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Buffy,

A lot of people who are addicted to something are addicted to other things, too.  Some people in Sex Addicts Anonymous came to SAA after going through AA or NA recovery, which helped them realize they have a sex addiction, too. 

Compulsive anxiety disorders, addictions are inappropriate responses to triggering situations that have been learned.  The good thing is, they can be unlearned, too.  Are you the Buffy who advertises your services on the Portland-based prostitution site The Hobby Hunter? That Buffy posted that she had at one time been sober for 6 months, and had been a drunk for the previous nine years.  If that isn't you, I apologize.  However, if you are that Buffy, I hope you are still in recovery and are being honest with yourself.  Though, on this blog you, and sound like you are trying to talk yourself into thinking your life is OK.  You protest too much.

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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My husband began his sex addiction in high school, 12 years before I met him.  I found out about this addiction 12 years after we met.  He lied constantly.  He learned this behavior in his childhood.  He was isolated, ignored by his parents, bullied, and very unpopular.  He created a persona where he wasn't a loser-- he thought he was smarter than everyone else.  He thought everyone else was a loser.  He may have been raped, but he doesn't remember his childhood. 

Addicts use people.  Toward the end before going into recovery, he didn't even know what he felt about anything, had no vocabulary for emotional experiences. He says that prostitutes and johns are deeply in denial about their addiction to sex.

 There are environmental and genetic factors that help to create a sex addict.  Most sex addicts were sexually abused as children.  I really had nothing to do with the creation of his sex addiction.  The Green Book, the Sex Addicts Anonymous basic text, has many stories of sex addicts and describes their behavior, as well as the way out of that hellish existence.

Prostitutes hardly screen clients, according to my husband.  He could get a date by email with no prior introduction to expensive prostitutes.  There is a lot of competition among prostitutes, who try to veil their desperation to get johns, judging by the emails I have read between my husband and prositutes.   Many people who use prostitutes are sex addicts, and many prostitutes are sex addicts, if not all.  About 8% of men are sex addicts. 

My husband says that nobody can make someone go into recovery, the person has to do it themselves.  One has to bottom out, unfortunately. Keeping someone from killing themselves is a harrowing experience, and this period lasted nine months.  Now we're OK.

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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Buffy,

"Many, many of my clients have beloved wives who are ill and can not or will not be intimate."  This is what my husband used to tell prostitutes, and it was not true.  It is a lie to make the client seem normal.  It is the sex user that is ill.  Sex addicts are deeply ashamed of their compulsion, and project a different persona than who they are.  This is part of the escape -- "fantasy" -- of sex addiction.

After my husband's activities were discovered, I informed myself about sex addiction research and the prostitution community in the area.  Sex Addicts Anonymous and sex addiction therapists have helped him greatly.  Now that he is in recovery, his life has changed dramatically to a happier one.

I hope you will do some research into sex addiction.  It is real and devastating.

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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There is something strange about Buffy and the other hookers on the blog who are so adamant about the positivity of their lifestyle.  I don't hear any empathy about their sex addict clients whom they take extreme advantage of, the emotional pain of the sex addict client when reality hits and the dopamine wears off, the clients' suicide attempts, divorce, and breakups of long time realtionships, and the economic disaster of the client and his family-- these are all things that prostitutes' "victimless" actions contribute to. 

Studies show that prostitutes are usually emotionally damaged in childhood, and this shows in this blog by the lack of insight into love and compassion for other people shown by Buffy and the others.  Emotional intelligence.  Prostitution is about using each other:  the prostitute gets money, and the john gets sex.  There is nothing loving or emotionally fulfilling about prositution.

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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pt.4

I am happier, too.  I had tried making him move out for years before, but he had always manipulated me by attempting suicide.  I saw through this, but he had a terrible rage.  Now, we are together by choice and not coercion.  I am dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder from the profound betrayal violent experiences in the early months of recovery.  We are still going to the sex addiction therapist.  Research shows that regaining my trust can take three years.  We feel that we have a much healthier and very close relationship now.   We have grown so much in the last year as individuals.

Thank you.

posted 4 years, 2 months ago
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pt.3

SAA has been great for my partner.  After his first meeting, he felt an incredible relief, love for me, and thanked me, crying, for helping him.  However, some of this was wishful thinking on his part about recovery at that point.  He was not truly in recovery for the first few months or so, and I would find out that he had relapsed.  He would get enraged and attempt suicide again out of shame.

