Overcoming shame and taboos to seek help for sexual issues
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By Edel Coffey
Saturday May 9 2009
In her book, Jane Haynes uses former patients as case studies to reveal the extent and variety of problems she has treated in therapy.
One patient, Callum was a young man whose pornography addiction was making it impossible for him to have successful relationships with women. The shame he felt about his addiction made it even more difficult for him to recognise his problem.
"When I first tried to talk about it, it was impossible to be specific. Just the names of the porn sites I was drawn to made me squirm. To talk about the most taboo thing of all -- sitting in front of that computer and what goes on at that moment -- was horrifying. The taboo of all taboos."
Callum was first introduced to pornography by his father. "I had a small treasure of stashed porn mags my father and his friends gave me sometime before I was 11."
In later years, as he became addicted to internet porn, his relationships with girlfriends failed to last. "I'm in the study with my girlfriend asleep next door," he writes. "Another night without sex. My libido at zero in her presence. The stream of excuses about why this is ran dry long ago and we have settled into a period where my continuing sexual rejection of her has gone from an acute to a dull, chronic pain that sits between us and fills our silences ...
"I'm on the internet with the door ajar, listening for her movement so that I can flick quickly back to the Word document I have open as cover if she stirs."
As his addiction progressed, his sexual preferences became "dirtier, seedier, more degrading". When Callum finally realised that pornography and not alcohol or drugs was his problem, he noticed that life became better. "My addiction to pornography kept me in a kind of permanent puberty. Maturing sexually as a man is to lose that shame, to know one's desires, to be frank about them to the partner one is with."
Just a few months of not seeing those images changed the way he imagined sex. "A drug it is: that I was becoming better in its absence was proof enough of that."
When he tentatively began discussing the subject with male friends, he was surprised to discover some similar experiences. "Their sheer relief to hear another male admit the scale of his participation, and for them to confess their own, has made me realise how vital it is that we talk of this. It's a nasty, shameful little room that so many of us are hiding in. Time to come out, boys."
Taken from Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am? published by Constable.
- Edel Coffey
