Hooked on Love and Lust or Dating Apps: How Two Women Moved Forward

“Hooked on Love, Lust or Dating Apps: How Two Women Moved Forward”

a lightly edited Girl Boner Radio transcript

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*****

Shani: 

And for the very first time I asked myself why I was allowing all of the things in my life to be there if they weren’t serving me. Like, why would I have anything in my life that wasn’t serving me? Asking myself that question, the biggest thing that wasn’t serving me, that had never served me, was dating apps. 

Kerry:

So the symptoms were probably more for me feeling like, I want this thing so badly from this man. And then as soon as I get it, I’m like, nah. And actually, the addiction is really in many ways to the wanting. So it’s kind of the inability to have a real relationship where true intimacy and connection was happening.

August (narration):

We probably all know someone who has had a positive experience, or even found love, through a dating app. And regardless, most of us have faced typical ups and downs in the sex and dating realm.

The stories you’ll hear today are not those. The positive side of each story involves how someone got out: for Kerry, out of the grasp of sex and love addiction, terms that are both common and controversial. For Shani, away from dating apps.

We will start there, with Shani. 

[acoustic chord riff]

Shani Silver told me that she has always been an “early adopter of things.” 

Shani:  

And so I remember using dating websites-

August (narration):

-as soon as she was old enough to even think about dating.

Shani:

And I was one of the earliest people on like OKCupid when it was a website. I did a little bit of online dating in law school. I would say after my law school relationship ended when I was about 26, I really started like going full force into, you know, every dating website there was and then later every app there was. 

I spent about 10 years total, on various apps, doing what everyone does, right, just sort of swiping their adulthood away. 

August (narration):

“Swiping their adulthood away.” That idea makes me really sad. A 2019 study from the Pew Research Center showed that 12% of adults in the U.S. report having found a committed relationship or gotten married thanks to an app. It also showed that over one-third people who’ve used the apps stopped using them after receiving unsolicited explicit messages or being called an offensive name. Nine percent said they were physically threatened. And another study, from last year, linked dating app use with social anxiety and depression.

Shani:

And whenever, you know, you’d get super frustrated with the apps, you would do what’s called “taking a break,” never really stopping to ask myself if I wanted to be doing something at all, if it required taking a break. 

But I would always come back, you know, because there is this sort of digital dating dependency that we have developed as human beings. And it always feels like if you’re not on the apps, you’re not doing enough to find someone. And that can feel really low and shameful and guilt-ridden and things like that. 

And all I ever found was just disappointing date after disappointing date or micro-trauma after micro-trauma or, you know, just so much dismissive and disappointing treatment, and I was voluntarily putting myself there.

August: 

Are you comfortable sharing an example of that treatment?

Shani:  

Sure. And I typically don’t like to tell horror stories because I find that they’re not, [pauses] they’re not entertaining, right? And horror stories have become rather than the exception, they’ve become the rule.  I don’t like to discuss it often. But in this context, to give you a little bit of fodder as to why and how I was able to permanently delete them, I will give you a very concrete example. 

One of the last days I ever remember being on a dating app, a man sent me a very, very lewd message that essentially suggested that we have sex. And he hadn’t even said, you know, hello, or told me his name. Nothing. 

And I wrote him back. And I said, “Does this ever actually work for you? Does doing this ever actually work?” And he wrote back and he said, “You know what Tinder is, right?” And I had never been more dismissed and degraded. It was one of the most disgusting things that had ever been said to me. And it was so impactful. And yet it was said by a stranger. I’ll never forget it. I will never forget that moment as long as I live. 

And that’s sort of one of those really illustrative moments that shows you the regard with which single women are treated in the dating space. We are, you know, we’re just this endless buffet of faces for people to swipe through. And I really do think there is an element of free sex work that we’re viewed through. Otherwise, you know, ghosting wouldn’t be a thing. Ghosting after sleeping with someone wouldn’t be a thing, if we hadn’t built this culture up. If we hadn’t made it, okay, it wouldn’t be happening. 

But we live in this culture where, you know, instead of calling out bad behavior and doing something that counts as a consequence against it, we give it a cute name like “ghosting.” It isn’t ghosting. You’re being dismissed and ignored by a human being who actively wanted to spend time with you in the first place. That’s what ghosting is. Somebody pursued your attention; somebody pursued your company on purpose. And then once they got what they wanted, they dismissed you and ignored you. Let’s not call it ghosting. Ghosting is cute. And that’s not accurate enough for me.

