From Where I Sit

Sam (no real names or individual stories are used in this blog) was hooked on sex, he loved how sex made him feel. He said he was addicted to sex, and given that he didn’t have a regular partner he was hooked on sex with casual partners.  However upon talking with Sam it soon became clear that while he thought his addiction to sex was a problem, in fact it was actually a symptom of another underlying problem.

While Sam enjoyed having sex, what he enjoyed more, what he found more valuable to him was the feeling that came from the knowledge that someone had found him desirable enough to want to have sex with him.  For Sam sex was a surrogate for self-esteem.

It is not uncommon for sex to be a ‘currency’ for something else.  For some people sex is a confirmation of love between two people, a validation of being loved, for others it may be much more an expression of physical need.  Even within one couple the two partners may ascribe different meanings to the sex they are (or are not) having.  For Sam, having sex meant that someone found him desirable.  Sex, or more accurately, attracting partners was the main way Sam was keeping his self-esteem levels up.

This situation was a problem for Sam, and at some point is an unsustainable way for anyone to have lasting healthy self-esteem.  This ’self-esteem’ that Sam was pursuing, was not self-generated.  He was not so much feeling good about himself, as able to feel good about himself if someone gave him a sign that they found him OK.  In this way his self-esteem was forever reliant on external input.  When that input was no longer there, he had very little to fall back on, very little belief in his own self-worth, and therefore needed to pursue sex (or another person who was willing to have sex with him) to feel OK about himself.  If he didn’t find a partner for sex, (which was getting harder as he aged), he felt bad, but then even when he did find a partner, the buzz that came from ‘the catch’ was short-lived and wasn’t really fulfilling the need.

Sam needed new ways to feel good about himself, ways that relied on his own knowledge and understanding of who he was as a person, the things he stood for, the values he held, his accomplishments, his life.  Sam needed to generate esteem that was really self esteem, and stop relying on the positive feedback from other people as the only source of pride.  This is not to say he shouldn’t feel good if someone did find him desirable, but this is very different from seeking sex partners in order to feel good about himself.

By the way, if you’re having trouble getting past the sex addiction aspect of this story, you could equally substitute the sex in this story with craving compliments about the clothing we wear, the job we have, the car we drive, the address we live at, or any other way we get caught up in ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.

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