The Truth. Neil Strauss

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ codependent depressive sex addict with PTSD and OCD,” he tells the group.

      “Hi, Charles.”

      “I was treated for sex addiction ten years ago and then relapsed two months ago. Because I didn’t want to raise kids around my addiction, I’ve passed up the chance to have children with my wife. We’re both too old now, and I really regret that. And I’m scared for her to come for family week, because I don’t want to lose her.”

      When he’s finished, he looks to Carrie. She’s changed into another tight T-shirt. This one says DAMAGED GOODS on it.

      “My name is Carrie, and I’m a love addict and trauma survivor.” Hi, Carrie. “I just got here today. I spent the last two years chasing after an abusive guy who wasn’t even interested in me. If a guy gives me just a little bit of attention, I get obsessed. I don’t feel pretty, and I see him as a challenge. And because I want approval and love so much, I have sex before I should—and a lot of times when I shouldn’t at all.”

      The thought occurs before I can stop it: These groups are a great place to meet women. Carrie is sitting here divulging the exact strategy by which she can be seduced. There’s nothing a man with low self-esteem loves more than a beautiful woman who doesn’t know she’s beautiful.

      I need to control my mind. I suppose that’s why I’m here.

      Next up is a man in his early fifties: gray hair, gray beard, slight belly, red cheeks, like a skinnier, sex-addicted Santa Claus. He stares at his stomach and slowly, reluctantly tells his story. “I started out just going to strip clubs, but then I went to Tijuana and found this whorehouse and started going there all the time.”

      He sucks in a lungful of air like it’s cigarette smoke, and lets out the saddest sigh I’ve ever heard. “And I got an STD.” He pauses, as if considering whether to share the rest of the story, then squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and shakes his head side to side. “And I haven’t told my wife about it yet.” He waits for a reaction, but it’s so quiet you could hear a syringe drop. “I’m going to have her come for family week and tell her then, I guess. Twenty-five years of marriage, and the whole house of cards is about to come tumbling down.”

      He looks like his neck is in a guillotine and he’s waiting for the blade to fall. No one seems to have much of a problem with cheating here, just with getting caught. Many a man has shot himself in the head rather than face up to the consequences of what he’s done in his secret life.

      Yet the consequences are rarely death, violence, or prison. The consequences are that other people will know about it, and they’ll have feelings and emotions about it that he can’t control. Santa Claus’s wife isn’t going to kill him. She’s just going to be really, really, really pissed off. Lying is about controlling someone else’s reality, hoping that what they don’t know won’t hurt you.

      Suddenly I notice that everyone’s eyes are on me.

      “My name is Neil.”

      “Hi, Neil,” they all echo flatly.

      And then I hesitate. If I check in as a sex addict, that could ruin my chances with Carrie.

      But I’m here to ruin my chances with Carrie. I’m here to ruin my chances with everyone. If I have sex in rehab, then I’m really doomed.

      But Carrie aside, am I even a sex addict? I’m a fucking man. Men like to have sex. That’s what we do. Put a beautiful woman in a tight dress in a bar on a Saturday night, and it’s like throwing raw meat into a den of wolves.

      But I ate the meat while I was in a relationship. And I lied to and hurt someone who loves me, or loved me—I’m not sure which anymore. I suppose that’s what addicts do: They want something so badly, they’re willing to hurt others to get it.

      “And I’m a sex and love addict.”

      Okay, so I softened it a little.

      Everyone is listening, no one is judging. They’ve all got their own problems. “I never thought I’d be in a place like this. But I made some bad decisions and I cheated on the woman I love. So I guess I’m here to find out why I’d do something like that and hurt her so much. And because I want to become healthy enough to have a committed relationship, hopefully with her. I don’t want to end up destroying a marriage and traumatizing my children because I cheated.”

      Santa Claus shakes his head and his eyes well up with tears.

      I stop there. I decide not to mention the other option I’m debating: to just say, “Fuck it, this is my nature,” and not get in another monogamous relationship, to be free to go out with who I want, when I want.

      Since adolescence, we’ve been trained as men—by our friends, by our culture, by our biology—to desire women. It seems unreasonable to expect us to just shut it off forever once we get married. Legs are long, breasts are soft, and forever is a long time.

      After everyone else shares, Charles asks if anyone is attending their first meeting. I raise my hand and he passes around a coin for me. I’ve seen friends who were junkies get these coins for sobriety and treat them like Olympic gold medals. Now I’ve got one. I look at it. It means nothing to me, except that today I’ve become one of them. One day sober.

      Never in my lifetime did I think I’d be a patient in a place like this. In fact, I always thought that I was normal, that I was lucky to have parents who stayed together and never beat me, that my father’s secret had nothing to do with me, that I had no use or time for therapists, that I was a journalist who wrote about other people’s problems. I’m not sure what made me finally realize I was the one who was crazy.

      Maybe it was Rick Rubin.

      Pacific Ocean, Five Months Earlier

      So let me get this straight: You love your girlfriend, but you went and had sex with someone else?

      Yes.

      And you knew that would hurt her, so you lied to her about it?

      Yes.

      Well, look on the bright side: If she finds out and breaks up with you, you’re not really in a relationship anyway. With all the lying, you’ve been in your own world the whole time.

      Rick and I are paddleboarding in the Pacific Ocean. He’s one of the best music producers in the world, and for some reason he’s taken me under his wing. At first I thought he befriended me so I would write about him in Rolling Stone, but I soon realized that nothing could be further from the truth. He doesn’t like to be written about, to go to parties, or to be in any situation outside his comfort zone. Yet at the same time, he has no problem telling bands like U2 that some new song they’ve recorded sucks.

      So do you think I should just tell her what happened?

      Of course. If you’d committed to always telling her the truth in the first place, you would have thought twice before cheating on her. So start now, and maybe it’s not too late to include her in your relationship.

      I don’t think I can do it. It would hurt her too much.

      Well, was it worth it?

      Definitely СКАЧАТЬ