August: 

That’s so powerful. And you’re so right. It’s like a cutesy term. We wouldn’t use that if someone just doesn’t – your doctor just doesn’t show up to your doctor’s appointment. Like someone doesn’t care about you. And yet there is this addictive kind of nature that’s built into it. What kept you coming back?

Shani:  

Yeah, I mean, at first, it’s just the shame of singlehood. I don’t want to be single anymore. And dating apps hold themselves out as a solution to singlehood. So I’m going to swipe until I find somebody. You will believe things for a long time, if you think they will lead you to love. And I believed dating apps nonsense for 10 years. I kept swiping for 10 years because he has to be in there somewhere, right? Because other people find somebody. 

I was leaning into a narrative that I was being trained to lean into. They operate very much like slot machines, very much like gambling, and gambling is very addictive. And I really don’t see dating apps as anything different. If you just pay a little bit more money, you’ll get in front of more people. If you just pay a little bit more money, you can boost your profile at this time of day when everybody’s on the apps.

They’re addictive because they’re designed to be. So if you find yourself addicted to dating apps, it’s by design. It’s not something you did wrong. It’s very much by design. We are addicted to these things because we’re ashamed of being single, and we never want to feel like we’re not doing enough to solve this problem. And on top of that, we have been trained to rely on these apps by an industry that makes more money the longer we’re single. 

August (narration):

Near the start of 2019, Shani said enough is enough. She knew she needed a change in her life, and that sense prompted her to ask herself important questions.

Shani:  

I had been just sort of—I don’t like the word hopeless—but I was just kind of directionless. I really wasn’t seeing a future for myself that I liked. And I was doing some growth work to try to feel better about my own outlook. 

And for the very first time I asked myself why I was allowing all of the things in my life to be there if they weren’t serving me. Like, why would I have anything in my life that wasn’t serving me? Asking myself that question, the biggest thing that wasn’t serving me, that had never served me, was dating apps. 

Dating apps were only making me feel worse. They were never making me feel good. They were never delivering a relationship ever. Not once in 10 years have they done that. 

So dating apps were not serving me, specifically. They never had. And so if they’re not serving me, why am I allowing them to be in my life? These just don’t work for me. That is allowed to be true. And I am allowed to walk away from them.

I don’t have to just, you know, blindly believe in these stories of how people met on dating apps. I can believe stories of how people met in real life, too. So I deleted my dating apps. I have never once re-downloaded but far more important than that is that I have never wanted to re-download. Not once. And so much good has come into my life since dating apps left it. 

August:

Did you expect to feel so glad you quit immediately?

Shani: 

No, God no! I expected to like a week later be like panicking like, I’m not doing enough to end my single life. And what really helps solidify a decision like that is seeing all the good that follows from saying no to something that isn’t right for you, saying no to something that hurts you, saying no to something that isn’t serving you is followed often, in my experience, by something wonderful. 

And so I took all of the time that I was spending swiping, and it was a lot of time, and I started a podcast instead. And now that’s like my career. [soft chuckle] It was followed by a lot of good so I had a lot of reinforcing good come from letting go of something that wasn’t serving me, freeing up my life, freeing up my headspace, freeing up my energy. So much good has flowed in from that.

August (narration):

Shani started her podcast, A Single Serving, because she felt the world was lying to single women about who they are and their place in the world. She kept hearing harmful narratives about how hard single women have to try to find someone and the shame that builds up around not doing so. And all of that work has led to the book she recently released. 

Shani:  

My book is called A Single Revolution: Don’t Look for a Match. Light One. And it is a book full of all of those narratives, all of those limiting self-worth demolishing, lack-soaked, shame-soaked messages about singlehood. 

It takes them and it reframes them to see them from a different perspective, one that is full of validity and self-worth and wholeness, realness. Just gives realness and a sense of “this is a right way to be” to singlehood. It just tells the truth. It is very much a guidebook for how to feel better about being single. We haven’t attributed value to singlehood. We’ve only attributed shame to it. Shame and wrongness and singlehood is the wrong way to be so you got to fix that with a relationship. We’ve never taken the time to see the value in being single. I’ve taken the time, and I put it into a book. 

