Q & A with Michael Dunn, M.A., LMFT, CSAT

Q: Why do sex addicts seem to have so little empathy for their partner’s pain?

A: I have observed that sex addicts have a deep sense of shame and denial.

PoSARC note: The complex way that an addict's shame prevents empathy will be covered in a future article. Additionally, we will also delineate the differences between the narcissistic aspects of addiction and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD); the latter is an absolute block for empathy.
First, let's explore denial by honing in on the definition of denial: Denial is a defense mechanism used to refute reality about oneself/one's behavior that is too uncomfortable to accept despite overwhelming evidence. Like most defense mechanisms, it is rarely conscious.

One of the Sex Addict/Compulsive's (SAC's) most stubborn denials is that their acting out behavior or addiction does not affect others, specifically their partners. Some of the more usual rationalizations offered regarding their acting out behaviors are:

“It’s not really sex because it is just electrons—”
“I’m not unfaithful because no one is touched—”
“No one is hurt by what I am doing—”
“All guys do it—”
“It’s natural for men to look at other women—”
(Excuses are from Dr. Patrick Carnes, Cybersex Use Inventory, © 2005)

I have also observed that sex addicts can’t emotionally attach to another human being. Addicts have learned in their childhoods that it’s unsafe/painful/unreliable to trust and attach, so they quasi-attach to things that cannot hurt/disappoint/abandon them, although the emotional depth of this attachment is, of course, quite limited. This is how addicts cope with the stresses and anxieties of life.

PoSARC note: This is a very brief explanation of attachment theory. We at PoSARC will make Attachment Theory information available in the near future.

As an example: a certain client had a goal to kiss a hundred girls before he graduated from high school. He was pre-occupied to the point of an obsession with his ongoing “count.” He had no interest in the actual girls he sought to kiss—in fact, he knew almost nothing about any of them—his focus was getting the kiss and then his focus zeroed in on the pursuit of the next kiss. To him, the hashmark for the kiss mattered and relating to the girls he was kissing did not. It was as if the perpetual pursuit he engaged in or attaining a goal of one hundred kisses would protect him from the emotional risks of high school dating. By narrowing his focus on the “scorecard” he avoided feeling the anxieties of dating and relating to the girls.

What he did not realize was that with each new hashmark he added, he was becoming further and further estranged from his own underdeveloped emotional life. Even as a teenager, he had already despaired of engaging and investing in the rewards of an ongoing relationship. Somehow he had determined that quantity without emotional connections was more gratifying than emotional depth in a single relationship.

Although he did marry as an adult, when he came to me, he was facing divorce. His utter inability to emotionally attach, that is, to really relate to his wife and his addiction to various forms of cybersex had destroyed his marriage. He had continued to value quantity over quality into adulthood and had completely devalued emotional intimacy within his marriage. He never learned to have an intimate relationship or to value intimacy. He filled the resulting loneliness with pornography and “attached” to cybersex. He emotionally shut out his wife by focusing on porn and cybersex. Although it vaguely bothered him that his wife was divorcing him, he could not grasp what his wife sought from him in time to prevent the divorce, as he had never experienced it himself. He had long ago developed elaborate avoidance defense mechanisms—bolstered by denial—that blocked even the concept of intimate emotional relationships from his mental realm.

In this way, addiction numbs any ability in the addict to experience their own distress, and by extension, the emotional distress of others. The addiction precludes even mild anxieties for the addicts. They simply cannot imagine the level of distress that their spouses feel.

Dr. Sue Johnson & Valery Whiffed wrote, “Because sex addicts tend not to experience emotional distress themselves…they tend to lack empathy for their partner’s distress.” (Attachment Processes in Couple and Family Therapy, © 2003)

I find that addicts frequently respond with a blank face when their partner pleads with them to stop the addictive behavior. The addict cannot process their spouses' anguished distress being associated with the very thing that prevents them (the addict) from feeling those very feelings!

We might note that it is the addict who is the biggest loser in the addiction process. However, he is unaware of his huge loss for most of his active addiction. The addiction itself is blinding him to his losses. We also want to make equal note that it is we partners that acutely feel the painful absence of intimacy and the betrayals that the addict vociferously denies. We partners are alone in that agony for a very long time. The addict is in a No-Empathy zone which deepens our pain and despair.
It is not until the addict “hits bottom” that he begins to sense the really bad bargain that addiction has given him: a sense of false safety in exchange for zero emotional intimacy. Some addicts are so wounded that they never, ever realize what they have lost; they simply cannot look at the enormity of it all. They will sacrifice relationship after relationship rather than brave their own lives without active addiction. These are the most wounded souls of all even if many of them have covered it all with a Don Juan glibness and apparent carefree lifestyle.

