July 5, 2025 • 15 mins
Sex addiction is classified as a “process addiction.” This is important as your treatment strategy may need to change depending on the thought processes that you’re addicted to.
In this episode, I discuss:Why the term “sex addiction” may be a distraction.Why the term may make it difficult for your wife to move forward.Why the term may be creating an inaccurate enemy.
For more about process addiction, check out my book on Amazon or audio book on Audible. Here’s the link: https://a.co/d/dCpfAlf
If you’re a high-achiever looking for a recovery group full of other high-achieving men, visit my website: successfuladdict.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Sex addiction is not about sex and I
really wish they would stop calling it sex
addiction. And I say this for two reasons.
You are listening to the sex addiction podcast
for high achievers, business professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs.
This podcast is designed to apply sobriety and
recovery principles specifically to the mindset of the
high achiever.
(00:21):
I'm your host, Roland Cochran, founder of The
Successful Addict, a recovery group for high achieving
men struggling with sex and porn addiction. For
more information about joining our group or attending
our next retreat, visit successfuladdict.com.
And now, enjoy the rest of the episode.
One, it's a distraction for the addict. It
makes them zoom in way too much on
(00:41):
the sexual behaviors, which are really just the
end result of all of the faulty brain
processes. So in a lot of ways, it's
a distraction. Right? In some ways, it gets
them sober, but in other ways, it harms
their long term recovery. The other reason I
don't like the term is what it does
to their wives, these betrayed partners. Right? You
hear the word sex addiction, it does them
no favors. Right? Because these poor partners, they're
(01:03):
already struggling. They've been lied to. They've been
gaslit by their husband. Their world's turned upside
down. Right? They're feeling unwanted. They're feeling ugly.
They're feeling discarded.
Right? It's it's incredibly offensive. And then you
call it a sex addiction. Right? Which how
is their nervous system ever supposed to calm
down with that? Right? They're married to a
sex addict, a porn addict? I mean, come
on. Nobody wants to be married to a
(01:24):
sex or porn addict. Right? How are you
supposed to live your life constantly worrying about
what he's looking at? Is he checking out
her? Does he like women like that? Right?
It's it's no way to live.
This is why I think we should start
using the term, the correct term, the psychological
term term for sex addiction, which is actually
called process addiction. And for those of you
who've read my book or listened to my
podcast, I talk about this a lot, but
(01:46):
it's because I truly believe it's why we
see the relapse rate so high. Right? And
we see the recovery rate so low. And
it's because I don't think we're focusing on
the right pieces that are actually gonna result
in long term sobriety, long term recovery. So
when we examine process addiction, I'm gonna and
in this episode, I'm gonna talk about it
in two different ways. I wanna first talk
about it from a recovery standpoint, but I
(02:07):
also wanna touch on why identifying
and understanding your process addiction is critical to
the recovery of your marriage. So first, let's
start with the addict.
If we're looking at process addiction and we're
actually gonna call it a process addiction, the
reason I like that is there's less of
an emphasis on the behaviors that actually occurred
and there's more emphasis on how the heck
(02:27):
did I let that happen. Right? How did
I get to the point where I was
sleeping with prostitutes, where I was having affairs.
Right? Like what on earth was I thinking?
Because most of these guys they're madly in
love with their wife. Right? A lot of
their affair partners were less attractive
than their wife, if not all of their
affair partners were less attractive than their wife.
And so it's crazy when you think about
it. Here they are risking everything. Right? Destroying
(02:48):
their family, their trust with their life partner,
all to what? Sleep with somebody who's less
attractive, who you can't even remember their name?
Right? It sounds nuts, but when we look
at the processes that birth it, it starts
to seem less crazy. And that's which is
important because we need to understand how this
happened. If you don't understand how this happened,
how are you going to make sure that
it doesn't happen again? Right? So for example,
(03:09):
if we're tracing the processes back, right, if
we're looking at some of these meaningless
interactions, we have to figure out what the
brain is after with these interactions.
