Healthy sex was a completely foreign concept to me.
I used to think being obsessed with sex was just part of being a guy, and like too many boys, I learned about sex in all the wrong places. In fact, most of what I knew, I learned from seeing my dad’s pornography, and the rest I learned from my friends and from some very unhealthy adults.
I was off to a rough start.
Today, with time, a lot of hard work, and more than a little help from a good sex addiction counselor, I’ve begun to really understand what healthy sexuality is, and how to share and nurture this wonderful gift in my marriage.
My Pornography “Library”
My childhood wasn’t supposed to go the way it did.
I wasn’t supposed to find boxes of pornography poorly hidden in our basement. I wasn’t supposed to find it, but I did, and even though I was barely 6 years old, it captivated me. It wasn’t arousal I felt, just excitement. Like discovering a secret that you don’t understand, but that is somehow important.
I never forgot where dad’s porn was. It was my own private porn library. No one seemed to notice.
When I first discovered orgasm, I felt like I had a new friend. Masturbation felt so good, and I had a never-ending supply that I could enjoy whenever I wanted. I used dad’s pornography “library” again and again and pretty soon, I was masturbating to porn every day.
Fantasy about sex with teachers, other students, or even some in my own family, filled my head. Sex had become a big deal for me, just like it had been for my father.
My Dad and Sex
My parents didn’t hug or kiss or show any real affection at all, so I don’t think it surprised me much when they divorced. I was 11 years old at the time and unaware of how much my life was about to change.
Dad brought a lot of women to his bedroom for sex and must not have cared about what I would hear. I remember wanting to escape the sounds, but being aroused at the same time. It was like hearing a porno playing in the next room except that it was my dad.
Sexual Abuse
I was first sexually molested around this time.
Sadly, it happened many times before I left home. I was a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of many different people, both male and female. Sexual boundaries simply didn’t exist in my world and my life had gone from bad to worse. I had no healthy people around to protect me or to help me make sense of what was happening.
Sex Addiction
There was so much that I didn’t ask for and was not responsible for in my childhood.
Sexually shameless adults had offended me as a child, sometimes with obvious and direct sexual abuse and sometimes by exposing me to their own sexual behaviors. Either way, it set the stage for my adult addiction to sex.
While I didn’t offend any children in my sex addiction, I did offend myself as well as every adult relationship I had before meeting my wife.
I know now that I wasn’t responsible for what happened to me as a child, but I am responsible for what I did and do as an adult. I was and am responsible for my own sexual behavior and my own sexual addiction.
Fortunately, I found an expert in treating sex addiction and my life began to change.
My Wife
I met my wife in recovery.
My wife was also raised in a home where healthy sexuality was unknown. In her experience, it was her mother who was a sex addict. She remembers different men in and out of the house and more similar experiences to mine. We had a lot in common.
People with histories like ours don’t usually get sexually healthy.
We knew all about unhealthy sex, but healthy and intimate sex was little more than an idea. It was a place we had never been, but that sounded nice. The concepts and principles were simple enough to understand, but we had never lived it.
In many ways, our sexual growth began on the faith that first, we could be sexually healthy, and second that our sex addiction counselor could help us get there.
Sexual Healing
Thus began a whole new learning experience.
We learned about non-sexual intimacy, like being affectionate with each other, holding hands, and cuddling without sex. We learned what it meant to be emotionally present and strived to really see each other in each other’s eyes. Our love for each other deepened when we made it a point to see each other this way every day and a kind of emotional passion and romance seemed to naturally emerge.
Our respective 12-step recovery programs kept us on track with our individual sobriety and we practiced “checking-in” with each other daily in ways that included our health in recovery and in our relationship. We earned each other’s trust and we felt safe.
From this much stronger foundation, we found that sharing loving and intimate sex was pretty easy. We were together sexually for the right reasons, we cared for each other, and the old sexual shame was gone.
When old traumas surfaced, and they sometimes did, we could deal with them together and grow from the experience. We both used to fear these times, but now we see them as opportunities to heal and take care of each other.
What I’ve learned is that much of sexual healing comes through emotional intimacy and taking the risks to be vulnerable. Moving to healthy sexuality is really a process of maturing on so many levels.
We’ve come a long way, and I’m sure we have plenty of new growth “opportunities” yet to come, but at 6 years and counting, I’m starting to think that we’ll beat the odds that were so stacked against us and enjoy the life together that we’ve always wanted. Counseling continues to help us talk about where we struggle and helps to keep us focused and on track and we’re both grateful for the help we’ve received.
We’ll be passing it on. I hope you will too.
Please share what has helped you find healthy sexuality in your relationship…
Carl Lansdale is author of this article. Carl can be found on Google +
