Rob Weiss Interview

Well, today I am quite frustrated about trying to make a difference or even being heard by anyone out there in this ‘Sex Addiction’ industry.

Rob Weiss left me waiting at the phone once again yesterday. Here’s his track record. He contacted me (well, his secretary did) in July with this e-mail:

Hi JoAnn,

All my best,

So, I wrote back asking if he would agree to an interview. He responded positively and I sent him a list of questions.

Interview time came around, he called me 15 minutes late and said he had to cancel because he forgot that he had a big conference with Patric Carnes. He rescheduled for the next week.

Next interview time came and went as I sat by the phone with all of my recording equipment and software set up and waiting.

No call.

I e-mailed and got a response from his secretary a week later apologizing and saying that he had gotten sick. We rescheduled.

This time he finally called at the appointed time, on his lunch hour while he was taking care of his two puppies. He did not remember that I sent him questions and was totally distracted for the first 10 minutes.

The interview was basically a disaster. He talks non stop and, even though I have been doing interviews for decades, he would not allow me to interject much of anything. He was like a bulldozer.

When I did manage to ask a few questions that he didn’t like his pat answer was, ‘Well, I’m not here to debate.’ and he would be off and running at the mouth again.

Now, to be fair, he did have a lot of information so I just figured I could edit the tape and use what was good.

He said we could do interviews as often as I wanted and gave me his cell phone number. We made an appointment for him to call me on Monday, Oct 10th at 1pm my time (yesterday).

When I listened to first the tape I realized that it would take a lot of magical editing to make it usable and decided to change my technique.

I wrote to him and said I would offer a topic and let him talk about it. When he was finished I would go to another topic, rather than trying the question and answer technique that just did not work.

I sent him this list of topics, which he wrote back and said were terrific:

Is there a connection between Sex Addiction and Personality Disorders?

What does the Sex Addict have to do to regain trust from their partner?

What are the main stumbling blocks in a Sex Addict’s recovery?

What specific types of counseling approaches do you think are the most effective for the Sex Addict? For example: cognitive, behavioral, psychoanalytic, EMDR, etc.

So, yesterday at 1pm there I sat, equipment and software ready, a few extra topics in hand in case we completed the ones I sent him, a glass of water close by (yeah, right, like I was going to get hoarse from all my talking!).

No call.

Today, no e-mail, no apology, no nothing.

I give up! These guys are just arrogant assholes and we are just insignificant irritations to them.

Well, we’ll just carry on in our own way and make what little difference we can. That’s all that we can do.