#66: Is it Sex Addiction? With Eric FitzMedrud

Love Is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect

Do you suspect that you or someone you care about has a sex addiction? Sex addiction is a topic that is being discussed more often nowadays, but misunderstandings are common. Listen to this episode to learn more.

My guest today, Eric FitzMedrud, is a licensed psychologist who specializes in relationships and sexual issues. His specialty is helping men improve their sex lives by learning to regulate their emotions, removing sexual entitlement, and honing their sexual consent and negotiation skills. FitzMedrud is a member of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. He has been published in an academic book an academic journal and has spoken at multiple conferences. He has also trained therapists and taught many graduate courses in psychology. FitzMedrud has a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. He is polyamorous and bisexual, and lives with his wife of twenty-three years and his life partner of six years in San Francisco’s East Bay area, California.

Learn more about Eric:

Website: https://www.drericfitz.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/drericfitz/

Book: A Better Man: A Guide to Consent, Stronger Relationships, and Hotter Sex

Learn more about Karin:

Website: https:www.drcalde.com

IG (relationships): https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/

IG (psilocybin facilitation): https://www.instagram.com/wildwoodfacilitation/following/

TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.

Episode:

Karin: Hello, everybody. Today we're going to be talking about sex addiction. And this is a topic that other people have come to me wanting to talk about and I have turned them away. And that is because it is not without controversy, and we're going to get into why that is today. But it's really important to me that I bring you good information and not information that might be harmful. And I certainly want to bring you the best information, the most accurate information that I can. So I am really happy to have found my guest today. His name is Eric Fitz Medrud and he is a therapist specializing in relationship and sexual issues, and he's based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he is also a speaker. He is a member of the American association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and therapists. He's been published in academic books and journals, and he also has a book called the Better Man, a guide to consent, stronger relationships, and hotter sex. And he was just really nice to talk with as well. And I really think he knows his stuff. So there's just one thing that I want to leave you with before we start, and that is we didn't talk too much about a term called out of control sexual behavior, and that is an alternative term to sex addiction. And I'm just going to give you quick definition here that I found online. It's from Douglas Braun Harvey, who I believe is kind of the pioneer in calling it this and describing it. He says it is a sexual health problem in which an individual's consensual sexual urges, thoughts, and behaviors feel out of control. And he saw it as a sexual problem, not a sexual disorder or illness. But again, we're going to get into that in this episode. I hope that you get something out of it, and I hope that you will leave me a review that really helps my podcast get out to more people. So I would super, super appreciate it. Anyway, thanks for being here. And here we go. Welcome, Eric.

[03:09] Eric: Thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here.

[03:12] Karin: Tell us where you are in the world.

[03:15] Eric: I am in San Francisco's East Bay Area, right next to the East Bay hills, which are still green.

[03:25] Karin: That's a familiar neck of the woods for me. I spent, really, the first half of my life generally in that area. But how long have you been there?

[03:37] Eric: I've been living in the Bay Area since 2002, and I was drawn here for grad school.

[03:46] Karin: And then you just never left?

[03:47] Eric: I never left. I had children. And like a lot of people, my nomadic days came to a sudden and screeching halt.

[03:56] Karin: Right. That happens with kids.

[03:58] Eric: It does.

[03:59] Karin: Oftentimes. Not all the time, but often. So tell us what you do for work.

[04:04] Eric: So I'm a psychotherapist in private practice, I work with individuals and couples, primarily heterosexual and homosexual couples, a few lesbian couples here and there, and some work with non binary trans individuals. And I primarily focus on sex and relationship issues.

[04:23] Karin: And what drew you to doing that kind of work?

[04:26] Eric: Having some of my own challenges in sex and relationship issues. So, you know, I grew up a Catholic. I experienced a lot of sexual shame as a young man. I also had the experience of a lot of relationship turmoil. And my parents, neither of them, they broke up very early in my life, and then they both had a lot of transitory relationships. And I was really clear that I wanted to do something different with my life. And getting into and staying in a relationship was the easier part for me. But figuring out how to navigate my own sexual desire, how to navigate monogamy for the many years that I tried to do that 18 of our years of marriage I was trying to do, that was very difficult for me. And so as I entered grad school around psychology, I started taking, you know, every course that I could here and there about sexuality to try to learn more about what was going on inside of me, what was going on inside of a lot of the men that I knew in my life. And that eventually created a specialty for me that showed up in my practice and continued to fertilize my own personal development around sexuality and relationships.