Okay? And it's it's a wide variety. That's
why I like calling it process addiction rather
than sex or porn addiction because, again, sex
or porn addiction oversimplifies it. It makes it
about sex, it makes it about porn, which
(03:30):
makes it harder to recover. But when you
really look at what's driving the behaviors,
it makes a lot more sense and therefore,
you're actually able to overcome and change some
of these faulty thought processes. And you'll be
surprised, they will go back so far. I
mean, almost all of the faulty processes
stem from childhood events that happened in your
youth and then compounded on themselves all the
(03:51):
way through adulthood and never truly got resolved.
And the irony is, we always focus on
you know, when we hear the word childhood
trauma, we always focus on these negative events.
But again, trauma doesn't have to be a
negative event. Trauma is just something that altered
your course of your life, altered your thinking.
So for example, I think one of the
most common pieces of trauma that we see
(04:12):
is the over emphasis on the value of
having sex with with girls.
You know, all through middle school, through high
school, through college, there is this massive emphasis
on getting laid, getting laid as much as
you can, getting laid by the hottest girl
that you can get laid by. You know
what again, I'm not saying this affects every
single male, but this is certainly a conversation
(04:32):
amongst a lot of the male circles that
I hunt around. And then you see it
again on television,
on movies,
right? There's this huge emphasis on what it
would be like to be able to sleep
with this woman. Right? It's built up on
this pedestal.
And if we think about the trauma that
that will cause and what that can do
to somebody's brain processes, it creates two things,
an overemphasis on the value
(04:54):
of a sexual interaction.
But also, if we look at the on
the on the flip side, it is creating
a scarcity.
Right? If we're talking about how hard it
is to get laid and how hard it
is to sleep with a super attractive female,
it makes it makes it scarce. Right? So
over here, you have this massive massive value.
And then on the other side, you have
this it's this scarce occurrence that's gonna be
(05:15):
hard to get. Right? And you and you
see this. Right? There'll be men who, you
know, through college or going out to bars
with the primary objective of trying to get
laid. Right? We have people who go on
vacations to Las Vegas, to Mexico, and again,
that's that's their objective. Right? Can I get
laid and how many times can I get
laid? Now if we're looking at that thought
process,
they expect getting married to stop it, And
(05:36):
that is one of the most naive things
I've ever heard. Right? If if for multiple
decades,
you have been obsessed with trying to get
laid and
constantly trying to sleep with more and more
progressively attractive women, you think that's just gonna
go away because you got married? You know,
you might wanna think again.
Okay? And if we focus on another process,
right, you you could be,
(05:58):
you could be fishing for compliments. You could
be searching for validation. Right? Maybe you wanna
feel accomplished, successful, more desirable. Maybe you wanna
feel like the most superior man in the
room. Right? All of these processes stem from
feeling inadequate, feeling like you're not good enough,
feeling like, the only way to live a
successful life is to get, you know, 1%
better every day. Right? All of these kind
(06:20):
of traumatic philosophies that we subscribe to when
we're young
lead us down all of these various paths.
Now one there's one other thing I want
to say for the guys who are hunting
for their problematic thought processes.
The other reason I don't like to call
it a sex or porn addiction is I
think when we zoom in too much on
the actual behavior, we ignore how else these
(06:40):
guys are engaging their process addiction.
Right? There the the truth is the sexual
behaviors oftentimes are like one or or two
percent
of their process addiction. If you look at
these men, a lot of the times they're
engaging in the exact same process addiction in
non sexual ways. Right? So if it's a
guy who's searching for validation,
superiority, compliments,
(07:01):
Right? This guy is going to be doing
this at work. Right? He's gonna be doing
through making money. Maybe he's gonna do through,
buying nice nice clothes, buying nice cars,
you know, landing big contracts, winning awards at
work. Right? So he's still engaging in his
process addiction.
