It Was Just Like Any Other Addiction

Hi Sharron,
Boy that sounds awful.
One of the things I was wondering was if he doesn’t remember sexualizing his daughter. If he was in trance/dissociation mode, he wouldn’t remember that part of what he was doing. Who would want to remember it, after all?
How long has be been unable to complete a sexual encounter with you? I remember much earlier posts (months away now) when you talked about a roaring sex life. So did it “peter” out, or was it a sudden thing?

The anorexia thing is really a challenge. I’m wondering what Marie’s wisdom and experience here is. I believe my SA was also a sexual anorexic, but that was never even broached and because his therapist needed to disappear me, it wasn’t needed on the agenda. So we need some expertise from others on this one.

D.

Hi Sharron,
You are right about the anorexia not going away when the addict is in recovery for addiction! When my husband got sober and into recovery for the sex addiction, it was my assumption that the way he treated me, our interaction would change as much as he had in recovery. And the opposite was true. In fact, as you probably already know, too, anorexia gets much worse over time, especially when increasing commitments are necessary….ie: going from boyfriend to fiancee to husband, adding children, joining accounts, buying property, etc.
For me, the anorexia WAS the wound, and the sex addiction was salt thrown on the wound. When you describe Steve’s looking at other women, etc….that’s obviously the addiction. When you talk about not undressing in front of your husband,and his pushing you away with negative talk…that’s the anorexia. And it sounds pretty hurtful right now, Sharron. You’ve only been married a year and a half and it gets SO much worse over time. We all tolerate what we choose, but I would find it easier to forgive my h for having sex with a prostitute than being critical of my body and telling me he doesn’t get turned on by looking at me. I know you have said that you couldn’t forgive him if he had sex with someone else, but you seem to be able to get past the things he says to you and the marriage that you don’t have Sharron.
And the thing with anorexic husbands is that unless they fully embrace the concept and are on board and doing the work as specifically outlined by people who know about intimacy anorexia….it will get worse and my heart is already hurting for you Sharron. For most, the sex addiction won’t get better ….there will always be a pull back toward that….. unless the anorexia is addressed simultaneously.
Love you,
Marie

Very good post Marie,

The Intimacy Anorexia is the wound in my life too. Now that I have a name for this and understand it, I can go back through our marraige and identify all the red flags and sirens I didn’t see and hear.

My h told me about his first girlfriend who he watched “kissing” her old boyfriend in front of him. Well, yeah, because he wouldn’t kiss. He didn’t kiss me for 25 years. He told me that his first wife would want to get dressed up in “Ethel Merman” dresses and “gaze into each others eyes” while he wanted to get down to the “sex”. I told him then that, yes, sometimes you just want to get to the main event but I had no idea that would be our entire sex life. He also liked to identify himself as a loner; the Marlboro man, Palladin (for those of you who remember that show – have gun will travel), a high-plains drifter. Early in our marraige, I told him he should have been a cowboy and just rode into town for a prostitute every now and then. I had no idea how close I was to the truth. I have read books and cried and sought out pastors and counselors and girlfriends for all these years. This distancing behavior would wax and wane but eventually got really bad. He has been in counseling for over a year and is still only talking about his Mommy boo-boo. As far as I know is SA sober, but not willing to admit addiction or the need for a recovery plan, an accountability partner or group, or to step into my pain and helping me heal. He does say he “can see he’s hurt me” as I’m heaving wretching sobs but has almost zero empathy. He now admits to distancing and his disconnect during normal love relationship and sex and then read me a paragraph from the ONLY book he’s read in 15 months, John Bradshaw’s, Healing the Shame that Binds You, which paraphrased said, ” coming to terms with yourself, that no one else can make you whole and that we go through our lives alone, sharing parts, and that the the best gift we can give to ourselves and our partners is the gift of solitude.” He apparently is reading to gain snippets to support his anorexia. I realize he has to heal his self-loathing to be able to then reach out but he is comfortable healing his own pain and holding there.