[05:55] Karin: And I just want to call out, because you said that you struggled with monogamy for many years, and so you then decided to try something else. Isn't that right?

[06:06] Eric: I did. I mean, when I say I struggled with monogamy for many years, I don't mean that I was having chronic, constant affairs, but I did have. I did have two affairs very close back to back in the 2002, 2003 time, shortly after I got into grad school, I then really went into a concerted effort to try to maintain my monogamy. I'm generally a very ethical person. Ethics are important to me. Honesty is very important to me, and I'm a very terrible liar. So I don't do affairs skillfully, which, all in all, it was a pretty good weakness to have. And it was several years later that I found myself in my third affair. And most of that time, it's not like I was thinking of myself as having difficulty in the monogamy. But in retrospect, I didn't realize what I wasn't integrating into myself and into my relationship. And so, yeah, after that third affair, I talked with my wife. We considered a lot of different options. I suggested a couple of different things at that point. I said, perhaps what we should do is leave the Bay Area, respecialize in my practice out of sexuality and into something else, and try to maintain the monogamy in a different way outside of community that included non monogamous people, and outside of service in my practice that serve non monogamous people. And bless her in her low levels of jealousy, ease in repair, and just being a graceful and kind human being, she said, but you're polyamorous, so we should probably try that. It took a lot of preparation and work up to it, but after about a year and a half in that conversation, we tried polyamory, and we haven't gone back since then. So it's been about eight and a half, almost nine years since we began that process.

[08:10] Karin: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I think, if we can, because I don't think that that is such an uncommon experience, and yet there is so much shame and so much judgment around doing it a different way. And so, you know, normalizing it, talking about it, I think, can be really powerful for people. So I appreciate that.

[08:37] Eric: That's part of what I decided I had to do if I was going to be speaking on a public stage about these materials. It's one thing to be a therapist, not disclosing your personal challenges. That's kind of what we do all the time. But to speak on a public stage, I think, required a different kind of integrity. I had to be speaking about my own difficulties. And I want to be clear, not advocating non monogamy for other people, that was my path to integrity. What I'm advocating for is that people, and a lot of my work is specifically with men, that men take that path of moving towards integrity, whatever that looks like for each of them individually.

[09:21] Karin: Yeah, yeah. And what we're going to be talking about is not unrelated today, and that is about sex addiction. And we came upon this. We originally were going to talk about something slightly different, but then we started talking about sex addiction, and I thought, oh, no, this is really. This is it. What I think would be good to talk about today, because I hear a lot of people talk about sex addiction, and I learned a lot of what I know from a pretty well known psychotherapist and expert in sexuality, and that is doctor Marty Klein. And he's got some very strong opinions about that. And what I learned from him is that it's not sex addiction, it's not sex addiction, and don't treat it as such, or you're going to do harm. And so, and, you know, I listened to him talk about what it really is about, and I think he really has some good things to say about that. But I think it really scared me off of really even talking about it at all because I don't have an in depth knowledge or understanding of it. And so it was really great to hear your take on it and talk to an expert in this area. So I'm really curious what your take is on it.

