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Chapter 5

Addictions: Life Behind The Wall (Part 2)

Process Addictions

When talking of addictions most men think only of substance addictions, like alcohol or illegal drugs. These ingestive addictions are the more obvious, and most reported, addictions. These are the addictions that catch the public eye.

There are also subtler addictions, called process addictions, that are not as obvious. I've discussed rage addiction earlier because rage is the cheapest, most accessible, and most prevalent addiction. It is also a process addiction. Sexual and work addictions are the other significant process addictions that are major detours on a man's journey toward manhood. Another example, but a less prevalent process addiction is compulsive gambling. For many men, a substance addiction, such as alcohol, will hide a long-standing process addiction, such as sexual addiction. Often the process addiction precedes the substance addiction.

Process addictions have to do with behavioral processes, like emotional habits. They are behaviors that are done regularly to medicate pain, just as substances can. Our addictive society winks at process addictions, if they see them at all. Many psychologists will also argue that there is no such thing as a process addiction.

The process addictions are more subtle and destructive than substance addictions. After the danger of rage addiction, the sexual and work addictions are the worst process addictions. One reason they are subtle is because they don't seem to take away from relationships and responsibilities. Anger is considered manly and powerful. No man has ever been jailed for working too much. In our patriarchy there is no such thing as too much sex.

I will elaborate on work, as a process addiction, in the following chapters on the father. For now, I will mention that this process addiction is not only modeled but idealized in our society. While most sexual addiction is winked at, corporations seek and encourage the work addicted. This addiction can be hidden inside an aura of 'responsibility', 'productivity', even 'genius'. And success often goes to the work addicted.

Not all hardworking, productive men are work addicts. The difference revolves around a man and his relationship to the fathers in his life. Work addiction, as well as some aspects of the flawed sexual training manual, has its origin in the world of the father.

Sexual addiction begins in the world of the dark mother.

Sexual Addiction?

I maintain that addictive sex is the norm in our culture. Patrick Carnes, an expert on sexual addiction, talks of our "cultural sexual obsession" that leads to a great divide between relationship and sexuality. Gary Brooks, describing the The Centerfold Syndrome, talks of all men being socialized to be "too voyeuristic, too objectifying of women's bodies, too competitive for sexually attractive women, too needy of validation through sexuality, and too fearful of emotional intimacy," Both talk of the widespread problem of objectifying women. Making a woman an object begins the process of using her for an addiction.

Addictive sex, as a symptom of life behind the wall, ruins more relationships then most other reasons given in relationship 'how to' books. Gary Brooks echoes this sentiment when he says, "I have come to the conclusion that this male pattern of relating to women's bodies, which I am calling the Centerfold Syndrome, represents one of the most malignant forces in contemporary relationships between men and women."

Addictive sex is also high on the list of emotional habits that keep a man stuck in the village, and our society stuck in its adolescence. Addictive sex is the dark mother's primary seduction to keep her son close. And like the dark mother's other activities, it is hidden and unconscious. Especially in the area of sexuality, men are sabotaged in their relationships without even knowing why.

The prevalence of certain attitudes about male sexuality contributes greatly to sexual addictions, and unsatisfactory sexual and personal relations. Most of these attitudes, like urban myths, are adolescent ideas that get culturally enshrined. The idea that men need sex to relax or to keep from being keyed up is prevalent. Jack Kennedy was reputed to have told a visiting prime minister that he needed sex every two days or he couldn't work well. Other men talk of needing release. Still others use their lack of sex to rationalize drinking. Describing extreme addiction, Patrick Carnes talks of sex being perceived by men as their "most important need." Too often sex is considered a primitive need along the same lines as food and water. Without it, death follows, or might as well.

I am reminded of the famous adolescent ploy done in millions of cars at thousands of make-out places across the country. An adolescent couple is deep into necking and petting when the boy pleads to go farther. When the girl is hesitant the boy talks about the irreparable medical harm he will suffer if they stop now. Ideas like 'exploding' and 'never being able to have children' are expressed. The boy pleads that getting off is the only cure. The responsibility is the young girl's. She alone can avoid a catastrophe.

