When you’re working through recovery from something like porn or sex addiction, depending on how deeply rooted that addiction is, it forces you to confront a number of different dynamics in all aspects of your life. Many people who do this difficult healing work are a blessing to others because they’re forced to face down so many issues, as often they have experienced a great deal of personal transformation. One of the important areas we look at in our therapy with those struggling with these addictions is attachment, something that we went into in detail back in episodes 251 to 254.
Attachment Calls Out the Blame Game
One of the unfortunate impacts of porn and sex addiction in marriage is that the addict often resorts to blaming tactics to defend or minimize the addiction. Of course, this is very hard on the spouse of the addict but when we understand the role of attachment in this sort of addiction, it helps us understand more of what is happening which in turn helps to push back on this blame game that gets played.
A few on the other. The more a person was comfortable with interpersonal relationships, the more the draw of his fantasies would diminish[1]. (e.g., genuine engagement scholars talk about the relationship between attachment style and sex or porn addiction. Leeds (1999, cited in Zapf et al., 2008) thought that an addict’s attachment style lived in tension between fantasy on one hand and genuine interpersonal relationships and connection and intimacy in marriage). It’s easy to see how someone is drawn towards fantasy based on their own attachment difficulties.
The father of attachment, John Bowlby, did not speak to sex addiction and attachment specifically, but he did point out that our individual assumptions about how we view others and ourselves are most significant in our closest relationships. This includes how comfortable a person is with being close to another person: indeed, much of attachment is about the intermittent effort to create closeness[2]. Thus, when you have an addiction like this occurring in a marriage, the addicted spouse is attempting to experience that closeness in a fantasy-based experience rather than in the context of a real, tangible, marriage bond. Again, you see that the attachment needs are there but they are pointed in the wrong direction.
Attachment difficulties are very common in people with sex addiction. A 2008 study (by Zapf et al.) showed that over 80% of the sex-addicted participants were characterized by attachment styles other than secure attachment[3]. Nearly half were of the fearful avoidant or disorganized attachment style where there’s a real longing for connection but a great fear of it as well, compounded by the shame-based concern of being really seen. You can see how pornography or sex addiction is an attempt to fit in the missing piece of that attachment puzzle.
Pornography Deteriorates Attachment
The problems of sex and pornography addiction are closely linked to difficulties in forming a close connection to one’s spouse. The research is beginning to show that individuals with sex addiction or pornography use have trouble forming close attachment to their spouse. Patrick Carnes, the grandfather of the whole sex addiction recovery movement conceptualized it as primarily a relationally oriented problem. Leedes (1999) wrote, “although the inability to form close attachments may not be sufficient to explain the etiology [source] of sexual addiction, it is a necessary component” (p. 218)[4]. Weinsten (2015) further notes that the acting out behaviours of sex addiction and compulsive pornography use are characterized by sexual activity minus emotional connection[5]. That is why you see these maladaptive attachment styles at play whenever you witness sexual compulsivity[6]. The acting out associated with these addictive patterns is like an attempt to gain intimacy, but without the emotional connection that comes with real intimacy with one’s spouse.
It’s important to note that just because you are not securely attached, it absolutely does not mean that you are sex or porn addicted. There are lots of other ways for those other styles to play out in the context of faithful, committed marriage partners. However, the opposite is usually true: if there is a porn addiction or sex addiction at play in a person’s life, they typically do not have a secure attachment style.
Since individuals with these addictions find it hard to form a close, secure attachment to another person, sex addicts will compensate by fantasizing about unattainable and unrealistic surrogates[7]. It’s the same for pornography use, in which case a person is seeking to meet their emotional and intimacy needs outside of the marriage. Of course, this impacts closeness and intimacy whether the porn use is known or hidden. Furthermore, it decreases something called partner significance in the mind of the porn user and these issues threaten the stability and satisfaction of the marriage relationship[8].
How Attachment Interacts With Porn or Sex Addiction
If your spouse is in recovery from a porn or sex addiction, it may be helpful to explore more around the relationship between porn and sex addiction and different attachment styles. Patrick Carnes was the first to document the fact that “over 70% of individuals with sexual addiction come from rigid, authoritarian, and disengaged households.”[9] That’s a pretty big revelation because it really points to the roots of an addiction like this. Not in the sense of blaming one’s upbringing, but in acknowledging that a home where there was little warmth or connection or flexibility is most definitely going to have an impact on how you pursue closeness or connection or sex as an adult[10].