[10:49] Eric: Yeah. When we're talking about addiction in relation to substances, what we're talking about is a neurobiological result of the substance being the body that causes dependence and tolerance. When a person is substance dependent, when they are addicted in the professional sense, they require continuing to maintain their exposure to the substance, and they experience tolerance. That is, they require more of the substance in order to create the same neurobiological high. And there are a lot of complications taking that framework and applying it over to sex and sexual behavior, among other things. There's some research by Nicole Prowse and others that questions whether neurobiological dependence and tolerance is valid at all for when it comes to sexual behaviors. And the notion of tolerance is also problematic in the sense that while many people do experience something that they equate to tolerance, where, oh, I was looking at porn, and the same porn that I was looking at stopped being interesting to me, so I started looking at other porn. It's very difficult to tease that apart from you were interested in other things and you began exploring a new area of your potential erotic landscape. So I agree with Marty Klein in a lot of senses that sex addiction is a bit of a misnomer. I really like talking about sexual behaviors more like we talk about compulsive food behaviors, because we need to cultivate a right relationship with food. We can't be abstinent from food, like an addiction model would present. And similarly, we are sexual beings. And as sexual beings, we can't eliminate our sexuality. We can't eliminate from ourselves what turns us on. There is no known way of eliminating a portion of your erotic map. We can't change people's sexual orientation. We can't change an aspect of their erotic landscape. In Doug Braun Harvey's term, we don't do erotoectomies. We can't cut out something that causes someone to feel erotic pleasure. And so the notion of addictions, a lot of the twelve step principles around that, for example, as well as abstinence guided treatment, engaging with a client in a way or with a person in a way that says, here are your problematic behaviors. Now, these are the things that you need to not do. You need to not think about them. You need to not be turned on by them. And that ends up creating a situation where a core part of the person's being is getting cut off by the treatment. None of that is to say that it's not causing damage in the person's life or relationship, that it doesn't feel out of control, that there may not be an escalating process. But concretely, in the DSM, the manual for Clinicians to diagnose in the United States, there is not a sex addiction diagnosis. There is not a sexual compulsivity diagnosis in the ICD ten, the International Guide to Diagnostic Frameworks, or the ICD eleven. I think we're on now. There is now a sexual compulsivity, a compulsive sexual behavior diagnosis. But the bar for that diagnosis is far above what the vast majority of clinicians encounter when somebody presents with the client saying, I think I am a sex addict. Specifically, it requires that the person is neglecting core responsibilities of daily living, that they're not eating, sleeping, maintaining employment, housing, and things like that. While there are people who engage in compulsive sexual behavior that way, we recognize that as being more similar to obsessive compulsive diagnoses than we do to a sexual issue or a sexual problem, or the kinds of things that we see most often, most of the time. For example, in my practice, when people show up and they say, I would like to see you for sex addiction, what they're talking about is sexual behavior they engaged in in secret, that their partner recently discovered, and that they're seeking treatment because they want to maintain their relationship. And addiction doesn't seem like the best framework to address those kinds of behaviors and problems.

[15:53] Karin: And why are people drawn to calling it that?

[15:58] Eric: It's a known way of labeling problematic behavior in our culture. Right. We have twelve steps of have seeped entirely into the culture. And it's a wonderful framework. It's very supportive. People in my family have benefited from twelve steps. I'm not anti twelve step at all, and I'm not anti addiction treatment. And I don't think it's the most skillful and appropriate way of addressing sexual issues. So there's a significant gap between people who are researching these issues and people who are on the front lines of trying to address those problems in the culture. And we have this gap. And I think a lot of us professionals are getting onto the idea of like, hey, the term sex addiction is here, and it's probably going to stay. And how we talk about that needs to shift. And we're hoping for the opportunity to shift the cultural understanding of the ways that problematic sexual behavior is different than other kinds of addictive behaviors. Especially when we compare it to substance use.

[17:07] Karin: And it seems like it's an issue not just because it doesn't accurately describe what's going on, but because the treatment approach that people then use ends up being not so effective. Right?

[17:21] Eric: That's right. Because let's take, for example, a person who has kink behaviors. They like looking at bondage videos. They want to engage in bondage practices with a partner or to be bound. And that is a core element for them of engaging sexually. If we were to label that behavior sex addiction because it took place in a hidden way, because a person experiences some shame about it, and because those two things can often create an out of control feeling for the individual, then the addiction model would immediately recommend a treatment of abstinence, or at least harm reduction. In the more enlightened addiction treatment centers around that behavior. Harm reduction is the idea of, okay, well, do it some, but do it as little as possible in order to cause as little damage. And what this does is that it continues to fuel a shame cycle. It tells the person that this interest is something that is not okay. We know that when we apply that kind of framework, for example, to treating gay men for being gay, that we end up causing harm. We increase the rates of suicide, we increase the rates of other mental health issues. Elements of a core erotic nature need to be accepted and integrated, or we are dividing the person. We are taking our external moral principles and we are imposing them externally on our clients. And we're causing harm. When a person can integrate elements of their sexual identity in their erotic math, then they get the opportunity to begin figuring out, okay, well, this interest isn't the problem. There are people who are gay, who have full, vibrant relationships, who have communities, who are vibrant contributors to their lives. That is also true of people with kink behaviors. This is also true with people who are non monogamous. This is also true of people with high drive, high desire, high frequency sexual behaviors. And so it becomes very problematic if we just use this person presented for treatment for a behavior that they don't like or that the people in their lives don't like. We need a framework for treating this that doesn't make us the moral arbiter of other people's sexual behaviors, or we will repeat the harms of our profession from prior generations on judging and pathologizing members of sexual orientation, sexual and gender identity difference, and sexual or neurotic difference.

