Understanding my Porn/Sex Addiction

Advice & Questions
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My therapist thinks I’m still not fully accepting of the fact that I’m a porn/sex addict.

I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot the last few days, trying to get my head around it.
I recently started going to local SAA meetings, I’ve been clean for coming up to 120 days, I did a disclosure and came clean to my ex-GF about my addiction and more specifically the ways in which I acted out, I have trusted my therapist with things that I’ve told no one else, I feel like I’m giving my recovery more time and effort than ever before…

But she still said I don’t seem to have fully accepted the fact that I’m a porn/sex addict.

One of the main thoughts I’ve been mulling over is around my understanding of addiction, and my understanding of free-will/choice/whatever you wanna call it.
I’ve been really beating myself up over my infidelity when I was with my ex-GF. I hate that I cheated on her. At the time I tried to justify it to myself because it was cybersex so it “didn’t count”, but that was just the addiction digging it’s claws deeper into me and making it easier for me to act out in this way.
Where my confusion comes is when I try to process what I’ve done.
Was I powerless to the addiction and the cybersex was something that I was unable to control?
That explanation just seems to me like a weak excuse for me to be unfaithful to my partner and avoid accountability because actually I was/am a bad person?

I think maybe this inner conflict, not wanting to just chalk my behaviour down to being addicted, could be why I don’t appear to have fully accepted being a sex/porn addict.

Don’t know if that little ramble makes sense, or if anyone else has experienced similar thought processes. Found it kinda hard to put into words…

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It does make sense and I think it’s honourable of you to not externalise and blame “the addiction” for what you did while in active addiction. I see that a lot, giving it a name, calling it a demon or bad ghost or whatever and while it may help keeping the cravings at bay and not give in when tempted, it does zero to help us understand ourselves and what actually happened. Which I think is what you’re trying to do and what is necessary to outgrow addictive behaviours.

We numb and try to escape uncomfortable feelings w compulsive behaviour. Sexual substance shopping, doesn’t matter. To accept responsibility in a meaningful way for me would mean to be commited to the journey of self-exploration and going deep into the discomfort that will come up for example in therapy. And especially w sexual addictions I think it also means to feel into what the loved ones might have felt whose lives were ruined and trust was broken. To grow empathy and integrity where that narcissistic disregard of another’s boundaries ruled before.

I think from your post you’re on the right way. A label will only get you so far. The actual work goes way way beyond that. Good luck!

PS can recommend the podcast Sex, Love, and Addiction by Dr. Rob Weiss.

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This has nothing to do with you being a good or bad person. Addiction is not a good or bad thing.

Addiction is a chronic health problem, like diabetes or cancer. Diabetes and cancer are also not good or bad things. Good and bad are moral judgments. There’s nothing immoral about having diabetes, and there’s nothing immoral about having an addiction.

I am powerless to my diabetes in the sense that no matter what I want to do with my willpower, I cannot force my pancreas to generate insulin. It just doesn’t do that, and it hasn’t done that since I was a teenager (which is when my diabetes started). My pancreas will never make insulin of its own ever again.

No one would call me weak for using research-informed treatment for my diabetes. I speak with my diabetes nurse and my diabetic specialist doctor, and I follow the course of treatment they prescribe. I join diabetic nutrition groups. I attend seminars. I exercise. I take insulin. All of which helps me keep my diabetes under control.

I am powerless over my addiction in the sense that no matter what I want to do with my willpower, my default setting as a sex addict is to make lust the centre of everything (just like my default setting as a diabetic is to have elevated blood sugars, which I can only treat with insulin). My default is I want to feed my lust, and I return to that condition if I neglect my recovery. If I neglect to attend meetings, my lust gets louder. If I neglect to cultivate and maintain relationships with other people in recovery, my lust gets louder. If I fail to hold myself accountable to external people in recovery, for me, my lust takes centre stage.

Lust wants to be at centre stage. It wants me to think the power is inside me, because then I can pick and choose what I want to do or not do (which is exactly what I did in my addiction: whatever I want). Lust will never admit that the power to change my direction and myself comes from outside me. The power does not come from inside me.

If I say “it’s weak to admit powerlessness”, then that’s my pride and my wilfulness speaking. That’s not wisdom and that’s not helpful. I want myself to be the centre of everything; I want myself to be the solution to everything; the solution has to come from me. (I have to have power.) That’s pride and lust - self-gratification - that is not wisdom and it is not recovery.

