Ken: There is a lot of anger in these men, a tremendous amount of anger. The biggest source of anger is that they are always feeling obligated and guilty to the parent, so never quite feeling free. One of the ways they can act out their anger is they find a way to force themselves to get married only to begin to feel torn between the demands of the wife and the demands of the mother. Yet in their anger, they say, “The heck with both of you; I’ll go be free with Susie across town or the prostitute or the pornography.” It’s a sort of angry retaliation, an angry attempt to separate, and it’s fusing anger and sex together. Very much that’s the case. Of course, it doesn’t work, right? They wind up creating more guilt and more disloyalty issues and more problems with feeling that “Now I have to commit even more to somebody I may be ambivalent about.” There’s a lot of ambivalence in these men. Ambivalence meaning that they’re uncertain and unable to know where they stand on issues; they’re ambivalent in their attachment styles, meaning that on one hand “I desperately need to be close to somebody, but when I get close to somebody I feel like you’re smothering me and I push away from you.” They’re kind of back-and-forth ambivalent. They can’t make up their minds about dinner plans or which movie to go to sometimes. That all comes from this loyalty to the parent at a cost to themselves, never gaining a sense of who they really are. Yes, they’re very angry about that.
One of the things we’re going to work on in the workshop is trying to reduce or make direct attempts to reduce the anger, so that it doesn’t come out inappropriately at the spouse or partner or sexually. Our workshops are not an addiction workshop. This workshop for mother-enmeshed men is very specifically a workshop designed to get at the dynamic that is between mother and son. This can be the case if Mother has been dead for ten years. Sometimes at that point, the damage has already been done. Certainly if she is still alive and there is still too much closeness, too much demand, it can continue to be problematic, but even when a parent is dead, sometimes the legacy continues.
The workshop is going to assist these men to identify what happened to them, what the consequences are; to de-stress or decompress some of the anger and other feelings; and then to make some commitments to themselves about where they want their lives to go, and to be able to make a commitment to somebody in a romantic relationship based on their choosing. That’s going to be the focus of our workshop. The value that these men are going to have in doing this is they are going to be able to come together to hear other men say the same story.
Carol: That’s exactly what I was going to say. I can’t think of any other treatment center, any type of intensive out there, that would provide this kind of work for men who have grown up like this. This sounds like such a novel intensive workshop for men who may not have any other opportunity to be with experts who know how to get to the root of the problem, how to jumpstart the progress, create a safe place for them to feel this. That’s what I think is so phenomenal. There just is not a safe place to talk about this, to feel the feelings, and to deal with the core issues. This is so therapeutic.
The office number to contact you about that is 248-398-0740. If they needed to go to a website, what website would provide more information on this intensive workshop?
Ken: They would go to www.sexualhealth-addiction.com or they can go to www.drkenadams.com. That will get them to the same website; go into “workshops” and they can get our phone number. We will do a phone screening for both the mother-enmeshed men workshop and the partners’ workshop. Just so you know, we try to include everybody, but if we feel like it’s not a good fit, then we invite them to do some therapy on their own and come back and see us again. We’re very careful about the fit. We make this a very positive and effective experience for everybody there.
Carol: So they are then assessed over the phone and, if appropriate, they can get into the workshop. If it’s not quite appropriate yet, you refer them to a CSAT or somebody in their area who can actually get them to a place where they can then attend the workshop at a later date.
Ken: There is a lot of therapy that goes on; there’s downtime; there’s homework at night; there are special assignments. The whole process is laid out in a very specific way. We’re also going to be offering workshops for male sex addicts, female sex addicts and love addicts, and couples in recovery as well—couples recovering from sexual addiction as well as couples recovering from other enmeshment issues. I can’t tell you the number of wives and girlfriends who have asked me, “Can you see us as a couple?” So we’re going to offer later in the year some more intensive workshops designed by my associates and me.
Carol: So they really do need to get to your website so they can get on your mailing list and find out what is available. Of course, I’m sure people come from all over the world. It’s especially nice if you live in the Midwest and don’t have to drive as far, but you have people who come from anywhere to these workshops.
Ken: We do, yes. I get calls for assessments from all over the world, particularly around the enmeshment issue. As you noted earlier, there is not a lot of specific work being done around that. It’s sometimes embedded in other more general recovery work, but the workshop we designed here to my knowledge is the only specific workshop for that issue that’s out there.
Carol: Again, Dr. Adams, if someone is not sure they’re quite ready for this yet, they can read your book, and the title of your book is?
Ken: Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners. I’ve also written a book called When He’s Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment. Silently Seduced is for men and women, because both are on the enmeshment issue. When He’s Married to Mom is more specific to men with that problem, although it’s also written for the spouses of those men. Silently Seduced is written for both men and women, because women also get into struggles with their mothers with enmeshment. The course is a little different, although the symptoms are very similar. We see some women who have been surrogate wives to their fathers, although we see more women who are enmeshed with their mothers and wind up absorbing some of their mother’s anger at men. These women find it difficult to make commitments to men or relationships because of the enmeshed relationship with the mother and absorbing her reality, never getting a chance to have her own identity. We do see that enmeshment issue with women; it’s just that my workshop isn’t for women this time around, but my book is.
Carol: I want to ask you a few questions as we begin to wrap up. You’ve obviously got two very specialized niches for people who are suffering from enmeshment or partners who are suffering with their own sense of identity, because they’ve been so wrapped up and traumatized by being with a sex addict. Do you think it’s truly possible to recover from a sexual addiction?
Ken: Absolutely. We see people do it all the time, but keep in mind there’s this notion that somebody becomes “recovered.” Right? It doesn’t quite work that way. What recovering people learn is that they are like everybody else at some point when they begin to feel they’re on an equal playing field. They have to continue to manage feelings, deal with issues of trust, and learn to contend with conflicts, negative beliefs, urges; so recovery requires an ongoing commitment to a life process that keeps being conscious and learning to live in reality rather than trying to escape it as their priority. We see people all the time who make that commitment, who stay out of relapse because they’re living a life that is a recovering life. We see that with people who are enmeshed. I get asked that around enmeshed men: “Do you think it’s actually possible for my husband or my boyfriend to break free and be committed to me?” I say yes, but he can’t do it if he remains committed to his mother. The caveat is yes, he can recover, but he’s going to have to get his priorities straight.
I get asked that by partners of sex addicts: “Am I ever going to be able to trust him again?” You know, that’s a tough question. You can trust yourself again, and you may or may not be able to trust him again. You can certainly come to trust yourself and learn to sort out other relationships in the world, and then there are ways you can determine whether your, hopefully, recovering addict can be trusted again. I do believe it’s possible. People do it all the time, absolutely.