[20:14] Karin: And I love that you mentioned people who have a high sex drive, wanna have sex a lot. I think that that often gets pathologized. And so could you talk a little bit about that?

[20:29] Eric: Yeah, I mean, there's some research that I really love about this that shows that at the high levels of pornography viewing, there are two different categories of people. One category of people does not have a problem with their high pornography viewing practice. It's not a problem for them. They aren't anxious about it. It's not causing any problems in their lives. And then there's another group of high pornography viewers who have anxiety or shame about their pornography use. These are people who view themselves as porn addicted and who may seek treatment for that. The problem isn't literally and kind of objectively the amount of pornography that the person is using. The thing, the factor that seems to make the difference is whether the person has shame and or anxiety about it. This is especially common, for example, among people with conservative sexual religious backgrounds, conservative sexual cultural backgrounds, and or people with a high level of internalized self shaming behaviors. For example, this comes up with OCD. In a practice that we talk about as scrupulosity. A person wants to do the right thing, and then they get certain frameworks in their mind of what the right thing is, and then they stay oriented. That, and they loop on it obsessively, and it creates a lot of anxiety.

[22:01] Karin: And what role might hormones play in all of this? You hear a lot of people thinking, oh, it must be high testosterone that's fueling this desire to have sex so often.

[22:16] Eric: Yeah. So a lot of blame and identification for male sexuality gets laid at the feet of testosterone in an extremely over simplistic way. Testosterone is not the sex desire hormone that it's played out to be. When testosterone is low, many men still experience sexual desire. When testosterone is high, men may not experience sexual desire. And there are pop up clinics all over the country right now advocating for testosterone supplementation. And when you read the endocrinology literature about it, it's highly problematic because what happens with testosterone supplementation? A couple of things. One, yes, you experience a short term increase in desire, possibly some increase in irritability. Just like if a person is taking steroids and over time the body acclimates to that new level of testosterone that's in the system and resensitizes. All of those gains get lost, and then the person thinks, well, either I need to increase my testosterone again, or they just give up. When you begin testosterone supplementation, your natural testosterone production decreases and your testicles actually start to atrophy. And so you create this dependence on the supplementation in order to just maintain levels where you thought you could use testosterone to create desire. Eventually that desensitization takes place and it goes away. Now, all of that is just background to say testosterone is not the problem. If people are experiencing high desire, it may be more due to their experience of and interest in and pleasure from sexual behavior. One of the greatest predictors of desire is pleasure. So if a man is viewing pornography, finds that pleasurable, masturbates orgasms or not, and finds that pleasurable, probably that is going to continue to increase his desire. If he's not experiencing pleasure in his romantic or sexual relationships, that may decrease his desire in those contexts. Pleasure leading to desire is the primary thing that we need to focus on, not testosterone. We also need to be aware that many women also have high desire. I've worked with lesbian couples where there's a high desire partner and a low desire partner, because remember, it's always just relatively, you might have been the high desire partner in all of your prior relationships, and then you get into a relationship with an even higher desire partner, and now all of a sudden you're the low desire. So high desire, low desire is always just relative to your partner, relative to somebody else's perception of where your desire should be. And you know, women do have a certain amount of endogenous testosterone and sensitivity. But again, that's not the primary determiner of women's desire either. Pleasure is right.

[25:23] Karin: When we hear about sex addiction, we usually hear about men being addicted to sex. But can women also have a sex addiction?

[25:34] Eric: So the exact same experiences of hidden behaviors, problematic sexual behavior, feeling out of control, can take place for people of any gender. And I think because of a number of cultural biases, I think that women are much more likely to self label as love addiction than sex addiction.

[25:54] Karin: Oh, that's interesting. Just a little bit of a twist. So what is underlying the behavior?

[26:05] Eric: So there are five common diagnoses underneath presentation for sex. Problematic sexual behavior treatment.

[26:15] Karin: And of course, I want to just interject real quick, we're talking about when it does start to become common issue.