And I hope that it leads to single women appreciating this time in our lives while we have it. Because I do believe if you want to partner, you will. Maybe not on the timeline that the Hallmark movies wants you to, but maybe on a timeline that’s much more customized to you. And maybe that’s better, maybe that’s allowed to be better.

August (narration):

If you are feeling hooked on dating apps and feeling miserable, yet the idea of quitting feels daunting, Shani wants you to consider looking at it all from a different angle.

Shani:  

We don’t want to delete our dating apps because that’s going to lower our chances, right? But what I would ask you to look at is how many chances have you already given dating apps and has it delivered on any one of those chances? You’re still single. You’re still using dating apps. The dating apps aren’t working. It’s allowed to be true. That doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong. That doesn’t mean you’re never going to find someone. 

But if dating apps feel bad to you, listen. Listen to that. Listen to what that is telling you. Listen to what all of the time, the years, the money. Listen to what all of that is telling you. We have this false adage in our head, like dating apps are the way everyone meets now. No, they aren’t. No, they aren’t. 

If you can cling to the stories of how people met on dating apps, I would encourage you to seek out stories of people that met without them. Because those are just as true. Those are just as valid. And those are just as abundant.

We don’t have to dedicate ourselves to this digital option just because it’s there. They’re a very new toy. They’re still very new. We don’t yet know the long term mental health effects of dating apps. But I can tell you something. I don’t think they’re going to be good. I don’t think they’re going to be very good. So you’re allowed to reflect on is it lowering your chances or is it taking back agency over your own life and not letting dating apps have such a hand in how you feel?

[acoustic chord riff]

August (narration):

Learn more about Shani at shanisilver.com or on Instagram, @shanisilver. Find her book, A Single Revolution, on Amazon.

[guitar strum]

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[guitar strum]

August (narration):

So Kerry Cohen is an author, too, as well as a psychologist and licensed therapist who specializes in sex and relationships. Her memoir, Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity, follows her journey from depending on sex and male attention and gradually toward true intimacy. Her latest book, released last year, is called Crazy for You: Breaking the Spell of Sex and Love Addiction.

She wrote that she became a therapist because she desperately wanted to understand why she and many others struggle to cultivate intimacy, [quote] “this thing we want so badly.”

Kerry’s own experiences in this tangled web started during a hot summer day in her youth. At the start of Loose Girl, she write: “I am eleven the day I begin to understand what it means to be a girl.” A middle-aged man sees her walking by and says, “Hello there,” with a wink. And for the first time, she wrote, she was aware of her tiny gym shorts and her shirt fell tight over her training bra. She and the man have this silent exchange, his friendly, suggestive eyes lingering on her. After he drives away, she thinks, That was easy.

Puberty had hit, and –

Kerry:

– I was suddenly getting male attention quite easily. And this was an antidote to the fact that I was not getting the attention that I really desperately needed at home. 

My parents had just divorced, but the divorce was not really particularly traumatic or anything. It was just that everything suddenly kind of fell apart. And then my mother left. My mother moved away to actually the other side of the world, to the Philippines, to go to medical school. You know, which is cool, but she left her kids. And we moved in with my dad and my dad was a lot of fun. But it was like having a friend and not so much the parenting. I guess the thing was, is that I was quite alone. And I felt quite lonely, and empty and needy. And so when I was suddenly getting attention from strangers, and they were men, it was like a light bulb went on. And it was just the start of my journey. 

August (narration):

A journey into sex and love addiction, which she describes in Crazy for You like this: “Sex and love addicts use sex and/or love to avoid real intimacy and connection and to escape uncomfortable feelings.”

Many experts in the sex ed and sex therapy circles take issue with the addiction framing—for a few reasons, including that the symptoms don’t necessarily fit traditional models of addiction. 

As a side note, what matters to me isn’t so much the terminology, but that people get the support they need. And I personally think that some of the discussions around the controversy of “sex and love addiction” miss a lot of nuance. Kerry’s take does not. 

She describes sex and love addiction as a process addiction—meaning it involves compulsive behaviors. Compulsive sexual behaviors, by the way, is the name some experts prefer. She also describes it all as a spectrum and doesn’t separate sex addiction from love addiction, given that there’s so much crossover and much of it is culturally cued.

Kerry talks a lot about gender roles and expectations in Crazy for You, and how they fuel and shape one’s experience with sex and love addiction. Because of those factors, many of us can probably relate to parts of her story, whether we’ve struggled with related compulsions or not.