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Thanks for your reply, it still feels like it’s early days for me in my recovery journey, and there’s still a lot for me to learn and figure out.

Sitting in bed writing this comment I’m thinking back to when I first started trying to give up the porn and the cybersex, and started therapy. I do think I’ve come a long way. Got rid of one therapist who turned out to give some pretty damaging advice, but my current therapist is so lovely, really empathetic and knows her shit! I’m now at the point where rather than dreading the therapy sessions, I can’t wait till the next one!

Thanks for the podcast suggestion, I’ll deffo have a listen to it, big fan of podcasts on long drives.

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Thanks Matt, my therapist said the same thing in my most recent session, that addiction is a health issue not a moral issue.

I kind of get it but at the same time it raises more questions, kind of the same as the whole powerlessness thing…
If the addiction is a health issue, and I’m powerless against it, then how can I claim responsibility and accountability for my actions, when I was in active addiction, which have caused such destruction and hurt to the woman who I love and care about?

Further on the powerlessness, I kind of get what you’re saying about the default lust setting and comparing your addiction to your diabetes, but surely there’s some degree of power? I’ve made the decision to sober up, get help, go to therapy, start going to SAA meetings, if I was powerless against the addiction how could I do any of that?

I’m not trying to pick an argument, I just genuinely don’t understand some of the terminology around sobriety and addiction.
I do appreciate you taking the time to write out your responses and for trying to help, I am clearly struggling to get my head around some of these concepts!

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I think you’re definitely on the right track. Perhaps it would make more sense if you figured all pornography is some kind of cybersex. I don’t think it really matters if it’s on a website instead of in your text messages, it’s fundamentally intended to be treated as if it’s in the flesh anyway. Good luck, it’s way worth it as I’m sure you can tell at 120+ days in now. Stay the course, and whatever you do: do not tap out.

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You are fixated on one narrow assumption about what responsibility is, and as a result you are blind to the much wider world of what responsibility actually can be. (You are making assumptions that are not true, and it is keeping you stuck.)

Here are our basic premises:

  • addiction is a health issue, like diabetes
  • treatment is external: I cannot “willpower” my diabetes to disappear, and I cannot “willpower” my addiction to disappear; that is not how it works; the treatment for the condition is something I need to learn and practice, under the guidance of experienced people
  • it is unreasonable to expect that I should focus my energy on something I cannot do, so no reasonable person is expecting me to overcome this on my own, without external input

All that is very common sense, and not very emotionally heavy. The next set of observations is where it starts getting heavy.

I once drove my car while in a hypoglycaemic episode, with my wife in the passenger seat. It was scary and she was terrified. I came to with a police officer helping me out of the car. I am thankful to everything in the universe that no one inside or outside the car was injured, and the car was not damaged.

How do I take responsibility for that? I am powerless over having diabetes, but I am not helpless. (Powerless and helpless are not the same thing.) I chose at that point to visit my diabetes nurse and doctor much more regularly - every three months - and changed my insulin and my diet. Since then, I have never had a hypoglycaemia problem while driving.

It was almost ten years before I verbally apologized for that. Before that, I lived my amends in my behaviour. I surrendered my previous habits (of eating and other diabetes management / mismanagement), and made changes. The behaviour changes - most importantly, the humility to say my life is broken and I need help; what I’m doing is chaos and I need to learn a different way to live; the willingness to be contrite, admit I don’t know a damn thing, and surrender to an external source of guidance, to help me find my way - that behaviour change, is the responsibility.

All of that is surface stuff. You haven’t done anything real yet. You haven’t actually surrendered anything that makes you vulnerable or scared.

You haven’t faced what is deep down, below the surface. You are still just going through the motions. It’s like you’re following instructions on a map: go here, then here, then here. You still don’t know why you’re lost. You don’t know where you started, or where you’re going; you don’t know what journey you’re on, or why.

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From personal experience and what I know about psychotherapy, there is a degree of unwillingness to go to be expected. If we assume we are going to face the things we’ve tried to hide from ourselves by distracting ourselves w our powerful addictions, w the level of compulsion and degree of depravity (going against our own morals) relative to the extremity of our need to escape our pain, it only makes sense we don’t wanna go and we don’t wanna face out stuff. It’s natural. If you find yourself dreading again, this could be why.

