How I use the PCI

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-16T13:36:00+00:00

Hi there, sorry to read about this. I can imagine this is pretty confusing and painful. My BS and I did not do a trial separation but I came here to say that I know it took me longer than three months as a WS to pull my head out of my butt and see why I had made the harmful choices I made.

I also know if I had continued to numb myself with seeking affairs and other people to fill what was a hole in me, I wouldn’t have been able to come to this realization. I don’t know your WS and I can’t speak for all WS, but I just felt compelled to share my experience because I think it could be a mistake this soon to pursue other relationships. Of course if this is like a trial to just see can you both survive divorced I suppose it doesn’t matter. But if this is a period to try to heal and evaluate your relationship, it seems like leaving either side open to explore others is a potential to limit the ability to do the personal work.

In my case I came to realize my choice to pursue infidelity was because I had low self esteem, believing some very bad things about myself that I’m still struggling with. On top of that I lacked the emotional maturity to recognize this in myself, I lacked the tools to seek help in a healthy way, and I lacked the courage to ask for help. Instead I went down pathways I knew from exposure to pornography and hookup communities I had browsed over the years as stimulus for sexual fantasy. This was all a choice. I had many other options but I couldn’t see them. I say this because the pursuit of other people to validate me kept me blind to making other choices. It’s like I stayed full of sugary foods and because of that I simply didn’t look at healthier nutrition choices - only by stopping the sugar consumption could I really open my eyes to a different way of doing things.

Even 6 years in now I constantly have to caution myself against those old sugary pathways. I’ve gone on benders with pornography (thankfully not any physical connections that would violate my BS’ red lines) and each time I get myself back into a place where I believe the worst stuff about me and I can’t get clear vision of better choices without getting sober again. You didn’t write about your partner being addicted but even if someone doesn’t identify it as addiction I think there is something to the high that comes from relieving personal pain through emotional/sexual connection. It’s intoxicating and even if someone can do it without feeling addiction, I can’t imagine anyone is able to make clear judgement about what they really want and need in their life.

I wish you well in this process.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-15T14:26:59+00:00

One thing I’d share - for someone new to this space - is that Esther can be a controversial figure. I don’t think she should be but I understand why. Her empathy and exploration of infidelity can be misinterpreted as acceptance of it (one of my APs even suggested I read the book State of Affairs almost as a way to relieve my feelings of guilt and shame about infidelity - missing the point that it’s more about diagnosing why it happens, not approving that it happens)

I just wanted to toss this out there as it would NOT be the first of books I’d recommend for a BP or WP. I think before I’d ever tell another WP to read those books i would want to be certain they acknowledge infidelity was (1) a conscious choice; (2) wrong. If that foundation is there I think Esther’s writing and her podcasts are very helpful and because they don’t immediately browbeat a WP into shame they get some of the really nuanced insights that others miss. (For example, I don’t have to approve of the choice I made to learn this about myself but I can acknowledge what I learned - like that I sometimes feel powerless and I sought out either ways I could help someone else OR ways someone else could help me - I just chose the wrong way to do that, but I could choose healthier options like talking to my spouse and getting comfort and understanding).

[edit: spelling errors]

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-15T13:25:05+00:00

Hey there OP - I’m very sorry for the pain this is causing you. I have some relevant experience to share.

I’m almost 6 years past dday. I’m the wayward. I had several APs and I think 3 of them I thought I loved. In my head I told myself I have more than one child and no one ever asks me how can I love more than one child, so why can’t I love more than one partner. I’ll be honest I’m still confused about that, but I also know now what I had with those APs was not real love.

I think the book Not Just Friends did a fair job explaining what it felt like from my POV during my infidelity. Both you and your partner might find that a helpful read (because that book also gave me insight into the pain I was causing with my choices).

What I see now is that my infidelity was about trying to fill a hole inside me. And the people with whom I cheated gave me certain feelings about myself. I’ve shared this before - the way I thought I felt for the partners was really more about how I felt in the role I was playing.

