If you put it in the wrong pipe, you could kill a girl.
Luke to the rabbi: “Have you had problems in this way? Hey buddy, you’re in the trachea, not the throat.”
A doctor emails me: “To insert male genitalia into the trachea accidentally would require you to be about 12 inches long.”
Whoops!
Rabbi: “Are you just going there to meet chicks?”
Luke: “God forbid. I’m not going there because I have behaviors out of control. I haven’t had sex in almost a year and a half.”
Rabbi: “With a person?”
Luke: “And I haven’t looked at porn in three months.”
Rabbi: “You haven’t looked at your own website?”
Luke: “No.”
Rabbi: “I haven’t looked at porn in two weeks.”
Luke: “Because your computer is busted.”
“I was describing my fantasies to my therapist about a month ago and he said, ‘That sounds like eroticized rage.’ All of my fantasies are eroticized rage.”
“I read these books on sex addiction. I don’t even fit stage one because I’m not acting out. I’m not doing anything behaviorally but all my fantasies are basically anger acted out. I said, I want to get clean. I want to get sober. Because I’m walking around dreaming about boinking chicks. There’s gotta be a finer, higher way to live my life. Why don’t I fantasize about being married? Why do I fantasize about boffing chicks at Ralphs? So long as they’re not tattooed and pierced.”
Rabbi: “I don’t buy sex addiction. Torah tells us that that is the way God made us and we have to fight.”
“Are you banging broads?”
Luke: “No.”
Rabbi: “Then you’re doing great. Why do you have to go to Sex Addicts Anonymous? That’s phony baloney.”
“There’s no such thing as sex addiction. It’s called being a male.”
Luke: “A longtime therapist of mine said to me, ‘You’re not a sex addict. I treated you for years.’ I said, ‘I’m not particularly interested in whether or not I’m a sex addict. I’m interested in whether or not the 12-step program can enhance my life. The price of entrance is to say, I’m a sex addict.
“Number two, I’m not interested in reducing my sexual desire. I’m interested in reducing certain emotional problems that hurt my life. For instance, in high school, I was a gambling addict.”
Rabbi: “Now that’s a real addiction.”
Luke: “It got really bad. I got thousands of dollars in debt [to a fellow student who I paid off about $100 total and we went our separate ways]. After high school, I said, I’m never going to gamble again. And with the exception of two times when it was with other people’s money, I have not.”
“So I’ve got this underlying addictive personality. What’s important is what’s underneath that. I’ve got this hole in my soul that I try to fill through excitement. Gambling fed that excitement. So I cut out gambling. Then it was chasing scoops. Big stories got my adrenalin pumping. That excitement fed my junkie side. I needed that excitement. Sexual conquests, real or imagined, would feed that junkie side. I know that I wouldn’t be so jonesing for a fix if I had my life together.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I tend to talk about sex inappropriately and too often.”
Rachel Resnick wrote the memoir Love Junkie. She is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick. She has published articles, essays, and celebrity-profile cover stories in the Los Angeles Times, Women’s Health, and BlackBook.
in December 2010, Luke Ford talks to Kirsten Rogoff, a licensed marriage and family therapist with offices in the South Bay, California. She is a trained psychoanalytic in sex addiction.
Fred emails: Reb yid,
Been a lurking fan ever since the Protocols. While you gravitate towards Yiddishkeit, I am repelled by it. Not repulsed, as I once was, after being a ritualistic agnostic and feigning the part of a litvisheh yeshiveh bucher for years.
I’ve purged myself of hatred towards this creed that attempted to keep me in the herd through fear and guilt.
I never fell into the atheist trap however, as atheism requires faith tantamount to that demanded by any other religion.
The more I study, physics/maths/cog-sci in particular, the more I recognize a being that transcends space and time. The question is whether such a being that created 10^1000 galaxies gives a shit about us, or is benevolent for that matter.
On the other side of the coin, I content myself with the Hegelian/Eastern concept of all life being fragments of a single entity – steadily growing aware itself along the arrow of time.
For much time, I found my tachlis in studying the pure sciences. “Euclid, alone, hath gazed upon beauty bare”.
But this is bullshit. Leonardo DiCaprio, alone, hath gazed upon beauty bare.
And I have not. And when I am, I am used for my cunning linguist skills, exploited, and then tossed out.
Being desired by beautiful women is my greatest motivator, and has been for a long time. Yet this has ever been beyond my reach. I’m the so called “nice guy”, or AFC, in PUA lingo.