He is not okay unless he is getting
better and better and getting validated for how
good he's getting. We can look at another
(07:22):
process on on the same way. If we're
gonna look at a guy who has,
liking liking to escape. Right? So somebody who's
using sex and pornography as a way to
cope with negative emotions to escape from life.
The truth is sex and pornography are only
gonna be again a small one, two, three,
four, five percent of their actual process addiction.
On the other hand, they're scrolling on social
(07:44):
media wasting time. They're playing, you know, maybe
games on their phone. They're looking at,
investment properties to buy, cars on auction. Right?
So it's, you know, we look at them
engaging in pornography as the escape. But if
you really look at the process addiction, there's
a ton of escapism practices that they're using
to get dopamine to vacate their life and
kind of tune out, check out. So my
(08:04):
point is, again, I think if we zoom
in way too much, these guys get sexually
sober. But again, if that's only two percent
of their process addiction, what about the rest
of it?
Right? And and are we really safe just
leaving it there? In my opinion, no. We're
not. Because if you leave all those other
problematic processes there, the unsafe the the the
constant thirst for compliments,
(08:25):
for,
for validation, for attention. Right? To get people
to look at you and say nice things
at you. Right? To if you're looking at
your avoiding,
life. Right? You're you're trying to numb out
and check out and escape life and not
feel your feelings. You know, if we just
focus on the sexual behaviors, we're leaving all
this other stuff on the table, which in
my opinion, just places you at high risk.
Right? That's the difference between sobriety and recovery.
(08:47):
Right? Sobriety is finding a way to not
do the sexual pieces, but recovery is how
do I not be an escapist
at all? Right? How do I live my
life and feel my emotions and express my
emotions? Right? Or how do I live my
life where I'm getting validation from me? Right?
I feel good enough. I'm validating myself rather
than constantly needing other people to validate me.
And I believe that's the issue with calling
(09:08):
this sex and porn addiction is we're kind
of completely missing the mark and we wonder
why these guys are relapsing. Well, because the
truth is the bulk of their addiction hasn't
changed at all. It's just the sexual pieces
that we've removed. So the second piece I
wanted to talk to is the, the the
importance of identifying your process addiction and being
able to explain it and articulate
it to your wife. And I think this
(09:29):
is absolutely critical for people who are trying
to heal their marriage. Because again, right, look
at look at how your wife feels. Right?
When you do this to your wife, she
feels it's totally justified. Right? She feels unwanted.
She feels discarded. She feels disrespected.
Right? She feels like you don't respect her,
that you don't respect women. Maybe she feels
like you never loved her. Right? How could
you do this to me if you actually
(09:49):
loved me? She might feel ugly. She might
feel bad in bed. She might feel like
you're bored with her. She might feel like
you, want someone younger, somebody more attractive, somebody
with different hair color. Right? These poor women,
here they are, you know, when this happens
to them. And it's right rightfully so that
they would draw all these conclusions. Right? Because
if your marriage was so awesome and your
sex life was so awesome, why would you
do this to her? And that's why you
(10:10):
need to be able to explain your process
addiction because if to her, it seems very
sexual and very personal.
Rightfully so. Right? But if you're able to
explain to her, hey. You know, as I
was doing some of the work with my
recovery work right? My my recovery groups, I've
been able to really uncover where this stems
from. Right? You know, I I don't feel
(10:30):
good enough on my own. I constantly need
validation.
I need other people to tell me how
accomplished I am. I need another people to
be impressed with me. Right? If I don't
have that, I don't feel okay. Right? And
so and the reason you need to articulate
that to her is she's gonna see it
in all areas of your life, not just
sexually. Right? She's gonna say, you know what?
(10:50):
I see you do that when we're at
work events and conferences and networking events. Right?
I see that when we are hosting parties
at the house. Right? You'd completely flip a
switch and turn into a total people pleaser.
Right?
