The New Naked: The Ultimate Sex Education for Grown-Ups (19 page)

Like any addiction, sexual dependency is a compulsive behavior that dominates the addict’s life. The addict will continue to engage in the addictive behavior despite clear harm or distress to himself or those around him. Sexual addicts make sex a higher priority than everything else in their lives. (If you think that sounds a lot like porn addiction, you’re absolutely right!) They are so driven by the addiction that they can sacrifice their family, friends, work, and health to keep having sex. They seek the orgasm as a compulsion, as an immediate gratification without the emotional connection.

On my radio show, I often get calls from men who are spending all their money on prostitutes or strip clubs. I ask them if they can pay all their bills. If they can’t pay the mortgage because they’ve spent all their money on erotic massages, they have an out-of-control addiction. If they admit they’ve been going to prostitutes for ten years, they know what they’re doing wrong without me telling them.

But if a man can afford to fund his addiction, is he still addicted? Of course he is. He’s a
functional
addict. Does he need treatment? That depends on how adversely the addiction is affecting his life and the lives of those around him. A rich single guy who chooses to spend his money on prostitutes is making a choice about how to spend his money. It’s not the same kind of problem that a rich married guy has if he’s doing the same thing.

In other words, anything that adversely affects your partner’s life or your life is a problem. I have a very low tolerance for
alcohol, so if I drank one glass of wine every day I’d be an addict. But I know plenty of people who can have two or three drinks a day without getting drunk or having it affect their ability to function at work or with their families. Are they alcoholics? Not by my definition.

Sex addicts need to admit that prostitutes and porn stars can’t ever really care about them, even if they do a great job of pretending. But a man in a committed relationship who hires prostitutes or goes to strip clubs either doesn’t care or is deluding himself. He wants the quick rush of pleasure and of having a (paid) woman do everything he wants to his body. If he’s a narcissist, he also will feel that he deserves this side activity for whatever reasons he tells himself. (His wife doesn’t like anal sex. She doesn’t give him as many blow jobs as he wants. She expects to have an orgasm during sex. She wants intimacy—and so on.) If these habits become ingrained, after a while they become the norm. That’s when the addiction usually starts to spiral out of control.

When you’re having sex, the goal is not just to have an orgasm. The crucial point of sex, beyond the physical gratification, is to build powerful emotional connections and love. Those are the keys to the best and most satisfying sex a person will ever have. Sex addicts need to understand that the real pleasure is in support, comfort, love, and security in their committed relationship—not in the sexual gluttony of mindless one-night stands.

This kind of powerful sexual intimacy can be incredibly tough to sustain over the years, which is one of the reasons why people cheat. A few sex addicts can overcome their addiction on their own (just as some cigarette smokers can finally kick their habits), but far more need professional counseling. Anyone who has
problems controlling his or her sexual urges needs to seek competent professional help as soon as possible.

The addict shouldn’t be ashamed to admit he or she has an addiction, although this seems harder for sex addicts than for alcohol or drug addicts. That’s because the shame level is so high for sex addicts, who may also have to deal with the ignorant or judgmental stance some of their loved ones or colleagues take.

A woman who finds out her partner is sex addicted should never blame herself, even though I’ve lost count of how many women have told me
they
feel guilty about the problem. They wonder if they’ve done something wrong and “driven” him to it. I have to reassure them that this is rarely the case.

The most important question a sex addict needs to answer is: Do you want to have a relationship with a real person? This relationship needs to be more important than a transient orgasm with a stranger. Because the only way to get away from sex addiction is to be able to have a relationship in which you care for somebody and want to make him or her happy—and that somebody cares for you and wants to make you happy, too.

I hope that knowing more about the tough stuff that can go wrong with relationships actually makes you feel better. What I mean is, if you are experiencing any of these issues, you are not alone. Turnoffs, bumps in the relationship road, disagreements, bad habits—all the stuff that happens to every couple—are all part of life. How you deal with them is what counts. Read on, and let a little LSD make you and your partner a whole lot happier.

“Turn on, tune in, drop out” was the famous phrase of American psychologist Timothy Leary. Back in the Swinging Sixties, he was doing research at Harvard on the effects of psychotropic drugs like LSD. Yes, that Harvard, and yes, that LSD. Eventually, Leary got fired because his love of LSD went a little too far, but I still love that phrase. Except I’ve reshaped to it to fit my relationship-improving system:

• Turn on your partner, and he’ll turn you on even more… once he knows the essence of good listening.
  

• Tune in to each other’s needs, especially the one for security.
  

• Drop out of boring, unsatisfying patterns and drop in to desire.
  

In other words, the essence of my favorite form of LSD is: Listening + Security + Desire. This is the kind of emotional “drug” that will keep your sexual and emotional relationships happy and thriving.

Trust me on this: You can forgive someone for any number of faults when the sex is really good, but after a while, the reality
of every other aspect of your relationship is going to set in. The morning after eventually arrives when the glow of the sex the night before has faded, and with it comes the need for LSD. Desire is delicious, but you still need the listening and the security or the desire can ebb away really fast, leaving frustration and regret.

