Zoe B’s Story

I didn’t know that I was a sex and love addict. In fact, I had never heard of such a thing. 

I had cruised around relationships all my life, believing it was normal to be inextricably attached to another human being. As a teenager, I was mentally marrying everyone I had ever been in a relationship with. Scrawling their name on a piece of paper with mine and planning a wedding with a long veil and giant bouquet.

By the time I was in my late teens, I believed that sex and love were the same thing; if I had sex with someone, then surely this person would love and stay connected to me?

I would gravitate towards men who were unavailable and often cruel. It mirrored a childhood that took me years to unfold. I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone, so when relationships started to sour (which they invariably did), I would line up someone new to take over where they left off. 

To sit in my own thoughts and process what was happening was way too painful. A new relationship would see me higher than a kite, throwing myself full force into a person I barely knew. I derived excitement and self-worth from the validation of this new person, irrespective of their feelings toward me. I found myself entwined in push-pull relationships where the more that they pulled back, the harder I tried – using sex to exploit myself. 

In my late 20s I met a good man who I spent 25 years with, and we had three beautiful children and a very good life. Or so it seemed on the outside.  

I felt I could never fully commit my heart to him. There was this raging fire going on inside that I couldn’t explain to anyone. I went through the motions of life on the periphery, never really being present or available. I drank to numb my pain and used my children’s successes as my own. In my head, they were the extension that was missing.

By the time they all left home, I was separated from my husband and felt like a child lost at a fairground, frantically searching to be rescued by someone. 

Anyone. 

Suddenly alone, accountable to no one, I was somewhat free to be me again. Those heady days of being wild and chaotic were knocking on my door and I was making myself available. It wasn’t long before I had a one-night stand that propelled me into the darkest three years of my life. He was just the first in a succession of random hook-ups that would momentarily take me away from myself.

When I met this person, I thought that I had finally met my match. He was as lost and lonely as I was. As it turned out, he wasn’t lost or lonely and had many other variations of me. Depression followed, a 10-kilo weight loss and a final realisation that the life I was trying to find didn’t exist. 

With a Google search I came across South Pacific Private. I decided to send an email explaining briefly my pattern of behaviour in the hope that some answers would come my way. Soon after, I received a reply asking if I had heard of ‘sex and love addiction’? I quickly got on to Google again, my legs like jelly, my stomach making its way out of my mouth. I ticked every single box. I was a sex and love addict. 

It took me another year of absolute misery to sign up to the three-week inpatient program. In hindsight, I would have saved myself a lot of heartache if I had surrendered a year earlier. My situation with that person worsened and finally propelled me – albeit kicking and screaming – to 24 Beach Road, Curl Curl. I’m not going to lie, it was the hardest day of my life. I was 54 and asking myself, ‘How did I end up here?’ I resisted a lot of advice I was given and fought my way through the Changes program, but it was the beginning of a miraculous discovery of who I am and why I do the things I do.  

It’s been exactly two years since I walked out of the doors of SPP.  I really struggled for the first year. I didn’t really want to give up the things that let me know that I was alive. I knew the fire needed to be extinguished, but I just wasn’t quite ready to do it. I used to look at life as a set of scales – as long as they weren’t tipping too far into the negative, I would continue as I was. I wasn’t living authentically. I was just getting by and being trampled on in the process. 

One day, my therapist said to me, ‘You know what, Zoe? No one is coming.’ These were truly the hardest words I had ever had to listen to. All of those dreams of being whisked off into the sunset were merely a way of not taking accountability for myself.

I have been in recovery for just over a year now, and I can finally look in the mirror, see my wounded child, and say, ‘We’ve got this.’ 

If you think you or someone you know needs help with sex addiction treatment, please call South Pacific Private on 1800 063 332. Our intake team can talk through the rehabilitation program options with you and suggest the most suitable recovery pathway for your situation.