Читать книгу The Truth - Neil Strauss - Страница 14

STAGE III

▪ Functional Adult ▪

THE TRUTH MAY BE OUT THERE, BUT LIES ARE INSIDE YOUR HEAD.

—TERRY PRATCHETT

Hogfather

Mexico City, Many Years Earlier

“Ready for school, princess?” her father asked.

She glanced up at him. He was wearing a dark suit and looked like a movie star. An actor. She hated it when he talked to her like that. He had no right. He was rarely around and had never taken her to school before.

He bent down and found her hand. She let it lie limply in his, like dough in an oven. She couldn’t remember ever feeling the warmth of his hand before.

Instead of taking her to the front door of the school, he led her to an alley alongside the building, where he met a short-haired brunette woman in a pencil skirt with high heels. He kissed her, but not the way the girl’s grandmother kissed people. They kissed like lovers in the movies.

In the days that followed, she conducted an investigation of her father, like in the detective shows she’d seen on TV. In an evidence box underneath her bed, she collected her father’s beeper, full of messages from random women; his scheduling book, documenting appointments with them; and, finally, tape recordings her father was secretly making of her mother talking on the phone.

When she was ready to make her case, she sat her mother down and handed her the box. The little girl was nervous, not because of the effect it would have on her mom, but because the phone recordings contained evidence that she and her brother had been prank-calling the butcher. (“Hello … do you have pig’s feet?” “Yes.” “Why don’t you wash them!” Click.)

Her mother didn’t say a word as she went through the box. First she looked confused, then uncomfortable, and finally she started crying.

The next day, her mother started her own investigation. In addition to discovering that her husband had several girlfriends on the side, she found out that not only had he never divorced his previous wife, but he was actually still living with her—and having more children with her. So she confronted her husband about his double life and told him it was over between them.

That night, the little girl was woken by screaming and a loud crash from her parents’ bedroom. She ran to their door and pushed against it, but it was blocked by a broomstick. The doorknob had fallen off a few weeks back, so she looked through the hole to see what was going on.

Her father was sitting on top of her mother, his face red and twisted as if possessed. His hands were over her mother’s mouth and nose, squeezing tightly. She struggled to breathe, her hands clawing at his. Her eyes, grotesquely enlarged, appeared to turn toward the little girl, pleading, “Help me!”

“Please don’t kill her!” the little girl yelled between sobs as she tried to open the door. She rushed to her older brother’s room and woke him up, and he ran into the hallway and slammed his body against the door. Over and over again.

As the door burst open, her father released his grip from her mother’s face and backed away, telling his children that they were just playing. Her mother stumbled toward her—gasping violently, her face pale blue, her eyes blood red—and the little girl grabbed her hand and ran into the bathroom with her. She locked the door, and the two of them cried together.

The boy ran to the phone to call their mom’s brothers. They were all big men and very protective of their sister. But as the boy was yelling “Help!” into the receiver, his father tore the cord out of the wall, pulled open the window of their fourth-floor apartment, and threw the phone outside.

Ten minutes later, the girl emerged from the bathroom. The house was completely still. She heard classical music coming from the kitchen. There, she saw her dad sitting at the table, his legs crossed gracefully. He was holding a glass of cognac, swirling it slowly, gazing at it with a look of complete peace as he breathed in the notes of the drink, the music, the night air.

She yanked the needle off the record. “What are you doing?!” she yelled, furious, confused, terrified.

“I’m waiting for my death to arrive,” he said calmly.

That was the last time Ingrid saw her father.

I wake up alone in the rehab dorm, the sun diffusing through a small dirt-filmed window, the muffled mating calls of birds and cicadas announcing another morning, and a raging hard-on pressing against my boxer shorts.

My mind drifts to an image of Carrie and the suggestive way she handed me her note. I remember she’s roommates with Dawn and I start picturing a threesome with them. I think about how her caretaking qualities must extend to the bedroom and I imagine her using her breasts in considerate ways. Some guys are ass men; others are into breasts, legs, or faces. My theory is that it has to do with the sexual position you prefer. If you like it doggy style and you’re looking at a woman’s ass when you come, you’re going to associate your sexual pleasure with that part of her body. If you like missionary, maybe you’re a face man. And if you like her on top, you’ve usually got an eyeful and a handful of breasts when you orgasm. And if … fuck, I just made a mess in my boxer shorts.

I waddle to the bathroom and wipe up. I feel like an alcoholic who’s smuggled a fifth of vodka into rehab and just guzzled it.

As I get ready for the day, I think about a book Rick Rubin once showed me. It was about a seventies commune called the Source Family, which was run by a bank robber, vegetarian-restaurant owner, and aspiring rock star known as Father Yod. In the book, there was a photo of him—looking eerily like Rick—sitting outdoors in his commune in the Hollywood Hills with thirteen of his hippie wives and lovers gathered around him, at least two of them pregnant with his children.

And I wonder what it would be like to live in an environment of open and unrestricted sexuality, with friends and lovers coming in and out freely, no one claiming ownership of another’s body as if it were a personal possession.

That’s when I realize why today, of all days, my mind is spinning out of control: It’s Sunday and Ingrid is coming. The force of light, monogamy, stability, marriage, children, and a normal life is on her way. And now my “disease” is blossoming like mold.

Check-in: guilt. And shame.

Guilt is about making a mistake. Shame is about being a mistake.

And fear.

Two days earlier, when I was lying in a puddle in group therapy, seething over the violence of the phrase emotional incest, Joan suggested a couple of things. The first was that I call Ingrid and tell her what I’d learned about myself and why I’d cheated on her. The second was that I ask my parents to come for family week to work on healing our trauma and dysfunctional relationships with one another.

As I masturbated, Ingrid was driving hundreds of miles to see me for the first time in weeks and talk about my recently diagnosed intimacy issues. I think of her driving so far all alone, and I’m touched she would do that for me after what I did to her. And how do I show my gratitude? By plotting orgies.

I’m not a bad person, I tell myself. I’m just scared of intimacy.