If growing up required you to develop detachment as a survival skill—checking out mentally or physically, hiding your actual feelings, avoiding closeness because there was risk associated with that—then that pattern is formational for avoidant attachment. It also fits well with sex addiction because you can get an experience of something very similar to intimacy without actually needing to be close to another person.[11]
On the other hand, if you were never certain of your parent’s availability and because of that developed an anxious attachment style, then in another way sex may become a means of feeling closeness and reassurance. If there’s no commitment required to obtain sex then you can also have an experience similar to intimacy but not have the concern of separation or abandonment. So sexual relationship without emotional commitment may also be easier for anxiously attached individuals as well as avoidantly attached ones. Again, this doesn’t mean that all people with these attachment style resort to these behaviours: we’re just describing a framework of possibilities.
Moreover, if you have a disorganized attachment style and find yourself porn and/or sex addicted it is likely because you experience a mixture of these reactions.
What This Means for Recovery
Of course, it’s great to understand all this and be able to connect the dots. But what do we do about it? How can our understanding of the connections between attachment styles and porn or sex addiction assist with recovery?
First of all, treatment for sex addicts and many porn addicts should include addressing attachment and not just the sexual aspects of the marriage. While it is devastating in its own right, for recovery purposes the addiction should be viewed as a symptom of the underlying attachment issues. If you are avoidantly attached and in recovery, you have likely noticed that you have difficulty expressing your feelings. Some of the characteristics in this category of attachment include introversion, a lack of assertiveness, unexpressive of emotions, a belief that you are undeserving of love and support and an interest in emotionless sex.[12] Working with a therapist, you can learn to adjust those beliefs and behaviours so that you can be relationally warm and expressive, trust in the reliability of the connection your spouse is extending to you, build the skills of emotional connection, and thereby create healthy, genuine intimacy.
Part of the process of healing is recognizing the ways that your former attachment style has created barriers to intimacy. There are a few things that you can practice help you create intimacy with your spouse including:[13]
- Sitting with discomfort
- Mutual support
- Focusing on the positives in your marriage
- Self-soothing in healthy ways.
These techniques can produce very positive results for couples. It takes work and patience and practice. But when you start to discover the joy of true intimacy and connection, even the beauty of connected soul-to-soul sex, then that creates a huge amount of resiliency against going back to the shallow, temporary satisfactions of addictive behaviours.
References
[1] James L. Zapf, Jay Greiner, and James Carroll, “Attachment Styles and Male Sex Addiction,” Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity 15, no. 2 (May 14, 2008): 158–75, https://doi.org/10.1080/10720160802035832.
[2] Saudia Twine, “ANCOVA Study of Psychotherapy Treatment of Internet Pornography Addiction in Heterosexual Men,” Fidei et Veritatis: The Liberty University Journal of Graduate Research 1, no. 1 (July 27, 2015), http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/fidei_et_veritatis/vol1/iss1/3.
[3] Zapf, Greiner, and Carroll, “Attachment Styles and Male Sex Addiction.”
[4] Zapf, Greiner, and Carroll.
[5] Aviv Weinstein et al., “Sexual Compulsion — Relationship with Sex, Attachment and Sexual Orientation,” Journal of Behavioral Addictions 4, no. 1 (March 2015): 22–26, https://doi.org/10.1556/JBA.4.2015.1.6.
[6] Weinstein et al.
[7] Weinstein et al.
[8] Twine, “ANCOVA Study of Psychotherapy Treatment of Internet Pornography Addiction in Heterosexual Men.”
[9] Stephanie Carnes, “Sex Addiction, Neuroscience Trauma and More,” Lecture, 2016, https://www.naadac.org/assets/2416/stefanie_carnes_neuroscience-trauma_ac16.pdf.
[10] Candice Christiansen, “How to Identify Your Attachment Style as a Sex Addict and Improve Security in Your Relationships — Namasté Center For Healing,” 2014, https://www.namasteadvice.com/blog/how-to-identify-your-attachment-style-as-a-sex-addict-and-improve-security-in-your-relationships.
[11] Zapf, Greiner, and Carroll, “Attachment Styles and Male Sex Addiction.”
[12] Zapf, Greiner, and Carroll.
[13] Christiansen, “How to Identify Your Attachment Style as a Sex Addict and Improve Security in Your Relationships — Namasté Center For Healing.”
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