This Is A Dangerous Book
September 28, 2008
DESIRE: WHERE SEX MEETS ADDICTION is a dangerous book. Several times in the book author Susan Cheever tells how she disguises her topic when asked, in public, what she's writing about. Sex addiction, she says, is vastly misinterpreted as porn, and -- despite numerous examples from a president to movie stars who are obviously sex addicts -- as "icky."
She is a sex addict, she says, peppering examples like this throughout the book: finding solace in her ill mother's oncologist's bed when she's supposed to be picking up her daughter at school.
The small, tight, literary volume defines symptoms of sex addiction as broken promises, remorse, and that desperation when the object of desire is present...and when he or she is not present. Cheever quotes liberally from her research, from poet bell hook, for example, who says "Addiction makes love impossible."
Cheever splits the book in three parts -- what is it, what causes it, and what can we do about it?
There are no true, definitive answers to any of these questions in DESIRE. But there are lots of possible answers. Families that are genetically predisposed to addiction. Child sex abuse. Trauma. Rape, and, by the way, women who are sexually-abused are twice as likely to be raped. Over and over.
This is a dangerous book. I read, compare, run and hide. But, secrets -- hiding the truth -- that adds fuel to the fire of addiction. I could feel the steam rising as I read.
At home, as a kid, my mother and stepfather played a scene over and over. Bottles breaking in the night, slurred speech by day -- no question my mother and her side of the family covered the genetic predisposition to alcohol addiction. I never met my real dad's family, but the rumor was that his was a band of alcoholics as well. And, as you know by now, the rapes started at four-and-a-half years old for me, after my real dad was ushered out of the family forever. As a teenager, a teacher lured me into the woods and raped me while a torrential thunderstorm soaked us. A year later, I was raped by a guy who -- the very next day -- gave a seminar to the women on campus on how to protect yourself from being raped. I was shocked when I saw him stride across the stage, but I never told. I was raped by three different husbands whose kids I was babysitting. And, finally, I launched into drinking and pot, finding myself frequently in someone's bed, and not really remembering how I got there. Cheever explains that phenomenon in the book, almost an out-of-body experience. Every time I had a boyfriend, I would fool around on the side -- and the next day, I would rush to the school doctor to get tested. A few years later, when newly married, secretly, one by one, I did three of the four guys on the anchor team at the TV station where I worked, plus the cameraman. Remorse? Oh yes, I felt remorse. My second marriage, I was a terrible flirt, but my husband liked that, so I got plenty of great sex and stayed loyal. When pregnancy, then kids arrived, I forced myself to quit drinking and drugging. And I found myself secretly shopping compulsively. Yes, Cheever says, addictions change objects. I forbade myself to go to the mall unless I had one or two specific items that I had to buy. Christmases and birthdays were still wild! And I forbade myself to go into any bars or hang around people who drank a lot. Tough to do in radio. Then I became addicted to exercise -- and became anorexic. So skinny, I lost my periods for a few years.
Now, I challenge myself to be as real as I possibly can be, genuinely demonstrative, not desiring. No secrets. I want to know Love. Real love.
Cheever says addictions can be treated.
I don't know if I'm treated, because, for now, I'm just staying away from temptation.
DESIRE: WHERE SEX MEETS ADDICTION is a dangerous book. Several times in the book author Susan Cheever tells how she disguises her topic when asked, in public, what she's writing about. Sex addiction, she says, is vastly misinterpreted as porn, and -- despite numerous examples from a president to movie stars who are obviously sex addicts -- as "icky."
She is a sex addict, she says, peppering examples like this throughout the book: finding solace in her ill mother's oncologist's bed when she's supposed to be picking up her daughter at school.
The small, tight, literary volume defines symptoms of sex addiction as broken promises, remorse, and that desperation when the object of desire is present...and when he or she is not present. Cheever quotes liberally from her research, from poet bell hook, for example, who says "Addiction makes love impossible."
Cheever splits the book in three parts -- what is it, what causes it, and what can we do about it?
There are no true, definitive answers to any of these questions in DESIRE. But there are lots of possible answers. Families that are genetically predisposed to addiction. Child sex abuse. Trauma. Rape, and, by the way, women who are sexually-abused are twice as likely to be raped. Over and over.
This is a dangerous book. I read, compare, run and hide. But, secrets -- hiding the truth -- that adds fuel to the fire of addiction. I could feel the steam rising as I read.
At home, as a kid, my mother and stepfather played a scene over and over. Bottles breaking in the night, slurred speech by day -- no question my mother and her side of the family covered the genetic predisposition to alcohol addiction. I never met my real dad's family, but the rumor was that his was a band of alcoholics as well. And, as you know by now, the rapes started at four-and-a-half years old for me, after my real dad was ushered out of the family forever. As a teenager, a teacher lured me into the woods and raped me while a torrential thunderstorm soaked us. A year later, I was raped by a guy who -- the very next day -- gave a seminar to the women on campus on how to protect yourself from being raped. I was shocked when I saw him stride across the stage, but I never told. I was raped by three different husbands whose kids I was babysitting. And, finally, I launched into drinking and pot, finding myself frequently in someone's bed, and not really remembering how I got there. Cheever explains that phenomenon in the book, almost an out-of-body experience. Every time I had a boyfriend, I would fool around on the side -- and the next day, I would rush to the school doctor to get tested. A few years later, when newly married, secretly, one by one, I did three of the four guys on the anchor team at the TV station where I worked, plus the cameraman. Remorse? Oh yes, I felt remorse. My second marriage, I was a terrible flirt, but my husband liked that, so I got plenty of great sex and stayed loyal. When pregnancy, then kids arrived, I forced myself to quit drinking and drugging. And I found myself secretly shopping compulsively. Yes, Cheever says, addictions change objects. I forbade myself to go to the mall unless I had one or two specific items that I had to buy. Christmases and birthdays were still wild! And I forbade myself to go into any bars or hang around people who drank a lot. Tough to do in radio. Then I became addicted to exercise -- and became anorexic. So skinny, I lost my periods for a few years.
Now, I challenge myself to be as real as I possibly can be, genuinely demonstrative, not desiring. No secrets. I want to know Love. Real love.
Cheever says addictions can be treated.
I don't know if I'm treated, because, for now, I'm just staying away from temptation.
Labels: DESIRE: WHERE SEX MEETS ADDICTION, Susan Cheever, THE BEST BUSINESS SCHOOLS' ADMISSIONS SECRETS, transcending the trauma
posted by Diana Page Jordan @ 8:34 PM
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