Obsessed with Sex? Who, Me?!

This Irish Catholic “good girl” describes the pain, guilt, and shame of
the secret obsession with sex and romance, and how she was healed.

I have a secret to confess. I have been obsessed with sex since the time I was a little girl. The funny thing is, I didn’t know it! How can that be, you might ask? Well, the thing about a sex obsession is that it is not as straightforward as it may seem. There are multiple layers, creative efforts to hide it, and related issues that seem to be the main problem. The easiest way to describe it, I think, will be to tell you what it was like for me.

I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, the oldest of four children. We lived comfortably in a quiet, suburban town, and grew up without wanting for much. The subject of sex was taboo in our house. Anything that had to do with it was off-limits. My parents were so uncomfortable with it that watching movies in which people kissed made them squirm. Physical affection was limited to pecks on the cheek and the “no body contact” hug. You know this hug: where you hug at the shoulders and pat each other on the back, but your bodies are as far apart as possible. As far back as I can remember, I felt uncomfortable with my body and with seeing other people express affection.

I always felt ashamed and afraid of changing my clothes in front of anyone, including my sister, with whom I shared a room. If my parents walked into my room without knocking and I was changing, I panicked and jumped to hide my body. When I got older and had to change for gym classes at school, I felt so awkward that I brought my clothes into the toilet stalls to change. Later, I tried to “force myself to get over it” by making myself change in front of other girls, but I always felt completely awkward. I also tried to get over my discomfort with physical affection by forcing myself to be “huggy” and “touchy-feely” with my friends—giving hugs and kisses and acting as though I was warm and caring. I wasn’t though, because I was always selfishly thinking about how uncomfortable I felt.

The awkwardness that I felt growing up was directly due to the fact that very early on I learned some pretty frightening and powerful ideas about sex. I was taught that sex was sinful and, therefore, by association, that all men were evil because they only wanted one thing; that women were always innocent victims of men’s evil desires and weren’t supposed to want it, but “accommodated” their husbands; that only whores and depraved women were sexual; and that God and my parents would disapprove of me and punish me if I even thought about it. God and sex were polar extremes, and if I wanted to get to heaven I’d better stay as far away from sex as I could. I became terrified of it, but at the same time, I was full of sexual feelings and curiosity, and I couldn’t stay away from it. When I was young, I instigated a lot of sexual exploration with my siblings and some friends, and when I got caught in the act by my parents I was condemned and made to feel dirty and guilty and bad for what I’d done. As I grew older I pushed those strong feelings away, too afraid of the guilt of being bad and having disappointed God and my parents. This resulted in extreme awkwardness in my interpersonal interactions. I tried to pretend that I didn’t want to look at other girls when we changed. I tried to pretend that I didn’t get turned on when I saw other people kissing or expressing affection. And I tried to pretend that I wasn’t interested in boys. All this suppression was subconscious; I couldn’t put into words what I was feeling because sexuality was never discussed in my family.

When I hit puberty, I tried to act as though I didn’t have sexual desires at all. I tried to be a “good girl.” I actually would feel angry and act bitchy when the sexual feelings were provoked because I was trying so hard to keep them at bay. I didn’t understand why I felt so angry, irritated, and uncomfortable in my body all the time. I was so terrified of the guilt and the disapproval that I pushed the sexual feelings deep inside, and believed that I was “good” because I wasn’t sexually active.

“Sexually active” is really a relative term, however, because in my mind I was very active. I masturbated from the time I was a young child, and it became a compulsive habit as got older. I used to sneak into my parents’ bedroom and look at my father’s Playboy magazines often. While I dressed very asexually and conservatively, I had fantasies of dressing seductively like a prostitute and turning men on, and of wild, erotic sex. I was so afraid to admit even to myself that I had sexual feelings and desires that I could not take responsibility for them, and most of my fantasies were of what I wanted others to do to me. I thought I was afraid of getting raped, but secretly, I felt excited by the thought of it. I also developed painfully destructive, obsessive “crushes” on men that lasted several years each. One of these crushes was on a young Catholic priest. I honed in on what the object of my obsession said and did, fantasizing that he really wanted me and always questioning, “what did he mean by that look?” “What did he mean when he said that?” I twisted everything in my mind to be the opposite of the way it was, and blamed the other person for sending me mixed signals. As a result, I lived with constant feelings of shame and fear of getting found out.

