Michele Christensen 0:07
Hi! Welcome to Sex. Love. Power. I'm your host Michele Lisenbury Christensen. I work with couples who want to create lifelong love and ever-deeper passion, and my clients are ambitious in every area of their lives.
Michele Christensen 0:21
Today, I'm wading into some fraught territory-we're talking about food and drink. It's Thanksgiving Day in the United States. This is a big family-oriented, and for many, people, emotionally intense holiday, that contains, culturally, a lot of expectations around food and beverages, and a lot of socially-acceptable and even condoned overindulgence. Against that backdrop, there's an elephant in the room for a lot of couples whenever we're talking about love and sex and that elephant is this group of behaviors that I call ESCAPE HATCHES. My friend Jennifer Loudon calls them shadow comforts. And one of my mentors, Judith Wright, calls them soft addictions. But on this day of feasts, we have ample evidence of what can kind of hide out in the shadows the rest of the time and that is this: most people have one or more ways that they jump out of the moment, into numbness, stimulation-seeking, or intoxication of some sort. So here are a couple of questions for you to reflect on to see if you can relate to what I'm talking about. When you're with extended family do you eat or drink to medicate? With your partner, is the glass or maybe the BOTTLE an essential part of connecting either socially with each other emotionally, or maybe sexually? Do you rely on alcohol to relax you enough to be sexual? Do you rely on eating out together in order to have a good time or to know that you're on a date? Does what you're going to eat,or a particular food ritual, or your daily Starbucks or your meal planning or your grocery shopping give you a kind of a hit or excite you? Do you get anxious when your rituals are disrupted? Do you get resentful of people who demand your time and what you quote really need is a drink or a snack? I'm asking these questions because lots of us do this and in a little bit, I'll share more about my story so you know I know what I'm talking about here.
Michele Christensen 2:24
There are many ways that these kinds of escape hatches can manifest. Maybe it's not food or drink at all. Maybe it's that at this time of the year, you're a listaholic planning 10,000 different things for gifts, events, holiday outfits, photoshoots, all the things. Or maybe you're getting high on shopping and the sales and all the gifts you're going to give. Or maybe your social cannabis use turns into something you need every night to wind down. Or maybe you find yourself unable to stop eating holiday treats, or you're exercising compulsively in order to balance out or fight the effects of the rich food on your waistline.
Michele Christensen 3:01
Some of these behaviors fall into the compulsion category and others cross the line into addiction territory, and sometimes it's hard to know where that line is. Some people just act out seasonally or when they're under tremendous stress. Other people are regularly using substances and behaviors in a way that's troubling to their spouse, but it's hard to pinpoint or to intervene on. So only YOU can tell for yourself where you might fall on the spectrum.
Michele Christensen 3:27
I want to talk about a couple of things. First, we're going to define what addiction or compulsion is, then we're going to look at how it affects a relationship. I'm going to share a little bit of my story. Then I'm going to talk about what you can do about addiction and compulsion. So first, what are we talking about? An addiction is in essence, a behavior you repeat despite its negative consequences. The consequences of compulsions for couples can be hard to recognize as consequences of compulsions and that's why we need to have this conversation. A lot of couples find that compulsions, even if they're subclinical, even if they're not what a couple might have thought warranted recovery in a 12 step program. These process addictions or substance addictions may still be stopping them from attaining the emotional presence, the equanimity and the resilience to address their intimacy challenges. So how does an addiction affect a relationship? Well, when you're engaging in behaviors that are compulsive, that you are powerless over, you can't NOT do them. You're using them to regulate yourself. You're making sure that you get that thing done, kind of above pretty much everything else. You're also still maybe trying to behave yourself, like show up for your family and show up for your spouse, but you might find yourself resenting the ways that they get between you and your compulsive behavior, you will try to hide the compulsive behavior so dishonesty will come up. Emotional energy unavailability is a result of these kinds of compulsions, because we can't be fully available if we're not fully feeling our feelings.
