Using people as drugs through sex and love.
Sex and love addiction is rampant in today’s modern world.
Due to the normalisation of hardcore pornography, hook-up apps and sex work through the rise of only fans and other platforms, sex and love addiction has become endemic in society.
In fact, full-blown sex and love addicts are applauded in modern culture as ‘living the dream’ when, in reality, many are seriously unwell and often trapped in a living nightmare.
How do I know? I used to be one of them.
Liberation Or Slavery
“Trouble often begins as fun. In the end, everything has a price.” ~ J.D.R.
The information age left society self-absorbed, disconnected and obsessed with money, notoriety and carnal pleasure.
Promiscuity and transactional degenerate sex became glamorised as sexual liberation. However, this so-called sexual freedom was basically behavioural and intellectual and dramatically limited the emotional and sensory experience of sex and love.
It left us with an experience of sex and love that enslaves rather than liberates. Promoting physical neediness but lacking spiritual givingness.
It encourages sexual gluttony and fixation that is out of sync with the ebb and flow of our natural desires and the body’s circadian rhythms.
Love is turned into selfish attachment, possessiveness and extreme emotionality or discarded entirely.
Sex’s sacred life-transformative meaning becomes a throw-away commodity — meaningless pleasure devoid of any real intimacy, connection or growth.
Sex and love become soulless.
Looking for Love in All The Wrong Places
“My fear of abandonment is exceeded only by my terror of intimacy.” ~ Ethlie Ann Vare.
Over time, many become transfixed and trapped by lust and fantasy. Left desiring and devouring, forever hungry.
High on pleasure but low on self-love.
And I was no different.
Frustrated and lonely, I attached myself to emotionally unavailable people in a desperate attempt to feel loved and validated. Repeating the same toxic patterns and relationships again and again.
Unconscious and numbed out through constant sexual encounters, I knew what I was doing wasn’t working, but I seemingly couldn’t stop — somewhere along the line, I had crossed a threshold and become a sex and love addict.
Drugs On Legs
Sex and love addiction is a powerful and painful emotional rollercoaster ride that leads to severe destructive lifelong consequences and sometimes irreversible damage.
It creates a bedrock of mental disorders and trust issues and rewires neural pathways, leaving its sufferers isolated, lonely, and clinically depressed.
Life is lived compulsively through intense, overwhelming feelings, mainly of anxiety (often mistaken as excitement), that can paralyse and completely immobilise a sex and love addict’s sense of being and purpose.
Driven by constant fantasy, intrigue, and an unceasing sense of longing for relief, a sex and love addict can never be present.
Work and then life itself become an inconvenience to be endured until their next fix of pleasure (which is the drug addict’s life: constantly seeking pleasure to escape reality).
The sex and love addict is simply using people as drugs.
And like every drug addict, the sex and love addict’s short-lived high is ultimately denied as their desires are, in fact, insatiable.
Addiction always promises but never fulfils.
I Blame It On Disney
People don’t want to experience change; they just want to wake up, and it’s different.” ~ Chadwick Boseman.
Addict or not, we are all predisposed to sex and love addiction.
After all, sex is everywhere. Consumerism is built on it. Sex sells everything.
In addition, we all have 24/7 access to all the chemicals we need to become sex and love addicts: dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. These homegrown chemicals are some of the best feelings a human will ever experience.
Social media companies know the power of dopamine to get users doom-scrolling till dawn — It‘s part of their business model!
Tech giants have become ‘attention’ cartels supplying algorithms like crack cocaine to hook their users onto their sites.
Technology is like rocket fuel for the sex and love addict.
In addition, society has indoctrinated us into this love-addicted, ‘happy-ever-after’ story. Hollywood hypnotises us with the fairy tale knight in shining armour saving the damsel in distress.
But these days, knights aren’t even in armour. Their at home revelling in Netflix and porn.
And damsels aren’t interested in being saved; they’re too busy monetising their looks and chasing online narcissistic dopamine hits.
Would You Be With You?
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” ~ Omar Khayyam.
You have to have a healthy relationship with yourself first before anyone else. But constantly being pulled by imperious urges and addictive habits, it’s impossible to be with yourself for yourself.
We’ve become proficient in self-harm rather than self-love.
As the drug addict has to become abstinent from drugs, similarly, the sex and love addict has to become celibate for a period of time to recalibrate and find their truth.
That means taking a break from:
- Porn (and perhaps all social media)
- Dating
- Masturbation
- Fantasy (scanning, objectifying and intriguing all come under this heading)
- Alcohol and drugs (and any stimulant that lowers our consciousness)
Instead, redirect the focus to being present for yourself. What’s going on for you?
By acknowledging your feelings and fears, sitting with them, not trying to change them, but feeling them and allowing them to come up, you can process them.
This is the withdrawal period.
The withdrawal period is painful, but the pain has a purpose.
On the other side of that pain is peace and freedom.
You can now pursue life without constant craving and obsessional thinking, hijacking your thoughts at every moment.
You can now relate to people from a state of wholeness.
A Healthier Way
“You don’t get to tell people how to love you; you get to choose if you want to participate in the way they love.” ~ Iyanla Vanzant.
Pleasure is our birthright. But we don’t want pleasure at the expense of our growth.
We want to grow and evolve via experience. And our biggest growth spurts come primarily through painful experiences.
If you’re using sex and love to take the discomfort off emotional issues, then it‘s not about pleasure — it’s about avoidance.
Ask yourself:
- What is your role and purpose in life?
- What is your greatest gift?
- How can you give back, use your time on earth to contribute and make a difference, even for just one person?
- How do you want to be remembered?
The sex and love addict needs to create meaning for themselves and seek to strive towards it. Otherwise, life quickly becomes tedious, meaningless and eventually toxic.
After Thought
“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.” ~ Marilynne Robinson.
Healthy sex is a by-product of a healthy, loving relationship that has boundaries and where the people involved are committed to growth.
Real intimacy cannot come without genuine commitment.
And to have a healthy relationship with anyone, you must first have a healthy relationship with yourself; body, mind and spirit.
When that is in place, and you know what you want, the perfect sex and love relationship will come to you without you having to do anything.
No chasing, fixing or changing anyone.
But whether somebody shows up or not, you accept life just as it is.
Why?
Because you are fulfilled in what you’re doing, trust the process of who you’re becoming and share your happiness with others.
And most of all, you are at peace in the splendour of your own company because you believe you’re right where you’re meant to be, with or without somebody next to you.
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Darren James 