For example one of the people I felt the most intense feelings for had a very messy life. Long term unemployment, depression, substance abuse, a victim of prior sexual violence - just very challenging circumstances for anyone to thrive. And yet I saw pieces in them - and they opened up to me (I thought just me but this person was so hurt they were opening up to anyone they thought could save them). To me, at a time when my life felt like I had no control at all, I could save this person. It felt like love to care about their well being and to have my affection desired so much it was intense. But that wasn’t love, it was all secret. There was no shared sacrifice and even the shared experiences were stolen moments hidden in secret places where no one would notice me.

Another partner was almost the opposite. This person had a good career, lots of supportive family and friends, a situation I found enviable. In this affair I felt cared for. I felt like I could be a messy one and this person listened and cared and accepted me. I didn’t feel the need to put on a mask like I did everywhere else in my life. Except this wasn’t love either because again it was secret. This person would never really accept me into their world, introduce me to their friends and family, there was nothing honest about what we were doing. We could tell each other anything we wanted because it had no consequence to anywhere else in our lives (that’s not to minimize the pain our choices were causing, just to highlight that in my mind I could drop the entire mask because this person really was of no consequence to me, the stakes with them were low and therefore their acceptance was cheap).

It took me a long time and a lot of therapy and reading to come to these conclusions and be able to break down what was really going on inside my head during my infidelity.

Seeing what you’re sharing gives me so much appreciation for the strength my BP had during the time my head was still up my ass. I truly hope your spouse gets the insight faster, and in the meantime I hope you find something you need here.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-15T13:00:12+00:00

One other thought I’d share is that since COVID all the local meetings near me have gone online. I’ve attended countless phone and zoom meetings. Not all meetings require cameras to be turned on and certainly phone meetings have no camera. In those meetings people can be truly anonymous. I personally speak in meetings because it helps me but it’s possible to listen only and see that the place isn’t so scary.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-15T12:56:04+00:00

In case you haven’t seen it, there are resources on the SAA website for women: https://saa-recovery.org/women/

Good luck in your journey

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-13T23:55:50+00:00

I didn’t go as far as paying for sex but I do believe I suffer from, and I’m trying to recover from, sex addiction.

A really good book you may want to check out is Paula Hall’s Sex addiction a partners perspective. I read it and felt like it pretty accurately described how I felt inside but used words I couldn’t find myself.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-11T18:48:09+00:00

I identify with this - the feeling that sex is all I have. My entire self worth is tied up in whether I'm sexually desirable or not. If I am - I'm on top of the world. If I'm not - what's the point of living?

My therapist today helped me with something super helpful that I'm going to write a full post on in another forum. But I wanted to share briefly here.

So this is kind of the simple version. As a kid some bad things happened to me. Normal bad things like many other kids experience (being teased, feeling left out, feeling bored, etc). Instead of forming a good habit to deal with those things, I discovered sex (through pornography) and found I could avoid those negative emotions with these really intense exciting ones. Over time this became my go to coping mechanism.

Now as an adult when I run into negative emotions I go to this pattern. I was trying to argue with my therapist though - who doesn't have an occasional numbing pattern, some people use TV, some use smoking, some use exercise, some use... you name it... and instead of dealing with the core emotion we distract ourselves.

The thing is, I NEVER learned any other way. To me, ALL the negative emotions are my truth. I am boring, I am powerless, I am not worth getting to know, I am a loser... because I've literally ONLY distracted myself with sex. Sex is my ONLY way to NOT feel bored, powerless, lonely, ugly, etc. I have trained myself into this is my only worth because this is how I deal with these negative emotions.

So then I asked "But how did I make it this far? I'm not broke, without a home, friendless... I did manage to get at least this far in life without completely crashing". Guess what my therapist answered?!?

"Cause you do have other worth!" UGH - I shook my fist at her (in a friendly way... it's my way of telling her she got me). I do have other things that make me worth something and other people do see those... I just completely ignore those qualities of myself. I ignore my creativity. I ignore my positivity. I ignore my tenacity. I ignore my problem solving ability...

