Maddening: A Sex Addiction Story

**Warning, this post contains explicit material**

“On Monday we had sex in the parking lot in my vehicle. We texted about it on Tuesday. He didn’t erase the messages, which is rule number one when you’re being shady. 

Wednesday at 1am, my phone started ringing.

It was his number. What the fuck!  I thought it was a butt dial. So I silenced it. I saw it again. I silenced it again. My husband woke up. He asked what was going on, if everything was okay. I said, ‘Yeah, I don't know… just a random number,’-  quickly erasing the contact name from my phone. 

And then another number started calling. And calling. But I had silenced my phone and turned it over so it wouldn’t light up anymore. There were ten phone calls. My whole body was shaking and I was nauseous. I turned away from my husband, he fell back to sleep. But I couldn’t sleep. Because I knew.”

Everything was about to fall apart. 

I meet my friend Lara on a sunny February day in Orlando, Florida. We’ve known each other for almost thirty years now, and so our conversation starts fast, as soon as I open the door. We’re talking over each other, catching up, laughing as we move into the living room and curl up on my friend’s big comfy couch. Lara and I met as children, our fathers worked together, our mothers became friends, and we’ve flitted in and out of each other’s lives as time and circumstances allowed, and we’ve been there for each other during the rough patches - major illness, heartbreak, the fracturing of families. Lara makes me laugh until my sides hurt, and makes a scone so perfect it will take you through anything. I’m not exactly known for my kitchen skills, but I’m very good at listening lovingly and ordering in. We make a good pair.

Over the years, Lara and I have often talked about almost everything. Today, however, she’s opening up to me about something new, something we’ve never discussed before. Lara is addicted to sex. Lara is addicted to sex and it caused her to lose her home, her marriage and her children. Sex made Lara’s entire life fall apart.

So often our bodies seem to fail us. They don’t work the way we want them to, they don’t look the way we desire. They break, they feel pain, they fall apart. And sometimes we fail our bodies. We neglect them, we abuse them, we risk their safety. I look at my friend on this February day - I hug her, I hold her hand, I put my arm around her shoulder - and I listen to her as she explains the pain and the shame that her body has gone through.

“Sex was a drug. And I searched for that high over and over and over and over again. I put myself in situations that were unsafe for me. I risked getting arrested. I went to some person’s house while his wife was at work and had sex in their bed. That's not the person I am. It was the person I became. And every time - every fucking time, Carly – there was this awful, awful, awful feeling of, You're disgusting, you’re shameful. How could you do this? Why would you be this person that you hate? Tears, guilt, feelings of disgust. I'm never going to do this again. Oh my god, okay, I’m never doing this again.

And then.

Ping!

A little text comes. The high once again completely takes over. You lose sight of your reality and everything that's important. Because nothing is going to make me feel better - the pain I have inside, nothing is going to fix it until I go and have sex.” For much of her life, Lara felt broken. Sex was the only thing that felt like healing.

Lara’s sexual experiences started at a relatively young age. I remember a picture of her at fifteen. She’s standing in front of her high school locker in Glendale, California. She’s wearing dark lipstick; heavy eye makeup and her eyebrows are so thin they look drawn on. Her long brown hair - curly and crunchy with hairspray - cascades down the back of a black dress that is very cute, but very short. Like almost every fifteen year old in the history of time, Lara is desperately trying to look older than she is. Despite her best efforts, however, her baby face peeks through. She’s a kid. Her eyes are narrowed in defiance, her lips pursed with sass – and Lara has always had sass. But you can see by the hunch of her shoulders, the way her arms curl around her body and shield her from the camera, Lara is a teenager full of insecurities.

“Growing up, I was made fun of a lot, for my weight.” She tells me. “I always just felt like I didn't fit in because I was the fat girl. I was the, ‘You’re cool as a friend, but…’ I wasn't the sexy girl. I was the cool chick who liked to bullshit - but not to date. God forbid anybody admit that they're actually attracted to a bigger girl – they’d be shunned. I just wanted to be loved. I wanted to be accepted.”

You look at this picture in front of the lockers - of this beautiful young girl trying to fit in - and you wonder: was this the day some asshole made her suck his dick after French class?

Lara shakes her head, “It's crazy because every time I tell the story - to my therapist, and when I'm telling you now - it sounds so weird, but I can smell and taste, it's so vivid.

“I had just recently turned fifteen. It was a boy that I had a crush on. He knew the ropes and coaxed me into thinking that this was a really good idea. Because of course it benefits him, right? This becomes a theme for me.

