Monthly Archives: May 2022

Okay, I’ll make this entry relatively short lest ideas get lost in the mix, which is naturally a problem when issues are complex, as sex addiction is. There are many sides or aspects to the “is sex addiction an excuse” question, some of which I’ve referenced in other blogs so I’ll not repeat myself here. But so far the “excuse” question has not been the focal point of any particular essay so I’ve inadvertently buried the lede on this matter. Not any longer. Today I’ll express the point that gets some print in our book, even center stage in a later chapter that is about impacted partners. The book? Yes, you know, the one you’d know about if you had read any of the other essays on this blog. There’s only just over three hundred of them, after all. Take your time. What? Just write it again so you don’t have to read all of that. Well, you can get the title on any other entry of the last six months pretty much, but on the question at hand, here’s the deal as our current president would say: the sex addiction field is divided; that is split between forces that treat or advocate for sex addicts and those who more or less do the same for impacted or betrayed partners of sex addicts. I’m somewhere in the middle, having not gone to graduate school in order to change the world—meaning, I don’t consider myself an activist because my psychoanalytic stance, contrary to my writing, is not polemical in nature, though I do hold opinions activists tend to not like so they’d stick me in camps opposite to theirs anyway.

Here’s an example: I think that the “excuse” argument/position serves the defenses of both addicts and impacted partners, though because the excuse narrative is generally deemed a protection of the sex addict figure, my positing of an analogous excuse for partners will more likely annoy them as well as their activists. See, once again, the most strident among them think that sex addiction treatment is meant to be a unilateral challenge to the behaviors, attitudes, and underlying pathology of the addict, coupled with a dominantly supportive (meaning sympathetic) hand-holding exercise for the impacted-partner. This fosters splitting, a term that means something to psychoanalytic thinkers and less so to the public at large, much of which practices splitting on a daily basis. What is splitting? It’s binary thinking. It’s good/bad, perpetrator/victim; it is simplicity. It’s popular with those who covet simplicity because they haven’t the bandwidth for thinking when they are stressed. And they are frequently stressed so that creates a circular problem. Anyway, as I’ve suggested elsewhere, the first narrative is well known, and often true I might add: a person who calls himself an addict may do so to elicit sympathy, clemency from rightful consequences of their deceitful, disloyal behaviors (Judgy? No, I think that’s fair). Again, I think this “excuse” profile is a correct call out, but only for those who truly are dodging consequences, whether they are legalistic or not, and only pretending to take seriously their problems.

Now, to that other and much lesser spotted employment of the sex addiction “excuse”: How is sex addiction an excuse for an impacted partner of a sex addict? Well, firstly, consider and compare treatment feedback that addresses affair-seeking behavior versus sexually addictive behavior. Especially when the affair seeker is female, you would hear of a space yielded for a conflict resolution that recognizes a mutuality of relationship disorder; for a therapeutic process to touch upon relational issues, which by implication, both partners are equally responsible for. For evidence of this, read authors like Esther Perel or Alicia Walker who, in the shadow of a sex addiction field that aims treatment at men, assert ironies like “women are judged more harshly for their sexuality”. When the context is infidelity instead of addiction, one hears the so-called wayward partner saying things like, “I was lonely” or “I wasn’t getting my needs met”, and don’t be surprised if such positions appear legitimized by the neutral or activist authority that is the mental health intermediary. But if the affair-seeking is cast as a feature of sex addiction then all bets are off and the question of mutuality dissolves. Then responsibility falls squarely upon the addict while the impacted partner hears admonishments like, “his behavior is not about you”. This is why the label of sex addiction might (emphasis on “might”) be attractive to impacted partners, not just the would-be targets (sorry—subjects) of clinical intervention. What? You’re telling me that betrayed figures might choose a concept the ethos of which absolves them of any mooted “part” in the development of a problem? And lastly, might this potential secondary gain be one of the reasons why sex addiction has for many bumped the concept of infidelity to the curb as a condition of clinical concern?

Graeme Daniels, MFT