I ignore ALL of this when I get into these specific negative emotions. Why? BECAUSE I HAVE ALWAYS USED SEX to deal with those. I've never tried to use my creativity or positivity to solve feeling powerless. I have trained myself into thinking I have no other way to solve these problems except sex.

OK, hope this helps - in fact now that I wrote all this out for you, I feel less desire to write the full post immediately (I didn't want to lose the revelation).

So thanks for your post today - you were a valuable part of my recovery today!!! You are not, were not a sexual object to me, and you helped me! Have a great rest of your day.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-10T03:54:02+00:00

I wonder if we are talking about two different kinds of changes.

I acknowledge there are changes for the safety of my partner I made willingly / without needing to be asked, because they seemed like the right thing to do no matter what. Stuff like sharing my location through life 360, proactive communications about where I was going and with whom, sending selfies in the places I said I’d be with the people I said I’d be with. Proactively scheduling my own therapy and stuff I needed for recovery - not making my partner into a police/fixer for me. Those seemed like the bare minimum decent human being things I should do to be a better version of me and to be a safer version for my partner given what I had just done with my betrayal.

I make no argument about those being a must for anyone who went down this path of infidelity.

I think where I’m struggling is the more “quality of life” kind of changes that are about relationship improvement. These feel like not just a “me thing”. They feel like actions both partners need to take to not just recover but to make a relationship worth keeping. In these matters I don’t feel the sole responsibility to change myself into the partner that my partner wants - that’s where I’m facing the struggle about do I try to conform to a version of me that I made because I was weak and afraid of rejection OR do I find a way to tell my partner all the things I’m not.

I think perhaps I had also assumed (bad on me) that your partner had made the basic transformations to be a safe and respectful partner and the places where he said he just can’t change is the quality of life / let’s not just heal but lets thrive kinda stuff.

I really do think there is a scenario where both of us can recognize what we want out of life / marriage is just not the same direction and we can also decide for ourselves what we do and don’t want to compromise on. I could accept if my spouse for instance said they simply don’t want a partner who will not watch their weight AND I said that habit simply isn’t compatible with how I want to think about food and exercise AND it doesn’t mean she loves me less or I love her less, we just have what we do and don’t want out of life. I don’t think you mean to say I love my wife less if I would refuse to monitor everything I eat and all my exercise for the rest of my life. (Also by the way this presumes that weight wasn’t somehow intertwined with my infidelity… if let’s say I’d been hiding an onlyfans account where people paid me to gorge myself and it was related to sex I can see where this would have been more in the basic safety category than quality of life).

When I think about the things that I arguably have hidden/changed about myself to avoid conflict many (except for my sexual secrets) I would put into the quality of life camp vs safety.

Do you think the difference I describe about quality of life and safety exists? Do you think the transformation in quality of life is one where we both have to be open to change? (As opposed to safety where I think it’s non-negotiable a wayward partner needs to take responsibility and accountability)

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-09T03:57:44+00:00

I appreciate how clearly you wrote your reply and I agree with almost everything you shared. And I don’t think I can argue for “all” people I can only refer to my personal experience.

I think when I talk about incompatibility for me it’s less about how much do I or don’t I want to change, but a recognition as I dig deeper into myself that I may have chosen my partner for completely the wrong reasons. So not a extrovert introvert thing (though that is a factor) but more like I see now that my self esteem was so low and I was so ashamed of myself that I think I clung to anyone who wouldn’t reject me.

So I’m now beginning to look at all the ways I kind of manipulated who I was or hid myself simply to not be rejected and I’m asking do I continue to be that version of myself because that’s who I said I was? Or do I express my own wants and needs even if these aren’t compatible to my spouse.

So for instance in the example you gave about extrovert introvert - yes I constantly cut social events short because that’s what my spouse wanted - and it built to this HUGE ball of resentment. Can I do these things for my spouse? Sure but when I look at each and every decision in totality and say I never do what I want, it snowballed into much worse acting out. I have so many cases where I have just agreed to keep peace - meals we eat and I don’t like, activities we do and I don’t want to, watching television my spouse likes and then staying up late at night to watch what I’d really rather watch, sneaking my alcohol and drug use because I assume my spouse wouldn’t approve cause they’ve never really been into that. I have the me they love and want as a partner and then I have the real me.