Unlike reaching out to Ingrid, calling my parents and telling them I was in rehab for sex addiction wasn’t liable to be greeted with the same degree of support. So, like anyone faced with doing something emotionally difficult, I put it off until later.

Every Sunday, all patients are required to attend family-week graduation. So I walk across the property to a large classroom, where a dozen addicts and trauma survivors sit with their families in the front of the room. One after another, sons, daughters, parents, siblings, and spouses stand up and talk about how the week has begun a much-needed healing process for them.

“A lot of times, people in a family think it’s just one person who causes all the trouble,” Lorraine, the therapist who lectured us on trauma, is telling the assembly. “But a family is a system, and a sick person is the product of a sick system.”

As the ceremony continues, I feel a dry, sticky crunching in my navel hair. Evidently I didn’t wash away my sins well enough. I look around to see if it’s possible to slip away, but then the freckly woman from Henry’s rape-and-incest meeting rises from her seat and turns to face us. She’s wearing black slacks and a blue cardigan, and looks much less sallow than before—almost upbeat, bordering on charismatic. She’s standing next to a man in his late sixties with a large red face, a porcine body, and huge, crevassed hands. It is the adoptive father who molested her.

I don’t sense any hatred from her, nor any warmth. Someone looking at a photo of the two of them might think it was of a schoolteacher giving an old janitor an award for forty years of dedicated service.

“If some of you remember, when I first arrived, I was very depressed and cried a lot and thought about killing myself,” she is saying. “I don’t think I talked to anyone for my first two days here. But thanks to family week, I feel like a human being again.”

She turns to her father and everyone sits stock-still, waiting to hear what he has to say. “It was very hard for me to make the decision to come here,” he says. No shit: You’re staring at a room full of trauma survivors who hate you. “I feel very bad about what I’ve done. And I think Laura is an incredibly brave woman for being here and for allowing me to be here. I know nothing I can do or say will take away the past, but I’m happy that Laura can have a future now. I think I’ve grown more as a person with the therapists here than I have in my entire life.”

Listening to him, I resolve to call my parents. Since the day I left home for college, I’ve called my mom nearly every Sunday; the few times that I haven’t, she’s given me a guilt trip to remember. And it is a Sunday.

Besides, if this woman could invite the monster who molested her to come, then surely I can ask a woman who merely grounded me a lot. Not only would it be good for my parents to face the truth—my mother and I have never told my dad that we know his secret—but maybe the family healing will relieve me of whatever is hanging over my head and standing in the way of having a happy, honest relationship.

Rehab, One Hour Later

You’re not a sex addict, you’re a man. If someone wants to play with you, you’re not going to walk away. What are you, a dork? You’re going to play back.

The voice belongs to my mother.

Yes, but not when I’m in a relationship.

In my book, that’s how men do it. I believe in honesty in relationships, but if you’re going to cheat, you gotta keep it to yourself. As a woman, I’ve been asked out for coffee a couple of times and I say no thanks. But that’s because I’m a woman and that’s not my nature. Though if he were a multimillionaire and he wasn’t married, maybe I’d get coffee with him.

As I listen to her talk, I’m floored. I’ve never heard her views on fidelity before, except when she’s disclosing the latest piece of evidence supporting her conviction that my father is having an affair. Yet here she is on the phone, making the exact same argument I’ve been making all week—except she’s doing it her way.

She continues …

I don’t think you need treatment. Everything about you is going to be in those hospital files for the rest of your life and the world is going to know about it. All you’re addicted to is life and living it.

It’s too late now. But I’m learning some things that will help my life. And the week after next, they have something called family week, when the parents of the people here visit. It really completes the healing process and I wanted to see if both of you could come for it.

To go there would be useless.

I really need you and Dad here. It would mean so much to me. And it would help me a lot.

Listen, you’re an unusual but normal person. If it were a life or death situation, we’d do it.

My father is also on the phone, but he doesn’t say a word—except to apologize when my mother tells him he’s breathing too loudly into the handset. No wonder I’m scared of marriage. Whenever someone I’m dating starts treating me worse than they treat a stranger, that’s always the beginning of the end for me.

What if I have a therapist from here call you and explain why it’s important?

Don’t you dare give anyone my phone number.

Okay. Please, Mom. I don’t know what to say.

There’s nothing you can say. Physically, it’s just very difficult to travel.

If they have therapists in Chicago they recommend, can we all go see one together?

I don’t think so. There’s nothing we could do or add. We don’t feel you have a problem. Whatever problem you have, you know and we know.

It would help us connect. Remember my ex-girlfriend Lisa? When she saw us together, she said it didn’t seem like there was any warmth or love between us.

Lisa was just with us for one meal. I wasn’t comfortable with her. She wasn’t friendly or smiling. She didn’t relate to us at all.

Joan’s words ring in my head as she speaks: another example of the women I date not being good enough for my mother. The implicit message is that sex and affairs are okay, but don’t get a real girlfriend because that would be competition.

I try using her own weapon against her: guilt.

As a mother, it would be one of the best things you could ever do for me.

How would it help you exactly?

It would help me be happier, healthier, and capable of having a functional relationship and starting a family of my own.

Charlie Aaron didn’t get married until he was in his seventies, and he was never happier. And he didn’t need any kids.

My breath catches in my throat. I’ve never heard of a mother who didn’t want to be a grandmother. Every word coming out of her mouth seems to support Joan’s horrific diagnosis.

But remember Irvin from high school? He said he didn’t even know the meaning of the word love until he became a father.

Irvin was your brother’s friend?

No, he was my friend.

That’s not possible. You were a dork. You didn’t have any friends.

Why would a mother ever say that to her son? I wonder. Then I realize that I just recently learned the answer: She’s keeping me in my place. I beg and plead for them to come, countering objection after objection, until she says flatly …

I have some really valid reasons why we can’t come. We love you, and we’d do anything else for you.

Hard to believe that right now.

Can just Dad come then?

No way, José.

He says nothing. He has no voice in the relationship. I try one last angle, my ace in the hole: promising to keep the secret.

Whatever you’re worried about, and I think I know what it is, we don’t have to discuss that.