[26:20] Eric: Absolutely. And it certainly can be. Yeah. So. And the biggest thing that I see in my practice is violated relationship agreements and where the person is doing something in a hidden way that their partner doesn't know about, when they had desires that they were living out online that their partner doesn't know about, when they're doing that with other people that the partner doesn't know about. And that can certainly be damaging and problematic. There certainly are also people who are looking at pornography on their work computers, damaging their career behaviors, having difficulty separating out, viewing pornography or erotic material while they're on video calls at work. These are problematic behaviors that damage people's lives and hurt loved ones. I am not ever trying to undermine that. So what's often going on underneath it? Depression, anxiety or shame. ADHD, OCD, and other substance abuse behaviors. Those five things are some of the most common underlying diagnostic frameworks for the person with depression. They're often trying to self soothe their depression and experience some change in that depressive mood by creating a pleasurable experience with shame, the very withdrawal and swearing off. And self repression cycles create the intensified pleasure that is pursued when the person reengages with behavior later, which creates a cycle of self repression and expression. With ADHD, it's often about novelty and interest and excitement and something new, something pleasurable. With OCD, it's the compulsive obsession and compulsive cycle, including pursuit of purity or the perfect just right video that I'm trying to see. And with substance use as a co occurring diagnosis, it's often that the person has gotten very far out of control of the substance abuse behavior. And they're either connecting that with sexuality, because now I can blame the substance for my sexual behavior, or they're just engaging in the problematic sexual behavior in order to continue getting access to the substance.

[28:35] Karin: And you've mentioned shame a few times, so maybe you could talk about some of the things that you see when really, that's the underlying problem?

[28:47] Eric: Yeah. When shame is the underlying problem, we often need to engage. And this is why I love the out of control sexual behavior treatment model as opposed to a sex addiction treatment model. This treatment model allows us to not be the arbiter of the other person's health, sexual health or the morality of their behavior. We begin by identifying the six sexual health principles, which are consent, non exploitation, protection from HIV, STI's and unwanted pregnancy, honesty, shared values and pleasure. And we begin helping the client identify that there are some people who do this behavior who are able to do that and maintain the sexual health principles for them. And then we ask the client, what would this look like for you? What would your manifestation of the six sexual health principles be? And in doing that, we begin unraveling the shame. We normalize the variety of sexual interest sexual behavior with the shared values principle. We identify that a part of the problem is not necessarily that you are engaging in this behavior, but that your partner didn't know about it. And that's why this behavior came up as a violation and created disruption in your relationship, as well as elements of the exploitation with hidden behavior. You're using the power of your knowledge to continue exploiting your partner's lack of knowledge in order to get consent for them, for their ongoing consent for the relationship and sexual behavior. And so there are all of these different frameworks that we can, that the client can use to understand why their prior sexual behavior has caused a problem and what the different pathways might be for them to maintain those sexual health principles.

[30:46] Karin: Yeah. And like you said, you know, if someone has that, that shame under underlying that, their, their behavior, if they go for, if they use that addiction model for treatment, then that just exacerbates the pain and that is, and the shame. And that can lead to it actually becoming worse rather than actually getting better.

[31:11] Eric: Absolutely. And certainly I have worked with clients where they identified the behavior through the process of the out of control sexual behavior treatment model. They decided that they didn't want to engage in that behavior before they understood that behavior itself may not be a problem, that that's a problem behavior for everyone. The client understands, but it is a problem for me because I have a hard time engaging in this behavior in ways that uphold the sexual health principles. The client decides that. And because the sexual health principles continue to include pleasure, that's allowed. My question for them is, how will you continue to experience pleasure given that plan for what you aren't going to do? I invite the client to come back to the question of what are you going to do? And where will you find adequate pleasure to express your sexual nature? To express your erotic nature, so that you stay whole and so that you're not trying to cut off from yourself parts of yourself. And that allows us, over time, to just eliminate the shame out of the process and to focus on the balance perspective of moving towards health. I love it.

[32:34] Karin: I'm sorry, go ahead.

[32:35] Eric: I was just going to say. And the client defines what that is for themselves instead of me bringing in a moral framework for that.

[32:42] Karin: Yeah, I love what you said about pleasure being so important. And I think that a lot of times in our society, we forget that piece. And it's also, I think the reason why so many couples struggle is because one person isn't experiencing pleasure with the kind of sex that they're having. And so having those conversations is so important.

