The Truth. Neil Strauss

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      Everything she says lands in my head like the sweep of a broom, knocking away cobwebs and uncovering lost brain cells, like the years of anger and regret I harbored over being grounded and missing out on my only high school sexual opportunity.

      “There’s one thing that’s been bothering me,” I tell Lorraine. “I can’t understand why I never stood up for myself against her strictness and just rebelled or ran away?”

      She looks at my genogram for a moment, then responds: “Because your example was your dad, and he never stood up for himself. And his father didn’t stand up to his mother either.”

      The rest of the guys nod in agreement as I wonder whether my grandfather had a secret sex life too. Probably. “And you’ll notice,” she continues, “that they didn’t model a healthy relationship for you. It’s no wonder you have fear when it comes to Ingrid. You don’t want to end up in a relationship like the one your parents have.”

      Growing up, I often wished my parents would have affairs. When my mother and I found photos of my father out with a woman we didn’t recognize, I was happy he’d apparently found some romance and excitement outside his desolate marriage. It’s no wonder cheating came so naturally to me. I’d given myself permission long before I’d ever had a girlfriend.

      Lorraine spends the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon doing everyone’s genograms. When she finishes, she tells us that before we start our chair work tomorrow, she wants to teach us about the relationship between the love addict and the love avoidant—or, as she prefers to put it, the codependent and the counterdependent.

      “If you think of intimacy as into me I see and I share that with you—that’s intimacy,” Lorraine begins.

      I’ve heard the word intimacy constantly here, spoken as if it’s the holy grail. And all these fun things—from sex to drugs to ambition to even dressing attractively, reading novels, or having intellectual thoughts—are supposed to be eliminated because they’re barriers to it.

      “Intimacy problems come from a lack of self-love,” she continues. “Someone who fears intimacy thinks, unconsciously, If you knew who I actually was, you’d leave me.”

      “I always think that!” Calvin says, raising his hand for a high five. It goes unslapped.

      “I’d classify all of you as intimacy avoidants,” she presses on. “The avoidant is very good at seducing, in the sense that he has an uncanny ability to find out what his partner needs and give it to her. Because he was usually enmeshed, he gets his worth and value from taking care of needy people.”

      “So are guys love avoidants and women love addicts?” Calvin asks.

      “No, I’ve seen both. What happens in either case is that we choose partners who are at our age of emotional development and maturity, and whose issues are complementary to ours. Your wives may think they sent you here because you’re sick and they’re normal, but I’ve never worked with a couple where one of them had it all together and the other was a screw-up. They’ve got just as many issues as you do. Proof of this is the fact that they’re still with you.”

      “Can I please get you on the phone with my wife to tell her that?” Adam asks.

      “This is exactly what I’m talking about,” Lorraine responds. “That’s the enmeshed child in you speaking. You should be in recovery for you, not for her. And that’s typical of your marriage as a whole. Because when a love avoidant and a love addict begin a relationship, a predictable pattern occurs: The avoidant gives and gives, sacrificing his own needs, but it’s never enough for the love addict. So the avoidant grows resentful and seeks an outlet outside of the relationship, but at the same time feels too guilty to stop taking care of the needy person.”

      “By outlet, you mean an affair?” Adam interrupts.

      “It can be,” Lorraine says. “But it can also be obsessive exercising or work or drugs or living on the edge or anything high-risk. He will also compartmentalize it because the secrecy helps kick that intensity up a notch. In the meantime, as the avoidant’s walls keep getting higher, the love addict uses denial to hold on to the fantasy and starts accepting unacceptable behavior.”

      As she speaks, I think of one of the most classic myths of our civilization: The Odyssey. Odysseus cheats rampantly on his voyage home from the Trojan War, even shacking up with a nymph for seven years, knowing full well that his wife, Penelope, is waiting for him. Meanwhile, Penelope stays pure for twenty years, even though she thinks he’s dead. Yet Odysseus is the hero of the tale and even slaughters all 108 of Penelope’s suitors for daring to court her. In here, they’d diagnose Odysseus as a love avoidant—off adventuring, warring, and intensity-seeking—and Penelope as a love addict, living in fantasy. This relationship is as old as time.

      “But the avoidant’s behavior has consequences,” Lorraine continues, “and chief among them is something most of you are familiar with: getting caught. And that shatters the fantasy for the love addict, who experiences her biggest nightmare: abandonment, which replicates her original wound.”

      One thing Odysseus did right is that he didn’t get caught. That’s because they didn’t have paparazzi, social media, mobile phones, and the Internet back then. It was easier to compartmentalize.

      “The pain and the fear are so intense for the love addict that she often develops her own secret life as well. Where the avoidant wants the highs, the addict typically goes for the lows. She wants benzodiazepines, alcohol, romance novels, shopping till she drops, or anything that depresses the central nervous system. If she acts out sexually or has an emotional affair, it’s not for intensity, but to numb the pain and get away from the agonizing hurt. Soon, the relationship is no longer about love for either partner, but about escaping from reality.”

      Lorraine draws a diagram of the unhealthy relationship she’s been describing:

      “Is everybody one or the other?” Calvin asks. “I feel like I’m both.”

      It’s a good question: I’ve always seen myself as more ambivalent in my relationships than avoidant, but perhaps doubt is just a form of avoidance because it prevents me from ever fully committing to anyone.

      “Some people have elements of both or play different roles at different times,” Lorraine responds. She then draws a picture of a healthy relationship:

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