I know who I am. I know who my parents are. I had an idyllic childhood. I think I turned out to be a great mother with two wonderful kids. I wouldn’t change you an ounce. But if you’re not satisfied with you, then you can help you by yourself. I’m not coming for personal reasons—very personal—and that’s it! Tell them not to call.

The words fall like a sledgehammer, breaking the ground around me, isolating me, sending me spinning off into space alone. I reach for a lifeline.

Can I ask you to just send me a copy of the keys to the house instead? They said it would give me a sense of closure if I could wear them around my neck as a symbol that I can be trusted.

I realize that since leaving home for college, I’ve always had an odd key fixation. I’ve never thrown one away, even to old dorm rooms, cars, and apartments.

Sorry, Charlie. It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t feel safe. And, besides, you’re absentminded. You lost that tape recorder when you were twelve and a million other things. And I can’t endanger my feeling of safety.

Okay, thanks for listening. Bye, Mom.

We can hire two people and send them to family week instead if you want.

That’s okay.

Enjoy your incarceration.

The world I once knew, the one I thought I grew up in—strict, yes, but full of love and sacrifice from the parents who conceived, nurtured, and supported me—is gone. What she’s saying, ultimately, is that her issues are more important than my well-being. And they always have been.

It could be worse, though. At least she has a sense of humor.

I shower for a second time, making sure to use a washcloth, soap, and pressure, then trudge to a men’s circle in progress on the lawn. The thirty or so guys there are using what they call a talking stick, and only the person holding the erect-cock-sized piece of wood can speak. When he’s done, he says “aho,” which is some sort of macho Native American sound, and hands the wooden dick to the next lunatic.

“Hi, I’m Calvin and I’m a sex addict. And I’m feeling a lot of fear right now, but also joy, because Mariana”—the Brazilian prostitute he impregnated—“just told me she wants to keep the baby. Aho!”

He hands me the stick. It’s my turn to check in and I want to get it over with quickly: “I’m Neil and I’m tired of labels and I’m fine. Aho!”

Everyone sucks in air or exclaims “ooooh” like I’ve just stepped in shit.

“What?” I ask.

Charles gestures for me to hand him the stick. I shake my head in annoyance and hand it to him. Idiotic rule.

“Fine stands for fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional,” he says.

“That’s about right.”

The men glare at me in silent accusation: I spoke without holding the talking stick. You’d think I just shot someone.

Charles hands me the talking dick and I place it on the ground next to me. “I love how someone can just make up a random fucking rule and you all follow it like sheep,” I tell them as I walk off. “I’ve been in a fucking men’s circle all week anyway. Aho!”

No one responds because no one is holding the talking stick.

I’m aware, as I walk away, that I’m not really mad at them. And I’m not mad at the talking stick. It’s actually a decent rule. If I’d had the chance to speak uninterrupted as a child and express myself and truly be heard, I’d probably be much healthier.

What I’m mad about is that some people’s parents can’t come to family week because they’re dead or broke or in prison, but my parents just won’t. A guy who molested his daughter has the balls to show up here. As for my father, he doesn’t even have the balls to speak up for himself on the phone.

Check-in: fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. And rethinking everything I thought I knew about my childhood, my life, and who I am.

The perfect frame of mind to see Ingrid after all this time apart.

She is too pure for this place.

She stands in the nurses’ area, where I’m now allowed the occasional use of my razor under supervision only. She’s wearing a fitted blue plaid button-down shirt that’s open to reveal a triangle of flawless skin, and black jeans that stop just above her high heels. No one wears high heels in this place. It’s not healthy for the fragile libidos here.

She stiffens as she sees me and everything comes up at once in her face—the love, the hate, the desire, the fear, the hope, the hurt—and pushes through the scab covering it all.

The words “Oh my god” escape from her mouth. Then the tears roll. When we hug, it seems like she’s dissolving into me. But when I feel her shirt rubbing against my chafed navel, a sense of unworthiness sweeps over me. Here I am, lusting after every slightly attractive inpatient I see, while she’s come all this way hoping I’ve changed. I guess I’m here because I want to be as good a person as Ingrid is.

What I’m feeling right now is another symptom of my trauma. It’s shame again. I am putting myself one down.

Where I belong.

Suddenly, a fragment of my past comes rushing back. I’m a teenager lying in bed, imagining what my life will be like in the future. It’s always the same scene:

My brother is living in a large suburban house with a big green lawn and a beautiful blond wife. I visit and ask if I can stay for a while because I have nowhere else to go. My clothes are dirty and wrinkled, and my face is unshaven. I crash on his couch, emitting a funny smell and watching TV, until one day his perfectly put-together wife asks him, as politely as can be, “Is your brother ever going to get a job? He can’t stay on this couch forever.”

And now, two decades later, I actually manage to achieve the happy life I never thought possible—a home, a job, a girlfriend oddly similar to the wife I imagined my brother with—and I wreck it. It’s as if the prediction didn’t come true, so I willed it to be. I fucked it to life.

“What are you thinking about?” Ingrid asks.

“I’m just happy you’re here.”

There’s an energy between us. It’s a stronger feeling than I get with anyone else, like the pull of two magnets held just slightly apart. “What’s in your hand?” she asks.

“It’s my timeline. I want to explain it to you, so you can know who I am.”

We walk to the lawn and sit in the grass near where the men’s circle was. It’s just below the patient lounge and I notice the sex addicts clustered along the outdoor benches above. They also seem taken in by Ingrid’s magnetism. I wonder if they’re thinking of being with their wives or of cheating on their wives.

Ingrid listens closely as I walk her through each event on my timeline. But when I reveal the punch line—emotional incest—she strains to understand. “How is that incest?”

“I know. I hate the term. Everything is diagnosed as some sort of crippling psychological disorder here.” It feels so good to be talking with her, sharing with her, smelling her again that, despite the subject matter, I’m giddy with happiness. “But this is what pertains to us: They say here that if you tell them what kind of relationship you had with your opposite-sex parent as a child, they can tell you what kind of romantic relationship you’re going to have as an adult. Unless you’re gay, in which case it would be the same-sex parent.”

“I don’t know. That sounds oversimplified.”