It’s also a big reason that Kerry didn’t realize she was struggling and needed support early on.

Kerry:

I didn’t really know. I knew that there was something up with me and boys. I felt quite needy around boys. I definitely pushed them away, while also being very available to them, in all ways. I definitely began to get a sense probably in end of college maybe. 

At first, I feel like I was just experiencing what it’s like to be a girl in our culture, in many ways, a heterosexual girl, because there’s so much that is not connected to our agency for so long. I definitely felt needy and I was extremely available with not a lot of boundaries to men and boys in many ways. 

It’s really not solely an addiction. And I feel like that’s a really important point about sex and love addiction. And also a part of why it’s a spectrum, rather than a substance use addiction. There is an actual neurobiological aspect that truly does look like addiction. And that can come into play in various ways. But so much more of it is not about that. And is more about the ways that sex and love and relationships and all those things are just sort of like existential needs. And, you know, really, I mean, I guess sex to some extent, biological need, in our culture, and we get all these mixed messages. So existential needs as humans, but then we get all these cultural messages that are just so all over the place. 

August (narration):

At the same time, she said, there’s not a lot of clarity or guidance about having these things we all need. Instead, we get harmful messages.

Kerry:

So the symptoms were probably more for me feeling like, I want this thing so badly from this man. And then as soon as I get it, I’m like, nah. And actually, the addiction is really in many ways to the wanting. So it’s kind of the inability to have a real relationship where true intimacy and connection was happening. And really, it’s like I was the unavailable one for the most part. 

Other symptoms would be like, often needing, you know, a bunch of men kind of on the sidelines for extra attention in case I wasn’t, you know, getting what I felt like I needed in a relationship. I mean, sex and love addicts are really like terrible users of people. It’s really terrible. [laughs] We’re pretty awful. And it’s funny, because we feel so often, like, you know, I’m the one who wants to have this relationship. I’m the one who wants intimacy. And, you know, it’s just all these other people don’t. And it’s just not true. We’re the really awful ones, you know?

August (narration):

Of course, when Kerry talks about sex and love addicts being awful, it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek—she told me she has needed to find humor in all of this as part of her healing. She also feels enormous compassion and empathy for folks who are struggling. It not only led her into the work she does today…and she understands what it’s like to reach a point at which you feel completely hopeless.  

Kerry: 

I don’t know what it’s like to be other kinds of addicts. But I will say that the immense emotional pain of being a sex and love addict is really the thing that makes it – I mean, I have so many clients who come I mean, they’re just desperate for somebody to help them.

August (narration):

Kerry wrote Crazy for You because she feels that there are too few resources for folks in recovery, or seeking recovery, from sex and love addiction. The only program she she really knows of is Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, which uses a 12-step approach patterned after the ones used by Alcoholics Anonymous. 

Kerry:

And most people who have that as a specialty in their practices, or in programs, they use that step process approach. 

August (narration):

Kerry values the community and group aspects of the program, she said, given that folks who are struggling experience so much shame and feel alone. But she doesn’t consider everything they provide helpful. 

Kerry:

Some of the things that they suggest that we do like it’s a substance addiction. Also kind of like it’s only an addiction, instead of understanding all these other aspects that have to come into play. For instance, they have like a period of abstinence that you’re supposed to do, where you’re supposed to figure out what you’re addicted to inside of these things, and then spend a certain amount of time, not engaging at all. 

August (narration):

You might abstain from sex with a partner, dating or masturbation, for example. Their literature even calls such abstinence “a beginning point in sobriety.” 

Kerry: 

I feel like—and I don’t just feel like I mean, it’s kind of a fact—you can’t work on any of this stuff, unless you’re involved in it. And that’s a very different thing from something like, you know, cocaine or alcohol where you really can just get those things out of your life, and not not have to do that again, you know. But there’s no way to not be constantly triggered, when you’re in the midst of engaging around sex and love and relationships, if you’re a sex and love addict. And that’s the only place you’re going to be able to do the work. So really, the work, in many ways, becomes a practice. 

August (narration):

Kerry said that that work is twofold. The first part involves building self-awareness around your challenges, understanding what SLA looks for you and sorting out those crossovers with cultural messages about love and sex. 

