A good essay on cybersex addiction:
What Sara didn’t understand was that no mortal human being could ever live up to the “erotic haze”—the dopamine-enhanced, highly aroused state that the sex addict enters into when he was acting out that really had little to do with sex with a real woman. A real-life person can never compete with a fantasy. She also didn’t understand that she held no responsibility for the situation, that Steve’s condition resulted from childhood trauma and that he carried the emotional wounds with him well before he ever met her.
In treatment, Sara relayed that it wasn’t the sexual behavior that hurt her as much as the lies and secrets that surrounded the behavior. It was that that she didn’t know if she could forgive. She doubted she could ever trust him again.
For years, Steve would tell her she was “crazy” when she suspected something. She needed to accept that she did not cause the problem and that she could not control it.
For a number of years, Sara, like so many women before her, became obsessive about “spying” on her mate; repeatedly checking computer hard drives, smartphones, texts, videos, webcams, emails, etc. to see if he was acting out. She said she felt crazy when she did this, but she continued to try to obtain more control over a situation over which she felt powerless.
Sara agreed to begin to attend S-anon, a 12-step program for partners of sex addicts where she met women who were able to give her support and empathy. At the same time, she started treatment with a therapist I referred her to, while they both continued couples therapy.
Psychodynamics
One year after treatment began, Steve announced that he was terminating treatment. I encouraged him to talk about what had led him to this decision. Our exploration revealed his fantasy that I would punish and humiliate him for having “failed” after having been so sure of himself. Further work indicated relationships between this fantasy and Steve’s shame about his fall from grandiosity and his need for help, his envy and resentment of me, and a number of emotionally significant childhood experiences with both his parents. Steve’s ability to discuss these things in a safe environment enabled him to see me less as a bully and more as a stable and stabilizing mentor who might be able to help him out of the mess that he now knew to be his inner life.
Effects of Treatment
As treatment progressed, Steve began to realize that these fantasy-based transient sexual encounters were not what he was really looking for, since they would not satisfy him or meet his needs for intimate connection.
