Both he and his wife agreed to keep their one son at home as much and as long as possible. They even homeschooled him as part of their plan to groom him to be as interpersonally avoidant as his father was sexually avoidant: a day trader in the market, working from his home computer, able to support himself adequately without ever having to leave the house—and Daddy.
My patient loved his life, and he loved his wife, but he never missed nor complained about not having sex with her. Nor did he have relations with other women. He was not homosexual either. As he put it, “I am simply content to go about my business from the waist up, without having to attend to each and every one of my body parts from the waist down.”
He never sought nor felt he needed treatment. Originally, he had come to see me because his wife had asked him to go for a consultation “just to see if something is wrong and if so what could be done about it.” But, uninterested in continuing therapy beyond our initial meeting, he made another appointment, then cancelled it and never returned.
His wife dealt with her own strong sexual needs by having a series of affairs. Though he knew about them, he didn’t really seem to mind. He did not deny that she was being unfaithful to him. What bothered him most was the possibility that she would meet someone new and leave him, then not be around to help him bring up their son and take care of the cats. He even agreed to pay for her trips to France, though he knew that she went there to actually meet and have sex with men she had initially contacted through the Internet. He figured “that a man should pay his wife’s transportation, and since she didn’t have her own car it is only fair that I pay for a plane trip to France now and then.” He would do anything for her—but one—as the price of her staying with him. Her reassurances that she sought only affairs, not divorce, were enough to keep him calm and happy.
This man claimed that he no longer felt any sexual feelings. He denied that he was suppressing them out of a sense of guilt originating in psychological conflict, social teachings, or religious tenets. His asex-uality only bothered him when someone he perceived to be knowledgeable and in authority told him that something was wrong and that he was missing something, or when he started worrying that his wife would leave him for sex and that he would grow old and alone. For him, asexuality was not pathology, but philosophy. And because his wife accepted him as he was, the pairing worked, the marriage lasted, and both he and his wife claimed to be happy and well adjusted just the way things were.
Acquired Sexual Avoidance
While true asexuality is innate or essential, acquired sexual avoidance, what Fenichel calls “psychogenic sexual impotence,”1 is the product of inhibition arising out of conflict. This psychogenic sexual impotence is often the product of an erotophobia, or “love phobia.” This becomes manifest in various ways, including guilty hesitancy about doing anything at all sexual, resulting in transient or prolonged fearful celibacy; limiting oneself to substitute gratifications such as hobbies used to partially or fully divert oneself from getting sexually involved; sexual coldness and frostiness; a paradoxical, counterphobic hypersexuality; or physical sexual symptoms such as diminished genital sensation, erectile dysfunction/impotence (inability to get or maintain an erection), premature or retarded ejaculation in the man, and dyspareunia or vaginismus in the woman.
Erotophobia is itself the product of a constellation of underlying fearful components. Some erotophobes fear touching and being touched because they view anything sexual as dirty and disgusting—as did the patient who feared shaking my hand because of the possibility that I would contaminate him with a sexually transmitted disease. Others fear that their sexual feelings will flood them so that for them, it becomes as difficult to tolerate sexual as any other form of intense pleasure. Still others, obsessively scrupulous individuals, fear that sex is forbidden because it is immoral and therefore to be avoided without simultaneously putting some form of countervailing cleansing prohibition into place.
In one such cleansing prohibition, the individual can only enjoy intercourse with a lover, but not with a husband or wife, for now, as Freud noted in his 1912 paper, “The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Erotic Life,” “the condition of [necessary] prohibition is restored by [the] secret intrigue [of being] untrue.”2 Another cleansing prohibition involves having sex, then taking it back, by condemning what one just did immediately afterward, say, with postcoital revulsion manifest as a desire to get away from one’s partner quickly, what one avoidant called my “take a shower and get dressed right now syndrome.” Still another involves keeping tenderness out of sexuality to the point that, as Freud states, a man might actually perceive a “check within him”3 so that, as Jones suggests, he is “only capable of intense physical pleasure with a woman socially, morally or aesthetically of a lower order.”4 Frequently, the condition of prohibition is restored by developing strong attractions to many and often only to unavailable people, as does the straight man who pursues serial affairs with prostitutes or the gay man who only likes stevedore types, or by demeaning one’s partners or sexuality itself by picking someone already devalued, say, “rough trade,” or by picking someone valued then demeaning him or her by refuting the value of sexual exclusivity by becoming openly or secretly promiscuous.
A Case Example
Recently, I received the following letter (lightly edited) asking for my advice:
About six months ago, I had a breakup. I was really hurt, and I decided that I was tired of being the monogamous, romantic one who was the only one that seemed to really care and the only one that ever seemed to get hurt. I have since been a slut, in all honesty, going from guy to guy not even caring to learn the person’s name. I honestly have guys in my phone that are labeled “A guy” and “Guy 1,” “Guy 2,” etc. But I am getting tired of not having a someone. Not being loved by a unique partner. Still I feel that all gay guys are stuck up, selfish whores that can’t give a damn about anyone but themselves.
I’m in the military, navy to be exact, and we aren’t exactly allowed to be gay, but everyone knows I am. I met a guy on post about two weeks ago that I slept with and eventually became fond of. I don’t know why really. I have only been with one guy since I met him. I actually care about him. Nowhere near “Love,” but I do care about him. I cry when he’s sad, I smile when he’s happy—a crush if you would. Still I posted an ad the other day on Craigslist looking for sex. I got about 40 responses,
30 of which I accepted and agreed to hook up with within the week. Well, the next day I started thinking. I e-mailed all the guys and told them I was no longer looking for sex. I feel like my life is so fake right now. I would use the commonplace term “empty,” but I don’t like that word. I don’t exactly feel empty, rather full of superficial things that are not really me. Henceforth, I will say I feel “fake”—just compiled of things I don’t really want (but pretend I do).
So, I canceled all these offers. And after about four to five lonely hours of feeling sorry for myself (because I found out that the guy that I like is married and is trying to avoid getting close to