13 Low self esteem makes you vulnerable to sex addiction!

For some strange reason I’m not really feeling up to dispensing words of wisdom this week! Feeling a bit emotionally fragile and I keep wondering about the element in my readership who will, as I was when a younger man, be mistrustful of those older and purportedly wiser. I’m starting to convince myself that no one actually listens to the twittering of granddad, least of all granddad’s son and grandson.

Yet here I am issuing forth with advice and hoping that someone will find it helpful or interesting. Hmm! Well here goes anyhoo!

The two themes this week are narcissistic defence and religious rejection. I’ve mentioned my friend Peter in the past few weeks. Been through a low patch after breaking up with a lover and moved from Brighton to London to get it out of his system. He’s now a lot happier and in the zone. Changed jobs and making lots of new friends. Having lots of superficial sex. I’ve been happy for him at one level but I’m also recognising a trait in him that was a major feature in myself when I was his age. It is the tendency to escape difficult emotions through the consecutive ego massages provided by serial sexual encounters. Finding people to be sexually drawn towards me and taking their words of appreciation about my body and looks as balm to the wounds of my low self esteem. And it’s all very addictive because it’s reinforced by the pleasure of orgasmic release at the end of the night. However as you approach the end of your sexual career you are still left with how you feel towards your inner self- the person who only you know you are- not who you’d like to be, or think you can become, or what people want you to become, or fantasize that you might be.

That’s when your sexual allure has faded and instead of seeing a red hot guy, people see a grey old man. And instead of feeling hot and horny you’re feeling cold and arthritic. It’s only then that you see how the temporary fix of lifting your spirits with sexual admiration melts into nothing. Like a mirage. Leaving nothing but memories, which may as well have been dreams.

I can’t berate Peter for what he’s doing. I did the same myself. But I hope he can find some way to stop himself before his sexual prowess and attractiveness diminish. I was lucky enough to meet my partner and found ways of tackling my sex addiction so that it didn’t destroy our relationship. Maybe Peter will find someone to love enough that he won’t need to keep jerking himself off- narcissistically speaking.

The other profound thought I was grappling with this week was to do with religious rejection and the damaging effect it has on the developing personality. I suppose the spiritual environment provided for a child by its parents is an important foundation for security and provides a starting point for understanding the mysteries of the universe and one’s place in it. I was in the unfortunate position of being brought up in a Roman Catholic family where sexual activity was closely identified with sin guilt and damnation. My straight classmates at school were all redeemable because they could simply go to confession; disclose their sexual exploits and all would be forgiven. As a homosexual, I was labelled, as ‘intrinsically disordered’ and my only hope would be to abstain and lead a life of celibacy. Fat chance of that! So I chose a route, which would mean I would be in a spiritual wilderness for years.

On that happy note I’ll leave you. More of this next week!

12 Find yourself and become who you are!

Peter came down to stay for a few nights this weekend. I mentioned him last week-the friend who has just made a break from Brighton to make his way in London so as to get some space between himself and a difficult relationship but also as a way of demonstrating to himself that he can be an independent adult and stand on his own two feet. When he moved away I sent him a copy of 'The Alchemist' by Paul Coelo. It had been recommended to me by a friend and I'd just finished reading it. It's one of those books that 'changes peoples' lives'. An allegorical tale of a Spanish shepherd who dreams of finding treasure by the Egyptian Pyramids. He gives up everything in search of his dream and the story follows him in his adventures and shows how, through his meetings with an Alchemist, he learns the secret of true happiness. Peter had just finished reading the book and had been energized by it. For a long time after his break-up he had lost interest in the idea of relationships. Or rather, I think, he had lost his hope in the potential of relationships. I think he had made the fundamental mistake that most of us make when we first fall in love- believing that if we love someone unconditionally enough then all will be well and we will be loved in a way which is reciprocal and which dovetails perfectly with our own emotional needs. In the storybook this happens and everyone lives happily ever after. When real life kicks in, and love isn't returned, it's a devastating blow because you have given your heart away but it comes back to you-'return to sender', battered, bruised and neglected. That's where Peter was when he went to London- or rather round about 12 months into healing those wounds. But something happened this week. Maybe it was the combination of making a success of his move to London and just enjoying the freedom of having lots of sex with lots of guys and also reading this book which suddenly enabled him to feel a passion towards another guy. A passion he thought  he had lost forever. He told me that there was something in the book that had given him permission to open up and be himself that previously, would have made him feel vulnerable but now he felt he had a greater internal strength because of his newfound confidence. He said that he felt the key to all this was getting an understanding of himself and that this had only come about after a long hard struggle facing up to who he was and getting to see the links between the upsets in his past and the walls he had built around himself, closing him off from a meaningful emotional life. He felt that all his life he had been aiming at becoming an emotionally and financially independent young man. And now , for the first time in his life he was feeling that he had arrived, "It seems as though the way to happiness is finding yourself and becoming who you are" he said.

I couldn't agree more!