Now 'blue balls' is a painful condition. But I haven't heard of anyone dying from it.

Sex in our society has not gotten much past this primitive stage. In an addictive sexual encounter a man's sexual partner will often feel pressured and used. She or he will feel like a sex object. And that will be an accurate assessment. Addictive sex involves using a partner to get to a feeling, not to connect to a person. In this case a man uses a person rather than a substance, or uses a person like a substance. This manipulation is the hidden agenda that creates the empty feeling in the partner, and ultimately in the man himself.

Unfortunately, the history of Judeo-Christian teaching endorses this addictive view of depersonalization, as long as marriage is involved. Evidently holy matrimony insures that there is a meaningful, personal relationship rather than an addictive one. The good symbol of marriage apparently covers a multitude of sins. Historically, the Christian marriage vows were taken to mean that the woman would have to please the man sexually, and on demand. The assumption was that men had this insatiable sex drive and women, with little sex drive of their own, owed the man sexual satisfaction. As St. Paul said, "better to marry than to burn." Sex was considered a necessary evil blessed by marriage. The man's sexual drive would at least guarantee procreation. Throughout this religious history, sex was rarely considered an act of love.

Many of the marriage and relationship problems that couples have involve sexual problems. Much of the time the woman will complain that all the man wants is sex. And the man will not understand the point. Some of this problem can be attributed to gender differences.

Women usually come at sexuality from a much more personal viewpoint than men. Most women need to feel close and intimate before they start feeling sexual. There needs to be a sense of significant and ongoing connection for most women to feel good sexually. Archetypal psychologists, as well as sociobiologists, might say that a woman's primary need for intimacy comes from thousands of years of needing to pick a dependable mate to protect her and her offspring. Or the need for intimacy before sex could be because the sexual act for a woman leads to the intimacy of child and family.

Most men, on the other hand, will say that they need sex first in order to feel the intimacy later. They experience closeness to their mate through the sexual act. Bernie Zilbergeld, in his book The New Male Sexuality, points out that "many men report that they do feel loving during and after sex, and some say they are more emotionally expressive after sex." He agrees that men often use sex as a healthy way of getting close and showing love.

These honest gender differences can be resolved with understanding and communication if there are no addictions involved. Zilbergeld talks of the importance for men to realize that women have a different style of movement toward sex than they do, and to respect that style. The need for men to experience sexual intimacy first, on the way toward emotional intimacy, is not a sign in itself of sexual addiction. A man who is not sexually addicted will be able to hear his partner's personal needs and compromise in his sexual behavior.

Sex as a way of achieving intimacy is a valid, and probably archetypal, masculine characteristic. However, this way of achieving closeness can be a red flag. Sometimes the closeness the man seeks during sex is the archetypal closeness to the mother object and not to the woman lying beside him. This kind of closeness mimics a juvenile feeling of comfort and body relaxation. A man can unknowingly confuse this body feeling with personal closeness. When that feeling goes away, and loneliness creeps in, he will then want to have more sex, as an alcoholic wants more to drink, to achieve the feeling of comforting closeness again. In the process the man mistakes boyish satisfaction for adult intimacy. The man mistakes comfort for love.

Terrence Real uses the term 'sexual mother' to define this relationship. This closeness is boy to mother, not man to woman. It is really more physical than emotional. Meanwhile the spouse is not feeling closeness, but resentment. The boyish closeness does not constitute a whole relationship. Women start feeling like the 'object' they really are. They feel more like a mother, comforting a child, rather than a woman loving a man.

I've talked to a number of women who "give in" because their man "needs it". Patrick Carnes described one woman who felt like "something to drain her husband's body so he could sleep." This addictive sexuality is the regressive sexuality of the young boy. Women instinctively know this.

I have counseled men who have sex every night like clockwork, and their wives accept this. I have counseled other men who would have sex every night if they could. They are proud of their desire. They imagine every man wants the same. They punctuate their desire by the obvious, "I'm a man aren't I?" Sexual desire makes them feel manly.