Michele Christensen 5:09
That's precisely what these kinds of behaviors are designed to do, is distance us from our feelings. We're more emotionally volatile, because we've been distancing from our feelings. And in my experience, I became so convinced that I couldn't handle emotions, that when something triggered intense emotion in me, I was more volatile or reactive than I am now, then than I would be if I had a more fluent relationship, and direct contact with my emotions more often. And then finally, these behaviors tend to precipitate financial problems, sexual problems and health problems for both the individual engaged in the behavior and then of course, for the couple, because our finances and our health and our sexuality deeply affect our partners. So if you notice, one, or a constellation of these kinds of challenges in your relationship, you might look beneath the surface and begin to ask, "Is there a compulsion at work here? Is there a behavior that one or both of us engage in?" Now there might be different behaviors for each of you. But MIGHT compulsion or addiction be affecting the topography of our relationship?
Michele Christensen 6:24
I had no idea that that was happening in my relationship. But the reason that I'm sharing this with you is because my life has changed dramatically since March of 2018. It was that month that I learned that someone can be addicted to food. That we can use food the same way that an alcoholic uses alcohol, and we can be affected by it in the same way. Having that allergic reaction, that the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous talks about, where one drink is all it takes to set someone with that kind of addiction off on a binge. They can't have the first drink because the first drink uncontrollably, irrevocably leads to more. So I had been in an ongoing battle with food and weight and depression for YEARS in my life. And I think a battle with food in our bodies, and weight is pretty epidemic among women raised in Western culture, perhaps in places all over the planet. Misogyny and marketing contribute to that.
Michele Christensen 7:32
The thing is, I'm a feminist, and I had a wonderful feminist therapist who happened to be male. When I came to him and said, "I need to change how I eat. I want to be healthier." He said, "Are you really unhealthy? Is there really a good reason for you to lose weight or change what you're doing?" And those are great questions to ask. I really believe that people can be healthy at a range of physical sizes. I wasn't suffering at that moment, health effects that were detectable by any medical measurement. However, what I couldn't tell him, even after the wonderful work that we did, and the ways that I learned to really turn my erotic light back on and feel gorgeous, and dress beautifully and groom myself beautifully. I was a sexy, 220 pound five foot four woman. Really from the outside, you could see that in many ways I was thriving in my life. It was perfectly fine for me to be that size. And I believe that there are people who really are A-Okay, at a wide range of sizes.
Michele Christensen 8:41
However, what I couldn't tell my therapist is that I ate like an animal. That I ate with a ferocity that frightened me. I felt completely out of control. I couldn't tell him that every time I left his office, I would go to one of one or two or three places that I would, as a ritual, get particular foods that would help me stuff back down the emotions that had been brought up in our session. I didn't know how to talk about that.
Michele Christensen 9:14
That therapist referred me to an intuitive eating nutritionist. They recommended that I think about the things that I really liked to eat and eat them in proportion, maybe alongside some protein. I couldn't limit myself. Once I ate some of those things that I really wanted, whether it was baked goods, chocolate or whatever, it usually had flour or sugar in it or both. I couldn't stop. I could not make myself be limited. Or maybe I could during that meal but within a couple of hours, I would have to go back and get the other half of the thing. There was no intuition that could keep me from going for more.
Michele Christensen 9:59
At different times over the last 20 years, I've had different rituals with warm beverages. And for several years, I would keep cans of sweetened condensed milk poured into a glass container, and mixed with Chai spices. This Chai mix, which I would then put by huge spoonfuls into cup after cup after cup of black tea every day to make this Chai tea. But I was drinking it by the gallons, I was going through maybe two of those cans every three or four days, which is just a ton of sugar to be eating that much sweetened condensed milk. And so it was kind of like mainlining candy all the time.
Michele Christensen 10:46
Many times, I would go through a detox, or I would do the Whole 30, do something that got flour and sugar out of my system for a time and I came to realize that when I wasn't eating flour or sugar, I felt 100 times better, and my cravings went away. But always even though I knew that, remember that definition of compulsion, consequences can't really stop us when we have a compulsion, the expense doesn't deter us. And it sure didn't for me. Because within a few weeks, I'd have some occasion to have just a bite or I'd have a meal at an Indian restaurant just once and go back and eat all that flour and sugar and butter and maybe a slice of pizza with a big salad. And I'd be really trying to be balanced with it, but I'd be off to the races again. I would be uncontrollable. I could never eat the way I intended to, the way I wanted to. So just like an alcoholic who goes, "you know what, I haven't drunk in a while maybe I can have one glass of wine" and then wakes up the next morning just going, "What did I do? How did that happen again?" That was me with food.