Kerry:

So the self-awareness is a huge part and ongoing, just noticing how you know, it plays out in your life – what you do. And learning to experience it as less of this big, meaningful thing. With the awareness comes the ability to also a little bit make fun of yourself around some of it.

August (narration):

Because some of it, she said, is absurd. Recognizing that can help.

The other piece she talks about is learning to tolerate your wound-based pain, the angst you experience because of emotional wounds—rather than trying to get other people to make it feel better.

Kerry:

That’s like all day long in a relationship in many ways, until you reach a point where it’s only sometimes. So when I say learning to tolerate it, as opposed to taking care of, I mean, you are taking care of it yourself. There does have to be some amount of self-soothing, but it’s more about self- containment, and learning to tolerate it, rather than constantly acting out.   So it’s really learning to notice when you’re doing that and tolerating the anxiety or pain of not being able to get it.

August (narration):

Kerry pointed out that these issues go beyond sex and love addiction. That it’s common for most anyone to try to escape difficult feelings by relying on others to sort of “fix” them, rather than learning to tolerate them. But it’s all more severe and potentially debilitating if you’re on the SLA spectrum.

As I mentioned, considering these issues an addiction is controversial. Even Kerry herself, someone who specializes in treating and writing about sex and love addiction, has mixed feelings about it.

Kerry:

I think it’s important that there be controversy for exactly the reasons that there are. A lot have people come to me and think that maybe they’re sex addicts, because of behavior around sex that is just simply not accepted in a mainstream way. And that’s not sex addiction, you know?

August (narration):

Masturbating most days, for example, is not in itself a sign of addiction. Feeling as though you can’t go about your daily life because you’re constantly thinking about or engaging in masturbation, though, is. 

Kerry: 

I both value the phrasing using the word addiction, and I also kind of hate it for the same reasons. And also, because it’s not just an addiction. There’s like this addict part, but there’s so much else that applies to it. But the reason I do hold on to that is, first of all, because it’s just, it’s in our lexicon now. I mean people have heard of it. And so it’s a way to talk about the issue and a way to talk about the phrasing. 

August (narration):

Another reason she holds onto the sex and love addiction phrasing is because it really is different from things like having only compulsions or struggling with constant longing for sex or romance.

Kerry: 

It took me a long time to figure out, like why is this a real problem and not just for instance, being a woman who wants to have a lot of sex, and will easily have sex with lots of different people? And so I did have to figure that out. And it is different. 

August (narration):

Some of that distress does come from what she described as “the cultural osmosis that’s in all of us.” Things like the Madonna/whore complex and what’s considered normal or acceptable among different genders.

Kerry:

But when you’re a sex and love addict, the devastation and the pain of the experience is very different from just stepping outside of cultural, you know, mainstream expectations. So there really is, there’s a massive amount of distress that comes from more like wound-based pain, you know, attachment issues that got developed. 

August (narration):

You don’t have to have had a terrible childhood or attachment issues to develop sex and love addiction, Kerry said. You merely have to live in this culture. Or you could be someone who’s especially prone to addiction regardless. Still, childhood wounding is more often part of it all than not.

Another constant seems to be the impact of gender messaging. Given that women and femmes are still taught, in many ways, that finding love, finding “the one,” is how we have value—and men often learn that being turned on and having sex as often as possible is where it’s at for them—it’s common for folks who are struggling to use different language. Those things can also make it more difficult to get appropriate support. 

August: 

I really appreciate the ways that you speak about the gender messaging. Because I’ve interviewed several people who either were struggling with sex addiction, love addiction, or both. And every time I have I hear from folks who are struggling themselves, and I’ve noticed that men are much more likely to say that they have sex addiction; women are much more likely to say they have love addiction. And then the messages are the exact same. It doesn’t seem different to me. 

Kerry:

Yeah, it makes it so much harder. And that’s the other thing with SLAA that I wasn’t um finding any, any help or attention to. There’s almost no addressing of the cultural issues and messaging and how much that, that increases an experience of sex and love addiction.

August (narration):

She pointed to two main problems.

Kerry:

The messages we get around romance and the messages we get around sex. 

You know, in our media, most love stories that we see involve romance. And romance, by definition, you know, is star-crossed lovers. It’s like people who can’t actually be together.

August (narration):

That is so depressing. She lists examples in her book: The Notebook, Say Anything, Titanic, Romeo and Juliet. 

