When I was in high school, I used to get teased a lot for having strict parents. After all, they were very vocal about saying that I was forbidden from having a boyfriend until I finished college. My mom or dad never let me ride the public bus either in fear of any boy trying to get close to me. They would rather wake up early to drive me to school instead of taking that chance.
While most kids I knew to have strict parents like mine were already being rebellious and having boyfriends left and right behind their parents’ backs, I did not share their sentiment. Of course, it seemed nice to have a boyfriend, especially when all your friends had one, but I shared my mother’s belief that my one true love would knock at my door one day, and I would not need to go through many guys to find him.
Striking Gold
I was already in grad school when I met John. We shared a class during my last semester, and I thought he was cute In a dorky kind of way. I liked guys like him because he did not seem too worldly for me, and I assumed that we would hit it off immediately. I was technically done studying, so when he asked me out on a date, I said yes, even without asking for my parents’ permission.
My relationship with John developed pretty fast. By the time we both got our Master’s degrees, we were already planning to live in New York together as we built our careers. Living together before any marriage talks took place was against my original beliefs, but John always made it sound so rational and exciting. When I informed my parents about it, they were a little unhappy with my decision, but they trusted me enough to know what’s right for me.
Finding Out I Might Have Gotten A Bronze
I had known since the first time we slept together that my boyfriend John loved sex. He never forced me to do it with him, but there were instances when all our conversations would lead to intimate talks. It almost even turned me off before, but then he promised to stop doing that.
The thing was, when we were already staying under the same roof, I saw his massive collection of adult movies. Although the actors and actresses were all of legal age, I found that a little odd. After all, we were already doing it three or four times a day, so why would he need to keep those movies?
When I asked John about it, he said that it was for “research purposes.” He claimed not to have a lot of sexual experience before we got together, so he wanted to get more ideas on what to do in bed from those movies. I accepted that reasoning for a while until I realized That he would always have one on whenever he had a chance. I even caught him watching porn while I was driving us back home from a grocery run.
I had to put my foot down at that point because it felt like I was dating a sex addict. Worse, he might be a porn addict. I talked to John about this again, and he started denying it like I saw things that were not there. That was our first major argument, and it did not feel good that it was because of sex.
John’s habits did not stop in the next couple of months, and I gave him an ultimatum. He could get counseling, or we could call it quits. He insisted that he did not want to break up with me, so John signed up for counseling, albeit half-heartedly.
Getting Counseling
While John agreed to go to a counselor, I could see that he genuinely did not believe that he had if problem. He wanted me to be in the same room so that it would be more like couples counseling if it turned out he was not a sex addict in denial. I was cool with that. I would even say sorry if I were wrong, but it did not feel like I was wrong.
The counselor allowed John to speak first, and he talked about his habits in a watered-down manner. Meaning, from his point of view, it genuinely did not sound like a problem.
When it was my turn, I told the counselor how John was always watching porn on his phone or laptop, even though we had sex multiple times a day.
John interjected, “What’s so wrong about liking it? I don’t say a word about you liking shoes or clothes.”
Before I could say something heated, the counselor took the floor. Her initial assessment mirrored mine — John was most likely a sex addict in denial. He started protesting about the idea again, but the counselor explained what a sex addict meant being.
“Sex addiction is not merely found in men or women who have a lot of one-night stands or pay people to have sex with them. Even if you are faithful to your girlfriend, but you refuse to let a day pass without having sexual intercourse or watching adult movies, that’s a sign of sexual addiction too. Now, the bigger problem is that you cannot accept that you are a sex addict, which can honestly ruin a relationship. After all, your partner can only do so much for you. If she sees that you’re lost cause, she may leave you.”
That seemed like a wake-up call for John. After that, he became more open to counseling, and after a month, he canceled his subscription to porn websites and deleted every adult movie that he saved on his phone, laptop, USB sticks, etc.
We continued to do counseling, and I believed it helped our relationship to grow as well. Even when John moved past his sexual addiction, we would still see the counselor regularly just to make sure that it would never return.