And then same thing for, you know, if
we're gonna go back to kind of the
escapism. Right? You can say, hey, you know,
I I started to realize that, you know,
when I'm, you know, stressed, uncomfortable,
feel like I'm under a lot of pressure,
(11:13):
I I tend to not feel understood. I
feel isolated, and that's when I wanna just
kinda check out of my life. And then
again, you're rattling off all of the objectives.
Right? I'm I'm trying to distract myself. Right?
I don't want to I don't wanna think
about anything. I don't wanna talk about anything.
I don't wanna feel my feelings. I don't
wanna express my feelings. Right? And then you
can describe all the things you do. Hey.
I'll I'll read a book. I'll go golf.
(11:34):
I'll go you know, and you start explaining
to her all the things that you do
so that you don't have to deal with
the stress, the emotions, whatever it is. And
so, again, there's there's tons you know, I
primarily talked about, like, two avenues of process
addiction, but the truth is your process addiction
can be anything and everything. I mean, there
there there's such a wide variety of mental
(11:54):
processes that men have become addicted to. Some
of those,
result in sexual behaviors, some don't. Right? Some
will result in, substance addiction, some will result
in a gambling addiction, some will result in
an eating disorder. You know, we never know
where these faulty processes are gonna take us,
but some do result in some sexual acting
out. Right? And so if guys are really
(12:14):
gonna recover from this, to me, they need
to look at the entirety
of their process addiction. I really believe that.
I think if you don't turn over every
stone,
I think you're gonna be leaving things on
the table and I think, you know, you
are at a high risk of relapse. And
if we're talking about, you know, healing the
marriage and your wife, you know, a lot
of guys, you know, they're in recovery for
a year or two, three and they haven't
(12:36):
acted out. They have not relapsed. But their
wife still doesn't trust them. And these guys
are like, what the heck? What's going on?
Like, what more can I do? I'm going
to, you know, one to two twelve step
meetings every week. I've got a fair I've
got multiple therapists. Right? A couple's therapist. I
got my personal therapist.
Right? I'm going to one or two intensives
every year. Right? This is what I did.
I did everything and anything I could, and
(12:56):
it still wasn't good enough for my wife.
And that was when I discovered process addiction.
And the second I started really under you
know, uncovering what my brain is after
every single day, that was when my wife's
finally started to feel like I had a
grip on this thing.
Right? Because she wasn't wrong. In the beginning,
I wasn't recovered. I was just sober. Right?
I was avoiding the sexual pieces. But it
(13:18):
was when I really started digging in and
understanding, you know what? Most of this is
not sexual. Most of this is a process
addiction that presents in so many other ways,
not sexually. And that was what scared her.
Right? Her nervous system and and these ladies,
you you guys have probably seen it. These
ladies, their nervous system, they're not dumb. They
they they can pick up on this stuff.
And so while you might be sexually sober,
(13:39):
they might not feel like you're recovered. And
oftentimes,
they're probably right. So rather than defending yourself,
you know, really ask, have I discovered my
process addiction? Do I know all of the
faulty brain processes? Have I discovered all of
them? And do I know the psychologically proven
treatments that are gonna be able to get
these faulty processes out of my life? And
most importantly,
(13:59):
are you doing the things that are actually
gonna remove them? Are you really truly doing
the work? And if you can say yes
to all those things, okay. But the truth
is if you can say yes to everything
that I just said, your wife probably isn't
doubting your recovery. She probably thinks you're in
great recovery. So again, for all you guys,
if you've gotten the question from your wife,
hey, are you even in good recovery? I
still don't feel safe with you. Before you
(14:20):
go defending yourself, stop and think for a
second. Is there some truth to what she's
saying? Have I truly eliminated all these faulty
thought processes from my life?
Thanks for listening to this episode. If you
are a high achiever of the sex addiction
and you're looking for a recovery group full
of like minded men, visit successfuladdict.com.
We provide men with a recovery mastermind group
(14:41):
using four day retreats,
weekly group calls, and daily accountability check ins.