I am always concerned when I hear a man say he would have sex every night if he could. Society might think him manly for having such a strong libido. I wonder how much he uses sex, or sexual fantasy, as a refuge from his problems and pain. I wonder how much sexual obsession keeps him from exploring other parts of his relationship and his life. Again, there is nothing wrong with sexual pleasure. But what place does it have, like other addictions, in keeping a man a boy.

I have found that sexual obsession is always a sign that a man has lost direction in his life. He tries to fill his emptiness with seemingly harmless behavior that few people recognize as addiction. Ironically, when a wife or lover does hear of a man's possible sexual addiction they immediately recognize the truth there. They immediately realize why they have felt so used. The presence of an addiction does not show there is no love in a relationship. It does show that a man has much work to do in finding healthier ways to fill his emptiness.

Sexual obsession is a sign, not of manliness, but of powerlessness. It is vital that men understand the hidden sexual addictions that we all have been taught to have. The norm for sexual conduct in our society is addictive sex. Few men are taught differently. When I mention to a man that there is sexual addictivenness in his life he will recoil under those strong words. I don't tell this to a man to blame him or shame him. I tell him so he can understand what is going on around him and inside him. A man needs to know the parameters of his mission and who the enemy really is.

Patrick Carnes estimates that 5-10% of men have clinical sexual addictions, those resulting in severe consequences to a man's life such as loss of job, public shame, legal action, imprisonment. It is the rest of us who have to find how this sexual addictiveness affects our lives and relationships, without the warning of public consequences. This addiction is insidious. Winking won't make it go away.

Pornography

One of the surest signs of sexual addictiveness is a man's use of pornography. Pornography is the smoke that exposes the fire of sexual addiction. Pornography elicits a wink and a smile from man to man. Yet most men are embarrassed to show this habit to women they love. And most men have been ashamed to admit this habit to me as their therapist, not knowing that I assume that the majority of the men I see have a high probability of being addicted to pornography.

Pornography is often the gateway to sexual addiction. "The Centerfold Syndrome" is a metaphor for the ocean of soft and hard pornography and media sexual innuendo that men have to swim in since their first sexual feeling. One of the main reasons pornographic viewing is so deeply buried in men's emotional needs is because pornography is often a boy's first experience of adult sexuality. This imprinting linking sexual excitement with flat page or screen fantasy is very powerful emotionally, so powerful this imprinting is close to feeling hardwired.

Pornography is not harmless. Women partners' reactions to discovering pornography in their man's life is a clue to how destructive this compulsion is. Most women who discover pornography in their partners' lives react intensely and painfully. Women often rage to cover the intense pain they feel. Their reaction is the same as discovering an affair. Men are often in surprise and shock at this reaction. Yet a woman's instincts are usually accurate. A man is not having an affair with a flesh and blood woman, but he is having an affair with a mother object. This object has many bodies and looks. The dark mother can be a shapeshifter. She keeps a man passive, having only to open a magazine or press a few keys to call up a web page. She keeps a man unconscious, repressing his shame while comforting his boyish needs.

Women often intuitively know that there is something wrong because here is proof that a man has separated regularly love and sexuality. Sometimes she is the one loved. Sometimes she is the object. She feels awful to rarely be both loved and sexually exciting. All sexual addiction separates healthy, mature love and sexual comfort. Pornography is the minor leagues for major league sexual and relationship problems.

Sexual Trauma

Literally, all men have been impersonally sexually abused by a sexually obsessed culture that objectifies women. However, up to one in four men have been personally sexually abused. And 90% of these men have been abused by someone familiar to them. Unfortunately, sexual abuse of men seems to be minimized or ignored. Yet physical sexual abuse can widen the gap even more between men and a healthy sexual response. Not everyone who is sexually abused will suffer damage to their sexuality. But physical sexual abuse on top of cultural sexual abuse has the potential for sexual trauma.