I just wanna reiterate that while useful in some ways, the metaphor of disease for addiction is limited, like all metaphors, and while it illuminates the similarities it will hide differences between the things it likens if over-employed.
Addiction is LIKE a disease in some ways, outlined by Matt above.
It is not truly a disease and it is NOT LIKE diseases in many other ways which to understand is significant for recovery. Diabetes and cancer can hit anyone, sometimes the most healthy living folk get lung cancer, and diabetes you’re born w, it’s got nothing to do w the life you’ve lived or the person you are. If you’re only just born you’ve not lived any life yet.
Addiction ALWAYS has to do w the person that you are. Both the fact you got addicted and what type addiction you have. No two stories are alike, and no recovery can supplement another. We each and every one have to go through our individual journeys to uncover our pains and resolve the conflicts were hiding from. There is no operation and no medicine, it’s personal.
Another p like me might have turned to drink or eating or gone mad had I had your life or you mine, while another might just have been able to process whatever you couldn’t and not gotten any ill consequences or maybe a million years later or whatever. Addiction is not random.
This doesn’t mean that it’s your fault or not your fault. The fault question is different from understanding and recovering and sometimes it’s not useful at all to think of fault or whatever, or necessary. But addiction is a psychological function. And to overcome it eventually you must learn what that function was, what you needed it for, and fulfill it yourself or chance such that the need doesn’t any longer exist. Or the needs cos it’s never one thing or one action we can take to exchange it. It’s a long process and I agree w Matt here, you’re right at the beginning of it all. Now is not the time to claim you’ve changed like this or achieved this and that yet, now is the time to learn and seek and try to open yourself up. Which is how I understood your post mostly, grapply w responsibility, it’s a valuable thought and uncomfortable. So I encourage you to keep thinking and feeling uncomfortable things.

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Thanks for your help.
I’ll be honest it feels like so much information to take in, so much to learn. I’ve kept coming back to your reply, reading it, re-reading it. It’s important to me to understand these things, I often get tripped up by the definitions, to me powerlessness and helplessness appear to be synonymous but here you describe them as different things.
There’s certainly more work that I can do. I need to be braver in the SAA meetings, ask for a sponsor who can help guide and support me through.
Having said that, I have fully committed to therapy. I appreciate you trying to help, and perhaps I’m misreading your tone, but I have told my therapist things that no one else knows, things I felt incredibly vulnerable and terrified to share. So it felt a bit blunt of you to suggest I am not facing what is deep within me.

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I think initially the unwillingness was down to me still being in active addiction and only half arsing trying to stop. Since I’ve been on a bit of a longer sober “streak” and feel like I’m actually in recovery, it’s been way easier to go because I know that the sessions make me feel better and are doing me good.
I’ve got a good working relationship with my therapist and feel like I’m now past the point of worrying about being judged for what I say, I can just open up and really work on getting better.

Absolutely agree with you that the solution for addiction is with figuring out what need(s) it was trying to fulfil, and fulfil them in a healthy positive way. Treat the cause, not the symptom.

I know I’m still in very early days, I’m absolutely not trying to claim I’m cured of my addiction. I think I have seen some changes since I first started attempting to quit porn/sex addiction, and that is positive, but there’s still a lot to uncover, figure out, and heal from.

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It is a lot of information. It took me 20 years to get this far into the jungle; it won’t take me 20 years to get out but it’s definitely not gonna happen overnight. :innocent: There is a lot for me to learn.

The important thing at this point is to recognize that power and responsibility are two different things. Take a tree for example. A tree has no power of its own. All its power comes from the sun. A tree does have responsibility though. Its responsibility is to turn its leaves to the sun, and make use of the power it gets by turning to the sun. (The powerless/helpless contrast - you can be powerless without being helpless (helpless = incapable of taking constructive action in a given situation) - helps some people to see this, but for others it doesn’t click; if it isn’t helpful for you, forget about it, it’s not a big deal.)

That’s great! Getting into the Steps will help you unravel deeper psychological chains, and will help you take meaningful accountability for your actions, and begin a lifelong transformation to a mindset and behaviours of service. Everyone at that meeting will understand. No one is going to judge you; the only prerequisite for attending those meetings is you need a desire to be sober.

I was blunt and dismissive above, and that was not fair to you, and not helpful. I am sorry. I should not have said that.

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