We went to this therapist together weekly for several months, then she didn’t think she could advocate for both of us anymore—she wanted us to split up, at least temporarily.  She said that what was good for my partner was not good for me.   Since my partner would not have health insurance without me, and the sex addiction reading I had done indicates a better outcome for the addict if the couple stays together during therapy, I decided to find a sex addiction therapist who would know more about it.  I stopped going to this therapist, and my partner continued with her alone.

I found a great sex addiction therapist via the Internet, who is not too far away.  We have had sessions with him together for the last eight months.  He advocates for both people in the couple while working together and works for a positive outcome from our discussions of very difficult issues.  In addition, my partner goes to SAA meetings twice a week, and his other therapist for other life issues once a week.  It is working.  It’s obvious from looking at my painful journal entries from a year ago.  We now have heart to heart discussions, his anger is less and he controls it, and he isn’t using.  We take a day at a time.  He now has five months of sobriety, a group of supportive SAA friends, and a real relationship with me.  He is getting more work and pulling out of debt slowly.   He does not get depressed like he used to.  He is far happier, a much different person.  He can relax.  We try to be realistic.  SAA teaches that a sex addict will remain a sex addict, however.

posted 4 years, 2 months ago
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pt.2

When I found out a year ago that he was still using prostitutes, by reading an email to a prostitute on his computer, he became violent and destroyed things in the house.  He blamed me.  I tried to manipulate me with violence and suicide.  I had an escape plan for these times.  I had a deadbolt put on a door to a room in the house so I could feel safe while I slept.  I bought a cell phone.  I called the police once.  He attempted suicide half a dozen times in the first few months after discovery.  Once, he passed out from rage. 

After the discovery that he was using prostitutes again, I immediately looked for a really good therapist who could handle a tough situation.  I am a Buddhist. Compassion was sometimes very difficult.  I was afraid.  I came to realize that compassion might require me to allow him to bottom out, and that he would have to go to a homeless shelter if his behavior continued.  My doctor was very supportive of me, whatever I chose to do.  I was warned that this was a very dangerous thing I was doing, to try to help him.  Addictions are very strong.  People are usually helpless to kick them alone.

A therapist we had gone to several years before had attributed my partner’s use of prostitutes with depression.  He basically shoved the idea of sex addiction under the rug-- some therapists don’t think sex addiction is real—it isn’t in the DSM yet.  Hopefully, it will be recognized soon—it is usually referred to now as a compulsive disorder. 

So, I called a friend’s therapist, and she made room for us in her busy schedule.  This was really a life and death matter.  She recognized the sex addiction immediately and recommended that my partner go to Sex Addicts Anonymous, and that I go to Co-Dependents of Sex Addicts groups.   He went to his first meeting that week in a nearby city.  However, there isn’t a COSA group in our area, so I tried Co-Dependents Anonymous (CODA).

posted 4 years, 2 months ago
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part 1.

I just want to let people know that sex addiction therapy and Sex Addiction Anonymous can work.

Sex addiction, like other addictions, is a chemical dependency and obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Sex addiction authority Patrick Carnes calls it a disease of escape.  Research shows that dependency on sex has to do with the neurotransmitter dopamine, and there may be a gene involved.   However, the brain and behaviors can change.  In many cases, there is a way to get out of the addiction cycle, which is actually a downward spiral.

Just over a year ago, I learned for a fact that my long time partner is a sex addict.  I had known that he had used prostitutes years ago, but we had gone to a family therapist for a while, and he said that he was not doing those things anymore.  However, as a doctor experienced with treating addicts told me later, “You can always count on an addict to lie.”

My partner is addicted to sex: he began using pornography he found in an older brother’s room at the age of eleven; he was much younger than his siblings, and was isolated, and an unpopular, bullied child at school.  He used pornography to escape from reality.  Addiction progresses.  Before the discovery a year ago, he sometimes spent 4-5 hours a day masturbating to internet pornography, frequented sex clubs and adult shops (they have booths for person-to-person sex encounters), and had sex with prostitutes whenever he could.  He was very familiar with the sex shops and clubs in the Willamette Valley and Portland.  He belonged to online prostitution online community sites, and frequently used Craig’s List Erotic Services and Casual Encounters areas, posting and responding to ads.  He went deeply into debt and kept going deeper.  Credit card companies hounded him.  His moods were erratic; he was depressed, angry, and uncommunicative.  He was barely employed.  He lied to everyone in order to keep his addiction secret.  He had nobody he could disclose to.  He pretended he was someone else. 

posted 4 years, 2 months ago
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