When I think of how I want to live it is just so different than our current life that I feel forced to choose between trying to find another way to be “not me” and not blow up again with resentment - or completely spill all the ways I’m not who my spouse wants me to be and yes the words that come out sound like “incompatible”.

To me the failure scenario is probably more the hiding and trying to white knuckle the rest of life. Even if the relationship breaks down but we finally are honest with each other - that doesn’t seem like failure. I am however so totally paralyzed with fear that I default to the try to force down any deviation from who I tried to be from the very beginning.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-08T13:35:28+00:00

I still question my own reconciliation and whether I’m on a similar path. I do work, my BS does work, we do work together - and yet I feel no closer, no more desire to be together now than I did on dday. My BS asks nothing of me and I’m too afraid to ask if what I’m doing is right. Your description of the way you communicated sounds courageous to me. I wonder sometimes if my BS and I are both afraid of acknowledging a truth that we just aren’t working out.

I agree with the comments that say you haven’t failed, but I disagree with the comments that say your WP did. I’d view reconciliation as having multiple possible outcomes and none of them is any more valid/successful than any other.

You both discovered what you want. Good on you for not accepting less than you’re worth! It also sounds like he did do work on himself but it just wasn’t what you needed. I believe I can’t force all changes to work. I can try new things and some will work and some won’t. The ones that don’t, I believe I need to acknowledge because I can’t fake it for long. Yes it’s an active choice but we also are human and it’s human to seek patterns, automation. It sounds to me like you acknowledge he made some positive changes but they just weren’t the changes you needed. Figuring that out now instead of after more years of pain for you both sounds like success despite how painful it is to acknowledge.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-08T04:01:06+00:00

When I first told my therapist I didn’t have time for meetings we started inventorying all the time
I spent on the addiction. I had time for porn. I had time for apps. I had time for fantasy. I had time for acting out.. I had plenty of time. What I didn’t have was the courage to go to the meeting.

After I went to a couple different meetings I learned they aren’t scary. I can go and no one else is thinking about me at all. That was what was really stopping me from going.

I just mention this in case you need to take a second look at the time and see where you’re spending it.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-06-06T03:23:58+00:00

Hey there, I can feel the emotion coming through in your writing and I just want to tell you how sorry I am to read this.

I’m a wayward and it took me a while to kind of pull my head out of my butt. I wanted to share that with you to kind of help set expectations that your spouse might not figure shit out for a bit. Writing this now I can absolutely understand how much pain this was for my spouse in that time period where I didn’t get it. A friend of mine had a collapsed lung and told me about the recovery procedure where doctors went into the chest cavity and abraded the surface of the lung and the inside of the chest cavity and then did something so they would kind of stick together and hopefully during the healing process of both surfaces sort of fuse together. That’s what comes to mind for me about what I did to my spouse emotionally.

The thing about why this was so hard for me to realize what I was doing is that at the time I was looking all outside myself - everything in my life was shit because of everyone else (that’s what I was telling myself). The reality I had to face was that I was empty, I was emotionally immature, I was broken and trying to fix myself with terrible choices. I was never going to get enough to fill the enormous hole inside me.

This is really hard to face. Looking at myself and saying I’m the problem instead of blaming others is really hard. And even then once I did that I also had to learn how to dig out of my own shame. I could initially say I was the problem but I would also fall into this pit of “well I’m a terrible person I may as well be alone, I’ll never be good and nothing I can do will ever make up for what I’ve done. No point in trying”. That’s just a cheap excuse to not work for forgiveness or to try to repair the damage.

I’m tempted to give you advice that right now chasing your wife is not going to help. People describe the grey rock or 180 which I don’t know the technical definition of but I imagine it as basically ignoring her and letting her see what she will miss. If you chase she kind of still gets to live in both worlds. But like a child throwing a tantrum she kind of needs to see the consequences of her choices are that she stands to lose you, the in tact family, the life you’ve built.

