experts are still debating whether there really is the adicci’n on sex, but the truth is that compulsive sexual behavior deeply affects the lives of many people.
Sangita Myska, BBC journalist, interviewed many of them.
This is the case of a woman in United Kingdom, discovered by chance, after 20 years of marriage, her husband had a secret life.
I always thought that I had a very normal marriage. We had been together for several years before we get married, have been married for two decades and had children.
My spouse was a successful business man who was traveling far for work, so I spent much time alone, raising kids, but he came home all weekends.
I simply assumed that it was a very normal relationship. Always seemed happy when I was at home. Had no idea of what was actually happening.
But one day I had to go to his Studio to find something on your desktop and your laptop was open. He had never before reviewed it but screen showed e-mails and saw one that showed a reservation for a hotel in London, for the day after the date on which planned to go on vacation with some friends.
I thought: “that’s a little strange, why does it have reserved a hotel room?” It just seemed strange. I could not understand it.
I spent all day thinking about it. At night, when I was in bed, simply not couldn’t out me head. So I put together courage and asked him why he had a hotel reservation. And he did not respond.
Silence told me that there was something that was terribly wrong. It seemed that I spent an eternity. After what felt like half an hour – I suspect that they were probably more like two minutes – I got up and said to him: “What’s happening?”.
I can’t remember his exact words but he only said that he felt it and I was watching someone; at that moment, I grabbed my robe and went down the stairs. I could just stay in the same room. And I cried.
Finally he came down the stairs, sat opposite me and told me how much he felt it. He told me that he had started going to strip clubs a long and I had met a dancer in one of the clubs and who had booked the room to meet with her, in order to deepen the relationship.
There same I asked if they had had sex and he told me that no, that there had been only flirting, but nothing more.
I wanted to believe him. I think it was absolutely desperate to believe him. I was terribly angry but there was a part of me that thought, ‘well, we can fix this. This is just a middle-aged man, a moment of madness. We will overcome it”.
And as my friends were desperate for me to join them the weekend I thought that it would give me time to process my thoughts.
Not I told it to my friends. I wanted to save it for me. A few days were really very difficult. I slept very badly. I could not eat. Looking back, I’m not sure how it went forward.
When I got home we talked about much. There was much crying on my part.
But the truth is that I always felt that it was too much coincidence that simply had found me an email from a hotel booking before sexual intercourse took place. It was too much coincidence.
So I insisted that I look in the eyes and told me that he had not had sexual relations with this woman, something that could do. This was about two or three weeks after I found the e-mail.
He then admitted that there had been a sexual relationship and that he had been going for a few weeks or a few months.
I remember looking at this man whom I met all these years thinking: “How could you hide it? How could not give me does of something was wrong?”
You could not understand how the man who I knew had done what he had done, he was involved in something that just did not seem to match the character of the person I knew.
None of that made sense, so I went in search of more pain: I started to review all your emails.
I found other reservations which were prior to the dates he had given me. And after go back until a couple of years, I discovered that some appointments not coincided with his story of how much time had been watching this woman.
The turning point came one day when we went out to walk. I simply said: “I have to know it all. I’m going to keep pushing and I’ll keep pushing because I do not think that you know everything.”
I threatened by looking at bank statements and check all your emails. I told him that I really needed to know the truth.
He replied: “Are you sure you want to take this route?” At that moment I thought: “Oh, there is much more than that”. But he had no idea of how devastating that would be what was revealed to me.
He told me that he had been paying for sex prostitutes along throughout our marriage. He also saw much pornography, sometimes for hours. And he went to strip clubs, sex clubs and sex cinemas while traveling abroad.
Not told to anyone. One or two friends noticed that he was more quiet and asked me if it was OK, but I always had an excuse: “I’m tired, I’m not sleeping very well, it must be the menopause…”.
I was embarrassed by what had happened. I wondered what people would think when counted them, what they would think of Dan, what they would think of me. I assumed that people would judge our marriage and think that it was a fake marriage.
Also I felt that people would think that it was not good enough for him, nor the beautiful enough, or sufficiently sexy.
I’ve always been a relatively safe person. It was not the type of woman that made the nails every week or got botox. I am middle-aged, I am a little overweight, I’m getting older, I have wrinkles, but I thought that it was normal for my age.
But this completely destroyed my self esteem. I wondered if he was a fun person with whom to be.
I started to wear more makeup and make sure to see me as best as possible. Had already lost some weight because I took enough time go back to eating normally.
I bought some new clothes, went to the hairdresser more often, and put me a little bit of botox.
But also believed that there was something wrong with him in his psyche: a disease. I thought that he needed help and that he needed help from me.
When I went to the clinic and they told me that their behavior was probably a sex addict, I believed it to me and I thought: ‘great, there is a tag for this, is sick. There is something wrong with it”.
I believe that because then I can continue convincing me that “no, you did not have anything to do with it, it was going to happen anyway”.
But he returned a time of a therapy session and told me that he wasn’t sure that was a sex addict or if had simply made bad decisions.
I found this very difficult to listen to, and affected me for a couple of days.
When we started couples therapy one thing said and I remember very clearly was that life until I discovered the truth was like being in a dark tunnel, hiding a secret, and that he could now see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I remember that I looked at him and thought: “that’s great for you, but now I am living in complete darkness. “For me everything is now dark and gloomy and the secret I have because I can not tell anyone what is happening”. And I felt that was so unfair.
I don’t want to tell people because I don’t want people to judge me. For example, I was watching the Ryder Cup the other day and saw Tiger Woods with a girlfriend and thought that people would watch it and think: “oh, that’s the little woman, the doormat.” Probably it tramples it. The sex addict has no respect for women”.
People judged… assume that they know.
In many ways our marriage is better than it was – it seems a crazy – but we spent months going to couples therapy. We are much more open with us.
We talk more and talk about our feelings, not just about what we have been doing today and what we plan to do. We talk about feelings, both good as bad.
There are many occasions in which I get wrong, but I would say that most of the time now feel that our marriage is balanced and my emotional state also.
I forgive him? This is something that I’ve spoken with therapists and really do not know what is forgiveness. I don’t think that ever forgive you for pain has caused me, that is so deep. I do not think that you can forgive that, but I want to be with him and love him. And life at his side is good. Is that forgiveness? I don’t know.
I think that at the end of the day we are together. We are good friends. I still love him and he assures me that you still love me, that I always loved.
I would also hate that my kids knew about this, I would absolutely hate it. I believe that they would lose all respect for her father. And my family loves my husband. I think that if you know it, just don’t you believe it. It is simply not the person who would do something like this.
It would be the last person that would suspect something as stupid as what he did.