11 Accept it. Change it. Move away from it!

Met up yesterday with a young friend of mine who moved up to London a few months ago. I was in London for a conference and we met up for a coffee at Victoria as I was on my way back to Brighton. Peter is getting over a difficult relationship break-up with the first guy he's ever fallen in love with. He had had a lot of issues about his self esteem from the past and ongoing difficulties in his relationship with his father meaning that generally he finds it difficult to feel safe with and trust others. Consequently these issues were played out in his relationship with Marco. He found himself behaving in the way his dad behaves towards him in his own dealings with Marco. Consequently he became controlling and manipulative in his attempts to extract the emotional contact he so desired. Marco, having his own baggage from the past , was disinclined to get into emotional displays and would get frustrated at Peter's emotional demands on him. Peter would blame Marco for for being just like his father, lacking emotional warmth and invalidating him whenever he tried to articulate his feelings. The relationship officially ended a few months after it began but continued subliminally for what seemed like years afterward because they rented a house together.

Peter would say that he loved Marco 'like a brother' but continued making the same emotional demands on him. Marco valued some aspects of his relationship with Peter but continued to be frustrated and angered by his emotional demands and jealousies. They seemed to continually make each other unhappy but finally, after a few months of therapy Peter summoned up the courage to crystalise a plan to make things better. He had to get out of Brighton and start afresh in London. His initial plan was to take his business up with him, which worked for a while, but he's finally settled for taxi driving which gives him a nice steady income and helps him pay off some of his debts.

It was lovely seeing him for the first time since he's moved. His skin was radiant and his eyes were full of life. He was energetic and felt empowered by having made a success of his brave decision to to move. He must have feared at times that he was jumping out of the frying pan into a fire.

Generally we're discouraged from making big changes in our lives. The idea is that if you've run into problems, it's better to work on them where you are rather than keep running away because you'll always find that your baggage follows you around like a bad smell!

But there are times when, for whatever reason, you're continually locking horns with someone and can't seem to shake them off. Something complementary in your psychopathologies makes things worse or at least as bad as ever they were as time goes by. If that happens for you then do what Peter did-get some independent advice. Get a handle on whether it's to do with you or the situation. And if it's the situation then make your mind up. Can you continue to accept being crippled by it? Is there something you can change about yourself to move it on? Or, if not, then move away either emotionally or, if you have to, geographically!

Until yesterday I had felt sad that Peter had moved away because I missed him. Having seen how happy he is, I'm now really happy for him.

Peter's story illustrates well that great advice for if you're ever in a pickle. Work out if you can accept what's going on. If you can't accept it see if you can change it. If you can't change it then move away from it!

10 Don't let the fear of illness and death be your tyrant.......

Illness, ailments and treatments seem to be on my mind recently. I remember when I was young, being fascinated by illness and symptoms. Being a very healthy child, I never had cause to need doctors or hospitals but I was acutely aware of the attention afforded to those who were unwell and needed treatment. So my earliest memory of ‘help seeking behaviour’ was as a six or seven year old asking for Andrews’ Liver Salts because I didn’t feel very well. In actual fact I felt fine but I loved the effect the Salts had on the water, changing it, as if by magic, from its still, clear, flavourless form into a fizzy cloudy, metallic flavoured pop. Next memory, a few years later, is of all the care and attention given to my sister because she’s got hair lice and she needs mum to soak her hair in vinegar and then carefully scour her scalp literally with a fine tooth comb to peel off the lice egg nits at the root of each hair. She’d be there for what seemed like hours and I so wanted to have lice and nits so that I could be meticulously groomed too! I asked what a nit looked like and I was told that it was a tiny white thing not much bigger than a grain of sugar. I asked my mum to check my hair for lice because I was feeling itchy. No joy. Head was completely clear. So I go to the kitchen, take a teaspoon of sugar and rub it into my hair. Thought that would do the trick but sadly for me -and probably to the exasperation of my mum –it didn’t quite look like the real thing and I would never get to experience the prolonged extended intimacy of a fine tooth comb grooming!

My only other memories of illness were, a few odd cuts requiring stitches, a broken arm requiring a plaster cast and a spell of Glandular Fever in my early 20s which then set me up for a 20-odd year period of kind-of feeling under the weather –fatigued and congested but determined not to let it get the better of me, determined to fight it and keep the struggle to myself. It’s only in recent years, however, that I’ve been getting ‘old persons things’ going wrong with me. Like, for instance, a grumbling, aching back that flares up every 6 months or so, like a painful elbow sustained playing tennis which, developed into a repetitive strain injury, like a painful knee and thigh, courtesy of collapsing foot arches. From being episodic things that you get treatment for and recover from, the pains merge and ultimately become constant traveling companions. Each day there is a different constellation of pains to be managed and fretted over. And with each new twist there is always the concern maybe this is the beginning of the end, the warning sign of the onset of some dreadful terminal illness!

I’ve noticed that a preoccupation with aches, pains and illness can quite easily occupy a substantial part of my conscious thought and this can quite effectively block a clear perception of the world on a moment-by-moment basis.

So my advice for this week would be, firstly, start to do the work on coming to terms with your mortality as soon as you can. There’s a lot of work involved. Don’t leave it ‘til you’re old! Too many grown-ups are caught up, preoccupied throughout their lives with a fear of death. Secondly try to spot the transition from youthful health to aged degenerative discomfort but don’t let your worries about aches and pains spoil your appreciation of life which is just too short to squander.