Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men by Robert Weiss

Author:Robert Weiss [Weiss, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Health, Mind & Body
ISBN: 9780985063344
Publisher: Gentle Path Press
Published: 2013-02-02T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Getting into Therapy

Seeking therapy in conjunction with Twelve Step support and sexual sobriety can be a highly productive and useful recovery step. The right therapy setting can provide a safe place to understand and integrate the feelings and challenges that can arise when changing lifelong patterns of behavior.

Finding the right therapist is key. In the not-so-distant past, medical diagnoses pathologized homosexuality, and even among highly trained therapists there’s still prejudice and misunderstanding about what constitutes healthy gay sexuality. Because of this, choosing the right therapist is sometimes more difficult for gay men than straight men. Choose someone who has a balanced and supportive view of gay men and healthy gay sex along with a full understanding of sex addiction. Many gay men have faced well-meaning but clueless counselors or clergy who wasted their time and their money or, worse, provided counterproductive advice that, when followed, made their situation worse than it was before beginning treatment.

Jared describes his first psychotherapy experience:

I first went to therapy because I was having some problems finishing up an important project for work and I just couldn’t seem to get past it. I thought a counselor might help me to understand why I was procrastinating so much. I had been depressed in a similar way around my schoolwork in college, and I felt like maybe I was getting depressed again.

The counselor was really nice, and we had some great conversations about my family life, my work, and my relationship with my boss. She seemed to really listen to me and to care about helping me get better. Eventually, she asked what I was doing with my time instead of working, and I told her about Grindr. I even turned on my iPhone to show her the app, so she could see how easy it was for me to pick up men for sex. She honestly couldn’t believe that I met men this way. When she asked how many men I’d had sex with in the last year, I told her I had no idea. “More than ten?” she asked. What a silly question, I thought, Heck, I’d had sex with more than ten men that month!

While well-meaning, she seemed pretty uncomfortable with my promiscuity and suggested I might want to focus on developing just one relationship, maybe something long term. But she felt I wouldn’t be able to do that until I worked through my depression and work issues.

A few sessions later, she started pushing me toward a career change. That idea felt totally wrong to me, and I decided to look for a new therapist. While she was kind and had good intentions, she wasn’t familiar with gay men and how we operate, and didn’t know anything about sex addiction.

Luckily, my next therapist recognized my real issue almost immediately and followed quickly with suggestions on appropriate things to read, workshops and recovery meetings I could attend. Sexual sobriety is something that I’m still struggling with, but big surprise I’m now completing my work assignments since I committed to get off Grindr.

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