So we’re in French class and our desks are facing each other. You know when guys put their tongue in the side of their cheek [to mime a blow job]? And he says, ‘After class?’ and mouthing to give him head. I'm trying to be like, Oh yeah, I totally know about this. I have no fucking idea. Scared to death. But not really thinking it's going to happen, just saying, Yeah, totally, okay.

And then he waited for me, after class. I was thinking, Go, go, go, go. Please, leave now. No, he waited.”

They stood in a hidden alcove outside of the classroom and Lara tried to get out of what was about to happen, “I said no. And I finally said, ‘I don't know what to do, I've never done it!’ And he says, ‘Oh, I’ll teach you.’ I was like, ‘Oh gosh! What a great experience!”

Lara shakes her head, “I was trying to kiss him because I'm still…I felt like that was my last time when I was still trying to find some normalcy. And he kind of was kissing me, but kind of also pushing my head down because we're standing and he's clearly not wanting to kiss me. He was there for one thing, and one thing only. And he says, ‘Just kiss it, just kiss it. That that's all you have to do.’ And I thought, I can do that.

And he's unbuttoning his pants and I’m awkwardly thinking, Do I crouch? Do I kneel? I don't know what the fuck to do. Do I just bend over? Maybe I just lean down? I'm not sure. And that’s when the head pushing started coming out.” He pushed her head down, “And I kissed it. And I looked up at him, almost so proud, I did it! Yay! Okay, cool.  And he's says, ‘Just…just lick it. Just put it…’ you know and continued with the progression.

So I ended up, you know, giving him head. When he came in my mouth I thought, I don't know what to do with this, so I just swallowed it. And so that's how I became a swallower. Because I thought, This is messy stuff. Where am I going to put it? And so that of course was one more thing for me to pride myself on, because guys love that shit, right?

So that's how all that began. It felt very dirty. I felt very used; he wasn't even really acknowledging me throughout school.”

But Lara kept doing it, almost every day after class, until one day she saw him with another girl. All of a sudden Lara understood she wasn’t the only one providing this service. The next time he looked at her across the classroom and mimed the romantic tongue-pushed-into-cheek movement, Lara nodded along. “And then I left him there. I stood him up. I just left class and I fucking hauled ass and I left him there. And in my mind I thought, Suck your own dick.

“But somehow that experience didn't deter me. It was very strange, that feeling of being used and feeling dirty was almost like a drive to make it better. Maybe I wasn't doing a good job giving him head, and that's why he didn't want to be my boyfriend or kiss me. Maybe I just need to up my game. Maybe I need to be better. It’s clearly my problem.”

Thus started the seeds of Lara’s addiction. “I started giving head to random dudes. We would meet some guys out and maybe my friend knew one. And then I'd be giving head to his friend. Because that's what you do when you meet. That's how you get to be liked.”

Lara found herself backed into a corner of insecurity, needing to prove her value again and again with sex. She describes it as a bucket with a hole in the bottom. “I'll pleasure you, that way you’ll think I'm amazing. And you'll give me more compliments about how sexy I am, how beautiful I am, how wonderful I am. And I will keep giving to you. Because I have this monster that needs to be fed.

“I was scared to have sex. I almost had sex twice. I mean like pants off almost. Then I would say, ‘No I can't do this. But I’ll suck your dick.’ ‘Okay!’ That was just my thing.”

But then Lara met Mike.* “Once I was with him the world had no other men. None.” No more blow jobs with random guys, no more searching for her value in endless hookups. Lara was in love. “I put him on a pedestal that was so high no ladder could reach. He was it. Oh my God, this guy.  I just adored him. We laughed, we had fun together, we went everywhere together. We were inseparable.” Lara lost her virginity to Mike at fifteen. Almost immediately she became pregnant with their son. Mike moved in with Lara and her parents. They had a baby boy, and they became a family.

Lara starts to cry, “I remember the moment - we were in my parent's kitchen on Ethel Street in Glendale, California. And Mike looked at me and he said, ‘I just don't love you as much I used to.” The boy who rescued her from a sea of insecurity stood on his pedestal only a month after their baby was born and took it all away. “I swear I spent the next twenty-two years trying to recapture what we had,” Lara sobs. I hear myself dismissing Lara’s pain even as I say it, “You spent years trying to recapture what you had from when you were sixteen? Because of a teenager’s comment?” “Yeah. I did,” she cries. “I wanted it back so bad. He was still on this pedestal because if I could just be good enough. If I could just be whatever he needed me to be, then he would love me again like that.”