This cultural denial of male sexual abuse may result from the assumption that men are basically promiscuous anyway, so an early sexually exploitative experience in not seen as harmful. Maybe men are seen as oppressors so often that they hardly can be seen as being oppressed. Warren Farrell talks of this phenomenon in his books. Sexual abuse of women, as a widespread social reality, was courageously uncovered by the feminist movement. Maybe that is why women are seen as the only people being abused.

Men need to know that compulsive sexual behavior of the sort that is blatantly dehumanizing is often the result of having been severely sexually dehumanized. This is not to excuse the behavior but to explain it. It is also meant to show a man a way out. The mission is to start dealing with the pain of abuse, after the destructive behavior is controlled.

Men who have been abused sexually have been traumatized. When a trusted person, male or female, is also an abuser the betrayal and manipulation severs the natural connection between sex and love, just as pornography does. The betrayal often freezes a man emotionally at an early developmental stage and an earlier time in his history. In other words, the boy is stuck.

Sexual trauma keeps a man stuck in the village in a more profound way than any other experience. His rare comfort will be sexual pleasure. He is not able to grow enough to understand the far more satisfying experience of a loving sexual and emotional relationship. He will find himself habitually performing behaviors, ritually, that mirror the abuse that was done to him. His life will alternate between seemingly endless depression and short bursts of sexual highs. The high will inevitably be followed by guilt and the familiar depression. The traumatized man will then become obsessed with getting the next high, to the exclusion of the rest of his life. This is how trauma works.

Men who have been sexually abused by another man sometimes feel bisexual. They feel the need to have impersonal sexual relations with another man, often an older man. They feel a need, a deep ritual need, to relive an emotional connection on a sexual level. I have found that these men are not looking for sexual comfort as much as the male archetypal recognition from a father figure. These men have a gaping father wound. When this wound is sexualized the guilt and confusion is paralyzing. This homosexual behavior has the genesis in trauma and not in healthy homosexual behavior. This traumatized stuckness can be addressed as other sexual stuckness with special emphasis on working on the father wound discussed in the following chapters.

Men who he been abused by a female can have a much harder time separating from the dark mother.. Women who abuse identify with the dark mother's need for control and keeping a male child a boy. Sexualizing the mother bond in a direct way intensifies the already cultural abuse. This is a trauma that can be healed in the conscious separation from the dark mother.

Not all abuse ends in trauma. However, men who have been abused are at greater risk to emotionally handle the reconnection of sex and love. This experience becomes something similar to a flashback. During an intimate encounter with a loved one the terror and betrayal return as painfully as when first experienced. The ritual must be impersonal. Then pleasure replaces the pain of betrayal. Pleasure anaesthetizes the terror of engulfment and powerlessness.

Acting In

Sometimes a man will not act out his sexual trauma by performing sexual acts. He will act in. Possibly because of a stronger sense of social right and wrong received from a father figure, a man may be able to keep inside the sexual drive for comfort. He will be able to contain destructive sexual behavior. But there is a price. He will often find he has little sexual desire. He cannot make love with a loved one without feeling conflict and pain. So he unconsciously numbs, numbing his penis as well as his emotions in any loving situation.

Sometimes this man will be forced into sexual fantasy as his only comfort. Fantasy and masturbation, usually brought on by pornography, will be his only satisfying ritual. The results will be the same. Guilt and depression will follow. Some of the man's guilt will be around his regret at not feeling sexual excitement about the woman or man he loves. Other times this man will shut down totally sexually. He will revert to a substance, and retreat deeper behind his walls. Often the substance, especially alcohol, had become addictive because he was using it originally to fight his sexual depression.

More and more men, both traumatized and not, are actually suffering from a lack of desire sexually, especially with their partners. These disorders of desire don't mean a man has erectile difficulties. They point toward a lack of sexual excitement or motivation. The paradox in these men's lives is that the desire lessens as their commitment to relationship increases. For many of these men, the problem is that they are unconsciously burying the addictive sexual conflict between emotional intimacy and sexual excitement.