If you wanna achieve long term sobriety and
save your marriage, go to our website and
fill out our application. If you enjoyed this
episode, please pass it along to a friend
in recovery who would benefit from listening. It
is my mission to get this information out
to as many high achievers as possible, and
I can't do it without your help.
Sex addiction is not about sex and I
really wish they would stop calling it sex
addiction. And I say this for two reasons.
You are listening to the sex addiction podcast
for high achievers, business professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs.
This podcast is designed to apply sobriety and
recovery principles specifically to the mindset of the
high achiever.
(00:21):
I'm your host, Roland Cochran, founder of The
Successful Addict, a recovery group for high achieving
men struggling with sex and porn addiction. For
more information about joining our group or attending
our next retreat, visit successfuladdict.com.
And now, enjoy the rest of the episode.
One, it's a distraction for the addict. It
makes them zoom in way too much on
(00:41):
the sexual behaviors, which are really just the
end result of all of the faulty brain
processes. So in a lot of ways, it's
a distraction. Right? In some ways, it gets
them sober, but in other ways, it harms
their long term recovery. The other reason I
don't like the term is what it does
to their wives, these betrayed partners. Right? You
hear the word sex addiction, it does them
no favors. Right? Because these poor partners, they're
(01:03):
already struggling. They've been lied to. They've been
gaslit by their husband. Their world's turned upside
down. Right? They're feeling unwanted. They're feeling ugly.
They're feeling discarded.
Right? It's it's incredibly offensive. And then you
call it a sex addiction. Right? Which how
is their nervous system ever supposed to calm
down with that? Right? They're married to a
sex addict, a porn addict? I mean, come
on. Nobody wants to be married to a
(01:24):
sex or porn addict. Right? How are you
supposed to live your life constantly worrying about
what he's looking at? Is he checking out
her? Does he like women like that? Right?
It's it's no way to live.
This is why I think we should start
using the term, the correct term, the psychological
term term for sex addiction, which is actually
called process addiction. And for those of you
who've read my book or listened to my
podcast, I talk about this a lot, but
(01:46):
it's because I truly believe it's why we
see the relapse rate so high. Right? And
we see the recovery rate so low. And
it's because I don't think we're focusing on
the right pieces that are actually gonna result
in long term sobriety, long term recovery. So
when we examine process addiction, I'm gonna and
in this episode, I'm gonna talk about it
in two different ways. I wanna first talk
about it from a recovery standpoint, but I
(02:07):
also wanna touch on why identifying
and understanding your process addiction is critical to
the recovery of your marriage. So first, let's
start with the addict.
If we're looking at process addiction and we're
actually gonna call it a process addiction, the
reason I like that is there's less of
an emphasis on the behaviors that actually occurred
and there's more emphasis on how the heck
(02:27):
did I let that happen. Right? How did
I get to the point where I was
sleeping with prostitutes, where I was having affairs.
Right? Like what on earth was I thinking?
Because most of these guys they're madly in
love with their wife. Right? A lot of
their affair partners were less attractive
than their wife, if not all of their
affair partners were less attractive than their wife.
And so it's crazy when you think about
it. Here they are risking everything. Right? Destroying
(02:48):
their family, their trust with their life partner,
all to what? Sleep with somebody who's less
attractive, who you can't even remember their name?
Right? It sounds nuts, but when we look
at the processes that birth it, it starts
to seem less crazy. And that's which is
important because we need to understand how this
happened. If you don't understand how this happened,
how are you going to make sure that
it doesn't happen again? Right? So for example,
(03:09):
if we're tracing the processes back, right, if
we're looking at some of these meaningless
interactions, we have to figure out what the
brain is after with these interactions.