In other words, an addict “hitting bottom” is not a guarantee, it is a miracle. Expressing your pain to the addict will not help him hit bottom, as convoluted as that may seem. Hearing of his pain would make us PoSAs aware of a serious problem and we think a reciprocal expression will apply to addicts. But no! Expressing our pain to an addict makes us looks crazy to them because they are so unaware of their own distress; our pain looks off-the-mark to them. Addiction has wired their brains to run far, far away from distress, pain, anxiety and run they do—often shooting back blame and disparaging judgments about your emotional stability to disarm you and to discourage any future attempts on your part to confront him with what he is denying with all his might.

An important part of recovery is to break the shame and denial in the addict and teach them how to create genuine emotional attachments. When the addict stops the active addiction behaviors and takes steps towards emotional intimacy, he then tends to begin feeling his own long-denied and hidden distress and therefore gains empathy. However, there is sometimes a huge unpaid emotional debt that becoming sober brings. Many addicts become deeply depressed after the acting out behavior has ceased, the denial ebbs and they suddenly realize that they have destroyed their partnership.

According to Robert Weiss, LCSW, CSAT, in Healing the Shame-based Self in Sexual Recovery: “No matter how hurtful the past has been, no matter how strong the current desire to act out may be—the addict must come to understand that their behavior came about in an early attempt to cope with unmanageable circumstances. They must learn that the “addict part” of themselves protected them in the best way they had available to them to emotionally survive until they could get the help they needed to let him go. Healthy 12-step work and therapy must help to replace self-hatred with grace and a more objective understanding that what happens in a dysfunctional family can leave a child so desperately needing their addiction for existence. Only in this way can the shame of the past be left behind to be replaced with compassion and empathy.”

I always remind my clients and their partners that there is hope in recovery. With dedication and continuing hard work, empathy is possible in many cases.

PoSARC Note: We are very aware how painful it is to face the utter lack of empathy from both an active and/or a newly recovering SAC. In addition to a lack of empathy, there is sometimes active cruelty directed towards you, the PoSA, from the addict. There is hardly anything lonelier or more painfully anguishing. We have been there.
Know that, for the time being, your partner simply cannot be empathetic. Dearest PoSA, you will have to find empathy and emotional intimacy outside your relationship. Some find this in the company of other PoSAs, friends, therapists, coaches, journaling and spiritual and meditative practices, for instance. As you begin to establish your boundaries, refine your discernment and begin getting your needs met, you may decide that a relationship without empathy is no longer acceptable to you. You will know when it is right to ask those questions.
This expressly means that we are to avoid seeking another romantic relationship to assuage our distress. We have not seem one instance that doing so made the situation one iota better.
We would very much appreciate your input: What in this topic would you like to know more about? What are your follow-up questions? We eagerly await your further questions to direct our future research.

PoSARC crash course in the concept of denial:

Denial comes in the following variations. Each variety of denial can be used alone or in combination with other forms of denial and/or other defense mechanisms:
Denial of fact(s): refutation of the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether by deception (by commission or omission) or false agreement.
Denial of responsibility: various means of shifting responsibility away from the self, including:
Blaming: Redirecting culpablity and may employ denial of facts.
Minimization: admission of the fact but deny its seriousness or effects
Justification: reality distortion to make an action appear more acceptable
Denial of impact: avoidance of knowing and/or feeling the effects (and therefore the harms) resultant from their actions/decisions.
Denial of awareness: use of claims of altered awarenesses (intoxication, etc.) to preclude the possibility that the consequences are causally related to their behaviors.
Denial of Denial: personality-wide thoughts and actions that bolster self-confidence and assure that nothing needs to be changed. A form of self-delusion.
Denial of cycle: claiming luck or happenstance instead of linking the negative consequences to their own behaviors.
DARVO: (victim blaming): Deny the abuse, Attack the victim, claiming victimization, and thereby Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender.
Projection: admission of both the fact and seriousness accompanied by a redirection of the source of the offense onto another—both “the pot calling the kettle black” and straight out blaming.