Never Substitute Sex for Love

“Never, ever sacrifice what you want the most

For what you want the most at that moment.”

James A. Owen, Drawing Out the Dragons

Addicts live for the moment. We tend to be obsessive-compulsive. And we are too often anxious to get a fix for all of our needy feelings-- here and now. Unfortunately, this leads many of us to sacrifice what we want most in life for what we want most in any given anxious moment.

For example, codependents often accept sex when what they truly want is love. It’s my guess that the average person, from the time that they were a small child, has wanted to love and be loved by one extremely important person in their life. Unfortunately for many codependents, finding that all important soulmate has been a nightmare; primarily because one essential ingredient has always been missing from our codependent love formula. And that missing ingredient is us.

Codependents—and all addicts for that matter—want to be loved and accepted for who they are, but they don’t expect to have to love and accept themselves, first. We mistakenly believe that someone should love and accept us completely while we are busy about loathing ourselves. The concept goes like this: I hate me, but I’m going to meet someone who’s going to love me soooo much that I will eventually come to love myself. This formula is completely messed-up and doomed to failure.

The really sad thing here is that although this formula fails us time and again, we continue to pursue it relentlessly. We use it over and over and over. And with every failure, we become more and more desperate for intimacy—with anyone. Suddenly, we are so desperate for any form of intimacy that we will accept sex instead of love—and we may even accept sex from people we don’t even like. In doing so, we sacrifice our life-long dream and want—the dream of being intimate with that one really right person—for any crumbs of intimacy we were able to get in the moment-- and at the mercy of our overwhelming neediness.

It’s not until we are in recovery, that we discover just how flawed and insane our love formula is. Recovery teaches us that we have to be part of any formula for love. We have to be present for ourselves and we have to work hard at being the first person to accept and love us just the way we are. Once we’re able to do this, we will be able to be present to ourselves— and an equal part of the formula in our relationships with others.

Over time, as we come to love ourselves well enough, we won’t be so anxious or needy when it comes to intimacy. This means we will be less likely to accept sex with someone when what we know we REALLY WANT is love—love for the long-haul, for the rest of our lives. It’s never too late to find that special person to love and be loved by. We just have to find ourselves—first.