Okay? And it's it's a wide variety. That's
why I like calling it process addiction rather
than sex or porn addiction because, again, sex
or porn addiction oversimplifies it. It makes it
about sex, it makes it about porn, which
(03:30):
makes it harder to recover. But when you
really look at what's driving the behaviors,
it makes a lot more sense and therefore,
you're actually able to overcome and change some
of these faulty thought processes. And you'll be
surprised, they will go back so far. I
mean, almost all of the faulty processes
stem from childhood events that happened in your
youth and then compounded on themselves all the
(03:51):
way through adulthood and never truly got resolved.
And the irony is, we always focus on
you know, when we hear the word childhood
trauma, we always focus on these negative events.
But again, trauma doesn't have to be a
negative event. Trauma is just something that altered
your course of your life, altered your thinking.
So for example, I think one of the
most common pieces of trauma that we see
(04:12):
is the over emphasis on the value of
having sex with with girls.
You know, all through middle school, through high
school, through college, there is this massive emphasis
on getting laid, getting laid as much as
you can, getting laid by the hottest girl
that you can get laid by. You know
what again, I'm not saying this affects every
single male, but this is certainly a conversation
(04:32):
amongst a lot of the male circles that
I hunt around. And then you see it
again on television,
on movies,
right? There's this huge emphasis on what it
would be like to be able to sleep
with this woman. Right? It's built up on
this pedestal.
And if we think about the trauma that
that will cause and what that can do
to somebody's brain processes, it creates two things,
an overemphasis on the value
(04:54):
of a sexual interaction.
But also, if we look at the on
the on the flip side, it is creating
a scarcity.
Right? If we're talking about how hard it
is to get laid and how hard it
is to sleep with a super attractive female,
it makes it makes it scarce. Right? So
over here, you have this massive massive value.
And then on the other side, you have
this it's this scarce occurrence that's gonna be
(05:15):
hard to get. Right? And you and you
see this. Right? There'll be men who, you
know, through college or going out to bars
with the primary objective of trying to get
laid. Right? We have people who go on
vacations to Las Vegas, to Mexico, and again,
that's that's their objective. Right? Can I get
laid and how many times can I get
laid? Now if we're looking at that thought
process,
they expect getting married to stop it, And
(05:36):
that is one of the most naive things
I've ever heard. Right? If if for multiple
decades,
you have been obsessed with trying to get
laid and
constantly trying to sleep with more and more
progressively attractive women, you think that's just gonna
go away because you got married? You know,
you might wanna think again.
Okay? And if we focus on another process,
right, you you could be,
(05:58):
you could be fishing for compliments. You could
be searching for validation. Right? Maybe you wanna
feel accomplished, successful, more desirable. Maybe you wanna
feel like the most superior man in the
room. Right? All of these processes stem from
feeling inadequate, feeling like you're not good enough,
feeling like, the only way to live a
successful life is to get, you know, 1%
better every day. Right? All of these kind
(06:20):
of traumatic philosophies that we subscribe to when
we're young
lead us down all of these various paths.
Now one there's one other thing I want
to say for the guys who are hunting
for their problematic thought processes.
The other reason I don't like to call
it a sex or porn addiction is I
think when we zoom in too much on
the actual behavior, we ignore how else these
(06:40):
guys are engaging their process addiction.
Right? There the the truth is the sexual
behaviors oftentimes are like one or or two
percent
of their process addiction. If you look at
these men, a lot of the times they're
engaging in the exact same process addiction in
non sexual ways. Right? So if it's a
guy who's searching for validation,
superiority, compliments,
(07:01):
Right? This guy is going to be doing
this at work. Right? He's gonna be doing
through making money. Maybe he's gonna do through,
buying nice nice clothes, buying nice cars,
you know, landing big contracts, winning awards at
work. Right? So he's still engaging in his
process addiction.
He is not okay unless he is getting
better and better and getting validated for how
good he's getting. We can look at another
(07:22):
process on on the same way. If we're
gonna look at a guy who has,
liking liking to escape. Right? So somebody who's
using sex and pornography as a way to
cope with negative emotions to escape from life.