Left with the choice of emotional intimacy they become shut down because they are not able to endure the sense of engulfment and powerlessness that intimacy brings them. The sense of engulfment could be the result of sexual trauma. It could also be the result of poor boundary setting in the total relationship and the feeling of engulfment by the mother complex. In either case, the feeling of engulfment must be dealt with before sexual healing can take place.

I must mention that there is another reason that a man may have lessened sexual desire, even impotency. When a man has walked farther down the path of initiation and thus sexual healing he may have times of erection difficulties and less of a need for genital sexual fulfillment. This temporary condition has more to do with sexual initiation and the way out of sexual addiction. This situation is dealt with in the chapters on ordeal.

A Way Out

When I talk to men about their sexual addictions, especially in their monogamous relationships, they gape in disbelief. Things like fetishism and promiscuous sex are their standard for sexual addiction. Anything less seems normal. It is hard for men to accept that we have all been sexually abused, some very personally, by a sexually obsessed culture. We have all been programmed to disconnect sex and love. We have all been acculturated to 'love' objects, not persons.

Part of the reason that men resist any thought that their sexuality is addictive is fear. They believe that my clinical answer is abstention, celibacy, cold turkey. It is not. Sex is a good thing. When making love is really making love the experience is one of the most edifying a person can have. Men who have experienced sexual love with a loved one cannot believe the wonderful difference.

First of all I have rarely met any man, no matter how deeply wounded sexually, who has not healed after summoning his sleeping warrior energy to set his intention to be initiated. Initiation is a process, not a medicine or an event. Deep wounds resulting in any addiction require deep and intense healing and deep experience of a different path. I must act as father/elder in my work with men to witness to the healing and transformative way out. I must witness to hope. I must also honestly warn of a process that is neither quick or painless. I must warn of the ordeal where pain and healing are like brother and sister.

Initiation is much harder than mere abstention, yet much more ultimately satisfying. The initial steps of initiation always involve mother separation. The initial steps have to do with a man summoning enough warrior energy to draw a line in the sand where the dark mother may not pass. Separation from the dark mother is essential.

To thine own self be true...

The dark mother seduces with the illusion of comfort to get men to be unconscious and passive. She works in darkness and secrecy. The most important thing a man can do to heal any addiction is to come out from behind the wall that hides so many secrets, that causes so much shame. This takes warrior energy. And the warrior's greatest weapon is the sword of truth through honesty.

The dark mother's greatest weapon is the unconscious process called denial. Denial is a slippery semiconscious state of secrecy that keeps men paralyzed behind the wall. The dark mother whispers words like "you deserve this pleasure after so much pain", "this doesn't hurt anybody", "it's all lost anyway", " it's really this once".

Denial is mostly unconscious. It's not a conscious choice. It's more like a slippery slope of self indulgence. A man doesn't decide to deny. He hardly knows the dark mother is around. He merely one day finds himself crouching behind a wall of secrecy where the truth cannot be discerned from all the illusions swirling about. This is a scary place where fear feeds on illusion and illusion feeds on fear. For example, I am convinced that O.J. really believes he didn't do it. This is the world of the dark mother and denial.

The dark mother creates spells so men act like in a trance. Men have reported to me vile behavior, even toward loved ones, that I know is outside their core identity and their conscious intention. Men have told me they are horrified at their behavior looking back from the higher ground of their initiatory path. They talk of waking up as from a bad dream. Some try desperately to convince me of something I already know. Their past behavior is not who they really are.

The most important step for a man intending to break the illusion is scrupulous honesty, starting with himself. A man must literally awaken the drugged or entranced warrior with the new mission of honesty, courageously facing his fear and shame. This new mission of honesty will jump start a man's instinctive warrior motivation to face danger for a higher purpose. In this case, as in the warrior's future orders, the mission is now going within. Any man who has read this far has started to awaken his warrior and surely has enough warrior energy to finish this initial mission of honesty looking within.