Michele Christensen 11:58
And when I stopped and I began a spiritual program of recovery, I saw that I had made flour and sugar, my sanctuary. They were this higher power on which I relied to get me through the day: to soothe my emotions, to comfort me, to guide me. And they always did a really bad job. But I couldn't stop going back until I quite deliberately replaced them with God, the Divine, the Universe. Call it what you want, I call it many different things, Goddess, father, mother, all of those things. And I've long had that spiritual relationship, but I think that I had kept that vicious dirty relationship that I had with eating, cordoned off in a secret room, like the mess room in your house that you don't let visitors see. I didn't let the best in me, the highest in me, anywhere near that part that I was ashamed of and frightened by. So of course, I didn't get help with it. When I opened that door, and began to rely on a higher power to help me, to rely on the divine and to say, I am powerless over this, I can't change it, please change me, then I got a huge relief of freedom from my mental obsession. And over the course of maybe 15 months, my body shed almost 100 pounds. So it's really important to me to emphasize, it's NOT about being thin. That is not remotely a part of my message. Today, I do weigh under 125 pounds, and I'm five foot four. I've been here for a year and a half or so. And I imagine I'll stay approximately this size my entire life.
Michele Christensen 13:48
Because this is what I was designed to be at, I can feel that my body is happy, not carrying extra weight. I don't at all have an agenda for anyone else's body size. And I want for anyone who wants it, the peace of mind that I have now, having ceased to rely on those external substances. Of course, I still have compulsive tendencies, and they pop out in all kinds of directions and all kinds of places. But I'm not acting out with my substance of choice anymore. And that means that I'm here with my feelings.
Michele Christensen 14:28
When I'm working with a couple, and I see that one or more of them, has something that, like food did for me, stops him from being present, then I bring it up. I'm not a chemical dependency counselor. I'm not a food addiction consultant. I can refer people to 12 step programs, to counselors who help with those things. What I know as a relationship coach is that if one or both of you are acting out in compulsive ways, then the other work that you do, to grow closer, to have deeper intimacy sexually and emotionally, to have less conflict, to lead more productive lives that work towards your vision and express your values.
Michele Christensen 15:13
You're building all of that on sand if you're acting out with compulsions AND things don't just stop being so problematic and so difficult when you step into recovery. In my experience, stepping into recovery has opened up new vistas, new possibilities, a depth and a sweetness in my marriage, but also my relationship with myself and my relationship with the divine, that I couldn't have even imagined when I first began. It's really a doorway to possibility. And I think I used to know this, I would look at, there were certain alcoholics, including the person who married me and Kurt, and the way that they expressed this kind of spiritual fire in them, there was a glimmer in their eyes, and a lightness about themselves that I could see was pretty special. And I've run around with a lot of pretty spiritually evolved people in my life. And, boy, those recovered, addicts really seem to have a kind of glow.
Michele Christensen 16:18
And I remember, now with some irony, that I used to be a little envious, like, man, too bad, I'm not an addict, because maybe I could get that kind of fire in the belly. Well, I got lucky, turned out, I am. Truly the way that people say I'm a grateful addict, has come true for me, because it's only through desperation, with the problems that I had, that I've been able to open all the doors in my inner house, and let a higher love and a higher vulnerability in. And that's made a huge difference between me and my husband, as well as in my own inner world.
Michele Christensen 16:59
So that's my addiction story. It feels both vulnerable, and really joyful for me to share it with you. Because I hope that you can see that this is what an addict looks like, is the expressed and present and available to others person that I am today. And I was great before too. I have clients that I've worked with since before I got into recovery. And they sure see the difference. But I wasn't just a train wreck before that. And if you start to notice, yeah, what she's talking about kind of resonates for me, it doesn't mean you're a train wreck, it just means that there are rooms that the light of spirit can come into, and really sweep clean in your life as well, like happened for me.