This kind of emotional, mental and physical starvation eventually brings about a myriad of reactive responses. Reactive anorexia is a Doug Weiss term for the natural shutting down in response to the severe rejection by our partners. Anger, bitterness, rage, punishing, policing, depression and developing our own addictive behaviors to cope seems to be a normal progression of this pain. This then, signals rejecting behavior to our partner and he is then triggered and justified for another round of acting out/in.

When I hear some who suggest, “taking care of ourselves, getting our own lives and not let our focus be our partner”, I wonder, how does that work? If I dress up and look fabulous, make a party, exercise and eat right, I am still coming home to a man who doesn’t want to love on me. I understand now that I cannot fix him and I’ll have to come to terms with my threshold of pain before I can let go of the relationship.

Even though it’s about money for me as well, it is not the deciding factor. This constant state of stress is taking a toll on my health. My counselor said today that my PTSD keeps me in a state of hyper-vigilence, and my adrenal glands keep pumping out the cortisol and cortisol with the lowered immune system gives us cancer and a host of other problems. How many battered women get breast cancer? Has there been a study done that digs in deeper than medical family history?

After the learning and trying, we need to count the real cost to ourselves.

Sharron – I saw this 26 years ago and it didn’t get better, it is now worse and he is giving me a heads-up for the rest of my life. I’m 55 and terrified of my future either way but it seems that the unknown is better than a slow sure death.

Love to All,

Debora

Wow Deb! 

Once again you’re speaking my truths! I sure hope you can make it this weekend. Your last sentence (besides the age difference and we’re not that far off) sums it up for me and that is EXACTLY the reason I am leaving! 

My opinion of Diane’s question (at least in MY case) is they still want you because you are their cover. Family Man, Father of the Year, Son in law of the year (for Heidi), etc. They can look “normal” to the world around them and still live their double life and do their creepy stuff. Also, if you are cleaning their home, washing their underwear, (yuk), cooking them meals, and all the little touches we do to make a house a home, then WHY NOT!?? Especially when they are getting away with it. 

And then let’s not forget the favorite (and so true in my
SA’s case) “It’s Cheaper to keep ‘er!” 

So, do they really want “US”, or just the stuff we do for them? 

Plus, let’s face it, it’s not near as fun to be slinking around, lying, and cheating and screwing around, just to come home to an empty house and a reminder that you (the SA) blew it and lost his family! 

Why don’t we believe them? I did, it just took me a LONG Time to get up the strength and courage to end this nightmare, once and for all….. 

Diane,

My h told me that he viewed me as a possession. I was a good reflection on him, in ways. He also needed someone to raise the kids and cook dinners, etc. He also preferred a body to masturbate on since the porn and MB is a sin. He needed me for boring ole holy sex and the good stuff, the forbidden, was only in his mind. He lied to himself that he really felt that way about some of this, because he wanted to “have the love of a woman”, and yet, in his arrested development, couldn’t step up to the man plate. He did everything he could to sabotage that possibility. I think he also viewed me as a buddy. He once told me that I thought more like a man than any woman he’d ever known, and that, to him was the highest compliment he could pay me. In short, I don’t believe they see themselves as broken, and we are merely an extension of them or an accessory of some sort.

My take,

Debora

Hi Sharron,
the only people talking about intimacy anorexia are Dr. Weiss and his people and anyone trained by them, and it’s relatively new for them, the book came out in 2010. Carnes identified sexual anorexia a while ago, but sex is just one of the 10 categories that is included in the intimacy anorexia. I have tried to explain this to therapists here locally and no one gets it. I am fairly intelligent and articulate and i can explain almost anything if I want to, and i haven’t found a therapist or counselor here who gets it, or that I can adequately explain this to. I have come to believe that if you haven’t been the spouse of one or treated lots of spouses of anorexics, it can’t be easily or readily explained. I have come to believe that if a therapist hasn’t been the spouse of one or treated lots of spouses of anorexics, they are not worth my time and money. That is the great thing here, is that there are unfortunately, way too many women who get this. And i belong to a phone group through heart to heart, there are 8 of us and they get it. Some of those women are actually anorexics, too, and most of them have h’s who are moreso. One woman is the primary anorexic in her marriage, and I am learning so much about this from the other perspective, too, in a way that isn’t emotionally close or threatening for me, as learning it from my h might be. there is a lot of work yet to be done,Sharron.
Marie

