Two Common Excuses for Dishonesty in a Romance

This article will expand on the theme by exploring some of the excuses we use for not being open and honest with our partners – but first we offer two important disclaimer:

First, openness and authenticity does not give us a right to hurt people in the name of transparency. We must think about what we are saying, why we are saying it, to whom, and when. When in doubt we can first ask a trusting friend, a therapist, a sponsor, or a close family member to review with us whatever it is we want to discuss with our partner.

Second, we do not get to share information with our partner that he or she chooses not to hear. So ask permission. Then ask for feedback when you are done sharing so that he or she can teach us how to improve for next time. It is important to remember that while this article is going to challenge you to be more vulnerable, it should never be done through the threatening of safety.

Once we have established that it is safe to share, and we have obtained our partner’s permission, many of us will still back away from the opportunity. Here are two of the common excuses partners use for not being open and honest with each other:

“This will be too hurtful to my partner.”

This excuse keeps many of us from opening up about who we are and how we really feel. Emotions build within us, gathering strength, regardless of what we do to dismiss them as wrong or inappropriate.  If we remain emotionally disconnected in our relationship, our partnership will become brittle and fail to be a source of strength for either of us.  Hiding who we really are will most likely harm the relationship rather than protect it.

“Our relationship is not ready for such honesty.”

When we use this argument we are perhaps really intending to say that I am not ready to feel the discomfort that may accompany honest self disclosure. Through our life experiences, we may have learned that it is easier to avoid a serious commitment with another than it is to risk emotional discomfort.  In our effort to protect ourselves, we create emotional barriers and designed escape-hatches that prevent true intimacy.  We think these obstacles will prevent hurt, but they often backfire.

In review, these arguments are really only meant to protect ourselves – not our partner – and in the long run we are not protecting even ourselves. When we withhold information from our partner and lie by omission we are slowly losing our authenticity. We tell ourselves too many lies and we show the world too many faces.

So instead of running, let us remember that love is a decision……and if we love truly, there will be moments in our romance when we will hurt. However, if the relationship is of a Higher Purpose, one of connectedness, commitment, and selflessness, we will get through our hurt and we will grow stronger.

Instead of hiding from each other in the name of safety, you can invite your mate to be a part of your healing process through the exchange of love.  The greatest healing comes from the giving of love to another.  The opportunities to love unconditionally are endless—do not waste any.

Please share some of the ways in which your own relationship has grown – or struggled – in the areas of being honest and transparent with each other. What are some effective tips that work for you or for someone you have helped in the past? What have been the rewards?

This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem

APA Reference 

Leadem, J. (2014). Two Common Excuses for Dishonesty in a Romance. Psych Central. Retrieved on February 19, 2014, from http://blogs.psychcentral.com/couples/2014/02/two-common-excuses-for-dishonesty/

What Causes Sexual Addiction?

Lord knows we hear plenty about sexual addiction in the news – most often stories about politicians, actors, athletes, and just plain folks who are systematically ruining their lives with ongoing patterns of problematic sexual activity. Of course, for every scandal that makes the papers, tens of thousands of similar tales go unreported, known only to the individuals directly involved. Regardless of whether the stories make headlines or remain anonymous, one wonders: What exactly are these people thinking when they put everything on the line for a sexual experience? What causes these seemingly intelligent, often highly successful people to act in such amazingly irrational ways? How and why do these men and women become so preoccupied with sex that they act on their desires to the exclusion of family, career, health, and more – regardless of the consequences?

For many sex addicts, attachment deficits, childhood neglect, and related forms of early-life abuse are at the core of their adult intimacy and sexual acting out issues. In other words, many if not most sexually addicted men and women have backgrounds of profound family dysfunction. Often, as children, they were victims or witnesses of emotional, sexual, or physical abuse. One prominent study suggests that as children 97 percent of sex addicts were emotionally abused, 81 percent were sexually abused, and 72 percent experienced physical violence. It is also common for at least one other person in a sex addict’s family to suffer from either a major mental health disorder or an addiction, be it a chemical addiction to alcohol or drugs, or a process addiction like sex (or gambling, eating, shopping, etc.) A common thread among sex addicts is that they nearly always spend their formative years in households in which their emotional needs are either unmet or inappropriately responded to, meaning the lessons they learned as children about intimacy, connection, and support were formulated through a distorted lens.

Being consistently exposed to early family dysfunction often leads to an internalized sense of being unworthy of the acceptance and love that normally come when one is simply being open and vulnerable to friends and family. Because of this, seeking help and support in such an intimate way feels both unfamiliar and scary to most sex addicts. Instead, even when they are in a romantic relationship, they tend to seek what feel like emotionally controllable connections in the form of affairs, prostitution, porn abuse, and the like. Essentially, sex addicts use sexual intensity as a temporary distraction from and replacement for genuinely intimate support, care, affirmation, and love. In other words, sex addicts learn, usually very early on, to fill the emotional void in their lives by self-medicating with sexual fantasy and behavior, either alone or with others. To them, this feels like a far safer way of quieting their emotional needs than risking more intimate experiences that could result in a painful re-experiencing of what they grew up with (rejection, criticism, abandonment, and the like).