Kerry:

Not being able to be together is like, kind of the definition of romance. And then, and then it’s always like, the relationship itself is treated like a destination, you know, it’s like, the movie will be all about how they couldn’t be together. And then it ends with, they get together. And it’s like, but then what? 

August (narration):

We don’t learn anything about how to have a relationship. That’s one reason that lots of sex and love addicts, she said, are attracted to unavailable people. And as for sexual messaging that get in the way, the most harmful ones impact women.

Kerry:

We are made to feel like A) we can’t have sex until a certain time, or as soon as we have sex with this person, then they’re going to go away. 

August (narration):

And B: there’s pressure, especially for women, to have to look a certain way to be considered sexy or even sexual. Just like her own experience at age 11, girls and women learn from early on that our sexuality relies on straight men’s desires—what they want from us.

Kerry:

We know quite early on that our bodies aren’t ours. And so we have to live a lifetime of not being able to inhabit our own bodies from a personal core place and we really have to fight for that a lot. And that also gets in the way for sex and love addiction, of course, and because then sex for women winds up being quite performative often.

August (narration):

And regardless of gender, she said, sex and love addicts use sex. 

Kerry:

Sex and love addicts use sex pretty much always, like I mean until they become really aware of that and begin to stop using it. And instead of sex from a place of like, I’m doing this out of my true like wanting to be inside my body and have sex.

August (narration):

In Crazy for You she writes that who you are in the bedroom is who you are everywhere. She illustrates it with the story of a woman named Sarah who fakes orgasms with her husband. And outside of the bedroom, throughout the rest of her life, she sacrifices her needs to avoid confrontation.

Kerry: 

If you fake an orgasm, you’re doing that instead of speaking up. Instead of taking care of your own self. 

So much about sex—this is actually the most important part of it—sex is one of the most vulnerable things that we can do. And in order to be vulnerable, you know, there’s so many things that get in the way. All of us have things that get in the way of our vulnerability. Whatever is getting in the way of your vulnerability is what you’re doing in sex, and you’re also doing it out in the world.

August (narration):

Kerry’s healing journey and working with folks going through similar trials have taught her a lot. One big takeaway, she said, is realizing that it’s okay to cultivate relationships that don’t match up with societal norms. 

Kerry:

One of the things that’s, I think very cool that is available, honestly available to all of us, but is certainly available to sex and love addicts, is that we’re probably never going to reach a point where what the world suggests is a healthy relationship, that we would be able to do that. So instead, you know, we’re alive now. I am very supportive of people being able to be in relationships that maybe don’t look like what would be healthy for other people. 

The definition in my mind of a healthy relationship is when you’re, you’re doing a really good job of, of not projecting too much on your partner. So for instance—you know, if you are only attracted, like I was using the example of unavailable men before—if you’re only attracted to unavailable men, that’s fine. You can be with an unavailable man, in various ways. It’s just that you’ll have you know, you’ll learn to understand that his unavailability isn’t about you and whether you’re worthwhile as a person. 

August (narration):

You can enjoy and still feel attracted to him, she said, without being in suffering and pain the whole time. Kerry has found her way there herself, and told me she’s currently in a relationship with a man she described as “super unavailable.”

Kerry: 

And I am good with that, you know? 

August (narration):

In fact, she’s used the relationship to do a lot of the work she talks about.

Kerry:

Because I was in love with this person in a way that I had really never felt before. And whether that means anything or not, doesn’t matter. The point is is that I just was not willing to get out of it, and yet was suffering. So then the question becomes like, How do I stop suffering then?

August (narration):

Early on, she realized that she’s usually handed just two choices:

Kerry:

Stay in and suffer or leave, which is what everyone is telling you to do, you know? 

August (narration):

So she asked herself, how could she help herself stop suffering, without leaving? 

Kerry:

And so that that’s the work I did. And just in this relationship alone is probably where I’ve grown the most in these ways. 

August (narration):

She’s done a ton of the work she does now with clients: learning to self-contain and self-soothe…

Kerry:

I make fun of myself and find those things about me endearing, and so does he. Because he’s super aware as well. I also really learned how to love another person for the first time. So often this is not just love addicts, although love addicts, especially, are so involved with, like, Well, how am I being loved? How am I being loved? Am I being loved? You know, is it the way I want to be loved? Or am I getting my needs met? 

And one of the things I really learned to do that made being in a relationship, so fulfilling and, and, and being you know, connected to another person feel so good is just focusing on loving him. And loving him the way he needs to be loved. 