“Maybe it is. I have no idea what’s true anymore.” Ever since presenting my timeline, my head’s been a mess. So I explain to Ingrid what I’ve learned since that afternoon …

They say here that there are three ways of raising children. The first is functional bonding, in which the parents or primary caregivers love, nurture, affirm, set healthy limits with, and take care of the needs of the child. I turn over my timeline and sketch it for her:

This creates a child who has healthy, secure self-esteem and relationships.

But then there’s neglect, when a caregiver abandons, is detached from, or doesn’t appropriately nurture the child. This can range from a parent who isn’t physically present, to a parent who is physically present but emotionally distant, to a parent who doesn’t provide adequate care or safety, to a parent lost in a work, sex, gambling, alcohol, or other addiction. If you grew up feeling unwanted by or unimportant to a parent, this is a sign that neglect likely occurred:

This creates wounded children, who are often depressed and indecisive, see themselves as flawed and less valuable than others, and feel they can’t face the world alone. In relationships, they tend to have what’s called anxious attachment. They may feel like they’re not enough for their partners; become so wrapped up in their relationships that they lose sight of their own needs and self-worth; and be emotionally intense, passive-aggressive, or in need of constant reassurance that they’re not being abandoned. Here, they call this type of person a love addict.

As Ingrid listens intently, I look for any recognition in her eyes. After all, she was abandoned by her father throughout her childhood, even before he tried to kill her mother and narrowly escaped her uncles. When I see none, I move on to explain the third type of parenting: enmeshment. This is my upbringing.

Instead of taking care of a child’s needs, the enmeshing parent tries to get his or her own needs met through the child. This can take various forms: a parent who lives through a child’s accomplishments; who makes the child a surrogate spouse, therapist, or caretaker; who is depressed and emotionally uses the child; who is overbearing or overcontrolling; or who is excessively emotional or anxious about a child. If you grew up feeling sorry for or smothered by a parent, this is a sign that enmeshment likely occurred:

In the process, enmeshed children lose their sense of self. As adults, they usually avoid letting anyone get too close and suck the life out of them again. Where the abandoned are often unable to contain their feelings, the enmeshed tend to be cut off from them, and be perfectionistic and controlling of themselves and others. Though they may pursue a relationship thinking they want connection, once they’re in the reality of one, they often put up walls, feel superior, and use other distancing techniques to avoid intimacy. This is known as avoidant attachment—or, as they put it here, love avoidance. And most sex addicts, according to this theory, are love avoidants.

I tell Ingrid that I asked if there was a fourth category for physically or sexually abusive parenting, but was told that this could register on a child as either neglectful or enmeshing. They explained that a rule of thumb to use is that when a parent’s abuse disempowers a child, that’s neglect; when it’s falsely empowering, that’s enmeshment.

Ingrid blinks back tears, places her rock-paper-scissors-playing hand warmly over mine, and says, “I would give up anything to see you healed and free of the enmeshment that’s keeping you from living.”

In the past, I would have thought this was the most beautiful thing in the world to say. Now, instead, I worry that wanting to give up “anything” for someone else’s happiness is a dysfunctional symptom of love addiction and codependence. Then I worry that being scared by her selfless caring is a symptom of my own love avoidance. They’re really screwing up my mind in here.

“I’m working hard on it,” I tell her. Wait, that’s not completely true. “Some of the stuff here is a little too over-the-top for me, though.” That’s better.

“I think this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you,” she responds. And for the first time since I cheated on her, I see the light return to her eyes.

“Do you really think so?”

“I know it. I’ve never told you this, but I was in rehab for two years.”

“So all you really want in a relationship is freedom?” Ingrid asks as we walk to the cafeteria for dinner later that day.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I’d like to give you more freedom, then.”

“Really?”

“Yes, starting now.” She grabs my jeans playfully and starts pulling them down. “This is what freedom feels like!” An impish smile, which I’ve sorely missed, spreads across her face. “Why don’t you show everyone here your freedom?” she mocks, pulling next at my boxer shorts.

I yank the waistband up to keep from exposing myself: If Joan saw this, she’d probably add compulsive exhibitionist to my permanent record. But Ingrid keeps fighting to remove my clothing, yelling “Freedom!” at the top of her lungs.

We walk into the cafeteria, grinning ear to ear. She’s making a joke out of the issue all us red demons have been tying ourselves in knots over. Perhaps the best cure is just to lighten up. I don’t need Zoloft. I have her.

“Miss, you’re going to have to button your shirt higher,” the dining-hall counselor and anorexic-feeder barks when he sees her, as if the sex addicts are going to break into spontaneous public masturbation when they see that extra inch of cleavage.

We each grab a plate of flavorless chicken parts over soapy rice and walk to the sex addict table. Troy claps me on the back and says idiotically, “You didn’t tell us how hot she was.” Maybe the counselor was right after all.

Charles doesn’t leave the table as we sit down, which means visitors are presumably exempt from the “males only” rule. Ingrid asks each guy in the group about his story and each speaks freely of his sins, except for Charles.

Then she tells them her family’s story: “My grandfather cheated on my grandmother all the time, but she always loved him. After he died, she started having recurring nightmares about him cheating. So every morning, she goes to his room and yells at his ashes, ‘Dios mío! Even in death you are still cheating on me. Can’t you let me be, you dirty old man?’” The guys laugh all too knowingly. “Then, a few hours later, she returns, apologizes, dusts the room, and refreshes the flowers on his nightstand.”

And so, even in death, in relationship with a memory, the ballad of the love addict and love avoider continues.

Ingrid’s mother was just as obsessive a love addict. “She used to be beautiful and independent and have her own TV show in Mexico, but when we moved to America, she became a domestic slave to my stepfather,” Ingrid tells the guys. “I’d try to get her to leave him because he was so emotionally abusive, but she’d always say, ‘I can’t. What am I going to do when you both turn eighteen? I’m going to be left alone.’”

“Maybe that’s the female dilemma,” Troy cuts in. “She marries someone who’s giving her love and romance, but over time she gets taken for granted or turned into a maid or becomes a baby factory or gets cheated on. There’s not a single emotional need of hers that’s filled by her husband. Then he has the nerve to complain that she’s not sexual or attractive when he’s drained the life out of her.”