If I cannot achieve this goal in this incarnation, then life is worthless to me. It is a deal-breaker.
I’ve read the Picture of Dorian Gray numerous times, and know that that road does not provide lasting happiness. Yet the gaping hole, pardon the double-entendre, in my life, its glaring absence makes it such a priority for me. It has triggered recurrent major depressive disorder.
I’ve seen many of your posts describing you in this situation.
Therefore I’m interested in hearing how you deal with this, having interviewed the most desirable women, a single one of whom could restore my passion for life.
I never get headaches from writing about personal stuff. I never get a stomach ache or any other ailment.
It’s pretty much effortless for me to write about my life.
What I find tough is reading such work to real human beings. That exhausts me. Try as I might, I can’t help fearing that I am offending them.
After reading aloud on Sundays, I walk to my car and climb inside and catch my breath.
It usually takes a few minutes for my pulse rate to return to normal and I finally feel strong enough – after a couple of scoops of peanut butter — to rejoin human society.
I’m stunned by how a few sex addiction meetings have affected me.
I don’t walk around with the predatory fantasies that normally afflict me.
Please know that these are fantasies only! I don’t act them out. I’m a good Orthodox Jew, a light on the Hollywood Hills, a shining example for the world of ethical monotheism.
My fantasy life is almost 100% eroticized rage. I don’t dream about intimacy within a committed relationship (though I rationally desire this). I dream about being a big swinging dick.
I don’t judge myself as a bad man for my fantasies. Like Judaism, I distinguish between thought and behavior, but I think my dreams are a mirror to my psyche, and that this psyche needs repair.
So I’ve done some meetings and shared my creepy thoughts and I’m different. Just as watching porn made me different in the opposite direction. It influenced me to treat sex like sport.
Twelve-step meetings sober me. I’m not walking around this week imagining myself a superstar with unlimited access to hot women. I’m not dreaming about being on the front page of the New York Times. I’m not wondering why nobody is making a documentary about my life.
In short, I’m not walking around in my normal narcissistic daydream. I’ve talked to too many people now whose lives have been rendered miserable by pursuing these delusions.
So, I feel more rooted in reality. When I’m with people I care about, I’m softer. I think my writing has changed.
It’s hard to go from davening or Torah study to the heedless pursuit of lust. And it’s hard to go from a 12-step meeting to treating people like objects.
I don’t expect this to last. I need to catch another meeting soon. Perhaps I might even make myself accountable to a sponsor and start working the 12-steps?
If you use the phrase, “I’m offended” or “That’s offensive”, I want nothing to do with you.
I’ve worked hard to create a life where I can say what I want. As I live this vision, I encounter increasingly few people with the temerity to tell me they’re offended by things I say.
Nobody in Pico-Robertson, for example, gives me a hard time to my face. They’re too afraid of my blog.
Still, the easily offended pop up in my world from time to time. To the best of my ability, I shut them down right quick. I ain’t going to be emotionally blackmailed into swallowing my views to accommodate your delicate sensibilities, even if you’re hot.
I’ve gotta say that women are at least five times more likely to take offense than men. Somehow much of the fairer sex think their exquisite feelings entitle them to shut down troublesome views.
In many contexts, I restrict myself. In shul, in school, and in the workplace, I put my desire to get along above my desire to speak my mind.
Other than that, I want to roam free the internet highway.
PS. I don’t ever recall saying “I’m offended” or “That offends me.”
I do take offense at things people say and do.
For example, I was at a party the other day. I was having a nice conversation with a young woman and I offered her my new business card, saying I was excited about it.
“Why would I want that?” she said. “I’ve got nowhere to put it.”
Now that was just rude. I’d just been describing my Alexander Technique practice and how jazzed I was to finally have a business card. And she shot me down.
I admit I took offense at her manner. I didn’t say anything. I just resolved to never extend myself to her again. She was hard and nasty, much like the boss she’d been complaining about.
I have the heart of a human being. If you prick me, do I not bleed? I take offense as regularly as anybody else, I just don’t think that my hurt feelings are ever an excuse to emotionally blackmail you to stop sharing your opinions on matters of politics, literature, and the like. If you advocate hurting innocent people based on sex, race or religion, then you are evil and I want you crushed.
If you are rude, if you poke unnecessary fun of people for their looks or for their clothes or for things not under their control, then you’re a jerk and I will sometimes speak up against you on that basis, but I’ll never claim that my negative emotional reaction to your words or deeds justifies shutting you down.
