I have had many clients who have been visited in their pasts by sexual abuse, and in many cases, they have blocked these memories from their consciousness. Sexual abuse and trauma lead to addiction which can show up as any kind of addictive behavior that can prevent a victim from enjoying all the best things this life has to offer.
One might think that like begets like. For instance, the assumption is that if you were a victim of sexual abuse, you may inherit a predisposition to suffering from sex addiction, but your addiction resulting from the sexual abuse may show up as other kinds of addictive behaviors such as food, internet, cellphone, videogame, computer, work, exercise, body image, weight, or pornography addictions.
I recently had a client whose addiction is being expressed as sexual addiction. She is married, and her husband has no idea that she is suffering from this kind of addiction as a result of the sexual abuse and trauma that she suffered from her past.
There is no shortage of male volunteers who offer to ease her suffering and pain. Some pay and some do not. She would probably prefer that she receive some remuneration for soothing her pain but will select ones who do not have the ability to pay to subsidize any lull in paid attention with her form of charity work.
These male attendees must agree to the terms of her arrangements. They must make themselves available during the hours that accommodate the schedule that she must maintain to keep her married life problem-free. She has a penchant for married men because they are more drama-free, and young men are probably deprived of the sex they crave.
So, most of her meet-ups are managed during the weekday daytime hours, while her husband is away at work. She has a separate phone and uses an alias to maintain some degree of safety and separation while engaging in sex-only trysts with her extracurricular sex partners. She accepts referrals and texts to make meeting arrangements throughout the day and night unbeknownst to the husband.
You will never find her car at the hotel. She meets the sex partner in the parking lot of an ordinary shopping location or restaurant, then goes with him to the hotel to take care of business, no strings attached. She demands cash before getting into the man’s car. Once in a while, she will follow him to the cash machine, before getting into his car, in those instances when they may have met her without cash in hand.
She makes sure they are ready for her because she doesn’t have time to waste “getting them ready.” She will exchange private photos and videos to demonstrate their readiness before getting into the car to meet. He must be hard and ready to perform.
She is very prompt, spending only 15-50 minutes with the stranger as she can satisfy his expectation in six minutes or less. She leaves her phone with the tracker on in the car at the shopping location’s parking lot, in case she ever needs to prove that she was not at a hotel with a paying client. And she is well-known for leaving her phone here and there so that everything she does would be considered “normal.” She is very serious about covering her tracks as if her life depended on it, and she believes it does.
She has out-of-town and out-of-state families that she pays visits to periodically for days to weeks at a time. When on these family visits, she appropriates neighbors and strangers for sex while “visiting with family” away from home. She admitted to having sex with relatives and her sisters’ husbands. Risky but among the greatest family secrets kept.
She has experimented with many different formats and scenarios for her self-medication process. She has rented hotel rooms to see how many clients she can pick up in the restaurant, bar, and hallways, and not forgetting the continental breakfast bar in the morning before checkout. A client can offer his home as a host house, where she stays the night and invites her clients, and the host invites his friends to share in the promotional efforts while reducing both risk and expenditures.
She will do men anywhere; in the park, in the parking lot, in an RV, van, truck bed, the backseat of a car in the WinCo parking lot, and truck stops are a cash cow. Truck stops have two parking lots, one for cars, and one for trucks. The truck side of the stop has a cash machine strategically positioned there. She parks her car, steps outside, and waits a few minutes before her blind-trucker-date introduces himself after paying cash, she takes care of business in the truck’s sleeper. This works well for her because she can do him in half the time of other visitors, and can easily do four truckers in an hour. House hosting and truck stops make the most fiscal sense, but house hosting requires an all-night commitment to make the most sense.
She considers herself spiritual in nature and claims protection for her self-healing endeavors is provided by her spiritual guides and angels from beyond, keeping her safe.
She is haunted by demons from her past trauma and abuse, these are the trauma-ties that Rosa M Luna talks about in her book, Trauma-ties. She, like so many others, has tried so many things to help relieve the pain. She’s tried alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, and more, but this paid “sex with strangers” is the only thing that helps to relieve the pain from her traumatic past. It gives her a soothing sense of meaningfulness and power over men, who she otherwise secretly fears.
She also does not see her efforts to self-medicate as “having an affair” or “being unfaithful.” She feels like this is necessary and not inherently bad or evil and therefore does not have any feelings of guilt or remorse. To her, this is necessary healing for survival. She knows what works, and she knows she needs it, or else everything would fall apart.
She does not fear her husband. She loves him very much and would be devastated if she ever had to lose him if he ever found out about her self-medicinal practices. I asked her what she would do if she had to choose between the two. She said that she wouldn’t want to but feels as though she would have to choose sex addiction, because not doing so may lead to the end of life for her, in one way or another.
Most all addicts have this type of inner struggle. They know the addiction is preventing them from experiencing all the best things in this life, but the addiction provides them with the strength to, in a sense, make it through one more day. It is so effective, that they cannot imagine life without the addiction.
On the other hand, she says she is willing to do the deep work, digging deep into her past to see if together we can find a resolution for her, essentially exorcising the demons that haunt her.
Not all addicts are able to complete this type of work and find that before reaching a victorious conclusion they are willing to walk away from therapeutic science, just as they may walk away from the life they could have had if confronted about their addiction. For those who make it, they find drawing on a higher power, outside of themselves, is necessary to battle the compulsory addiction(s).
Addiction, especially addiction stemming from deeply buried trauma and abuse, is a very powerful energy controlling the addict. Trying a different approach may be the most difficult challenge you face, but know this: There is hope.
If you need help, you can reach out to me. I might be able to help you.