As the guys nod in sad recognition, Ingrid quickly summarizes her teenage years, some of which she’d never shared even with me before: Her stepfather treated her worse than a servant—making her do backbreaking work, refusing to let her dine at the table with the rest of the family, and giving her an unheated garage without any furniture as a room. Ingrid soon slid from a straight-A student to a straight-F student.

Eventually, she ran away, started doing meth, and spent two years living in rehab because her stepfather wouldn’t let her back in the house. She ended up becoming the youth spokesperson for the treatment center, appearing on the news and speaking at events with the mayor.

Yet despite separating from her family and accomplishing so much on her own afterward, she still followed in her mother and grandmother’s footsteps and fell in love with a cheater.

After dinner, the anorexic-feeder curtly tells Ingrid that visiting hours are over. As we head back to reception, Henry, my new friend from the art room, falls in step with us and starts speaking in his slow monotone, ignoring Ingrid. “They talk about how there are eight emotions here, but I think there are nine.”

“What’s the other one?”

“The ninth emotion is the death emotion. It’s just feeling nothing.”

We’re fragile beings, I think as I see the pain in his face. Even when the body heals, the soul remains scarred. As we talk, he slowly becomes aware of Ingrid’s presence and asks if she’s my girlfriend.

I turn to Ingrid and our eyes search each other’s for an answer. I’ve done my penance and shown a willingness to change by checking in here; she’s shown her forgiveness by driving here to see me and sharing her own secrets.

“Yes,” she tells him. “I am.”

Relief and gratitude flow through me. I’m done fantasizing about the women here. I’ve been given a second chance not to be Ingrid’s father and grandfather—or to be them and perpetuate the multigenerational pattern of cheating men and the women who love them. The sins of the parents are the destinies of their children. Unless the children wake up and do something about it.

“I trust your boyfriend,” Henry says. “I feel like I can talk to him.”

Of course he can, I think. I must give out some sort of enmeshment signal, letting everyone know they can confide their crazy shit in me. That’s probably why I ended up profiling rock stars for Rolling Stone, why all those mistrustful celebrities felt comfortable divulging private thoughts to me that they’d never shared with anyone else, why my editors clapped me on the back afterward and put the story on the cover.

Childhood trauma may sneak up from behind and fuck you in the ass when you grow up, but at least it leaves a tip on the nightstand.

“Who was that poor guy?” Ingrid asks as Henry drifts away, talking about his latest suicide plan: He’s identified the most dangerous patient here and is planning to pick a fight with him.

“He had sex with a horse.”

“And the horse got jealous and told his wife?” she jokes, though there’s a barb in there that I ignore.

As we hug goodbye in reception, I try to imprint the softness of her breasts against my chest, the ridges of her spine beneath my fingertips, the warmth of her cheek against mine, so I can remember them when I get weak.

“My biggest wish is that you find your inner peace and happiness,” she says as she pulls away.

“Thank you for believing in me,” I tell her—my girlfriend, my lover, my jailer.

After she leaves, I sit on a bench outside the patient lounge and tears come to my eyes. She seems to love me unconditionally, but I fear that I love her conditionally. I look at her sometimes and worry that she’s going to get wide hips like her mother, or I wonder if I’ll still be able to make love to her when she’s fat and wrinkly. Other times, I pick apart her existing features, looking for flaws and imperfections. The sad thing is, I certainly have a lot more imperfections she could pick apart: I’m short, bald, bony, and big-nosed, with huge greasy pores. I’m lucky to have her. And I wonder: Am I even capable of love? Have I ever truly loved anyone?

I can’t tell whether my tears are for the beauty of her love or the sadness of my incapacity to feel worthy of it.

As a journalist, I’ve met a lot of so-called experts. Most are just people with a little experience and a lot of confidence who’ve given themselves a title with which they can fool the suggestible and dim-witted. But every now and then, I come across someone who has the experience, knowledge, and calling to be not just a teacher dispensing information but a guide leading others to themselves. And Lorraine seems to be one of them.

“Self-deprecation is still self-worship,” she is telling Calvin. “It’s the flip side of the same coin. It’s still about self.”

It’s our second week here and the staff has divided us into smaller groups to experience a Gestalt-like therapy they call chair work. Adam, Calvin, Troy and I—the troublemakers—have, to our relief, been placed under Lorraine’s care in a nearby building. And she’s in the midst of prepping us to undergo this intense form of trauma healing.

“I suck at self-deprecation,” I whisper to Calvin.

Lorraine overhears and says sternly, “Remember that humor is a wall. It’s a form of denial, just the same as repression, rationalization, globalization, and minimization.”

Yes, I think she is one of those experts. It’s clear she’s dealt with enough stupid smart people that she can read me like a book.

That afternoon, Lorraine rips open everyone’s minds. As she lectures on the human psyche, sex addicts’ faces illuminate intermittently, like fireworks, as they realize the origins of their behaviors, their feelings, and the beliefs that have kept them estranged from others and ultimately themselves.

Unlike traditional talk therapy, in which a therapist sits with a client in an office for an hour every week for years or even decades, addiction treatment has to change people quickly. Lives are at stake. That next drink could lead to a burst vein; that next injection could be a hot one. What matters is what works today, not what’s been studied and accepted by the mainstream psychiatric community. And so some say the techniques here, many of them adapted from the decades-old work of a former nurse, Pia Mellody, who as of this moment doesn’t even have her own Wikipedia entry, are problematic; others say they are the pinnacle of personal transformation—if you’re lucky enough to get the right counselor.

And we were lucky enough to get Lorraine, the only person I’ve encountered here so far who doesn’t seem burned out or embittered by the Sisyphean task of healing damaged minds she can’t touch or see.

As Lorraine explains the model they use here, she asks us to take a deep breath, listen carefully, and drift back to the way we saw our parents—and the world—at age eight or twelve and not as we understand them now. And this is what we hear. Maybe, if you choose to do the same, you’ll recognize someone you know …

EVERYTHING THAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR BEHAVIOR AND WHY IN 1,800 WORDS OR LESS

In the beginning …

You were born.