The truth is sex and pornography are only
gonna be again a small one, two, three,
four, five percent of their actual process addiction.
On the other hand, they're scrolling on social
(07:44):
media wasting time. They're playing, you know, maybe
games on their phone. They're looking at,
investment properties to buy, cars on auction. Right?
So it's, you know, we look at them
engaging in pornography as the escape. But if
you really look at the process addiction, there's
a ton of escapism practices that they're using
to get dopamine to vacate their life and
kind of tune out, check out. So my
(08:04):
point is, again, I think if we zoom
in way too much, these guys get sexually
sober. But again, if that's only two percent
of their process addiction, what about the rest
of it?
Right? And and are we really safe just
leaving it there? In my opinion, no. We're
not. Because if you leave all those other
problematic processes there, the unsafe the the the
constant thirst for compliments,
(08:25):
for,
for validation, for attention. Right? To get people
to look at you and say nice things
at you. Right? To if you're looking at
your avoiding,
life. Right? You're you're trying to numb out
and check out and escape life and not
feel your feelings. You know, if we just
focus on the sexual behaviors, we're leaving all
this other stuff on the table, which in
my opinion, just places you at high risk.
Right? That's the difference between sobriety and recovery.
(08:47):
Right? Sobriety is finding a way to not
do the sexual pieces, but recovery is how
do I not be an escapist
at all? Right? How do I live my
life and feel my emotions and express my
emotions? Right? Or how do I live my
life where I'm getting validation from me? Right?
I feel good enough. I'm validating myself rather
than constantly needing other people to validate me.
And I believe that's the issue with calling
(09:08):
this sex and porn addiction is we're kind
of completely missing the mark and we wonder
why these guys are relapsing. Well, because the
truth is the bulk of their addiction hasn't
changed at all. It's just the sexual pieces
that we've removed. So the second piece I
wanted to talk to is the, the the
importance of identifying your process addiction and being
able to explain it and articulate
it to your wife. And I think this
(09:29):
is absolutely critical for people who are trying
to heal their marriage. Because again, right, look
at look at how your wife feels. Right?
When you do this to your wife, she
feels it's totally justified. Right? She feels unwanted.
She feels discarded. She feels disrespected.
Right? She feels like you don't respect her,
that you don't respect women. Maybe she feels
like you never loved her. Right? How could
you do this to me if you actually
(09:49):
loved me? She might feel ugly. She might
feel bad in bed. She might feel like
you're bored with her. She might feel like
you, want someone younger, somebody more attractive, somebody
with different hair color. Right? These poor women,
here they are, you know, when this happens
to them. And it's right rightfully so that
they would draw all these conclusions. Right? Because
if your marriage was so awesome and your
sex life was so awesome, why would you
do this to her? And that's why you
(10:10):
need to be able to explain your process
addiction because if to her, it seems very
sexual and very personal.
Rightfully so. Right? But if you're able to
explain to her, hey. You know, as I
was doing some of the work with my
recovery work right? My my recovery groups, I've
been able to really uncover where this stems
from. Right? You know, I I don't feel
(10:30):
good enough on my own. I constantly need
validation.
I need other people to tell me how
accomplished I am. I need another people to
be impressed with me. Right? If I don't
have that, I don't feel okay. Right? And
so and the reason you need to articulate
that to her is she's gonna see it
in all areas of your life, not just
sexually. Right? She's gonna say, you know what?
(10:50):
I see you do that when we're at
work events and conferences and networking events. Right?
I see that when we are hosting parties
at the house. Right? You'd completely flip a
switch and turn into a total people pleaser.
Right?
And then same thing for, you know, if
we're gonna go back to kind of the
escapism. Right? You can say, hey, you know,
I I started to realize that, you know,
when I'm, you know, stressed, uncomfortable,
feel like I'm under a lot of pressure,
(11:13):
I I tend to not feel understood. I
feel isolated, and that's when I wanna just
kinda check out of my life. And then
again, you're rattling off all of the objectives.