Lara had gone from a young teenager experimenting with dark makeup; to a young mother trying to hold on to her man. And she did. Lara and Mike had another son. They got married. They had a daughter. Still, Lara never felt good enough. She turned to food for comfort and her weight skyrocketed. Sex with Mike was about earning love and value, but when she looked down at her body all she could see was failure. Any love or value she earned quickly vanished. She was still the fifteen year old, insecure in a body that wouldn’t be what she wanted it to. Lara explains that in her shame, she could barely look up at the world around her. She ate, she took care of her kids, she sought approval from Mike and she moved through a cycle of self-hatred, her head still pushed down all these years later.

And then a series of events happened in Lara’s life: She had a daughter. She discovered that a close family member was sexually abusing another close family member and was forced to step in and almost single-handedly manage the situation. Her close-knit extended family fractured and fell apart as a result. And Lara realized she was about to turn thirty. Was it all of these factors? One? Something else entirely? Lara’s not sure, but “A switch flipped in my brain, it was really weird. I thought, I cannot be almost four hundred pounds anymore. I have to do something. It became easy for me. I started losing weight and just feeling better about myself. I was going for walks and finally picking my head up to see what was around me.  And so of course, enter Rico Suave, stage right.”

He was a coworker at Publix. He told her she was pretty. “For the first time in fourteen fucking years I listened.” It was nothing, a flirtation. But then she found herself making sure she looked nice for work, and then she was coming early, staying late. And then one day: a kiss. He felt like the most romantic guy in the world, made her feel beautiful, sexy, wanted. Lara had lost weight, she had gained confidence, but to her, she was a long way from feeling worthy on her own. She shakes her head, “In hindsight I was sticking out like a neon sign, Please I will do anything you say. Please tell me good things about myself because I will fall for it.” Soon they were making out behind the unpacked cereal cartons between shifts. “That was my first affair.” They never had sex. They were working up to it, but Mike caught her - leaned up against her car making out in the dark Publix parking lot. “I begged him not to leave, I was crying. I remember sitting on the front lawn and Mike said, ‘Well, how am I going trust you? And I said, ‘Well, I guess I'll leave Publix. Quit, that way there's no temptation.’ And right after I said that I remember thinking, You would continue this shit. And Mike said, ‘No temptation? So you would still fucking mess with this motherfucker?’ And I said, “No, no, no, no.’ But really in my brain, Yeah I would, yeah I would.

“Because it was a drug. That affair was my gateway drug. The high that I felt was like…I mean I would assume like the first fucking line of coke somebody does, right? Just like holy shit that was amazing.” Lara felt confident, she felt beautiful, she felt wanted, she felt in control. And she couldn’t get enough of it. Lara went from fourteen years of fidelity to a steady string of affairs - sex with men she knew, sex with men she didn’t know, sex in public places, sex at work. Sometimes she went months, sometimes she barely went a day. The search for a new sexual experience, however, was always on her mind.  “But come on!” she says. “People just like to have sex, right?

“Sexual addiction is not about sex,” Lara explains. “Which is very counterintuitive. It would be like saying alcoholism is not about alcohol. Well, it's really not. Sexual addiction is about your choice of coping mechanism. Sexual addiction is about how you choose to numb your pain.” Lara wasn’t out there just trying to have fun. It was that monster that needed to be fed, like in high school. The bucket with the hole in the bottom. “And in reality I wasn't feeling pleasured,” she tells me. It was rare for Lara to have an orgasm, in fact. The euphoria that sex brought to Lara wasn’t from any pleasure that sex was bringing to her body. The high came from the feelings of control and validation.

Lara describes the cycle of her addiction. “The cycle of it is so fucking maddening. I went through these periods when everything was good. I hadn’t acted out. And then I would start to have a bad day. I'm feeling stressed. I feel fat. Probably nobody likes me. Everybody is just looking at me and thinking, Gosh, you're fat and you're disgusting. And so at the grocery store, for example, I would get into a sexual conversation with anybody. It was almost a challenge to see if I could get this person to kind of engage, because that gave me power. That gave me desirability. That proved that I was sexy enough, good enough, pretty enough.” For a moment Lara could forget about everything that made her feel small.

“Sometimes it was almost just like a game and I wouldn’t carry through with anything. I would leave them hanging, hungering for something. It made me have this power. It felt so good to be able to take a random guy from a store and make him desire me.” Sometimes she would leave them hanging. Sometimes she wouldn’t.

Lara did the same thing on social media. “She would take a sexy picture, post it online with a sexual innuendo and wait and see how many people told her how sexy and beautiful she was. Maybe there would be comments from a friend of a friend, a back and forth flirtation that turned into direct messaging. Eventually, for the men she met in person or online, there would be the exchange of phone numbers, the texting, the sexting and finally sex.