And like all infants, you were completely vulnerable and dependent, with a new developing brain and no understanding of the world.

In a perfect world …

Your parents would be perfect. They would be dedicated full-time to taking care of your physical and psychological needs, always making the right decisions, setting the healthiest boundaries, and protecting you from all harm, while preparing you to eventually take care of your needs without them.

But in the real world …

No one is perfect. Neither your parents, nor the other people who play a role in your upbringing. Therefore, along the way, some of your developmental needs don’t get met.

And the problem is …

When one of your needs doesn’t get met, however big or small, it can leave a wound.

These wounds are known as childhood trauma. Each instance or pattern of trauma can create specific core personal issues and relationship challenges—and if these are left untreated, you’re likely to pass your wounds on to the next generation. Since this trauma occurs early in life, it can affect social, emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and moral development.

It’s not always overt or intentional …

Most commonly, people think of trauma as coming from hateful perpetrators who are knowingly and willfully abusive. But even parents who think of themselves as loving or well-meaning make mistakes, cross boundaries, or simply do their best with the limited internal resources they have. And this covert, often unrecognized abuse can, through its constant repetition, leave wounds just as deep as those created by a single malicious act.

It can be an emotional scar …

In your earliest years, you’re the center of the universe. Everything revolves around you. So wounds can come from caregivers who are either out of control or completely detached from their emotions around you. When Mom is always full of anxiety as she’s breast-feeding, Dad comes home in a rage every time he has a rough day at work, or Stepdad is depressed by his money problems during the rare moments he spends with you, you soak up these emotions like a sponge, often erroneously taking the blame or responsibility for them. Even if a parent falls ill and passes away, it can seem like abandonment or something you made happen if you’re too young to understand death.

It can be physical …

Most people understand that it’s not okay to physically harm or even spank a child. But here’s an example that’s not as obvious: Any invasive medical procedure—even something as commonplace as a circumcision or getting stiches—may register the exact same as physical abuse if you experience it in your first few years of life. You may even start to distrust your caregivers for bringing you to an unfamiliar place and not keeping you safe.

Often it’s intellectual …

After the first few years of life, you start to separate from your parents. In this period, it’s their job to help you become your own person and confidently stand on your own two feet in the world. Here, a whole new set of problems can arise—especially when parents try to over-control you, habitually criticize you, or unreasonably expect you to be perfect. Other families adhere to such rigid rules that any manifestation of a child’s individuality is immediately attacked as a threat. All these can lead to esteem problems later in life.

Or it can take over your entire identity …

Within a dysfunctional family system, each child tends to play a different role that helps the family survive and detracts from its real issues. These can include the revered hero, the troublemaking scapegoat, the neglected lost child, the people-pleasing placater, and the mood-lifting mascot. Later in life, these roles (as well as birth order) can lead to corresponding personality issues, whether it’s the hero’s judgmental perfectionism, the scapegoat’s explosive anger, the lost child’s low self-esteem, the placater’s denial of personal needs, or the mascot’s impulsive irresponsibility.

But it’s not easy to see your own core issues …

Your oldest beliefs, behaviors, and adaptations have not just been reinforced by decades of habit, but are built deep into the architecture of your brain, which is busy building new neural connections at an astounding rate in early life. As the saying goes, “Cells that fire together, wire together.” So trying to see yourself with any objectivity can be like trying to touch your right elbow with your right hand.

But if you can detach from yourself a little bit, you’ll notice that the things you do and think don’t just come out of nowhere. Here are a few techniques and tools you can use to better understand the way your past can interfere with your happiness, your relationships, and your life today.

You can work backward …

Are you relentlessly driving yourself to succeed and beating yourself up when you fail? Maybe that’s because when you were a teenager, your parents made you feel as if your worth as a human being was dependent on your grades, touchdowns, or accomplishments.

Are you out of touch with your emotions because Stepdad always told you to toughen up when you cried? Do you feel deep down like you don’t matter because you were often ignored growing up? Are you always trying to save or care for others because you were never able to save Mom from her depression or addiction? Are you in complete denial that anything was wrong with your family because Dad acted as if he were infallible and must be unquestioningly obeyed, so criticizing him would be like blaspheming God?

Are you getting the hang of this yet?

You can excuse my language …

Some of you have a big bag of shit you’re carrying around. And every time you encounter a situation in which you can possibly get more shit to put in the bag, you grab it and stuff it inside. You’ll even ignore all the diamonds glittering nearby, because all you can see is the shit.

This shit is known as “the stories you tell yourself.”

Examples include generalizations like “I make bad decisions,” “If people saw the real me, they wouldn’t like me,” or, conversely, “No one is good enough for me.” Each of these beliefs can be formed in childhood by, respectively, fault-finding parents, abandoning parents, and parents who put you on a pedestal.

As a result, you can spend much of your life misinterpreting situations and thinking you’ve found more evidence to support these false conclusions formed in childhood. One way to recognize when you’re stuck in your own story is whenever you feel less than or better than others.

You can examine this chart …

Wounded Child (emotionally 0– 5)	Adapted Adolescent (emotionally 6–18)	Functional Adult (emotionally mature)
Worthless	Arrogant	Esteemed from Within
Extremely Vulnerable	Invulnerable	Healthy Boundaries
Extremely Needy	Needless	Communicates Needs
Feels Bad / Naughty	Feels Blameless / Perfect	Honest and Self-Aware
Out of Control	Hypercontrolling	Flexible and Moderate
Fears Abandonment	Fears Suffocation	Interdependent
Seeks Attention	Seeks Intensity	Lives in Integrity and Harmony
Idealizes Caretakers/Partners	Disillusioned by Caretakers/Partners	In Reality About Caretakers/Partners

Then ask yourself: In a given week, do you exhibit any of the wounded child or adolescent behaviors here? If so, you may have either gotten stuck somewhere along the way in your emotional or behavioral development, or certain situations are causing you to revert to those ages.