A friend of mine regularly disturbs the waiting room of my therapy center with his loud phone calls. So after the second time it happened with me there, I Facebooked him and told him to take it outside, to his great offense.
I don’t want people to tolerate bad behavior, but please don’t argue from the standpoint of your hurt feelings, or, if you must speak from this place, then say, “It hurts me when you…”
Don’t resort to the emotional blackmail of taking offense.
Michael Covarrubias: So, apparently, Luke, you believe there’s an important difference between “I’m offended” and “I took offense.”
Otherwise, why did you admit the latter in your post?
Luke: Feelings are fine. Feel everything you want, including offended. Just don’t use “feeling offended” as the basis for asking people to change their behavior and speech. If you must and if you are close to the person, then feel free to argue “I feel hurt when you do X, Y, Z.”
Joey Kurtzman: I don’t think we can feel “offended,” I don’t see it as an emotion. Anger is an emotion; “offense” is the assumption that other people should feel ashamed because I’ve managed to make myself angry. “I’m offended” is an intrinsically comical statement, because it’s presumptuous to the point of absurdity.
Michael Covarrubias: i tend to agree, Joey. i believe we can put too much faith in some of our immediate emotional reactions, which then influence beliefs. or at least influence which arguments we’re confident we can make effectively.
often, as you say, Luke, th…at expression is an attempt to stanch someone else’s expression. but expressing a reaction honestly is perfectly ok. i have no problem with you saying that you were hurt by the woman being dismissive of your new cards and the new direction they symbolize for you. that’s an honest expression.
when you say you were offended by it, i then of course wonder about what lines you draw in the challenges, to your expressions, that make you, in turn, dismiss others. i wonder what i might not be able to say when trying to sustain a conversation with you. how blunt can i be? how much can i challenge?
the statement “i’m offended” is less important to me than the way it’s used.
if, as a strategy for inviting and eliciting conversation, someone claims to be offended, i have no problem with it. in fact i relish the opportunity to understand that person more, because it seems that’s what they’re trying to do as well. the fact that they’re “offended” doesn’t matter to me. — i don’t pity them, judge them, or respect them any differently for that reaction.
if someone shuts down and stops listening to a conversation or processing an argument, that’s what i have no use for. i’ll simply be bored by their silent obstinacy. all i will judge is how interesting to me they promise to be.
I’ve met many enchanting women who were simply too strong for me. I couldn’t keep up with them. I think all healthy women want a man who’s stronger than her — stronger physically, psychologically, financially.
Dennis Prager says that what women want most is a man they can admire and that what a man wants most is to be admired by his woman.
One sign of strength is the ability to stand on your own two feet. A woman who doesn’t constantly demand your attention and approval is strong. A woman with a successful career or demanding interests is strong. She may be committed to her religion or to her charity work or to her family. These are good signs, unless she’s consistently putting them before you.
I demand to be the number one thing in my woman’s life. Not just the number one person — before her family, friends, and our children — but the number one thing — before her career, charities, hobbies, causes, pets, etc. If this is not possible, I’m out.
I hate to date women who own pets because their devotion to them will typically interfere with your relationship. She simply won’t be available much of the time because she has to walk her dog, take her cat to the vet, feed her parakeet, and play with her parrot.
The older women get, the more they accumulate pets, and the more difficult they are to date. That’s another reason why young women are best. They haven’t adopted so many men substitutes and thus are more open to the real thing.
Dating is the one thing that people get worse at the more they do of it. They accumulate so many layers of cynicism and hurt that it gets harder to reach their heart.
Women with dogs suck. It’ll likely mean they can’t stay overnight. They’re reluctant to go away for weekends. They’ll be so covered with doggie hair and slobber you won’t want to boff them. Their need for male energy is largely met by their dog and so they feel less need for you.
I had a friend. He was dating a woman with a dog. This dog had some issues, so she couldn’t drop it off for the weekend to a dog sitter. So the dog came along on their trip to Joshua Tree and the trip sucked because the dog had so many needs.
I met this hot chick in shul. I almost made out with her in the parking lot. She invited me over for an Oscar’s party. I got to lie on top of her for a few minutes. I was hot to trot.
One problem — she had several dogs and she had fleas.
I’ve never had a happy relationship with a woman who owned pets. Their needs typically came before mine.
When I meet a great girl, I tend to moon about her for weeks and months. This mooning, this fantasizing, this attaching of magical qualities to her does not generally endear me to the object of my desire and just hastens her rejection and my subsequent depression.