Lara met up to have sex anywhere she could - in cars, in public places, at work.  Lara opened herself up to people that were a risk to her and her family, she put herself in situations that were physically unsafe, she opened her body up to sexually transmitted diseases, she risked her job, she risked arrest, she risked her whole world. Lara explains that the feeling of texting with a man and knowing that you were driving him wild with desire made her feel invincible. “You just want more and more and more.” She knew exactly what these men wanted, if she gave it to them they would think she was worthy, they would tell her how wonderful she was - just like in high school. And Lara would be in control - over them, over herself, over everything. “I ended up going through the motions with all of these men,” Lara says. “Thinking, I know what you need and I can give it to you, but it's going to be on my terms. I'll tell you when I'm fucking showing up, right? But really honestly I better show up soon so that he still likes me.” Her control was, at best, fleeting. At worst, it was a complete delusion.

Reliably, after every sexual encounter, Lara felt immediate regret.

“You realize your actions are fucking ridiculous, and awful, and they make you feel like shit. And they're hurting other people, and they're hurting you. And so that's when you come down and you get into that low like, this is awful. But then ironically that starts your cycle again because of the self-loathing and the self-hatred, the shame. And then you need that high to get you back.

Lara experienced eight years of this. Eight years of the cycle, the up and the down, the hiding and sneaking around, the thrill of the chase, the self-loathing and shame. And then, finally, it all came tumbling down.  Lara was 38 at this point, and her latest sexual interactions were with with a married man at work. “On Monday we had sex in the parking lot in my vehicle. We texted about it on Tuesday. He didn’t erase the messages.” Tuesday night Lara received a dozen phone calls from two different phone numbers. his number and his wife’s. The man was absent from work the next day, and Lara spent it at her desk, fighting back tears, avoiding calls and threats from his wife, and terrified for her marriage. Lara looks at me and begins to cry, remembering, “I had this intense fear of, it sounds weird, but of literally not surviving if Mike left me. How can I live? I don’t know how to do this.” Coming home from work that day, all she wanted to do was see her kids. As Lara walked up the steps to the Central Florida home she shared with Mike and their three children - tired, teary, head hanging - she suddenly heard a honk from a car behind her. It was the man’s wife.

Everything slowed down. “I had been shaky, sick, distraught the whole day. But at that moment, when I turned around and saw her, the strangest calm came over my body. I can't even explain it. It was like Momma Bear mode because my kids were in the house. There was no fucking way that this lady was going to come anywhere near my house.”

Except she already had. “She had already knocked on my door and spoken to my children.” The woman had only asked for Lara or Mike, she hadn’t shared any information, but even that was enough for Lara. “The fact that she made contact with my children was my rock bottom,” Lara cries. “My cheating, my addiction allowed this woman to come in contact with my children. That's a feeling that carries a lot of shame. Because I pride myself on being a great mom. I feel like that's the one thing that I really did right.” The world of risk and drama that Lara exposed herself to on a regular basis was suddenly at her own doorstep. The thought that her innocent children could be caught up in it was gut wrenching. “How could I allow this? It was almost like something was shaking me, Do you see this?”

Lara stood with the woman in her front yard and listened as she gave Lara a choice: Call Mike on speaker phone and tell him what happened, or she would wait there until he got home and tell him herself. “I did not want Mike to have the additional humiliation of having to face somebody. So I chose to call him.” Lara sobs, “It broke my heart because he answered the phone as he normally would, ‘Hey Bean, how's it going?’

And I already knew this was my last shot at our marriage and I knew that it was over. I said, ‘There is a women in our driveway. She is the wife of one of the guys at work.’

And he said, ‘Okay...’  

And I said, ‘She will not leave until I tell you that I had sex with her husband.’

And he goes, ‘Why would she think that you had sex with her husband?’

And I said, ‘Because I did.’

And he said, ‘You motherfucker. Get the fuck out. Get the fuck out. Now.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ I didn’t shed any tears. There was no way I was going to let this woman see that. She felt so intrusive, which is ironic because obviously I was the intruder. But I don't know, I just had this protection. So I hung up the phone and I went in my house.”

Tears stream down Lara’s face as she describes walking into the house and seeing all three of her children waiting inside, “I just broke down and said, ‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I’m sorry.’ I said, ‘I made a really bad decision, Daddy is very angry, and I betrayed our marriage.” She told them she had to leave. Lara is a very hands-on mother. I ask her why she left, instead of Mike. “He asked if I wanted to stay at the house,” she explains. “But the level of shame that I felt, I felt very undeserving of that. Extremely undeserving of that. No matter how many times Mike has absolutely crushed me, I thought he was more deserving than me.”