Using warrior energy a man must honestly question his attitudes and behaviors. Paradoxically, a man must use his warrior energy to first face and then fight shame. Shaming is another tactic of the dark mother. To become ensnared in shame is self indulgent. The warrior is only interested in truth.

The line in the sand is a line of no return. No return to secrecy. No return to comfort instead of conscience. No return to passivity instead of passion. No return to the fuck it mentality. No return to 'whatever' instead of a conscious 'what now'.

...thou canst be false to no man

At this point a man must take any doubts as well as truths to another man whose life journey he respects. This is where his warrior is most challenged. A man questioning his stuckness in the world of the dark mother must be totally honest in reporting his attitudes and behaviors. The dark mother will try to convince him to keep some behaviors secret or to omit a certain shame. Withholding compromises the mission.

This reporting is not about finding solutions from another or answers outside oneself. This honesty is about breaking the trance of secrecy and taking steps out from behind the wall. This step is about making honest connections with a brother or a father or an elder, practicing crucial connections that are part of the initiatory journey. This is about starting to learn initiatory humility in asking for and receiving honest feedback

I have found that the warrior feeds on honesty, first with oneself then with those he respects and loves. He instinctively feels the rightness of this work. He gets stronger the more honest steps he takes.

The man he confides in could be a good friend, actually a friend who is good. This man can be a colleague, a minister, a counselor, a man who sponsors other addicted men, any man who seems to be walking a path of honesty and integrity. A man needs a friendly face and an understanding reaction when stepping out from behind the wall of secrets.

Moving On

Once the warrior awakens to creating boundaries and becomes fearless in facing inner truth he has exhibited one of the most courageous actions a man can take. He has gone inward on the path to manhood. Boundary setting starts the separation from any addiction. Seeking the truth within breaks the spell of unconsciousness and denial. Seeking other men for understanding and connection to healthy masculine energy overcomes the paralysis of passivity. The path of manhood is the healing path. Once taken any man will surprisingly find assistance and guidance, much like the hero myths of so many cultures.

The next big step for the man with the awakened warrior is the connection to father energy. Father energy gives a man strength to finish his separation from the mother complex and move into the world of the father. Reaching out to another man is a start in finding father energy. Father energy can be carried by any older man who has traveled his inner road. Father energy is needed by a man of any age who has a father wound.

The uninitiated boy is stuck in the world of the mother, by the mother's comforting hut. Part of the stuckness for the addicted man is sometimes a lack of a consistently good mothering experience. However, most of the time a man's mothering experience is good enough to move on. The more important reason for his stuckness is the lack of masculine, fathering energy. The father brings a boy the courage and the support to move into his world, helping him face the inevitable pain. As we will see it is the father who gives the boy the strength and wisdom to finally separate from his regressive comforts. It is the father figure and his message who leads a man out of the world of addictions.

Most often the counselor has to be like a good father, talking of other ways of finding satisfaction other than from the mother. He needs to explain about addictions and how they rob a man of his will to grow and mature. He needs to explain the difference between addictive euphoria and the spiritual connection of initiation that a man can feel. He needs to explain, as Gregory Bateson did, that "addiction is a prayer gone awry." Addictive hunger is really the psychospiritual hunger for initiation. Nothing else will do.

A man needs powerful relationships with important people to grow. This is the opposite of the popular myth that a man can go it alone. At this point he needs strong fathering and then wise eldering, a strong masculine presence. Addictions keep a man unrelated and unmotivated. When things get painful, as they inevitably will on the journey to manhood, an addicted man will move toward an addictive object and away from the men who can help him.

For most men, the father and what he represents is the answer to their overstay in the mother's world. His is the important relationship that holds the key. He is the way out from behind walls. He is the way out of the mother's hut. We are an addictive society because there are not enough good fathers and elders to guide and lead men into their manhood. We, men, are regularly orphaned by absent fathers. Yet the young boy inside needs a father to grow, even into his young adulthood. The archetype of initiation cannot be denied without destructive consequences. The following chapters will describe the next initiatory steps and how we can find answers in the world of the father.

All chapters of Toward Manhood are archived.