Any time you overreact to something—by shutting down, losing your temper, sulking, feeling hopeless, freaking out, disassociating, or any of numerous other dysfunctional behaviors—it’s typically because an old wound has been triggered. And you’re regressing to the childhood or adolescent state that corresponds to that feeling.

Note that the wounded child tends to directly internalize the messages that caretakers give; the adapted adolescent tends to react against them.

However, not everyone reacts to the same trauma in the same way …

And children are born with different predispositions and resiliencies. So if you remain loyal to people who abuse and mistreat you, that’s called trauma bonding.

If you only feel normal if you’re doing something extreme or high-risk, that’s trauma arousal.

If you’ve developed intense self-loathing, you’ve got trauma shame.

If you find chemical, mental, or technological ways to numb yourself and your feelings, that’s trauma blocking.

And it goes on and on. One pattern of trauma; many different possible responses to it. We’ve only scratched the surface. But at least you know the model we’re working with here.

It’s not about blaming but understanding …

In summary, we each spend our adult lives running on a unique operating system that took some eighteen years to program and is full of distinct bugs and viruses. And when we put together all these different theories of attachment, developmental immaturity, post-traumatic stress, and internal family systems, they make up a body of knowledge that allows us to run a virus scan on ourselves and, at any point, to look at our behaviors, our thoughts, and our feelings, and figure out where they come from.

That’s the easy part. The tough part is to quarantine the virus, and to recognize the false self and restore the true self. Because it isn’t until we start developing an honest, compassionate, and functional relationship with ourselves that we can begin to experience a healthy, loving relationship with others.

“And that,” Lorraine concludes, “is what chair work is all about.”

At the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meeting that night, Carrie plops down on the sofa next to me, her bare arm resting gently against mine. I move my arm away. This is the new me.

“I can’t believe that bitch still won’t let you talk to me,” she says.

“It’s for your own safety. I’m too dangerous for women.”

Charles, who’s sitting across from me, makes a slashing motion over his neck. He’s right. Even that little is too much. I leave the room, return a few moments later, and sit somewhere else. Although it seems like a sensible thing to do and respectful of Ingrid, this kind of distant, uninterested behavior is probably only going to make Carrie like me more. This is, until she hears my check-in.

“I broke my contract Sunday morning,” I confess when my turn comes. “I feel weird saying this in front of everyone, but I masturbated. I just woke up in a certain condition and couldn’t help myself.”

The words ring in my head: “I couldn’t help myself.” That sounds exactly like something an addict would say. To reassure myself, I ask if anyone else has masturbated.

There’s total silence and then one hand sheepishly rises. “I have,” Calvin whispers.

Suddenly, I’m the most out-of-control sex addict in the room. Calvin was probably masturbating about his picnic. “I realized afterward,” I continue, “that I was masturbating because I was terrified of my girlfriend coming to visit. However, it turned out to be incredible having her here, and it made me want to take my recovery more seriously and become a better person.”

As we walk out of the lounge after the meeting, Charles falls into step with me. “Let me give you some advice so you don’t break your contract again,” he says. “Believe, behave, become: Believe in you and Ingrid. Behave for Ingrid. Become a nuclear family.”

It’s good advice. The three steps.

“If you ever decide to admit you’re powerless over your addiction, you can look me up in L.A. when you leave,” he continues magnanimously. “I can get you into a private therapy group with one of the best CSATs in L.A.”

Evidently I said the right thing in today’s meeting. I decide to ask him how he relapsed, since he shared the details of his story with the group before I arrived. “I was in New Zealand, where prostitution is legal,” he answers. His voice is melancholy, yet despite himself, a guilty smile creeps across his face. Joan calls this euphoric recall. “And I ended up going to this place where they had a menu of services and had a threesome with two very attractive women for four hundred and fifty dollars.”

We stand silently at the edge of the dormitory for a moment, both dialing up the visual, a crack of desire appearing in Charles’s austerity. “And that was bad,” I say. “Very bad.”

“Yeah, very bad.”

That night, I dream that Ingrid and I are in a hotel room in Las Vegas with a priest we’re paying by the hour.

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” the priest says.

As soon as the words leave his lips, a cold shroud of fear envelops me. Something irreversible has taken place in just seconds and I’m overcome with regret because I know I can’t reciprocate what Ingrid feels. I wake up with a sense of doom hanging over my head.

Charles’s words ring in my head: “Become a nuclear family.”

What’s so great about a nuclear family? I wonder, before I can stop myself. All the word nuclear makes me feel is a fear of annihilation.

Chicago, Twenty-Three Years Earlier

Ring. Ring.

Hello.

Is Todd there?

It’s a girl calling for my younger brother. They always call for him. Never for me.

No, he’s out.

This is Rachel.

Hey.

I’m with Julia and we were calling to invite him over. We’re having a special party. Julia, why don’t you tell him about it?

They both giggle. It’s a sound only teenage girls can make. It is their mating call.

Yeah, Jonas and Craig were over, but they can’t get it up anymore.

What do you mean? What are you guys doing?

We’re really horny. Want to come over?

This is it: finally, a chance to lose my virginity. And I need to become a man before college.

There’s only one problem.

I can’t. I’m grounded.

We’ll make it worth your while.

How?

We’ll give you—and here she whispers—a blow job.

Together?

If you want. We’ll do you so right if you do us right.

God, I want to come over so much.

I can’t believe they’re offering to have a threesome with me. This would be the Super Bowl of teenage sexual experiences. But I stayed out too late one night without calling my mom, so I got grounded for two months. I’ve spent most of my teenage life punished. The year before, my mom somehow found out that I’d gone to a rock concert I wasn’t allowed to attend, so she grounded me for six months.

Hurry. Julia wants to have sex with you.

Really?

She wants you, Neil.

Fuck, I want her too. But I don’t think I can today.

Or any day for the next seven weeks.

Why not?

I told you. I’m grounded.

Just sneak out.

I can’t. I don’t have the keys to the house.

You’re no fun.

Wait.

Let’s call Alex. Hey, do you have Alex’s number?