Having a great relationship means you have one thing above all else: the ability to show your partner that you care about him. In this part of the book, I’m going to show you how to teach
him
to show you how much he cares about your life together. This is what
LSD
is all about: Women want men
L
istening to them + they want to feel
S
ecure + they want to feel
D
esirable. The man in your life needs to:

• Get better at
  Listening
  to you. By doing so, he will validate what you need to talk about. He has to stop interrupting. In
  Lesson 5
  , you will see how that means “shut the fuck up.”
  

• Provide
  Security
  . By doing so, he will make you both feel safe and able to conquer the world. In terms of financial security, he needs to get a decent job and not be a bum, making the effort so that you and your family will hopefully have financial security now and in the future. Even more important, however, is that he gives you emotional security so you feel safe in his love and physical security so you feel safe in his arms and together in your home. What could be better than returning from work every day to a home that is your haven from the ups and downs and zigs and zags of life?
  

• Fuel your days with
  Desire
  . Women want to feel desired, so he needs to be lavish with compliments, acknowledging the
  effort you put into your appearance and everything you do. Women really want men to make them feel they are worth it. Because, naturally, you are!
  

Doesn’t that sound almost ridiculously simple? Or rather, impossible? Actually, using the LSD system in your relationship is deceptively simple. Most of the couples I see have been married for years, and I see how they behave with each other. They love each other, but they can’t express what they need in bed and from each other. They have absolutely no language to do so. That’s because they honestly don’t know anything about sex—what’s normal and how to explain their desires.

At the heart of all of the relationships I see in my office or hear about on the radio are two people who each just want to be acknowledged for—and accepted—the way they are. But they are rarely willing to put in the work to compromise and accept the other as is, although the women, who are usually more attuned to their emotions and capable of talking about them, are almost always more willing than their partners are.

If a man is frustrated because his wife won’t have sex with him, he may boast, “I’m just gonna go out and find somebody else.” I believe him. Does he care? Sure—about himself. About his marriage? Not with that attitude. Will they stay married? Only if they both start communicating!

That’s exactly what I’ll show you to do in the following lessons. Once he finally starts listening, the more he’ll give you the security you crave, and the more he’ll understand your desires—which will jump-start your ability to communicate, in bed and out.

You can’t have security and you certainly can’t have sustained desire if you can’t communicate with each other—and communicate
well
.

That may sound obvious, but you wouldn’t believe how many couples don’t stop to think about whether they are communicating, what they are communicating, and most importantly,
how
they are. If you don’t know how to listen—and, equally if not more importantly, if your man doesn’t know how to listen—you’ll never get anywhere in bed (or out). You’ll always be talking
at
each other, not to each other. You’ll be frustrated. You’ll think more about what’s
not
being said than what
is
being said. When this happens regularly, it can doom even the happiest of relationships. This lesson will help you get back to basics—to the L in LSD: Listening.

Communication = Listening

I’m a lucky guy. I’m happily married to the world’s greatest woman, but if somebody would have told me thirty years ago
what I know now about how to communicate in a loving relationship, it would have made a lot of difference over the decades we’ve spent together. We would have fought less. My wife, Karen, would not have been so frustrated when I’d try not to roll my eyes and say, “I can’t take it anymore,” practically every time she wanted to talk about something for any length of time (in my male view, “endlessly”).

Most of all, I would have understood my wife when she was talking to me. Before I figured it out—or rather, before Karen helped me figure it out!—she’d talk about things I thought I didn’t want to hear. She would talk about work, what happened with the kids, what happened when she was shopping, something that needed work around the house, her girlfriends’ relationships, you name it.

But really…I just didn’t know how to listen.

Yes, I was a typical guy. Mr. Macho Me thought I was too important to take time to really
hear
what she had to say. The truth is I didn’t know
why
I should listen. After all, wasn’t what I said or thought more important than what anyone else had to say? Even if it was said by my beloved wife?

Fast-forward to now, and my twenty-year-old daughter helps me to remember why that arrogant attitude had to disappear. She’ll say, “Let’s take a walk, Dad,” and we’ll go out and she’ll talk. Okay, so sometimes (all right, a lot of the time) she goes and goes like the Energizer Bunny, but you know what? Over the years I’ve grown accustomed to listening to her, and she knows it. (I’m not just a better listener to
her
, but to
everyone
.)

Even better, I really like hearing what she says. She’s smart and funny and interesting. She has all the passions and convictions
that young women should have when they’re finding their place in the world, and it’s exciting to share that with her. In fact, the best conversations we’ll have are during this special time together. Everything she needs to say comes out—because she trusts me to listen.

If my daughter had gotten the message from me, as many daughters do from their dads, that I was too busy and self-important—canceling on school events or family outings I’d promised to go to because “something came up,” or talking too much about my work and not asking enough about hers—to take the time to let her talk, we would not have become as close as we are.

She’d have a much harder time confiding in me, and I wouldn’t know what’s going on in her world. She’d shut down to me. She would blow me off for time with her friends if I wanted to spend an afternoon with her. She wouldn’t accept my opinions as having much validity. I know that we could have started fighting, leading to tension in the house—with her and with my wife. All because I would have been too selfish to listen.

This point came across loud and clear the other day when a friend was complaining about his wife. “All she wants to do is talk,” he grumbled. “What’s the matter with her?”