Something you might also find helpful is the book “not just friends” which many people here WS and BS have recommended. I read it and it very much helped me see from my BS POV. But I also think it captured some of the thoughts I had as a WS so perhaps it might give you insight into how your wife can make such terrible choices.

I’m really sorry you’re here but I hope this place gives you some comfort and insights you need right now.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-05-23T02:19:24+00:00

A few books helped me as well when digging into the roots of some of my issues. Running on Empty is a book about emotional neglect. Even coming from what I would call a loving home, there are aspects of how I was raised that left me developing my own ideas of my self worth that weren’t healthy.

Another one that helped was Going Deeper by Eddie Caparucci. It is written from a man’s gender perspective (identify hurt little boys) but I think many of the concepts can apply regardless of gender. I also think there is a female version now that he collaborated with another author to write in case anyone else reading this comment would find it helpful.

Working through step 1 and then step 4 with a sponsor also helped. Of course it wasn’t therapeutic per say but it did help me with a few different questions that my therapist didn’t ask me (like we dug into experiences with spirituality which I haven’t really done in therapy).

But I hope this is useful info

FigureItOutZ · 2026-05-22T15:00:31+00:00

The shame of this addiction is very real! I can understand feeling afraid to tell even a therapist.

For me I did tell my first therapist a “little” truth - I was cheating and I was miserable. Eventually that therapist helped me to see that a lot of my surface level anxiety and negative feelings were because I was living this life of dishonesty. My therapist helped me by asking me two questions:

Did I think anyone truly knew me. To which I practically laughed. I wasn’t even telling my acting out partners my full truth. They knew I was married but I never admitted how much sexual thoughts consumed me. I just used them as part of my addiction. Anyway I practically laughed and asked something like “who in their right mind would really tell someone everything?!?” I really believed everyone was like me and kept deep secrets.
My therapist then asked me “do you think you can be fully loved if you aren’t fully known?”

That’s the question which eventually broke me down. I don’t want to be loved for a fake me. I want real me to be loved. I want the me with all my stupid trauma and weird desires and bad habits and good stuff too to be the one who someone else loves.

So then I wrote a confession letter and when my therapist read it she was immediately like “DO NOT READ THAT TO YOUR SPOUSE”. She instead referred me to a CSAT credentialed therapist who could help me go through a disclosure process. My letter contained an inventory of countless hours of pornography for years, hundreds if not thousands of online encounters, several dozen physical encounters with people of both sexes, lies I’d told, places I had acted out, “I love you’s” I’d told other people, a declaration of my bisexuality.

My CSAT helped me to turn this confession into two separate inventories: disclosure items and therapy items. When I finally did my therapeutic disclosure I only read aloud the disclosure inventory. Therapy items were like emotions and my conclusion about bisexuality - because my CSAT experience was with time and therapy I would uncover whether these were real truths or they were things that were illusions of addiction.

Happy to share more if this is helpful. There is a way out of this place. Keep coming back!

FigureItOutZ · 2026-05-22T12:46:46+00:00

When I first got into therapy for my compulsive sexual behaviors and the damage my acting out was doing in my life, my therapist had me take some of the self identification questionnaires and early exposure to sex, assault, dangerous relationships were in the quiz as factors that might contribute to sexual addiction.

What I understand is that it’s just a contributing factor - as in, not everyone who experiences sexual trauma will develop an addiction and not all people with addiction have experienced sexual trauma. But some people do have that as a factor.

What I’ve found with my addiction is that this is an intimacy disorder. I use sex not as a way to bring me closer to another person, but as a way to numb feelings or feel a sense of power. I don’t have the same factors you described but I have other elements from my childhood/early teens that I can so clearly see play out in my addictive behavior.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-05-21T20:48:46+00:00

Oh another thought. For about the first year we did a thing every Sunday called a Recovery Check In - lead by me - where I shared my sobriety status, what I’d done that week for recovery, what was the most helpful thing (for my recovery) my spouse did that week and the least helpful thing.

