 |
|
Larry Pesavento is a member of the TMC Advisory Council, a therapist, an author and the Founder of CHRISTOS - A Center for Men located in Cincinnati, Ohio.
"In 1993 Larry Pesavento started CHRISTOS men's center to help initiate a dialogue about how a man in this confusing, elderless world can find a sense of identity, place and pride. He had been counseling men for close to 25 years and learned from their struggles as well as his own. He then decided to write a book about the internal journey that a man must take in order to find a sense of peace and generativity. He felt called to write this book to share what he had learned as part of his own journey and struggle with manhood.
For more info about Larry Pesavento, visit his web-site, http://www
.christoscenter
.com/
E-mail:
MENSIGHT will publish a chapter each month and we would like for you to submit suggestions and discuss your opinions on our Men's Issues Forum.
|
|
Chapter 5 - Addictions: Life Behind the Wall (Part 3)
Process Addictions
When talking of addictions most men think only of substance addictions, like alcohol or illegal drugs. I have been talking primarily of substance addictions when talking of substituting feelings for people. 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. 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. There are no substances directly involved, yet substance addictions invariably tag along with process addictions. Our addictive society winks at process addictions, if they see them at all. Even many psychologists will 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 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.
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, such as the competition among men for women as 'trophies', has its origin in the world of the father. Sexual addiction still begins, primarily, in the world of the mother.
Sexual Addiction?
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 couldnÕt 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 painful. But I haven't heard of anyone dying from them.
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 covers a multitude of sins. Historically, the 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. Most of the problem is the result of a faulty sexual training manual.
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. 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 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 "hated being 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.
Sexual Trauma
Sometimes this addictive sexuality will come out in a more blatant way, because it is even more regressed. These are the more clinically significant problems that Patrick Carnes deals with. It is vital that a man realizes that these clinical addictions are most often the result of personal sexual abuse, or abuse in the man's family. Literally, all men have been sexually abused by a sexually obsessed patriarchy 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. The sexual abuse of women is taken very seriously in our culture, which it should be. Unfortunately, sexual abuse of men seems to be minimized or ignored.
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. The trauma causes a profound split between sexual pleasure and a loving relationship. When a trusted person is also an abuser the betrayal and manipulation severs the natural connection between sex and love. The betrayal also freezes a man emotionally at an early developmental stage. 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 abused cannot 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.
This more impersonal sexual conduct is what society understands as sexual addiction. These clinical addictions range from voyeurism and exhibitionism, to obtaining sexual pleasure from objects like women's clothing or materials like leather or rubber, to indecent touching, to compulsive use of prostitutes, to compulsive heterosexual and homosexual 'cruising', to incest, to child molestation. The defining mark of this addiction is the compulsive need to find comfort and feel powerful by using a person or thing. The ritual, like a fatal attraction, brings a man a sense of temporary relief while committing an act the man knows is destructive.
I do not include coercive sex such as rape or violent perversion in sexual addictions. For these are acts of violence rather than sex. The addictive feeling comes from the need for brutal power and revenge, not from the need for sexual comfort. This antidote to the feeling of powerlessness is at the far end of the spectrum of rage.
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 gotten 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 a loving situation.
Sometimes this man will be forced into sexual fantasy as his only comfort. Fantasy and masturbation 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 containing inside a sexual conflict between emotional intimacy and sexual excitement. 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.
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. My answer is actually much harder than abstention, yet much more ultimately satisfying. It has to do with looking at the whole relationship, as Bernie Zilbergeld explains. It has to do with the healing love between a mature man and a mature woman. It has to do with the journey toward manhood
Entrenched
When a man is so deeply damaged by a poor mothering experience, or by sexual or physical trauma, any addiction can be profound. He rarely, if ever, ventures beyond his walls. It is almost like the primary foundation of a man's life is so damaged that no next steps can happen. There also seems to be little anyone, including a good father, can do when a man has lived this emptiness so long. As Carl Jung talked about in one of his letters to the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, the only real answer is outside of human predictability and human psychology. The man needs a strong spiritual experience of the higher power for healing to start. As Jung said, speaking of a substance addiction, "You see, alcohol in Latin is spiritus, and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: Spiritus contra Spiritum."
A man so thoroughly entrenched behind walls needs to come to a healing experience outside the traditional context of the initiatory journey. He needs a profound reparative mothering experience to give him some hope to go on. Jung and AA talk of this experience coming directly from a higher power, as happens in the ordeal. A deep sense of emotional and spiritual hope needs to take place that gives a man trust that future pain has some meaning and purpose. Yet a man is far from ready to experience the initiatory ordeal of manhood.
Some psychologists, like Karen Walant, called attachment theorists, say that a counselor can provide this sense of deep acceptance and regard to heal the deep mother wounds. They talk of healing the results of profound deprivation or traumatic depression. The counselor, whether male or female, must be the good mother object to make up for the deficit a man has experienced. I believe that dedicated counselors and spiritual directors, who understand attachment problems and trauma, can help heal very deep wounds.
I also know that 12 Step programs, with their emphasis on the spiritual connection to a personal God, a God one personally experiences, somehow bring men and women to the profound experience needed to go on. The transformation has to do with accepting powerlessness, instead of finding ways to experience the illusion of power. It also has to do with finding comfort in a higher power, possibly the radiant, feminine face of God, rather than the dark mother. This is the spiritus that Jung talks about, the spirit that is most often imaged as feminine. Only with this transformation can the entrenched addict resume the rest of the initiatory journey.
I have often experienced that once a man has been in recovery, especially in an AA program, for at least a year he is ready to take up his initiatory journey and come to full initiation. He is then ready to separate from the regressive mother. The next steps in the initiatory process can then happen. As a psychologist I am always humbled before this mystery of how this formerly addicted man gets to my office ready to work.
A Way Out
Most addicted men are not entrenched behind walls. But they are scared and confused inside. And walls are too easy a refuge when things get tough. Since few of us are left unscathed by the addictive plague in our society, we are all in need of a way out of the dark mother's world. One answer to healing addiction is contained in this book. It is the same answer as a man finding his maturity. He must move away from the world of the mother. To be healed a man must start to find other, healthier ways for the young boy to separate from his addiction, his mother object. This is where the role of the father comes in.
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 usually 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 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 that a man can feel. He needs to explain, as Gregory Bateson did, that "addiction is a prayer gone awry." A good father points the way away from numbness and the deadening avoidance of pain. He helps a man to handle himself when he feels like he's going to explode from frustration and anger. He provides a witness that masculine maturity is worth struggling for. He also shows the boy how to negotiate the next steps into the world of the masculine.
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.
Larry Pesavento and MENSIGHT ask you to submit suggestions and discuss your opinions on our Men's Issues Forum.
Larry Pesavento ©2004
|
|
 |
