Love versus Sexual Addiction
I have often seen couples deeply in love yet not physically involved and on the other hand couples who confuse bodily lust with love. But then when in a relationship how do we distinguish between love and sexual addiction?
“Love is a many splendored thing,” an old sung goes. Almost all of us have fallen pry to love some time or the other in life, chased love enthusiastically and often played the fool. But maybe it’s all part of a natural state of existence, not an aberration. In a life where change is the only constant, and we’re all in a state of flux, is it any wonder that when we try to connect we “fall” into addiction instead of love? Yet this thought never ceases to wonder me.
Speaking of love, Freud noticed the link between “love” and “hypnotism.” He said, “From being in love to hypnosis is evidently only a short step.” Then he described the lover’s “subjection…compliance…absence of criticism…sapping of initiative.” The love object has consumed the lover’s ego, for a time. But eventually the fusion turns to confusion, and brings with it disillusionment. And if we’re not blind to reality, we may come to realize that we’ve been hypnotized first, and have then become sexually addicted, and that love was never in the scene.
According to psychologist Stanton Peele on sexual addiction, he feels: “When a constant exposure to something is necessary in order to make life bearable, an addiction has been brought about, however romantic the trappings.” This is very close to Dr. Stanley Gitlow’s definition of addiction as “any technique for adapting to life other than interpersonal relating.”
But then you question isn’t having sex with a partner “a relationship”? It all depends on your attitude. Are we just giving or taking, nurturing or demanding, demonstrating our affection or satisfying a primitive craving? When the sex act becomes our primary goal and we use it to feed our self-centeredness we’re asking for the trouble, named addiction. “Often, two people simultaneously engulf each other,” says Peele. “The result is a full-fledged addiction, where each partner draws the other back at any sign of a loosening of the bonds that hold them together.”