Lara moved into a friend’s house and begged Mike to take her back. “I kept telling him, ‘Something's wrong with me. I need help and I need you to not throw me away. Please don't throw me away.’ The whole time he's just saying. ‘No, I can't. I will be your friend, but I cannot be your husband.’” Lara gets quiet, looks at me. “It's funny because it’s devastating to remember, to talk about. But it was seriously the best thing that happened to me. God. I think how unhealthy my life was.”

Lara knew she needed help, but she was asking for it from the wrong person. This help wasn’t going to come from Mike. It wasn’t going to come from a man. It was going to come from women, a group of them in fact. Lara was going to find redemption sitting in a folding chair at a random church with the most unlikely group of women she could imagine – women who looked like her rock bottom. Lara was going to find a place to heal not among women who were strictly just like her, but among women who were a little bit like the one standing in her driveway. Lara’s path to herself was in a room full of women who had been cheated on.

It started with a gentle suggestion from her friend at work, “I go to this group on Wednesdays for women who have been betrayed sexually in any form.” To Lara, this was a match. There were moments in her marriage when she felt sexually betrayed, it hadn’t been long since the sexual abuse in her family had been revealed, and then there was that fifteen-year-old girl, crouching outside her classroom, trying to find love. She agreed to go along. Lara starts to cry as she describes her experience, “It was the first time that I felt one hundred percent, and I mean one hundred percent, nonjudgmental, full acceptance for all of my brokenness. I told them my deepest darkest shit. Head down, feeling this shame that was brimming, like…beyond. And they said, ‘Hold your head up. And look at us.’ And it was just like, How? Your husband did the same fucking shit to you. How can I look at you?” How could she look at them? She was the other woman, the mistress, the vixen. She had gone to a group for the sexually betrayed and revealed herself as the sexual betrayer. She had sought help in a room filled with jilted wives.

“I really think they saved my life.” She says. “I really swear they did. Because I was in such a dark place. I had just lost my home. I didn’t know where to go. I had traumatized my kids. In my opinion, how do you get lower than that?” She told them her story and begged them to believe her when she said that she was a good person. And they did believe her. And then she began to believe herself, too. “They have totally transformed me,” she says.

Lara started to attend one-on-one therapy with the group facilitator. She moved into her own apartment. She began to come to terms with the fact that she has a sex addiction. And she started her recovery process. Eventually, as part of Lara’s recovery, she stopped all sex, even masturbation, for ninety days. After that it was a relearning process.

“I couldn’t even remember the last time I had sex because it was fulfilling for me. And that's what I had to learn. Sex is for intimacy and to be fulfilled and to be mutual and to be loving. And not you know, Choke me and pull my hair because that's hot, right? Treat me any kind of way. I had to relearn how to have sex that's actually meaningful. The way it's supposed to be” How do you relearn the rituals of sex? Not just the act itself, but the before, the after? How do you rewire the muscle memory that comes from years of abusing sex? A flutter of desire in your chest, when does it not flash to the blind euphoria of control? A twinge between your legs as you lay in bed afterwards, when does it not sting of shame?

For Lara it took hours and hours spent in weekly therapy and group sessions, personal work and reflection, and then, eventually, finding a loving, respectful relationship. “It's been a wonderful thing to have him come into my life,” she tells me. “His personality in general is so respectful, so kind. He doesn't judge me, ever. He knows that I'm good and I’m kind and he believes that with his whole heart and he makes sure that I know that. And he accepts me for exactly who I am. He has taught me a lot about my body and how it is beautiful, even though I may not like it today.”

Lara tells me that by using her body for things she was ashamed of, she was perpetually reinforcing her insecurities about herself and her hatred for her body. She didn’t like the way her body felt, the way it looked, the way it moved – “Then look what you’re using it for,” she would say to herself, “More bad shit. It’s just bad. You need to just be ashamed of it.” Now Lara’s challenge is to find peace within that body. “It's done amazing things for me,” Lara says. “And I grew three amazing people with it.” It’s a daily process, but Lara is learning to love who she is.

Mike and Lara have found a peaceful co-parenting relationship with shared custody of the kids. She’s still heartbroken that their marriage failed, but she’s happy for where she is now. “I would have never learned all of this about myself. I would have never met the man I’m with now, who has shown me such a different, non-judgmental kind of love. He is my lover version of group.” Lara still goes to group, still goes to therapy, still takes it a day at a time. “There's hope,” she tells me. “There really is. But you have to want it, and you have to put in the work. You have to be so serious and honest because sexual addiction is the opposite of honesty. It’s about hiding.” And Lara isn’t hiding anymore.