DR. DREW'S WARNING SIGNS

The five warning signs that Dr. Drew Pinsky gives to identify whether your spouse could be a sex addict are as follows; (I am going to explain how they rang LOUD and TRUE in my life and marriage.)

1.) DIFFICLTY WITH EMOTIONS:

This one rings home to me very profoundly now, how I never really stopped to see Wayne’s lack of emotions just blows my mind. If someone got extremely sick, someone passed away, if we had financial difficulties, when I needed him to make a decision about anything, it was kind of like he never had an opinion or just didn’t care about the issue. When others, such as his sisters, his mother, his friends, anyone who loved and cared about him was going through hard times, Wayne never showed emotions. When his mom got sick and passed away I never saw a tear, nor did I hear how he was feeling. When I would ask him how he is doing all he would ever say is “fine”, “I’m fine.” There was such an emptiness about him, I could feel it but I could not for the life of me understand it.

During our marriage we had up’s and down’s like all relationships do, yet with Wayne when things were not going good or important decisions needed to be made, he always ran. His words were, “I don’t know what to do.” I was always left to defend, decide and fix the issue alone. If it took to much effort for Wayne, he would go underground. I always saw this but excused it as he had to much stress at work and he just couldn’t handle anymore. I never gave my stress level much thought as I could handle anything, RIGHT !

When I look back now I truly see just how unimportant I was to me. I had a job, kids, house, yard, bills and real life issues everyday, yet I could justify Wayne’s lack of emotional involvement by using, “He’s under to much stress at work.” He had a JOB, one JOB and I took care of everything else, plus. What was I saying to myself during all those years? “I can handle it all, I’m strong enough to get through this, I can figure it out, but Wayne couldn’t.” Was I saying he was to weak, that he couldn’t handle what I could handle? What was I really telling myself and why did I excuse his lack of emotional involvement as being okay?

Was the lack of his emotional involvement a reason to end my marriage? NO, not to me it wasn’t. Wayne and I could have really GREAT times together and even though I knew he would not be there during the hardest times in life for me or anyone else who loved him, I accepted that it was who he was and I loved him unconditionally and somewhere in all that unconditionally meant unaccountable.

So how has this now changed since discovery? We talk about feelings, we explore what feelings really are. After discovery I found out Wayne thought that we only had two emotions, Happy or Sad. Our counselor actually had to give him a list of emotions for him to understand that there are all kinds of different feelings, emotions, we go through everyday.

Today, I demand that he handle the stress of life as I have had to handle it, with fortitude and decisiveness. He can no longer bury his head in the sand, run away from the issue, or dump it on me alone. Today, he must make a plan and put it into action, he must tell me what he is thinking and feeling, he must now SHOW ME that he is being responsible in his life, WORDS, empty words will never be tolerated or excused by me again.

2.) CHANGES IN LIBIDO:

I have always been one of those people that when I meet someone I want to give them a hug. Physical touch is something I have always enjoyed. It did not take long into my marriage to Wayne for me to stop reaching out to him for physical touch. Physical touch became groping, grabbing, sexual, there was no intimacy in it at all with Wayne. I loved to cuddle on the couch at night and watch TV but if I did that with Wayne, even with the kids in the room, he would grab at my body parts it always left me feeling sick inside, used, dirty. When Wayne would be outside working in the yard and if I would run up and give him a hug from behind he always turned it sexual. There was never any play in it. I found that with him I had to be cautious with what I did physically and because of that caution I started becoming physically distant from him.

About a month after our wedding we started having a very difficult sexual life. It was extremely hard for me to feel close to Wayne. I use to beg him to go to counseling with me or even sex therapy as I never felt close or “enough” for him. I was always left feeling alone, used, dirty even abused sometimes after sex, not all the time, but most of it. Wayne had an issue that I could never understand and this issue didn’t start until we were married for about a month, once it started it never changed and it always, always made me feel horrible after wards. It was never making love to my husband, it was always SEX. I begged with tears for him and us to get help but he never would go, he didn’t think he needed help, he was just fine and it did not matter how I felt or how it made me feel. This caused even more distancing between us.

