reality”.) – This passage describes the passage through the strongest experiences associated with the absence of any desire for the heroine of a loved one. You can read more about overcoming feelings. here .

The author teaches the reader to properly handle their harmful emotions – “It is important not to fall through them. But they cannot be ignored either. You need to see the sensations, but at the same time stay “afloat”. And the ability to perceive the rest of your life will help in this. It is that part of life that you rejected in the past without the presence of the most important thing in it, that will support you in a difficult period for you. ”

In conclusion, it remains to note – when the heroine of the famous story made aspects of her own life important to herself, she managed to overcome her addiction. She discovered, at last, that the desire was no longer constant. She learned to deny a man sex. And at the same time, she was able to calmly accept his response refusal (and how could it be without it!). And, finally, after four years of constant work on myself, described in 10 parts of “People from the closet,” I was freed from pain.

Her path is an example of how you can solve a problem inside yourself, solve it outside (along the way, she built new relationships with her beloved) and as a result come to a full-fledged and harmonious relationship.