On this site we often focus on the challenges presented to men and women when a mate (overwhelmingly male) gets hooked on porn. However, today's sexual climate makes it inevitable that getting hooked on sexual stimulation is not just a male problem. Here are some thoughts from a man concerned about his mate's past sex addiction. The feelings he expresses are similar to the feelings of women whose spouses are hooked on porn.

I'm very happy, and always have been, with the sort of pair bonding behaviors you advocate--it's why I took an interest in your work; it seemed to go very far in explaining what I always felt intuitively. I do not watch pornography and have never been inclined to. I'm quite average, I suppose, and sex isn't a big preoccupation of mine. I've been in a few happy relationships that just ended for one reason or another.

Recently, things have gotten somewhat bizarre. I met a woman who in many ways is ideal for me. I love her, she loves me. There are no problems in our relationship, except one.

My lover had been in a couple of very, shall we say, extreme sexual relationships with men. She was raped once. She had a boyfriend at the time who was (surprise) both a sex and porn addict and a video game addict. Subsequently, after breaking up with him, she dated another guy who...this must sound odd...may or may not have raped her.

In effect, this last guy treated her, as she puts it, like a "sex toy," and she claims that she both didn't want to do it and willingly acquiesced to it. I could describe for you what they did, but my sense is imagination will suffice. It was pretty gruesome. Maybe "pretty" isn't the right word.

Now, she has done everything to convince me that this past of hers is not her, that she was lonely and depressed, and did all of that stuff because she was afraid they would leave her if she didn't, even though, she says, she did not want to.

First question: Do some women really do that? Acquiesce to sex they do not want to have, simply to "not be alone," as she says? Perhaps I am just naive in this regard. I can't imagine she would do that stuff unless a) she wanted to, and b) got pleasure out of it. No matter what she tells me, I'm stuck right there.

So, second, here's the basic problem: I can't get it out of my head. I have never felt anything like this before. It is paralyzing, crippling, devastating--really, it destroys me. I look at her and I try to just say "it's nothing, it's nothing, it's the past, it's silly, forget it, she loves you..." But, for god's sake, it just does not work. I see it when she smiles. I see it whenever I touch her. I have a moment of bliss in her presence, then it pops into my head, and I am eviscerated.

Am I jealous? Insecure? Honestly, I do not know. I have no idea what is going on with me, and I cannot find anything close to a cogent explanation from anyone. But it kills me--I feel somehow disgusted with her, inadequate (insufficiently extreme), repulsive to myself, and then guilty for feeling all of that. It's a perfectly vicious circle.

She does nothing, let me say, to make me feel inadequate or insecure or jealous, or any of that stuff. She is all in (with me, anyway) for the pair-bonding stuff. But the thought, the memory of that prior behavior of hers... it's like a cancer eating away at my sense of the sufficiency of the pair-bonding. You see what I mean? Is this common? Have you heard problems like this before?

I don't even really want to do any of the stuff her exes did to her. I really don't. But there's this monster--I don't know how else to describe it--in me that says, "You must do more, more, more..." I never do "more," mind you, but that horrible feeling is always there.

I love this woman, I want to be with her forever (and she wants to be with me forever). I have to get over this. I cannot let this kill what we have. I am in complete misery about it. (I realize the "rebound effect" is in the background here, but I don't see this as being related to that--a different problem.)

By the way--I wrote this on the off chance that it might be related to something different but important in the brain that isn't exactly the same as the porn-related/dopamine/addiction material you usually deal with with such insight. My sense is this is related but a different phenomenon.

Thanks for listening,

REPLY

Dear __,

Thanks for sharing your story. I'm not a counselor by profession...just a former lawyer who strayed into this field. My thought is that a good psychologist might be very helpful to you in framing your sweetheart's past differently.

I think this issue is going to become more and more common...the issue of partners teaming up, only to find that one has gotten caught up in the past in the addictive pursuit of hot sex...to the horror/excitement of the other. Typically, I suspect it will be the man who has become hooked by porn/clubs, and the women who will have to "move past the issue of past behavior."

The more I learn about brain plasticity, the more I realize its principles apply to all kinds of "brain loops." By that I mean all kinds of repetitive thoughts that create anxiety and don't lead to resolution...even though the brain finds them exciting in some ways.

If your anxiety about this is such a loop, then it will continue unless you repeatedly stop such thoughts, mentally putting a big red "X" through them and turning your attention elsewhere. You may have to do this for weeks, but eventually the frequency of the thoughts should decrease. See this post: (read previous post for background) http://www.reuniting.info/node/3420#comment-17986

As for your question about whether your girlfriend could have done things she didn't want to do, my answer would be "Absolutely." If you read the forum at our website, you will hear men who were on "autopilot" watching raunchy porn or visiting hookers that they REALLY do not want to be watching/visiting. When one gets caught up in any kind of addiction, dopamine can rise so high that one is in an altered state...operating like a robot...in pursuit of the brain chemical high that "forbidden" or "risky" activities offer.

Perhaps, as is the case with so many unhelpful brain loops (whether rage loops or arousal loops), the brain finds the thoughts "rewarding" at a brain chemical level, even though YOU are finding the thoughts distressing, too.

You'll have to ask yourself, "Can I forgive this person her past mistakes - perhaps by realizing that I might easily have become caught in the same trap, yet would still like to have a normal, loving relationship?" And probably some other questions I haven't thought of.

Now that I've rambled on with my random thoughts , what do YOU think will help you let go of these thoughts?

HIS REPLY

I've introspected, and you are definitely correct that my brain is excited by the thoughts. What is baffling to me is that these are not thoughts I have ever had before; the anxiety is entirely novel. It was prompted solely by knowledge of her past.

It pains me to say it--it pains me to say all of this, actually, but I have to say it--but I suspect it's related to insecurity about my manliness, if that's the right way to put it. I don't even think of doing these things to her because I want pleasure out of it (at least not consciously), but so that I can know that she knows that I am every bit the "man" her exes were. What a horrible thought to have. All the more so since it is so out of character for me.

And I also think you're right that this problem of mine will be increasingly common, and that it certainly will concern the woman more than the man (since the men are the porn addicts, therefore, etc.). Indeed, my lover told me that she hated her ex's porn addiction; it made her miserable. She also said she hated his sex addiction--"he had to have sex every 30 minutes," is how she put it to me.

I don't quite know how to put what I'm trying to express - perhaps it's that I feel like I have to prove something to her. As far as pleasure goes, I really am content with the life of intimacy-building. I've never wanted anything else. Forgive me, for this is an awful thing to say, but it seems like it has more to do with pain than with pleasure. She tells me her exes hurt her, and yet she kept doing what they wanted. It wasn't actual physical violence, though it was close (at least, as far as I know)--pulling her hair, gagging her mouth, tying her up, spitting on her... utterly repulsive stuff.

I'm... I can't imagine wanting to treat someone I love that way. It just sickens me. And when I think about actually doing it to her, I don't derive any pleasure related to sex, at any rate. It's something that is almost conceptual. Her past makes it seem as though she sticks with a certain concept of a "real man," even though she claims not to like it. So I feel as though I do not meet her concept.

You asked the question of questions... what do I think will help me let go? I've tried to answer that posing hypotheticals to myself, trying to come up with different explanations for her behavior that made it seem irrelevant or aberrational to me. I tried to explain it, for instance, as a result of her horrible upbringing and childhood- suffice it to say she was bullied and her parents were abusive. So, goes the theory, she didn't know any better, she had been in hell for so long that she assumed all there was was hell, as it were. Then she met me, and found heaven.

It's a pleasant story. One she would insist is more or less accurate. But it feels like a rationalization to me. I always come back to the same question: ONE time I can understand; but repeatedly, to keep doing it, even though you claim to hate it... My thick skull has a real problem making sense of this.

I know for example that I would never have done anything like that with my late fiancee. It never would have occurred to me. And if she'd brought it up, I would have thought everything I knew about her now had a question-mark after it. I certainly wouldn't have done it.

I suppose there is a theme running through this, as I talk about it, that relates to things such as trust and honor. It must follow in some sense that if I persist in having these thoughts, despite what she tells me, that I don't believe her. Yes, the old weird vagueness: I do trust her and I don't. How do I know she values my "manhood" enough to not go back to her old ways? How do I know she's not keeping her real thought and feelings to herself? The point is, if her past weren't what it was, I wouldn't find it difficult to believe her.

Let me ask another question. Is this something close to what women feel when they are with a man with a porn problem? Oh... wow. I did understand it in theory, from reading your blog, but to understand the sheer misery of it viscerally, to experience it... there simply are no words. To imagine a woman lying there, knowing her love is sitting in front of a computer, seeking extreme stimulation from some fantastic orgy of pure, brutal carnality... how must she feel? It is unbearable to contemplate.

And what do they do, what do they feel, when they somehow get their lover to stop? Isn't there a lingering suspicion that he's gone on the wagon against his will? That he still "really" wants the pornographic life? I'm sure you've heard from many women with such horrific dilemmas, and insofar as one can commiserate with perfect strangers, I do so. And how.

Let me close with saying that above all, the mere fact of corresponding with you is helping me immensely. I can always refer back to your words of advice and explanation and take the kind of comfort one takes from words one knows are thoughtful and considered. And it also helps to know that you are going to give it to me straight, let me know about what you've learned about the brain and the tortuous enigmas of love and eros. Thus, I may not know the final steps in what I need to do to get over this, but I know the first steps. I have to face it head on. You are helping me do that, simply by giving me the reinforcement of bothering to care about my problems.

Said a woman who read these remarks, and recently discovered her upstanding hubby using scary porn :

Yes, women will do ANYTHING to keep a guy. It is the 'I-am-not-complete-without-a-man' and 'A-bad-guy-is-better-than-no-guy' thing. I have talked to some young women - 20 to 30 years - and they mould themselves (literally with plastic surgery) and neglect themselves for a man. Sex is always the first thing they have to do - clothes, talk, acts and it is all about pleasing the man. Most women fake orgasms to make the man feel good.

What's going on?
Where is that female power?

During my therapy training, I practiced life regression therapy and had many sessions myself. Over and over I saw myself as a man - usually a strong one - and saw myself regularly abusing women and children.

What's love got to do with it?

My thinking:
I now know that what I focus on will increase.
Fighting or resisting something I hate will only persist.
Putting a red X over a thought will attract me more to it.
Trying to NOT think about it will make the thought stronger.
Judging someones actions will only come back to me more intensely.
Trying to suppress pictures in my mind makes them more vivid.

What helps me is a shift in my thinking. As soon as I focus with gratitude on what is, my energy and mood change. I do understand that I have in my life what I NEED right now - maybe I don't want it - but I need to deal with it without pointing the finger to others.

When I resist what is happening, I suffer more.

This man's thinking goes into the direction of 'not being man enough'. That is such a good insight and the best way would be to ask 'What does it mean to me to be a man?' and 'In what way could I be more manly'? With internal reference he would have to re-define his values and question all ancient conditioning and old beliefs.

Now, isn't that a good thing?
Will that not push him into more growth and development?
Will he not be a better man for it and a better model for others?

And I ask myself 'Am I womanly enough?' and 'What does it mean to be a woman?' and 'What stops me to be the woman I want to be?'