August (narration):

She also got really in touch with beliefs she had about her own hopes for sex and love.

Kerry:

I stopped thinking that I wanted the thing that I kept thinking I wanted, and instead started understanding that I want to keep wanting. This is actually what I want. And I say that to my clients a lot. They’ll say “I want this, you know that thing?” And I say “No, you don’t. Obviously you don’t. You love this. Clearly you love this.” 

August (narration):

The longing, in her case. Not the super intertwined relationship with deep emotional intimacy on both sides that she thought she wanted all along.

Kerry:

I love it, you know? And I constantly held myself bringing that back that obviously I love it or else I wouldn’t be doing it. 

August (narration):

She pointed to a Jungian understanding related to this: having is evidence of wanting.

Kerry:

When you look around you, you will see what it is your unconscious wants. And that includes things that you think you don’t want, but obviously, you do. 

August (narration):

Of course, that doesn’t apply to everything. There are many hardships that we don’t have control over, and systemic problems that work against many. But in the case of sex and love addictions or compulsions, I see where Kerry’s coming from. And embracing the idea seems to have helped her a great deal.

Kerry:

And when you get connected to that, it’s so soothing and peaceful. And helps me not constantly ruin my relationships with it, you know? 

August (narration):

She stopped pushing people away with her perceived needs. 

Kerry:

And I also stopped trying to make something into…you know, controlling. There’s a lot of control in sex and love addiction, tons of control, controlling other people. And so I really worked to just take my claws out. And that’s a huge part of it, too, is I constantly am aware of the impulse to control something and work regularly to just allow. You know, that’s another huge part of it is to take my claws out. 

And through doing that work, what happened is I learned to tolerate the distress. And, wonderfully, I’ve felt loved for the first time. I was able to feel truly loved for the first time because it wasn’t about my wound-based needs and instead was just about love.

August (narration):

Kerry realized she was feeling loved for the first time gradually. As she described it to me, it sounded like it came in waves.

[soft ocean waves, gentle and happy guitar playing…]

Kerry:

I’ve had like weeks of just like, almost euphoria around that, of feeling just like full of love loved up – 

August (narration):

…and loving another person so strongly – 

Kerry:

…that I didn’t have to be around him to do that. Like it was just there.

August (narration):

She said she’s also gotten to a place where she finally doesn’t feel the need to step outside of her relationship to be with other men. 

Kerry:

In fact, I’m kind of grossed out by the thought of that, which is so great. And I’m able to just be by myself a lot. 

August (narration):

She still loves male attention and considers herself a “terrible flirt,” but she doesn’t feel the need to take things further than that.

Kerry:

I’m now finally I think safe for a partner, you know, like I’m not gonna I’m not gonna do anything. And that’s huge too.

August (narration):

I was curious if writing has played a role in, or reflected, Kerry’s healing as well. She basically said, yes and no.

August:

I was really struck by the way you talked about having difficulty with allowing yourself to be vulnerable and have true intimacy — and now you speak and write so openly about your experiences. Has the work you’ve done on yourself allowed you to do that? Because writing your story seems like such a, sort of, vulnerable act. 

Kerry:

I would say that initially, it was evidence of a lack of boundaries [laughs] which, you know, all sex and love addicts have around being too available. Now, it’s become something that I feel like has been immensely helpful to other people. And I mean I learned that after Loose Girl when I learned when I got lots of messages, you know, hundreds of 1000s Literally of messages and people like from 13 to 80, like telling me that, that that was their story, too. And knowing that it helped. 

It’s not like I provided guidelines on how to feel better, but it just helps to just not feel alone. You know, it’s such a huge part of the healing process. So even with my clients, I’m therapeutically self-disclosing, but they know a lot. And it’s helpful for them to know because it’s not like I’m over here like all better. 

I want them to know that it’s a process and I want them to know that we’re in this together, that we’re not that different. So much of it is the shame piece I want to get rid of the shame piece.

[acoustic chord riff]

August (narration):  

Kerry’s latest book, Crazy for You: Breaking the Spell of Sex and Love Addiction, is available most anywhere books are sold. She told me that while “sex and love addiction” are on the cover and used throughout, the book is really for anyone who struggles to have what they went as far as sex and love in their lives. Learn more at kerry-cohen.com. 

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