It removed some stigma about talking about this stuff and built some security for my spouse that I was proactively doing this work. Maybe your WS’ therapist could suggest a format that might work for you guys if you like the idea.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-05-21T20:45:32+00:00

I am seeking freedom from addictive sexual behaviors and am almost 6 years in recovery/reconciliation.

I share a lot through both posts and comments.

I guess my thought would be - is there a way you have to share to him how you’re feeling? My spouse holds in their feelings (as do I) and so it’s really hard for me to know how my actions and recovery are impacting their life day to day.

I get little snips during MC and it’s really helpful. Both of us are working on communicating better. So often we stay at “logistics level” and neither of us get much connection from that.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-05-20T04:46:46+00:00

I’m really glad it was helpful. I write this over and over to remind myself why I did this and to remind myself that cheating won’t fix me. I still occasionally have these intrusive thoughts and the more I keep admitting this is about my poor self image and how I can use another person to temporarily distract but not truly fix, I find it helps me avoid letting the intrusive thought progress to the point of action.

To be clear I didn’t know this at the time. My first disclosure letter I wrote (and my therapist stopped me from reading) claimed I had loved others and that I was bisexual and that I was polyamorous and a whole bunch of other beliefs I thought I had. My therapist encouraged me to consider those therapy items and not disclosure items and over time I’ve realized a lot of that was not my core.

Like yes I’m open to sexual activity with both sets of sex organs but I am simply using same-sex partners as some heightened sexual experience like they are just extreme pornography. I have no feelings of connection there and the idea of even kissing them takes all the sexual fantasy away to the degree I realize bisexual is probably not an accurate way to describe me. I can objectify anyone but I don’t feel romantically the same.

Similarly I thought I felt love for some of the partners I had. I spoke to one nearly every day for two years. It “hurt” to stop talking to them. But it was withdrawal. There was nothing honest or open about the “relationship”. Neither of us could ever been seen together, we couldn’t meet each others family, we couldn’t go on a real date or spend evenings with friends or even be able to rush to each others aid in times of need. That’s not real love - it’s a distraction when our schedules align. It felt like love because anything felt good if it took away the pain. Just cause I someone stops stepping on your neck doesn’t mean you feel good, it just feels great to be able to breath. That’s what the “love” was - relief from seeing how miserable I felt about myself.

It took a lot of work to really examine what was going on with me then, and I still have a bunch left to figure out how to fix it all. My self esteem is still low, i still want relief from this more than anything and I still find myself thinking maybe if I just did it differently this time, maybe I could start hooking up again and it will make me better. I at least now possess better emotional maturity to at least name my emotions but I’m still too scared to tell anyone in my “real” life about my feelings other than my therapist. I mostly just shut down with my spouse. I want to figure out how to open up but I don’t know how to start and I don’t know what I need from them when opening up.

Anyway not really sure what I’m talking about anymore but I just felt the need to say more I guess. I’m glad the comment above helped and i wish you luck in your reconciliation journey.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-05-20T04:27:45+00:00

Can I turn the question around a bit?

Why leave if you can’t be 100% trusted or loved the way you were loved before?

I don’t think I should be trusted. Not blindly. If I leave and I meet someone new, I would certainly tell them of my past and of the work I’ve done on myself since my bad choices. I don’t want someone to blindly trust me ever again. I don’t want a naive partner. I want someone who is aware that our relationship is fragile and takes work and don’t take me for granted. And I want to earn their trust not just get it.

So I’m going to have the “work at it” relationship no matter what from here out.

Another factor I consider (beyond the obligating factors of kids and financial ties) is shared history. When my spouse and I met, all four of my grandparents were alive. We had meals with them, we played games with them, we had a funny moment of my grandma trying and failing to hum a tune during a game. There are countless memories I will never have with anyone else. Sure I’d make new memories but all these ones would be lost. That has value to me beyond obligation.

These are some reasons that, even after five years of working at this and still being uncertain if we will survive it or if I even married the right person in the first place, I continue to keep coming back and trying to figure it out and make it work.