For sex addicts, sex is not about emotional intimacy or even physical pleasure. Instead, sex addicts use escapist sexual fantasies and behaviors to cope with (dissociate from) emotional discomfort, life stressors, and the pain of underlying psychological conditions like depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, attachment deficit disorders, and unresolved childhood or severe adult trauma. (By the way, alcoholics and drug addicts use alcohol and drugs for the same basic reasons.) Unfortunately, hypersexual behaviors often cause feelings of guilt, shame, and remorse – further emotional discomfort – especially when those behaviors harm others or go against the addict’s moral code. This exacerbates the addict’s underlying issues, often leading to more frequent and progressively more extreme sexual behaviors. This downwardly spiraling cycle is characteristic in all forms of addiction, not just sex addiction, especially when the addictive behavior leads to external consequences such as damage to or loss of relationships, career, family-life, physical and emotional health, etc.

As is the case with other forms of addiction, biochemical processes in the brain factor into the development and maintenance of sexual addiction. Essentially, certain stimuli (sex, alcohol, drugs, etc.) cause the release of dopamine and other pleasure-inducing neurotransmitters into the brain’s rewards center (the nucleus accumbens), resulting in a sensation of enjoyment. Other parts of the brain – primarily the areas in charge of memory, mood, and decision-making – take note of this, remembering that sex (or drinking, taking drugs, etc.) is fun and encouraging a repeat performance. Unfortunately, vulnerable individuals sometimes learn that the easiest way to feel better is to feel less – to “numb out” through a pleasure-inducing behavior or substance. Over time, triggering the brain’s pleasure response can become a go-to coping mechanism for any and all uncomfortable emotions, even something as seemingly benign as boredom.

Interestingly, rewards pathways in the brain can be triggered not just by the addictive behavior or substance, but by anticipation of using that behavior or substance. Consider a drug addict driving to his dealer’s house. Isn’t he high already, even though the drug is not yet in his body? After all, his pulse is elevated, his palms are sweaty, and his decision making is already impaired. This is doubly true with sex, as sexual fantasy provides an “anticipatory high,” an elevated neurochemical state of dissociation that is actually the driving force behind the addiction. In essence, this extended emotional buzz is the “substance” that sex addicts use to temporarily escape and numb out. As such, orgasm is not the point of sex addiction. In fact, orgasm ends the sex addict’s high. Because of this, sex addicts often delay this event for hours or even days while acting out. Thus we see that sexual addiction, like other behavioral addictions, is more about the process of looking, seeking, searching, and planning than the act itself.

In sum, sexual addiction is most often caused by a multi-determined, deeply complex psychological history, often traumatic, in which an individual learns that being vulnerable with intimate others is not only unlikely to lead to his/her emotional needs being met, it may lead to rejection, abandonment, abuse, and other emotional pain. Thus the individual learns, usually during his or her formative years, to utilize seduction, manipulation, and ultimately sex as a means of temporarily filling emotional needs and/or avoiding the pain of unmet emotional requirements. Over time, the individual establishes a pattern of using sexual fantasy and behavior as a primary coping mechanism, eventually becoming addicted. Many sex addicts report having begun their compulsive sexuality as early as 9, 10, or 11 years old, though such concerns usually don’t take on a life of their own until late adolescence or adulthood.

 

Robert Weiss LCSW, CSAT-S is Senior Vice President of Clinical Development with Elements Behavioral Health. 

Pornography Addiction Can Be As Alluring As Drugs

The Internet has provided increased convenience with access to information, shopping and financial management, but there are negatives as well, including online gambling which can lead to compulsive behavior, and the same is true for pornography.

In prior decades, a minor pornographic curiosity could be quelled by the embarrassment of having a postal worker delivering a magazine subscription, or by having to purchase from a convenience store clerk. Now online pictures and enticing banner ads tempt even those that logged on to the computer with no intention of exploring pornography.

Online pornography sites are having a huge effect on teens and pre-teens. The average age at which youth are first exposed to pornography is getting younger, with current averages at 11 or 12 years old. Many of these cases involve children that logged on to a computer to do school work or something equally harmless when a suggested video pop-up appeared on the border of the web page which tempted their curiosity. A simple click led to a compulsive urge to see more of the same.

For many teens, the problem gets so out of hand that they require intervention, but shame and embarrassment prevent them from telling anyone that pornography has begun to take over. For others, the need for help may be acknowledged, but they may lack the financial resources to receive the treatment they require.

While the recognition of pornography addiction as a diagnosis has not been accepted by the medical and mental health community, the large number of individuals that are addicted to viewing pornography testify to the need for the problem to be addressed.

An earlier study appearing in Pediatrics showed that in recent years 42 percent of teens had viewed pornography online. Of those, 66 percent had not wanted to view the material. Those numbers continue to rise.

One major concern of those treating teens for pornography-related problems is the increasingly violent content that is available online. Many of the scenes in the most popular pornography videos included violence, such as spanking, gagging, kicking or hair-pulling. Most of the time that violence was against women.

Recent studies have found that when teens watch violent pornography content they are six times more likely to engage in behavior that is sexually aggressive when compared to teens that had not viewed violent pornography.

Experts note that while not all pornography is equal, both violent and non-violent types can lead to trouble for teens. The teen brain is rapidly developing, and the constant flood of dopamine that accompanies addictive behaviors can create pathways that make it difficult for the teen to redirect their behavior patterns.

Parents should no longer rely on one major talk about sex to introduce their children to the “birds and the bees.” Rather, an ongoing dialogue that addresses sexual topics on a deep level is recommended to help teens navigate the temptations that are often hovering in the margins of the Internet.