Tiger Woods, Breathless Hype, Sex Addiction

Tiger Woods was back in the news this week. No surprise there. He’s inescapable. The press is addicted to him – not so much addicted to Tiger, but addicted to sex. I came across the February issue of Vanity Fair magazine recently, and there was Tiger on the cover.

It was the typical coverage – breathless hype and vapid moralizing (Matt Lauer on the Today show is particularly good at that). I skimmed through the article with details on the car crash, Tiger’s attempts to control events, speculation about his wife’s pain and, of course, whether she will stay, blah, blah, blah.

Nowhere in that article, or in most of the endless hype, is there much discussion of the salient issue that crashed Tiger’s life – sex addiction.

Now I’ve never met Tiger nor have I done any clinical evaluation of him. But the signs are there from the reports – multiple partners, sense of sexual entitlement, obsession, compulsion, a secret life, obliviousness to the consequences, and an eventual crash that disrupts his life and the lives of those around him.

 Sex addiction is a real and serious issue:

·      The National Counsel on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity estimates that sex addiction afflicts 18 million to 24 million Americans. That’s 6 percent to 8 percent of the population.

·      Researchers at Stanford University estimate that at least 200,000 Americans are addicted to some form on Internet pornography.

·      And sex is the single most searched topic on the Internet.

Sexual addiction has little to do with sex per se, and more to do with how an addict uses sex. Like most compulsive behaviors and addictions, sexual addiction is about avoiding pain and grief. We tend to act out whatever pain and grief we are avoiding – thus the term “acting out.” Paradoxically however, it is those addictive and compulsive behaviors that end up exacerbating the sense of shame, guilt and grief. It’s an endless cycle.

Symptoms of sexual addiction include:

·      Compulsive masturbation,

·      Multiple affairs,

·      Compulsive use of pornography – often to the point of creating a financial crisis

·      Unsafe sex

·      Multiple anonymous partners

·      Compulsive or obsessive phone sex or cybersex

·      Prostitutes

·      Prostitution,

·      Sexual anorexia

 And the consequences can be severe, including

 ·      Broken relationships and marriages,

·      Legal consequences,

·      Public humiliation,

·      Health risks, including AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases,

·      Depression,

·      Anxiety,

·      Damaged self esteem,

·      Moral conflict,

·      Fear of abandonment

·      Remorse,

·      Self-deceit,

·      Severe emotional harm to the people who love and care about the addict.

When the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal hit the airwaves back in the 90s, we had the same phenomena that we’re seeing now – breathless hype, vapid moralizing, and a missed opportunity to have a dialog on a major social ill.

Indeed sex addiction is controversial. Many people think it’s just about a lack of morality or compromised sense of ethics. But part of the suffering associated with sex addiction is the inevitable feeling that one is acting outside his/her ethical standards and is powerless to put a stop to it.

I’ve been working with sexual acting out behaviors since 1997, when I began a two-year stint at the Giarretto Institute, a pioneering sexual abuse treatment center in San Jose (unfortunately Giarretto was acquired by EMQ Inc., which subsequently shut down most of the treatment operations).

What I observed at Giarretto and subsequently in my clinical practice is that people who act out sexually have serious and deep emotional wounds. The deeper the grief, the more abhorrent the acting out behavior.

As in any therapy, sex addicts need a safe environment where they can discover and heal the pain that led them to the behaviors that have damaged their lives and the lives of those around them, while at the same time learning new coping and management skills for those times when the feelings are overwhelming.

Despite their suffering I’ve seen addicts reach into their deepest pain, learn how to heal themselves, reconstruct their lives and move on with new skills and a renewed sense of self.

Indeed, if the abundance of moralizing and hysteria had any healing value at all, we’d all be Saints or Buddhas by now. But as Tiger could likely tell you, it’s of no use whatsoever, though it might help broadcast ratings and magazine circulation.

Nonetheless, Tiger Woods has presented us with an opportunity for a national dialog about a serious affliction. I’m not optimistic that the media can or will ever rise to that opportunity. After all the first step toward recovery is to admit that you’re an addict. The people who bring you wall-to-wall, moment –to-moment, never-ending coverage of every sex scandal are unlikely to admit that they’re as hooked as the people they’re covering.

I wish Tiger and the people he’s hurt well with their recovery.

Stay tuned to your television set for the next lurid sex scandal.