In families with rigid boundaries, there are no exceptions made to family rules. Rigid boundaries lead to isolation and a breakdown in communication. There is an atmosphere of either indifferent detachment or of tension and anger. Physical abuse may be present in these families.
Families with defuse boundaries do not have an understanding of where one person’s role and rights end and the role and rights of others begin. Parents are overly involved in every aspect of a child’s life. Husbands and wives have few if any individual pursuits. Children may be allowed to do what they want. Enmeshment is the norm.
Being raised in a family that does not have clear boundaries is one of the factors that can predispose a person to developing addiction.
Attachment refers to the emotional bonds that connect one person to another. Attachment disorder is an umbrella term that describes a person’s inability to develop normal, healthy bonds with other human beings. Healthy attachment bonds develop in early childhood and are the result of being raised in a nurturing environment. An attachment disorder may develop because of a number of factors, including moving frequently over a short period of time, changing caregivers often, the absence of one or more primary caregivers, unresponsive caregivers (such as a child crying and there is no one responsive to his or her cries), or profound neglect.
When a person is a sex addict and also suffers from an attachment disorder, he or she may turn to casual sexual relationships hoping for the neurochemical reinforcement that is present in a committed relationship. (Neurotransmitters, the source of this reinforcement, are chemical messengers that, among other things, regulate mood.) He may have an inability to rebound from disappointments or criticism. Consequently, he may look for acceptance from someone who is willing to be sexual with him—even if he has to pay for it.
I think that my mother’s trauma and my father’s inability to deal with it greatly affected their relationship with me. Is it possible that this lack of bonding contributed to the development of my sex addiction?
Yes, it is possible. It is healthy to recognize the possibility that the lack of attachment may have contributed to your sex addiction. If your parents were not emotionally available to you then that certainly has had a negative impact on your life. The question now is what are you going to do about it? You can choose to believe that you will always sexually act out because of the unresponsive parenting you received. Or, you can engage a skilled sex addiction therapist who has expertise in working with adults who have attachment disorders. We will look more at treatment in Part Two.
Abuse is often a factor in the development of addiction. Abuse can take many forms including sexual, physical, psychological, and religious abuse. Neglect intersects with abuse when there is a failure to protect children from being abused by others.
Jed’s Story __________________
Jed’s sexual acting out started when he was in grade school. When asked about his first sexual experience, he recalled that it took place on a campout with two other boys his age. Others had picked on him for as long as he could remember because he had some physical characteristics that were more common to girls than to boys. Jed welcomed the opportunity to go camping with two other boys because it seemed like he was being accepted as one of the guys, even though these boys were among those who had ridiculed him the most.
When evening came, the boys ganged up on him and forced him to engage in sexual acts against his will. As the night progressed he participated without being forced. That was the beginning of a lifelong fascination with forced sex. Through the years he spent thousands of hours fantasizing about being forced to be sexual. Sometimes he envisioned himself as the one forcing someone else to be sexual against his or her will.
As an adult, Jed sought out pornography involving bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism (BDSM). He started seeking out people he could pay to engage in BDSM behaviors and to abuse and humiliate him. Jed felt his sex life was a bit twisted, but until he got into therapy he never made the connection between his early sexual abuse and his sexual proclivities as an adult.
When I was ten, I found some soft-core porn magazines hidden in my father’s dresser . . . I would sneak them out and masturbate to the images every time I was home alone. How do I stop feeling guilty about doing that?
First, it is crucial for adults to recognize that having pornography that can be found by children is a covert form of child sexual abuse. Children are naturally curious. They will check out every nook, cranny, and “secret” place in their environment. If pornography is in the home, at some point a normal curious child will likely find it.
Unfiltered and unsupervised access to the Internet also puts children at risk of being exposed to pornography. The average age of first exposure to Internet pornography has commonly been reported to be age eleven. There is some evidence that this number is decreasing to as young as nine. However, protecting children from harmful Internet sites at home is not enough since access to the Internet is ubiquitous.
The original question concerned guilty feelings you have over childhood behavior. Healing begins with realizing that you were a child with a normal curiosity about sex. As an adult, it is time to recognize that you were a child and forgive that ten-year-old boy for doing things that ten-year-old boys do.
A person who is physically abused in their formative years is at risk of developing addiction or multiple forms of addiction as a coping mechanism.
I was brutally whipped by my father many times until I was a teenager. Could this abuse be partly responsible for my sex addiction?
Although we can never conclusively point to one factor or even multiple factors as the definitive cause for the development of sex addiction, we do know that physical abuse can contribute to it. Abuse like you describe is terrifying. Children may spend increasingly longer periods in fantasy to escape an abusive environment. Sexual fantasies are normal. Yet when a person spends hours a day indulging sexual fantasies, he or she is well on the way to developing sex addiction.
Both of my parents used to slap me a lot when I was a child. I don’t remember acting out sexually until I was about fifteen. Why didn’t I develop sex addiction earlier?
You said you don’t remember acting out sexually when you were much younger. What is your understanding of what constitutes sexual acting out? You may not have physically acted out until you were fifteen, but I wonder how much of your time was spent in sexual fantasy before that. Many people become caught up in fantasizing about sex long before acting out physically.
We know that not everyone who is abused develops addiction. The best we can do is to recognize that there are a variety of contributing factors.
Helen’s Story __________________
Helen’s earliest memories were of her mother telling her that she would never amount to anything. She was constantly being