When I attain the object of my desire, what then? I feel deliriously happy. I float for weeks, even months. Then I come back to earth and realize the work ahead.
According to the Urban Dictionary:
Often confused with love, this is the feeling that a particular woman is actually special. This is just an illusion; she is the same as the other three or so billion. “Go **** ten other women” is the most commonly prescribed treatment for this “disease” (hence the “itis”), as it tends to show quite quickly how very alike people are.
In other words, get over yourself and your obsession with that girl, because it’s just an illusion. And when you get rejected, don’t be depressed. Because there’s really not much to worry about.
Dude, you definitely have oneitis for that girl. You’ve been talking about her nonstop for the past week. Don’t you realize she’s nothing special, and that you are just being fooled? Snap out of it so you won’t be so depressed when she rejects you!
I often think that one woman is special and that I don’t want to live without her. I call her often, think about her often, and read lovesick stories about her to my writing group until they cry uncle and challenge me to write from her perspective.
Oneitis is my natural state. I prefer to be fixated on one woman. Being an equal opportunity predator is not my style.
A normal burst of oneitis hits me for months. I’m down for the count as far as other women are concerned.
I won’t call oneitis love. I won’t call it anything. I’ll just say that I tend to get fixated on one woman to the exclusion of all others. When this is part of a relationship, it’s is a good thing. When not, it sucks.
I wonder if oneitis is an escape from intimacy? If I can’t be with the one I love, I’m not much interested in anyone else. I’d rather be on my own with my Air Supply DVDs and my blog.
PS. I’ve dated many women of quality who did not prove to be disappointments. They contained all the magic I ascribed to them. In the end, I either decided we were not compatible or she did.
Greg Leake writes: Hi Luke,
It seems to me that this week’s Torah Talks could be titled “If You’re Completely Dysfunctional or Chronically Depressed in the Clinical Sense, Then Judaism Not Only Accepts You, But Prefers You.”
At the same time, Luke, I will say that you frequently seem to be at the lower end of the cutting edge. Suddenly we have discovered that Arnold Schwarzenegger has a love child with some woman who previously held a position on their household staff.
And apparently the head of the IMF, while staying in a $3,000 a night suite, came barreling out of the bathroom absolutely nude and sexually attacked a maid who had come in simply to tidy up.
And now you have announced that you are attending a 12-step program for sexual addiction. If you happen to bump into the governor at your meetings, please tell him many of us hope that he can get his life back into control. Furthermore, it wasn’t very nice to have Maria Shriver out front publicly defending him for all of his past liaisons, only for her to discover that she, in fact, has a 10-year old step-child.
So you may have your difficulties, but apparently you are not guilty of half the affronts of the rich and famous. Also, one has seldom encountered someone who continues to work as diligently as you do to try and fix themselves in order to have a better life and to be a better person in relation to the world. No one can say that you have been resting on your laurels when it comes to taking affirmative action in the direction of improving the things that you find wanting about yourself. I think you have to get a meritorious approval for effort.
Rabbs, I’m wondering if there was a time in your life when you felt that conditions were sufficiently good for you to feel OK about following life to its end. Would it possible to try and re-activate things you were doing during that period that made this all acceptable? Is there something that you could do today that would bring you back into a similar orbit? Naturally, it would be impossible to go back to the same jobs and what have you, but maybe there could be something similar that would lift your outlook to a considerable extent. I’m just curious.
Luke, as I reflect on the matter, my supposition would be that the most likely candidate for you in terms of a good marriage would be another Alexander Technique teacher or student. As far as I can intuit, basically you are at your best when you are involved with the technique and other people involved in the technique. Additionally, since you will be a teacher yourself soon, people who appreciate the Alexander Technique would see you as a success rather than a would-have-been. After all, you have successfully come to grips with the Alexander teaching and made real accomplishments. It is also possible that women you might meet in the Alexander milieu would also have your number, which ultimately is a good thing in a happy marriage. It’s just a thought. I appreciate that it is not likely that such a woman would be a frummie, but she would probably be a lot closer to being your soulmate.
RABBI RABBS EMAILS: Hey Greg,
Thank you for your continued enthusiasm for Torah Talks, and for your always-welcomed feedback.
To answer your questions, the only times in my entire life that I felt life was worth living to the end was when I was loved by a woman. If there was something we needed to change, it would be to find me a wife ASAP.