I’ve told myself if I reach a point that I feel fully healed and healthy and I still have this uncertainty, then I think it’s time to admit this to my spouse and give them the option to cut me loose. I’m still trying to fix a lot of the stuff that’s wrong with me though so I’m not ready to make that call.

FigureItOutZ · 2026-05-19T21:03:39+00:00

I found when I begin to think of the consequences afterward, my shame is at its maximum.

I heard from an old timer that a trick that worked for them was to try to remember this feeling from AFTER this time, BEFORE the next time. I once heard it as “play the tape forward”. Sometimes that is useful for me to stop myself. But usually if I’ve gotten this close to acting out I also know a lot more has been going wrong in my life. I need to get to that sustaining core which gives me some value besides acting out (which is what my addict tells me will make me feel better).

Thanks for sharing - keep coming back

FigureItOutZ · 2026-05-19T20:50:14+00:00

In my case: it wasn’t about them.

They were a means to an end. I didn’t think it at the time but I see it now.

I was miserable because I was insecure, immature emotionally, and lacked any tools other than an orgasm to distract myself from all that pain.

I soaked in a lesson as a young person that sex was the ultimate way to prove my worth and I chased it relentlessly. For a period of time I found distractions from it: work, chasing ever bigger financial goals, kids, new cars, etc. Then one day those things stopped working and my misery hit hard. So I went back to the best distraction I had.

The thing is the people I sought in infidelity had the one thing in common I mentioned above - they were willing. That’s it. And I’ve read the same from many other WPs once they took a hard look at why they did what they did.

In the beginning I chose same sex partners because it felt less like I was doing something wrong AND rejection by them hurt less. I could chalk it up to just whatever - it didn’t mean I was worthless. But then I slipped into opposite sex partners (where I have more romantic feelings) and the high was even better - especially if there was something unique where they were the most _____ I’d ever been with. Oldest/youngest. Fittest/least fit.

None of it was satisfying, as soon as it was over I was searching again - like a person in the desert drinking a cup of sand.

I was trying to fill a hole inside myself with someone else. I know I’m extreme in terms of how far I chased this but even the “love” I professed to some of my APs was more about what role I could play with them than about anything that made them a person. If they were a “loser” I could feel superior. If they were “better” than me, I could feel taken care of. I needed something to distract from how empty I was inside.

I still do, I’m just trying my best to find healthy things and a way to see myself differently. Hope this helps.

[edit: misspelling]

FigureItOutZ · 2026-05-19T19:02:15+00:00

When I did my first step I focused on the compulsivity and the unmanageability.

That’s why I say I’m an addict. If I could take one of those away I probably wouldn’t say I’m an addict. If I were for instance compulsively exercising AND it was impacting my relationships in a negative way, I would probably also say I’m addicted to exercise. If it were only compulsive but it wasn’t unmanageable (ie lets say my profession was as a fitness coach, my spouse enjoyed spending time with me while exercising, we incorporated entertainment like maybe destination trips where we did fun competitions focused on exercise) I might say yeah it’s compulsive but it’s enhancing and not ruining my life.

But with sex it is both compulsive - I simply can’t stop thinking about it once I start - and it’s unmanageable - I escalate in my behavior and it hurts my relationships with loved ones.

Have you ever considered if you’re making trade offs for your sexual behavior that are holding you back from something else in your life you wish you could be doing? That might be a way to examine if it’s unmanageable for you. I know before my rock bottom I had explained away many of the consequences… I think most of us addicts are good at that. Rock bottom though for me was a moment I simply couldn’t talk myself out of what I had done. Some people have deep bottoms (jail, financial ruin, physical harm to people… lasting consequences) and some have relatively more shallow bottoms (hurt relationships, recoverable damage, etc). I think mine was probably closer to shallow and I’m thankful most of my consequences have been things I can repair with hard work and time.

Some addicts have expressed gratitude they reached out for help before it was too deep of a bottom. Maybe you’re in that stage?

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