Right? I'm I'm trying to distract myself. Right?
I don't want to I don't wanna think
about anything. I don't wanna talk about anything.
I don't wanna feel my feelings. I don't
wanna express my feelings. Right? And then you
can describe all the things you do. Hey.
I'll I'll read a book. I'll go golf.
(11:34):
I'll go you know, and you start explaining
to her all the things that you do
so that you don't have to deal with
the stress, the emotions, whatever it is. And
so, again, there's there's tons you know, I
primarily talked about, like, two avenues of process
addiction, but the truth is your process addiction
can be anything and everything. I mean, there
there there's such a wide variety of mental
(11:54):
processes that men have become addicted to. Some
of those,
result in sexual behaviors, some don't. Right? Some
will result in, substance addiction, some will result
in a gambling addiction, some will result in
an eating disorder. You know, we never know
where these faulty processes are gonna take us,
but some do result in some sexual acting
out. Right? And so if guys are really
(12:14):
gonna recover from this, to me, they need
to look at the entirety
of their process addiction. I really believe that.
I think if you don't turn over every
stone,
I think you're gonna be leaving things on
the table and I think, you know, you
are at a high risk of relapse. And
if we're talking about, you know, healing the
marriage and your wife, you know, a lot
of guys, you know, they're in recovery for
a year or two, three and they haven't
(12:36):
acted out. They have not relapsed. But their
wife still doesn't trust them. And these guys
are like, what the heck? What's going on?
Like, what more can I do? I'm going
to, you know, one to two twelve step
meetings every week. I've got a fair I've
got multiple therapists. Right? A couple's therapist. I
got my personal therapist.
Right? I'm going to one or two intensives
every year. Right? This is what I did.
I did everything and anything I could, and
(12:56):
it still wasn't good enough for my wife.
And that was when I discovered process addiction.
And the second I started really under you
know, uncovering what my brain is after
every single day, that was when my wife's
finally started to feel like I had a
grip on this thing.
Right? Because she wasn't wrong. In the beginning,
I wasn't recovered. I was just sober. Right?
I was avoiding the sexual pieces. But it
(13:18):
was when I really started digging in and
understanding, you know what? Most of this is
not sexual. Most of this is a process
addiction that presents in so many other ways,
not sexually. And that was what scared her.
Right? Her nervous system and and these ladies,
you you guys have probably seen it. These
ladies, their nervous system, they're not dumb. They
they they can pick up on this stuff.
And so while you might be sexually sober,
(13:39):
they might not feel like you're recovered. And
oftentimes,
they're probably right. So rather than defending yourself,
you know, really ask, have I discovered my
process addiction? Do I know all of the
faulty brain processes? Have I discovered all of
them? And do I know the psychologically proven
treatments that are gonna be able to get
these faulty processes out of my life? And
most importantly,
(13:59):
are you doing the things that are actually
gonna remove them? Are you really truly doing
the work? And if you can say yes
to all those things, okay. But the truth
is if you can say yes to everything
that I just said, your wife probably isn't
doubting your recovery. She probably thinks you're in
great recovery. So again, for all you guys,
if you've gotten the question from your wife,
hey, are you even in good recovery? I
still don't feel safe with you. Before you
(14:20):
go defending yourself, stop and think for a
second. Is there some truth to what she's
saying? Have I truly eliminated all these faulty
thought processes from my life?
Thanks for listening to this episode. If you
are a high achiever of the sex addiction
and you're looking for a recovery group full
of like minded men, visit successfuladdict.com.
We provide men with a recovery mastermind group
(14:41):
using four day retreats,
weekly group calls, and daily accountability check ins.
If you wanna achieve long term sobriety and
save your marriage, go to our website and
fill out our application. If you enjoyed this
episode, please pass it along to a friend
in recovery who would benefit from listening. It
is my mission to get this information out
to as many high achievers as possible, and
I can't do it without your help.
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