[33:09] Eric: It is. And that conversation about what our different erotic maps look like, where they are bridged together and where they aren't is extremely important. We can often get into this idea that my partner's sexuality ought to look like mine. But human sexuality is such a vast, diverse and varied landscape that no two partners have an exactly overlapping erotic map. And especially in the long term relationship, it often becomes important for us to find new avenues. And the high desire partner brings a certain gift to the relationship. The pursuit of novelty, of spicing things up, of, hey, we seem to keep doing the same things all the time. Is there another path here? And if those gifts get shut down, shamed or cut off from the relationship, that higher desire partner doesn't have an opportunity to talk about it, doesn't have a way to incorporate into the relationship the full and vibrant nature of their desire. And so shame creates the capacity for the hidden nature and the process of that cycle of problematic sexual behavior.

[34:33] Karin: And I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about how shame can really stem from a certain kind of religious upbringing and how that can have a big impact on a person's experience of their sexuality and sex.

[34:50] Eric: Yeah, this is one of the things that I love working with, because virtually every time, when it comes from religion and an adult client is still struggling with shame from a sexually conservative religious background, it's because this is a person who, in the depth of their heart, wants to be a good person, and they want it so much that they are continuing to bump into the challenge. The problem is that a lot of conservative sexual religious perspectives don't have an accurate map of the reality of human sexual diversity. They don't understand the nature of high desire, low desire sexual relationships between two married couples. And so they'll do things like tell the low desire partner, well, you just have to have sex with your high desire partner, because that's just the right thing to do. That's just how you keep your relationship strong. That kills pleasure instantly. It's also possible, whether there are kinks or variety, or whether the person has a sexual orientation or landscape that doesn't fit into the moral framework, that the person is left with some part of their sexuality where the content of it, the thing that interests me is specifically a thing that's considered bad, sinful, dirty, inappropriate, not allowed. And the consent based frameworks, for example, of kink communities are not incorporated into that perspective. To understand that you can be a good, loving, kind, compassionate human being who cares about the other person and still maybe want to engage in a kink behavior that the conservative religious background has labeled deviant in some way. And kink behaviors existed throughout time, throughout history. It looks a little different based on the culture, and it even seems that exactly the things that are repressed cause certain types of kinks to exist in a culture. The kinks are our pathways over what has been shame, our pathways to pleasure that our minds come up with because we weren't allowed to access pleasure through another means. And so there's this paradox experience where the religious background actually ends up creating the pathways to desire by almost like a photographic negative. So a lot of what I end up doing is just talking about the realities of human diverse sexuality. And it's fine for you to the client to want to continue upholding the principles of your religion, but how will you also accept the variety of human sexual diversity that's out there and also the specific human sexual diversity that exists in you?

[38:02] Karin: Can you talk just a little bit about some of the messages that people hold onto from their religious backgrounds?

[38:11] Eric: It's you shouldn't look at porn, you shouldn't masturbate, you shouldn't have any objectification of a partner. All sexual behavior should be open to or possibly causing conception. You shouldn't be attracted to behaviors that deviate from your gender norms as assigned by the religious background. So, for example, if you're a fembody person, you shouldn't be interested in any experience of dominance, or you shouldn't have high desire. If you're a mask bodied person, you shouldn't be interested in submission feminist feminism behaviors, you shouldn't be interested in dressing up in women's clothes, you shouldn't be interested in being dominated, you shouldn't be passive, you should be on top, you shouldn't be on the bottom. You shouldn't orgasm outside of your partner, only orgasm inside of your partner. And penetrative sex after a certain designated amount of time. And that should feel satisfying for you.

[39:21] Karin: And of course, what comes through is all those shoulds and shouldn'ts.

[39:27] Eric: That's right.

[39:27] Karin: And when people can let go of those and write their own rulebooks, that's where the magic happens, right?

[39:35] Eric: That's right. I mean, these are our pathways to pleasure, the scripts that allow us, you know, you get a person who has gotten messages his whole life, that he should be kind and protecting and not lustful. And his erotic map happens to conform with all of those principles. But it means that he cant find pleasure himself unless his partner desires him so much that his partner is in control of the process. And now that puts him into a role of being passive or submissive, or receiving pleasure. And that doesnt map onto what his culture or his religion told him he should be as a man. All because his heart is kind and loving and compassionate. And his eroticism blended right directly with the pathways to pleasure that we have make sense with who we are at a certain level.