Michele Christensen 17:53
The show notes are going to contain a lot of links to different recovery programs, and some of my favorite books, which are fascinating whether you think you or somebody else, you know, is an addict or not. It's just amazing how the brain works. So check those out. If you're wondering what you can do about addiction and compulsion, that's a good place to start. If the addictive pattern is your own, then I would highly recommend that you check out some of those books, and the appropriate 12 step group for what you're up against. And just give it a chance. There's a saying, hold no contempt prior to investigation. So you probably have preconceived notions, let go of those. And just go and find out what's really so and then decide.
Michele Christensen 18:43
If you suspect that your partner has an addictive pattern, then you want to tread carefully, because none of us wants to be told, "You know what YOUR problem is." You'll get a lot further by treading very gently and letting them self identify. So listening to this episode together might be something that starts to help them to connect some thoughts, and referring them to other literature, or inviting someone else important and valuable in your lives, like a member of the clergy that they have respect for, or a medical professional that they see. A conversation with that person might be more productive than a conversation with you about the ways that the consequences are racking up for them, and they're unable to change their behavior, even in the face of those consequences.
Michele Christensen 19:35
Now, most of all, I want you to know, addiction is stigmatized in our culture as a weakness or a moral failing. And to consider labeling oneself with the word addict, or to face the possibility that our beloved is living with addiction, it can feel like a death sentence. But I'm here to tell you that on the other side of that humbling reckoning, I can truly say, as I so often hear from others as well. I am a grateful addict. Once I saw that, so many of the pains and frustrations in my life were stemming from my addiction, I could finally begin to address it. And once I began, a whole constellation of other frustrations began to clear up. Unrealized dreams began to unfold, an amazing frontiers of spiritual expansion opened up. Recovery makes me little by slow, every day, just a little more, and more and more of who I always wanted to become. And then some. And that kind of radiant VISTA is possible for everyone whose relationship and life are weighed down by the disease of addiction. It just takes the humility to raise a hand and say, Yep, that's me. I can't fix this my way. Show me how you fixed it in yourselves. HELP! And when you say that, the Help is there, in spades, freely given by amazing people who have gotten what they never knew they wanted, because they declared utter helplessness in the face of their compulsion. And as a result, they lit an exquisite fire inside themselves that I don't really often see in anyone who's not a recovering addict.
Michele Christensen 21:13
It's paradoxical, but it's true... the spiritual black hole in the heart that drives us to compulsions in the first place, when we redirect it to recovery, often becomes a spiritual supernova. So take heart if this is ringing bells for you. There's so much good that lies ahead, there is hope. Check out the show notes for ideas and reach out if I can help direct you to any other resources. I wish you every blessing on what I know firsthand is a hard journey, but an ultimately redemptive one, for those who have the courage to surrender.
Michele Christensen 21:45
Do you have questions about addiction and compulsion or about other topics related to sex, love and power? The secret society of turned-on couples over at society.lisenbury.com is a great place to ask your questions, share your experiences, and join the conversation about creating the eroticism and intimacy that you deeply desire, in ways that evolve you both. It's all happening at society.lisenbury.com. That link is in the show notes atlisenbury.com/episode/015.
Michele Christensen 22:17
If you've enjoyed this or other episodes, what would help me in the podcast immensely, is if you leave a review, particularly in Apple podcasts, because those are huge help in finding new listeners and growing the positive impact that these conversations can have. So please go leave a review right now with a few words about what the show gives you. I would so appreciate it. Hey, could you subscribe to the podcast? It's a great way to make sure you never miss an episode. Please go to Apple podcasts or wherever you listen and hit that subscribe button so that you always get notifications of new episodes every week.
Michele Christensen 22:47
Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michele Lisenbury Christensen. And this has been sex,love,power. I'll be back here next Thursday with another episode. This time we'll be talking about men's sexual avoidance. If you've ever been confused by your (if you’re a man) or your male partner's sexual response or lack thereof, you'll want to be sure to listen in. Until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you