As I got older, I started bingeing on junk food to try to alleviate the emotional pain and stress I was feeling. I became obsessed with my body and my weight. I hated my body because I believed it was bad and had caused me the disapproval of my parents, and did everything I could to try to control my weight. I starved myself, exercised obsessively, and binged and vomited. Ultimately, I could not stop eating compulsively, and gained a lot of weight. Being overweight then became the apparent problem. I spent most of my time obsessing about my weight, and fantasizing about what my life would be like if I were thin. I thought my problem was an eating disorder. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I had a sexual disorder.

When I got into college, I drank alcohol to relieve the stress of feeling so inhibited and uptight, and I could only ever express myself sexually when I was drunk. I would experience “blackouts” when I drank, and it was only after I stopped drinking that I recognized the pattern that it was during the blackouts that I acted out sexually. I had to lose conscious awareness, because the terror and the guilt of my sexuality was too intense for me to handle when I was sober. I couldn’t reconcile the powerful desires and fantasies I had with the image of the “good girl” that I tried to project.

I felt tremendous guilt about all of this, especially when I was around my parents, and overate constantly to numb out the feelings. I distracted my conscious awareness away from my sexual feelings by obsessing about the way I ate and being fat. I fantasized that if I could just stop overeating, I would be thin and attractive and then I could be in a relationship. Someone would like me, and I would suddenly, instantly be the woman I always fantasized I’d be. Each time I lost weight, however, the obsession intensified and I felt so crazy when I was thin, that eventually I would start eating again to try to cope with the feelings.

I went to therapy because I felt depressed and was distraught about not being able to stop eating. I never mentioned the sex obsession, and my therapist never brought it up either. Even if she had, I would have denied it. I thought my problem was that I couldn’t get a boyfriend because I had low self-esteem from overeating, and that all my problems would be solved if I could just get into a “relationship.” Who me, obsessed with sex? I thought I was the furthest thing from being obsessed with sex because I hadn’t ever been in a sexual relationship. Therapy didn’t work for me because all we did was focus on trying to combat symptoms of compulsive eating and depression. We never addressed the root cause of these problems.

The most painful thing about this sexual obsession was the guilt and self-hatred I felt about myself because of the way I acted. In the back of my mind I was always judging and scheming to try to “hook” a man, so all of my interactions with men were awkward and insincere, and my motives for even just talking to them were to try to get them to want me. Of course, I worked hard to hide this because I felt guilty, so I was completely phony, not to mention nervous all the time. I condemned other women who overtly did this very thing, and felt smugly superior to most women because I prided myself and deluded myself that at least I wasn’t “a tease” or manipulative. Deep inside, I was jealous that these women I judged and felt superior to were getting the men I couldn’t get, and I didn’t understand why my games and flirtations weren’t working. I isolated and didn’t want to get very close to people because intimacy would bring up sexual feelings I was loath to feel. As a result, I had many superficial friendships, and spent a lot of time alone, eating, masturbating, and fantasizing. All of this made me feel ashamed, and therefore even less inclined to get into relationships where people would get to know me. While outwardly denying I felt sexual, I was driven by my subconscious fears that I’d never get married and be able to be “legally” sexual. So I emitted the energy of a desperate woman. And it pushed people away. It was a repetitive cycle that put me in the exact situation that I feared: being alone and unwanted.

For a long time I was unwilling to look honestly at this obsession because I didn’t want to be rid of it. I was terrified of letting go of the obsession that there was somebody out there who would save me, love me, take care of me, and with whom I could get my fix of sexual release. I was terrified of letting go of the fantasy of the “white picket fence, loving husband, and adoring children.” But the truth is that that fantasy was just a cover for the drive to fill that insatiable sexual hunger. I thought that letting go of the obsession with sex would mean “white knuckled” celibacy where I would be plagued by sexual desire and always fighting the urge, and all I could think about were the long, dry years ahead. I couldn’t imagine living without at least the option of sex, even though most of my activity was a mental obsession. The obsession was irrational because I never got the sex I craved when I was obsessed, but I was locked in a vicious cycle and couldn’t clearly think myself out of it.

In the course of seeking help for compulsive overeating, I met a man (Roy) who had over twenty years of experience in helping “hopeless cases” of eating disorders, alcoholism, sex addiction, and many other compulsions. Through intensive work with Roy and the Metasteps process, I came to understand that the depression, compulsive overeating, nail-biting, anxiety, and irrational behavior were all symptoms of the underlying, all-consuming sex obsession. And that the insatiable sexual hunger was a voracious appetite for security because I felt so afraid and insecure all the time. Once I began to address the real issues, the other symptoms disappeared on their own. I am grateful for the insight and the help Roy has given me. I have experienced an incredible freedom from this painful obsession, and hope to share the message that there is definitely a way out.