Looking back on that phone call—the only time I ever got propositioned in high school or college—I don’t know why I never rebelled, why I never just went out anyway, why even at that age I put up with being constantly imprisoned. Senior year of high school, second semester, when you’ve already been accepted to college—that’s supposed to be the best time of your life. At least for teenagers who aren’t enmeshed.

Lorraine tapes several sheets of butcher paper across the wall and asks me about my relatives as far back as my great-grandfather. As I speak, she maps my family tree, diagramming everything I know about each relative, from their birth order to tragedies in their lives to the power balance in their marriages. This is called a genogram. She’s looking for patterns. And she finds several.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, and this is one of the most narcissistic mothers I’ve ever come across,” she tells me when we get to my parents and my relationship history. “She suffocated you, so you set up a wall with her that you kept in place through anger and sneaking around behind her back. And you’re still using that wall to keep from being suffocated by Ingrid.”

Everything she says lands in my head like the sweep of a broom, knocking away cobwebs and uncovering lost brain cells, like the years of anger and regret I harbored over being grounded and missing out on my only high school sexual opportunity.

“There’s one thing that’s been bothering me,” I tell Lorraine. “I can’t understand why I never stood up for myself against her strictness and just rebelled or ran away?”

She looks at my genogram for a moment, then responds: “Because your example was your dad, and he never stood up for himself. And his father didn’t stand up to his mother either.”

The rest of the guys nod in agreement as I wonder whether my grandfather had a secret sex life too. Probably. “And you’ll notice,” she continues, “that they didn’t model a healthy relationship for you. It’s no wonder you have fear when it comes to Ingrid. You don’t want to end up in a relationship like the one your parents have.”

Growing up, I often wished my parents would have affairs. When my mother and I found photos of my father out with a woman we didn’t recognize, I was happy he’d apparently found some romance and excitement outside his desolate marriage. It’s no wonder cheating came so naturally to me. I’d given myself permission long before I’d ever had a girlfriend.

Lorraine spends the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon doing everyone’s genograms. When she finishes, she tells us that before we start our chair work tomorrow, she wants to teach us about the relationship between the love addict and the love avoidant—or, as she prefers to put it, the codependent and the counterdependent.

“If you think of intimacy as into me I see and I share that with you—that’s intimacy,” Lorraine begins.

I’ve heard the word intimacy constantly here, spoken as if it’s the holy grail. And all these fun things—from sex to drugs to ambition to even dressing attractively, reading novels, or having intellectual thoughts—are supposed to be eliminated because they’re barriers to it.

“Intimacy problems come from a lack of self-love,” she continues. “Someone who fears intimacy thinks, unconsciously, If you knew who I actually was, you’d leave me.”

“I always think that!” Calvin says, raising his hand for a high five. It goes unslapped.

“I’d classify all of you as intimacy avoidants,” she presses on. “The avoidant is very good at seducing, in the sense that he has an uncanny ability to find out what his partner needs and give it to her. Because he was usually enmeshed, he gets his worth and value from taking care of needy people.”

“So are guys love avoidants and women love addicts?” Calvin asks.

“No, I’ve seen both. What happens in either case is that we choose partners who are at our age of emotional development and maturity, and whose issues are complementary to ours. Your wives may think they sent you here because you’re sick and they’re normal, but I’ve never worked with a couple where one of them had it all together and the other was a screw-up. They’ve got just as many issues as you do. Proof of this is the fact that they’re still with you.”

“Can I please get you on the phone with my wife to tell her that?” Adam asks.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” Lorraine responds. “That’s the enmeshed child in you speaking. You should be in recovery for you, not for her. And that’s typical of your marriage as a whole. Because when a love avoidant and a love addict begin a relationship, a predictable pattern occurs: The avoidant gives and gives, sacrificing his own needs, but it’s never enough for the love addict. So the avoidant grows resentful and seeks an outlet outside of the relationship, but at the same time feels too guilty to stop taking care of the needy person.”

“By outlet, you mean an affair?” Adam interrupts.

“It can be,” Lorraine says. “But it can also be obsessive exercising or work or drugs or living on the edge or anything high-risk. He will also compartmentalize it because the secrecy helps kick that intensity up a notch. In the meantime, as the avoidant’s walls keep getting higher, the love addict uses denial to hold on to the fantasy and starts accepting unacceptable behavior.”

As she speaks, I think of one of the most classic myths of our civilization: The Odyssey. Odysseus cheats rampantly on his voyage home from the Trojan War, even shacking up with a nymph for seven years, knowing full well that his wife, Penelope, is waiting for him. Meanwhile, Penelope stays pure for twenty years, even though she thinks he’s dead. Yet Odysseus is the hero of the tale and even slaughters all 108 of Penelope’s suitors for daring to court her. In here, they’d diagnose Odysseus as a love avoidant—off adventuring, warring, and intensity-seeking—and Penelope as a love addict, living in fantasy. This relationship is as old as time.

“But the avoidant’s behavior has consequences,” Lorraine continues, “and chief among them is something most of you are familiar with: getting caught. And that shatters the fantasy for the love addict, who experiences her biggest nightmare: abandonment, which replicates her original wound.”

One thing Odysseus did right is that he didn’t get caught. That’s because they didn’t have paparazzi, social media, mobile phones, and the Internet back then. It was easier to compartmentalize.

“The pain and the fear are so intense for the love addict that she often develops her own secret life as well. Where the avoidant wants the highs, the addict typically goes for the lows. She wants benzodiazepines, alcohol, romance novels, shopping till she drops, or anything that depresses the central nervous system. If she acts out sexually or has an emotional affair, it’s not for intensity, but to numb the pain and get away from the agonizing hurt. Soon, the relationship is no longer about love for either partner, but about escaping from reality.”

Lorraine draws a diagram of the unhealthy relationship she’s been describing:

“Is everybody one or the other?” Calvin asks. “I feel like I’m both.”

It’s a good question: I’ve always seen myself as more ambivalent in my relationships than avoidant, but perhaps doubt is just a form of avoidance because it prevents me from ever fully committing to anyone.

“Some people have elements of both or play different roles at different times,” Lorraine responds. She then draws a picture of a healthy relationship: