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Sex Matters: Family values and the addict
Sexual addiction, the compulsive and often disruptive drive for carnal satisfaction, can leave deep scars on the families of addicts. Douglas Weiss, the author of more than a dozen books on the subject, has a new one for those who've been hurt by a parent's sexual addiction. Beyond the Bedroom: Healing for Adult Children of Sex Addicts comes out next month. Is sexual addiction misunderstood? The sexual addict is often miscategorized as the playboy or the nymphomaniac, or addiction is played off a lot in stereotypes such as a Don Juan. But sex addiction is really real, where the person is truly addicted to sexual behaviors. The person is suffering and ashamed. What exactly are they addicted to? They can be addicted to various forms of sexual behavior. For most, masturbation is really paramount, but also chat rooms, affairs, fetishes, cross-dressing, exposing self, and voyeurism. Really, anything sexual can be a part of it. Is it really more men, as it is so often portrayed? Yes. Men have been socialized to be sexual addicts since the 1960s. That's when the paradigms of sex not being about love and commitment and relationship were birthed. That moved us into object-relationship sex. Men asked each other, "Did you get it?" or "Did you get some?" That's how men started talking about sex. Recently, women are starting to get a lot more into sexual addictions, because they're also starting to look at sex not necessarily as a part of a relationship. It was OK for boys to be bad, but now it's OK for girls to be bad. How does sexual addiction affect the family? For kids, the immediate impact is that Mom or Dad is emotionally, spiritually, and morally underdeveloped. Sex addicts are also unavailable and very selfish. So the child will accept that some of his or her needs will not be met from that parent and will fill those needs up with something else, often something unhealthy. And then the cycle continues to repeat. That's like other addictions. Unlike other addictions, the shame around a sexually addicted parent is much greater. It's almost vogue to be in recovery from alcohol and drugs. But when your mom or your dad is a sex addict, can you imagine what that feels like? It raises a lot more questions than the other addictions do. For example, imagine the teenage girl who goes on the Web to do her homework and finds her dad's homosexual pornography. That makes her think, "Who is he? Who am I? Am I OK? Is Mom OK? Are they staying married?" Now she's stuck with a secret that's so powerful, and it begins to affect her life. How do children usually find out? The large majority find something–such as pornography–that involves their parent's addiction. Most of these kids, 59 percent, find out before the age of 15 that their parents are sex addicts. So it hits them during their own sexual development. There doesn't seem to be a lot of talk about recovery. The recovery movement is not as large and not as stable as with other addictions. It's just harder for people to break through that barrier of denial and say, "I want to get help so bad I will sit in a room and talk about it." Unlike alcohol or drug addicts, the sex addict will try to be by him- or herself until almost the end. The secret of "I'm going to get hand jobs from a prostitute" is different from "I'm drinking gin." Why? Because there's more shame. And if you're keeping the secret, you're going to stay sick.
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