What is happening down under at the personal iceberg of the betrayer? -Part 4-

In the first three articles about the personal iceberg we have taken first a closer look at the deepest levels of the iceberg, namely the complex trauma shaping (Part 1) in terms of the attachment, the gender, the sexuality and the body construction (Part 2). Then we took a look at how the complex trauma shaping is manifesting itself in our responses towards the world (Part 3), mainly in terms of our personality and the expression of our gender. In this last part we are going to look at the sexuality part and how it shows up in daily life.

With that I invite you again to put on your diving gear and check your air system and if you are ready to jump in the water and dive down to the next level and part of the iceberg.

Sexuality

The third template is the sexuality template. The template that helps men to have responses in terms of their sexuality and how to express themselves sexually. What does sexuality mean to them? How do they express their sexuality? What is healthy sexuality? What does male sexuality mean and how to live it in a healthy and relational way? Responses to those and other questions are in the template. The template is built over time in the context of the family and the society, and its base is the trauma around sexuality that a person has been exposed to (or not) during his upbringing.

Before we start to look into the sexual template, I would like to set the frame to look at it. First, we have to understand that each human being’s sexual arousal template is like a fingerprint, it is a unique configuration of each person and the body of this person. A connection of the body, the mind and the emotions and how they respond sexually to the world. This fingerprint is shaped over time through the social experiences each person is exposed to. Which brings us to the second part of the framework to have in mind when we try to understand the sexual template of a sex-addict. And that is the reality we all are exposed to in the society we grow up in and live in. Sexuality is not a topic we openly and honestly talk about and at the same moment we live in a very sexualized world. We have so easy access through internet to any kind of pornographic or sexualized material. And if we look at commercials, movies and series, music videos and so on, all are playing with sexuality. So, nobody talks about it but at the same moment it is constantly present around us. Those two aspects, the fingerprint and the sexualized world we live in, form the framework around the construction of the sexuality template.

We have talked about the trauma base around sexualit, and how it is formed by the social situations that we are exposed to and that shape us. The result is a constricted compartmentalized sexuality with a very wounded person underneath it, that has a lot of shame and fear around sexuality. Combined with the gender construction which does not allow him to express his emotions, he has to compartmentalize it, he has to put his emotions around sexuality aside. The deeper, or underlying emotions around sexuality we can find in a betrayer are fear, anxiety, shame, disgust, anger and hostility. Because they never learned to connect to their emotions and they also did not learn to express them in an adequate and relational way. This leads to a disconnection of the sexuality from the self. Sexuality is something that one has (on physical or body level) but that is not deeply connected to the person. This separation gives him the possibility to satisfy his sexual needs when there is a possibility and when there is a need to use sexuality as a soothing mechanism for his nervous system. (“Let’s talk about the secret sexual basement”) He has learned to disconnect sexuality from himself and that is why often the addict does not have a clear memory or a clear understanding of his acting out. It is hard to understand for the partner that reality. If you understand the separation of the body/sexuality from the rest of the person, it makes more sense. Because of the separation he can act out and have no integrity around it also he has a lot of integrity in other areas of his life.

As I have mentioned during the trauma around sexuality, sexuality is not a topic we talk about, not in the family and not in the school (also we get some education about protection and safer sex, but we do not talk about healthy sexuality in a relationship!) and not in the society. The result of that reality is that the betrayer never learned to have a voice around sexuality and to talk about it in a relational way. Connected with the silence around sexuality we build a lot of shame, because for some reason the adults do not talk about it, so it must be something bad. And if I feel sexually aroused or interested in sex, I am really a bad person, because I break this unspoken rule and the tabu. The betrayer grows up in the combination of silence and shame around sexuality without having a voice. The consequence is that he has to hide it and with that the basement is already under construction. Way before he met his partner. In some cases, the restriction around sexuality goes so far that sex is only permitted for procreation within the marriage. It is not there to express desires and experience satisfaction. So, what do you do with that mandate? You create a secret basement where you can live and express your sexuality! If we look just at those aspects (no voice, shame and certain social meaning towards sexuality) – and there are more that we could explore – it is a relieve to create a secret sexual basement. And as society is not talking about it, I have the perfect entrance and argument why I am not talking about it either! The combination of the no voice around sexuality and the entitlement as a man is “perfect” for the construction of a secret sexual basement.

I have learned by sitting with the betrayers and listening to their stories, that most of them have been exposed to pornography and masturbation very early in their lives, when they did not have a clear understanding of sexuality. They got introduced to it by friends, older relatives, or older neighbors and what has started then is a adaptation of the brain structure to sexuality. The interesting thing about sex-addiction is, that whenever the addict acts out, it releases dopamine in our brain. Dopamine connects with the same receptors that drugs do, so we have actually a typical drug reaction in our brain when we act out. I said interesting thing in terms of sex-addiction, because we do not need to inject any substances in our body to get a dopamine hit. Sexuality is always available for us, and we can engage in it. A drug addict needs to go out on the street and find someone that sells him drugs. A sex-addict has always access to his “drug”, the dopamine is already in his body. I talk about that, so that the importance of being exposed to sexuality in a very early age, changes the brain structure in the way, that it learns very early to use sexuality as a soothing tool. Whenever there is emotional pain, the brain will try to get a dopamine kick in the system to soothe the pain. And if we start very early with masturbation and pornography, we create a neurological pathway to be used to soothe our nervous system.

The good news is, as it is a learned behavior, because nobody is born as a sex-addict, we become a sex-addict, we can learn something different, and our body and nervous system can integrate and adapt to those new tools and behaviors. It is a possible path, and it requires the willingness to really become aware of the emotions, the need to soothe the nervous system and the behavioral aspect behind it. In my work with betrayers, I teach them a lot of neurobiology, so they can understand what their brain is doing and why it is doing what it is doing. It helps them to understand themselves better and from that place they are motivated to change. When we connect their personal story to the neurological response, they start to change. Because they realize that they are no longer a responsive person to the stimuli without control over it. They learn that there is a connection between their story and their behavior and that they can learn to change it. They start to write a new chapter in their own book. It is the combination of understanding their story, their neurological response, their gender construction, and their wrong understanding of integrity when they really start to change and become a different person, a different man.

Stay safe

Gundolf