Table of Contents
The information in this book, including much of the direction and guidance, is taken from a comprehensive survey of male and female adult children of sex addicts (ACOSAs) conducted in the fall of 2004. The substance of the book is also based on my almost twenty years of professional experience helping to heal sex addicts and their families, as well as my personal experience as a recovering sex addict and adult child of sex addicts.
INTRODUCTION
My Story
Hi, my name is Doug, and I am an adult child of a sex addict. Here is what happened, what I have learned and where I am (gladly) today. My hope is that as you read about my strength, hope and experience, you will understand that it is not where you come from but only where you arrive that is critical. It is not the good or bad of what was given to you, but what you decided to make out of it that counts.
My mother, who was married with no children at age twenty, decided to act out sexually with another man. Her ongoing adultery with this other man brought about my conception. My mothers first husband divorced her when he discovered her behavior. The man who impregnated her abandoned her as well because he had impregnated someone else. He never showed up in my life, ever. So here she was, divorced, pregnant and abandoned. She became sexually involved with another man. She married this man, and he became my legal father. His name was Bill Weiss.
Bill was an alcoholic and also had other significant mental issues. They managed to stay together long enough to have three daughters. They divorced while my mother was pregnant with the last daughter.
My mother became a single mom, with four children to care for and feed, two still in diapers. Feeling overwhelmed, Im sure, she tried to care for the family, but eventually we were all placed into separate foster homes. I was hustled from home to home to home due to my mothers complaints about each place. My first memory takes place in one of these foster homes. I remember that I was being noisy in a church and got a beating with a belt for this behavior. Its sad, I think, that my first memory did not involve my sexually addicted mother. Sadly, my heart never really attached to her because I was moved from place to place.
My mother, who was now without any children (she gave the baby up for adoption), was free to get a job and continue acting out with other men. Her favorite place to go was a bar to find men. She eventually found a man, and they moved in together. She was soon able to get a social worker to return her children to her.
Here, for the first time, I remember my sisters Debbie and Suzie. Her boyfriend at the time was Bob, and they were living together. It was shortly after this I remember starting first grade. There was a lot of chaos, rejection and inability to put the pieces together. This somehow was my life. Changing people, changing rules, changed systems, and now I was supposedly home. I learned to adapt to the world around me. I learned the language and who controlled the system, and I did the best I could to survive.
Bob and my mother eventually married. They just took off for about two days and left their children home alone. They had gone to Virginia to get married. As an adult, I cant imagine leaving three children for two days without any information. Then they came back and told us the good news. It was bizarre, but we adaptive children just did what we did bestwe adapted.
I was aware that my mother and Bob had pornography hidden in their bureaus. My parents verbalized sexual humor that at times was inappropriate. As time went on, my mom thought I needed to know about sex. When I was, somewhere between twelve and thirteen years old, she gave me a very thick book on sex. This book was sort of like a college textbook. I really dont remember much of what I read, but the pictures in the book became the platform that initiated and maintained my own future sexual addiction. This became an almost daily medication for me that temporarily eliminated the past pain and desire to somehow connect.
Sometime later, I remember walking across town. About five miles one way, a man asked if I wanted a ride. He gave me a lot of alcohol and then abused me. This was my first sexual encounter, and I was treated as an object. Shocked, I suppressed it and then adapted as usual.
I started to become sexually active in high school and quickly became out of control. The use of alcohol and drugs was a regular occurrence. Girlfriends and one-night stands were very common. I would go to bars where I thought I was picking up women. Most of these women were in their twenties or older, and I was under eighteen. It wasnt until later that I realized I was the one being picked up by adult female sex addicts who were using me as an object for sex. By the time I was in high school, I was already living with a twenty-three-year-old sexually addicted model. How insane!
My mom really didnt say much about it. I have to believe that at times she knew I was drunk, high or had girls in my room. This was all a reaction to being an adult child of a sexual addict. My mom really couldnt nurture her children. Im sure she had her own guilt and shame to deal with. She sat in front of the television and zoned out for most of our evening hours if she wasnt working.
I definitely didnt learn how to be emotionally authentic. Emotions, if shared, were used later to shame and humiliate. Spirituality was not discussed, although we were dropped off on Sundays to go to the Salvation Army for a few years.
I definitely learned how to live with secrets: my secrets, my mothers secrets and extended family secrets. Duplicity in life was normal; it was always, Do as I say, not as I do.
Feeling out of the norm was commonplace. I remember feeling so ashamed over my welfare token for lunch at school. I was emotionally, morally and spiritually underdeveloped.
I remember distinctly in high school projecting a false self that I had it together. I was as well dressed as I could be, confident and in shape on the outside. I was this falsely projected self well into my twenties. I did not have a clue how to be me. Materialism and partying were all I knew as a result of growing up as an adult child of a sex addict (ACOSA). I couldnt let people into my heart, even if it was to save my life. I had some really good-hearted women try to get close to me, but I couldnt go there. I definitely had the core belief that if you knew me, you wouldnt love me.
I would give myself away to people and be hurt. I had so many female sex addicts for girlfriends. They were beautiful, sexual and emotionally unavailable, and they would use me like an object and reject me. I had good girl relationships, too, but I really didnt feel good enough for them, so I would end them eventually.
When I was nineteen years old, I had a significant spiritual awakening, and alcohol and drugs stopped instantly in my life. But the brokenness of abuse, abandonment, shame and my sexual addiction all stayed. Finally, as I grew spiritually, layer after layer of dysfunction began to peel away.
When I married at twenty-three years of age, I was still damaged goods. Fortunately, I married a good girla really good girl. Lisa was beautiful and full of love and wisdom, which my soul desperately needed. My sexual addictions were already significantly in remission. Months into our marriage, I became totally sober and free of sexual addiction and have remained so for over eighteen years (no porn, self-behavior or behaviors with others). I have been able to stay monogamous with Lisa.
Next page