WOW,
Now this is a thread! For the majority of my marriage I was not subjected to this sort of thing on a sexual level….or even an emotional level. We had an active sex life and I thought my husband was happy with me in that way.I have probably mentioned that around Sept 2008 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer…our sex life began to dwindle. By that point I was already considering leaving but I still didn’t know what he was doing….other than being a supreme asshole. As a matter of fact, I was going to Thailand to think things over when I had the mammogram! I thought he was freaked out by the diagnosis and the surgery and things didn’t grind completely to a halt…just slowed enough for me to notice? Naturally, I had other things on my mind.Of course, since Nigeria I was mainly cold sexually most of the time myself and if I had sex with him, I let him know it was only because I wanted to get laid. My husband would often reach for me in the night and sometimes it would lead to relations and sometimes I would shove him away.When I found out what he was doing, who he was doing it with…it was hard on the self esteem and I wondered if he had slowed wth me because he preferred young women? Then I realized that he had been with both me AND them for years so that stopped that line of thinking. He has made attempts to initiate sex with me since we left Asia but I rejected him outright. I could NEVER have handled the kind of sexual rejection some of you ladies experienced…let alone the othe rejecting behaviors!!! I did experience some of those over the years but I think mine threw loaves of bread instead of crumbs because I didn’t really notice his distancing until 2002 in Africa?
Your description is really chilling, Marie, BUT it definately explains what you meant when you said you wished he would provide you an excuse to leave him. Deborah….I think you are right and what you say really, really hurts me because I am trying to imagine how devastated you must be? Same goes for all of you who tried and tried to get recognition from your husband’s that you were living, breathing, women and just had those needs ignored year, after year. I don’t know how you all stayed faithful through all of that!!!! I am Catholic and never cheated on my husband BUT that would have driven me to another man in a heartbeat because to me no sex= no marriage?. I have to agree that the rejection of “YOU” would be worse than the cheating and I thought THAT was the worst thing…for your husband to go with another woman? My best friend is married to one of these guys and when she tried to explain it …I didn’t really know what she was talking about BUT lucky for her she found Dr Weiss’s site pretty quick. As I said before I think we research and focus on what we are living with. I really feel their motivation and how they act it out on their partner is incomprehensible and horrific….and of course you all know by now I certainly don’t think it is addiction you are dealing with. I definately experienced some of this stuff in my last 2 years in Asia (once I began to really think about leaving him and he knew it).., blaming,ignoring, avoidance, distancing, criticism, attacking my physical appearance, some sexual rejection, arrogance and attempting to diminish my personhood. I fought back like a viper BUT it was incredibly painful and I thought he was trying to break me in some way. That is how I regard this type of behavior…as an attempt to break the other person. I barely made it 2 years and I am strong. I would NEVER have lasted in a long term marriage with this being done to me. God Bless you all! Karen xx

Dear SL,

I am a good Catholic girl- NOT but I do not condone cheating BUT….I have always said that if in a marriage one partner is witholding sex consistantly without a good reason (illness ect) then the other partner is well within their rights to get it elsewhere BECAUSE (and I learned this in a Catholic theology class) a marriage without sex is void. To withold sex in a marriage is abuse. PERIOD. If I met the right man at the right time I would be tearing my knickers off and wouldn’t give my husband of almost 27 years a second thought. 😉 Karen xx

I am assuming intimacy anorexia and sexual anorexia are different. I see the words interchanged at times, or a slash between them /, but they seem completely different…correct. One is about intimacy…sharing heart, life…the other is about not giving you sex…

Obviously, if a husband is has sexual obesity, he could still have intimacy anorexia, correct???

Thank you, Marie, for sharing all of that!
Love, Julie