Wayne took my distance as though I didn’t like making love, he could not have been more wrong, I loved it, but I just didn’t have it with him. The way it made me feel afterwards was too high a price for me to pay.

I would tell him how it made me feel and all he would say was that he could not help it. The excuses for why he couldn’t change it were numerous. I told him time and time again I believed he had something psychologically wrong with him and that there had to be some way to change it, he would just laugh and give me another excuse as to why he just couldn’t change. When I look back now, I feel sad for all the time that was wasted and for all the years that I had to go without being loved and loving in the bedroom.

How is it different today? It is OH SO MUCH different. It now feels like LOVE. We have eye to eye contact, we talk and communicate before and during, we can laugh and truly enjoy our time together. The issue that was between us for so many years is now gone. That is the one thing that keeps me grounded with our physical life now, if that issue comes back, I will know immediately That empty, empty feeling I use to get, is GONE and today I have what I have so desired for so many, many years a relationship built on so much more than sex.

3.) EXCESSIVE ONLINE INTERNET USEAGE:

I never had this issue with Wayne. He used his work computers for his internet pornography usage. I never had access to his work computers until the last two years prior to discovery. Most of Wayne’s pornography was done in Adult Book Stores, I had absolutely no idea this was going on until discovery. Also, we did not have a computer in our home until 1998.

Today, I know that if Wayne wants to view pornography there is nothing I can do to stop him, this has to be his decision, all I can do is set my boundaries high, be ready to keep the accountability to crossing them and feel safe in who I am. Wayne never knows when I will ask for or demand a lie detector test and I know I can rely on my gut instinct as it is alive and well. My gut instinct is what I believe today, it is my spiritual guiding force and when she speaks, today, I listen.

4.) MOOD SWINGS AROUND SEX:

This one use to drive me insane. I could have just worked a 20 hour day and fell into bed drained to exhaustion and Wayne would have to have sex. Sex was like work for me with Wayne at times and there were just times I did not in anyway want to go there, so I would say, “Not now, maybe later” or “how about tomorrow night?” and this whinny, pouty, man would appear. If we had sex he would be on a high, mister wonderful for about 24 hours but if we didn’t he could be hard to be around. He could be like a little boy who couldn’t have the candy like the other kids. I also lost respect for him because of this, I thought I had married a man and I found myself dealing with a little boy a lot of the time.

This mood swing issue around sex addiction is so true.

How is this different today? Today Wayne accepts the fact that he is not going to get sex every single day, in fact he may not get it once a week, nor once a month. Our relationship is not built on sex today but deeper more intimate issues, such as loving, caring, forgiving, understanding, compassion, anger, trust issues, today sex is a much smaller part of who we are as a couple and because of that when we are together its finally the WOW we both longed for.


5.) DOES NOT SOCIALIZE WELL:

My girlfriends use to tell me all the time that they thought Wayne was a flirt and I always excused it away. I knew he was a flirt but I was never insecure in who I was so his flirting never really bothered me. I just accepted it was who he was. Do not think that I did not bring it to his attention if I thought it was out of hand because I did on occasion. I always saw that Wayne could talk to women so much easier than he could to men. Most of his conversations with men were about work, construction. With women I always noticed it was about their problems. He use to love to talk to my friends about their relationship problems or any issue they were having. I know now that it made him feel good about himself if women talked and listened to him, that ego thing.

There were times when I told him very bluntly that him talking to women about his personal life, our marriage, my personal life was way out of bounds for me and that if I ever caught him doing it, it could end our marriage, he would laugh at me and tell me how he would never do that. Sad that he did and he did it all the time to any woman who would listen. He told them such intimate details about not only our marriage but about my personal life. This was harder for me to over come during discovery than the sexual act. This was a much bigger deeper betrayal for me.

Today, he does not talk to women outside my presence. He does not have intimate conversations with them and if a woman shares her issues with him he tells me about the conversation. He has to learn how to bow out of intimate conversations with women period.

These are just 5 warning signs that Dr. Drew discussed. If you see any of these in your marriage, please get help. Do it now, don’t let yourself make excuses or justify them in anyway. You deserve to have the best life possible and you owe it to yourself, your spouse and your family to have a happy, healthy life.

God Bless
Kate