Sex addict’s family of origin

Bob grew up in a non-traditional home.  His Mother and Father were alcoholics and they worked nights.  On the weekends they were drunk and ran errands and never had time for Bob or his 2 siblings.

A typical day for Bob would be…

Getting dressed for school (his Parents would leave food and clean clothes for him), going to school and sometimes falling asleep in class, going home where his Parents would be sleeping,making sure his siblings were ok and  going out and hanging out at a men’s club open to 3am (his Parents were at work) and doing it all again. 

When I asked if he had a childhood, he said sure he went to some group club run by the city where they’d play football or other stuff.

Whenever Bob spoke he’d always speak about “the neighbourhood” he grew up in and never about “home” – I found it odd.

His other siblings are alcoholics and one has severe medical problems that could kill him at any time.  Bob grew up with his whole family addicted to alcohol including his extended family.  Bob is the only one in his family never to have had a drinking problem.

He doesn’t blame his parents at all and really thinks he had a normal childhood.  He excuses his Parent’s behavior as they were immigrant workers who didn’t speak the language and they had to work nights.  He always had food, a roof over his head and clean clothes.

He was not sexually abused.  However, when he was 14 he had sex with a woman in her 20’s on several occassions.  His neighbourhood club (men only) would praise his exploits.

In his early teens he had issues with violence and aggression – which he says now were rage.  He had spent some time in prison for assault charges.  He is very embarrassed and regrets this part of his life.  He spent time in court appointed counselling where he was taughth ways to suppress his anger and likely feelings too.  Perhaps the masterbation was an outlet to help him forget and cope.  Bob genuinely today thinks he’s a bad person and unworthy of good things.

He got married in his early twenties, stayed faithful (story is corroborated) and his wife left him and his daughter for a much younger man.  He thought he had his life under control.  He had bought the large home his wife wanted, had a child and really is/was a good Dad.  When she left it was a shock to him and he had a nervous breakdown, was on anti-depressants, missed time at work (he loves his career), etc. 

When we got together he had only been legally seperated for a year.  He told me it was 4 or 5, I only found out recently.  We generally have a good relationship.  We bought a house together about 4 months ago and his daughter and I are very close.  We laugh, he treats me well and I love him. However, this stuff hurts and I can’t the visions out of my head nor can I understand how the doublelife existed.

Do I think he was looking for sex?  That he was just a cheating bastard?  No.  I hope not.  Not sure. Here’s something I read from www.sextreatment.com :

“Characteristic of any addict is a long history of a disturbed mother-child relationship. An unempathic, narcissistic, depressed or alcoholic mother has low tolerance for the child’s stress and frustrations. Nor is she able to supply the empathy, attention, nurturing and support that foster healthy development. The result in later life is separation anxiety, fear of abandonment and a sense of imminent self-fragmentation. This anxiety sends the sex addict running to his eroticized, fantasy cocoon where he experiences safety, security, a diminution of anxiety as well as the quelling of an unconscious wish to establish and maintain the missing, yet essential tie to mother. Typical of this person is the hope that he can find an idealized “other” who can embody, actualize and make concrete the longed for endlessly nurturing parent. This approach is doomed to failure. Inevitably, the other person’s needs start to impinge on the fantasy. The result is frustration, loneliness and disappointment.

On the other hand, a mother can be overly intrusive and attentive. She may be unconsciously seductive, perhaps using the child as a replacement for an emotionally unavailable spouse. The child perceives the mother’s inability to set appropriate boundaries as seductive and as a massive disillusionment. Later in life, the addict is hypersexual and has trouble setting boundaries. Real intimacy is experienced as an engulfing burden. The disillusionment of not experiencing appropriate parental boundaries is acted out later in life by the addict’s unconscious belief that the rules don’t apply to him with regards to sex, although he may be regulated and compliant in other parts of his life.

A major theme for all addictions is that they have experienced profound and chronic need deprivation throughout childhood. Addicts in general sustain emotional injury within the realm of the mother-infant interaction as well as with other relationships. Intense interpersonal anxiety is the result of this early-life emotional need deprivation. In later life, the person experiences anxiety in all intimate relationships. Because the sex addict has anxiety about being unable to get what he needs from real people and because his desperate search for the fulfillment of unmet childhood needs inevitably end in disillusionment, he inevitably returns to his reliance on sexual fantasies and enactments to alleviate anxiety about connection and intimacy and as a way to achieve a sense of self-affirmation.”

Reading this and other books, websites and podcasts – which I will list soon – makes me believe that he is a victim of his childhood or lack thereof.

There’s a lot of good information on Adult Children of Alcoholics as well which can apply here.

This defines characteristics of adult children of alcoholics:

http://recoveryissexy.com/characteristics-of-adult-children-of-alcoholics-acoas/

This defines types of roles within the family of origin adult children of alcoholics:

http://www.recovery.org/acoa/whois.acoa.html

Like I said, I’m not sure what to believe or what to do, going forward.  I do love the Bob I know but when he lies telling the truth I don’t know how I will ever trust him.  He says he feels closer to me now than anyone because I know the real him.  Well…he’s got issues and apparently so do I.