[40:35] Karin: Great. So what can people do when they find themselves in this situation? Either they have a partner who is engaging in these out of control sexual behaviors, and it's impacting their, maybe their job or their relationships. And then if you find you are the person that feels really like this is out of control and it's impacting your life, what can those two different people.

[41:01] Eric: Yeah, let me start with the partner. If you're the partner and you're experiencing that, it's very normal to experience shock, feelings of betrayal, withdrawal, reactive anger at your partner. All of that makes so, so very much sense. And I want to. I never want, as I'm trying to be compassionate to the person with the out of control sexual behavior, I never want to pathologize the person who felt betrayed. Of course you felt betrayed. You were given a story that doesn't conform with the behavior that you've just discovered in your partner. And if you want to recover from that experience, you need to start with, how are you going to protect yourself here? How are you going to create a sense of safety? Does that mean not having sex with your partner for the time being? Does that mean only having barrier protected sex with a condom, for example, with your partner? Does that mean getting into couples therapy to try to heal the wounds of betrayal that are very normal for you to be experiencing all of that is great and beautiful. And over time, you may be interested in now, how do we move forward? One of the most important things that I would encourage you to do, if you were the partner who was betrayed, is to just try to learn what's true. Why did this happen? What does your partner actually desire? What don't they desire? And it's not your fault that they broke your relationship agreements, but you may have the capacity, you may be empowered to change elements of the relationship to prevent this from happening again in the future, to create a relationship that is more sustainable going forward than you created before. And if you can find a way to do that that addresses the reality of erotic life in your partner, you may also find a renaissance of sexual connection with them that you never knew possible. And that is one of the most beautiful transitions people can make if their partner is honest going forward, if they are open to it, and if they have the capacity to forgive, and then if you're the person with the out of control behavior. You know, I have a principle here that I call be a better asshole. And what I'm saying there is, hey, if you have some out of control sexual behavior, you're already maybe all out of integrity in some of your relationships. How can you come into more integrity than you already are in? So if you were engaging in cheating behavior, can you admit that and stop the beh, the cheating behavior? If you can't, can you at least use barrier and protection and get tested and get your affair partner tested to make sure you're not transmitting to your other partner? If you're out of integrity, what's the most that you can do to move towards integrity from here? And that is my principle of not advocating for people ever to do something out of integrity. But the moving towards more integrity is always a good thing. Start.

[44:19] Karin: Yeah, great. And that was perfect because I think that my next episode is actually going to be about forgiveness. So thank you for that segue. But at this point, what's one thing you'd really like people to walk away with? After listening to this episode?

[44:37] Eric: One of the major sources of out of control sexual behavior comes from believing that human sexuality will fit inside of the boxes we think it should, and in particular, that our human sexuality will fit into the boxes that we want it to. It's very important that we take a look at the nature of our erotic map and just acknowledge that we are turned on by the things that we are turned on by then. From there, we can take a look at what are our relationship agreements? What are our community principles. What are the legalities of our community so that we can operate inside of that to the best of our ability to maintain sustainable health for ourselves. It's that dual element of accepting the truth instead of trying to fit reality into a smaller box. That is one of the first and most important things that we can do to begin healing some of the divides and the sources of shame that we experience.

[45:44] Karin: Great. And what role does love play in the work that you do?

[45:51] Eric: I find that loving my clients is and always has been the principle of my work, to witness the pain caused by the behavior, and also to love my clients as wounded and vulnerable human beings, always from inside of a professional and appropriate framework. But ultimately, it's still love of them that helps them learn how to love themselves, that helps them become more skillful in their love and delivering that love and desire to their partners.

[46:31] Karin: And I also love that as a therapist, you talk about that because a lot of therapists are told that you shouldn't, right? You're not supposed to love your clients. Yeah, it's wonderful. So how can people learn more about you?

[46:48] Eric: My website is erickfitz.com You can also find Eric Fitz on most social media and you can find my book, the better a guide to stronger relationships and hotter sex on most online booksellers.

[47:09] Karin: Wonderful. And I'll put that in the show notes as well.

[47:12] Eric: Thank you very much.

[47:14] Karin: Thank you for joining me today, Eric. This has been really enlightening and I think a lot of people will learn something really important from it. So thank you.

[47:23] Eric: I hope so. It's been a rich conversation. Thank you.

Outro

[47:27] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on love is us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today, because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.