Fighting a Fornication Fixation

Heather (pseudonym) is a multilingual adventurer in her thirties who has traveled the world. She shares her experiences with exploring sexuality, developing a sex addiction, and finding treatment.

Growing Up

Heather grew up in a Catholic household in Buffalo, New York, and was the oldest of five children. In a marriage with traditional roles, her mother stayed at home with the kids, and her father was a lawyer. Heather says, "I don't remember a lot of my childhood. I just remember that I was always very happy." Growing up, Heather enjoyed close relationships with both of her parents but considered herself "a daddy's girl." Though he was strict, her father was more demonstrative, frequently sharing affectionate feelings and gestures. Her mother, while very loving, was more reserved.

As the oldest child, however, Heather did resent having to share her parents' attention and did not enjoy the added responsibilities of being a role model and frequent babysitter. At age twelve, Heather was particularly upset when her mother announced her fifth pregnancy. When Heather asked her parents why they decided to have yet another child, her father simply said, "Why not?" (Looking back, Heather says that "the real answer was because we grew up in a very fundamentally Catholic, religious home, where it was expected that no sexual relations took place outside of marriage, and that people were supposed to have as many children as humanly possible.") This felt like the final straw to Heather – one sibling too many. The family was visiting her grandparents in Florida, and Heather decided to run away. Without a plan or knowing anyone locally, she stuffed some clothes into her backpack and ran out the door yelling she would never come back. Her distress in the moment was enough to overcome her fears of the snakes and scorpions that inhabited the valley below her grandparents' house. But her grandfather soon came after her, and they sat outside together to talk. He reassured her that her newest sibling would not lessen her parents' love for her. Especially comforting to Heather, he told her that she was her grandparents' favorite (which she already knew). Nonetheless, Heather remembers this as the start of her thinking she should have been an only child. She enjoyed being the center of attention and, despite her parents' best efforts, they could not give her the undivided attention she craved. Heather matured with age, and by the time that her youngest sibling turned three years old, she "got over it."

At thirteen, Heather reached puberty before most of her peers and consequently received a considerable amount of interest from boys. When she began high school, older girls bullied her over the attention she received from older boys. For example, during physical education classes, they would stare at Heather as she was getting dressed. Heather adds that her bra was "double Ds in grade nine. You don't see that a lot… they wanted to know, like, are they natural? Are they fake? Are they, you know, and it was just really annoying." Heather also felt isolated from the students her own age. She had gone to school with them in elementary school but had been away from them for three years while attending a different middle school. Her return to their orbit was greeted with awkwardness and skepticism, and Heather felt unable to be herself.

Early Crushes

At fourteen, in the very first month of her high school career, Heather became infatuated with a boy in band class. Heather recounts, "I wanted to make an impression on him and become everything that I'm not, like learn about baseball. I didn't even like baseball, but I did for him… He was so sexy." Soon, Heather was going along with his mischievous suggestions. One day, he told her he was going to see Poison, one of her then-favorite music groups, but they had to skip band practice to go. Then, he suggested she could skip typing class to go to his house to drink alcohol, which she had never tried. Heather adds "he told me, 'if you want to date me, you're going to have to become naughty. I can't date, you know, an A plus student.' And I'm like, 'Oh, I'll do anything.'" Heather's parents did not allow her to date, but this did not stop her; she was thrilled by her rebellion and pleased to no longer be a "goody two-shoes."

However, Heather did not anticipate how detrimental these escapades would be towards her academic life. As she and her boyfriend spent more and more time together, Heather spent less and less time studying. She was readily persuaded by her boyfriend's encouragement to stop studying and to instead go out, drink, and make out. Swept up in all the excitement, Heather stopped doing her schoolwork and stopped caring about it. Heather went from always earning straight As to failing her freshman math, typing, and French classes. When Heather's parents saw her grades, her father, the lawyer, made Heather sign a contract to agree, in writing, that she would improve her behavior and grades or she would be sent somewhere like a juvenile detention hall. Around this time, the boyfriend called Heather's house, asking for her. Her father answered the phone, and finding out that Heather had a boyfriend, he "blew a gasket right there on him" and threatened him saying, "If you show up at this house, I'm going to beat you to a pulp." The boyfriend stopped calling, and the relationship fizzled. Another motivating factor was Heather's desire to transfer to the high school that would reunite her with her middle school friends. Her parents made the transfer conditional on her improved grades and her leaving the boyfriend. Consequently, Heather stopped drinking, started studying, and raised her grades.

Having successfully transferred to her new high school, Heather rapidly developed feelings for someone new: her French teacher. He was popular with the students, and Heather thought he was gorgeous, smart, and funny. She also thinks her taboo feelings provided an outlet for the part of her that still wanted to rebel. Heather regularly brought her teacher presents, mostly because she liked the thank-you hug that he would give her ("We would always wait till everybody was gone. And then he would give me a hug. And I'm like, oh, this is the best hug ever!"). On Valentine's Day of her sophomore year, the French teacher had the class write their deepest secrets relating to the holiday in their French diaries. Heather decided this was an intentional prompt for her to reveal her feelings to him, and she did. In his comments to the confessional diary entry, Heather's teacher wrote that he understood her feelings and cared for her, but could never do anything to jeopardize his job. He included a reference to the Police song "Don't Stand So Close To Me," which is about a teacher's feelings for a student, and included a postscript that he would take Heather on a date when she was eighteen.

Heather's feelings did not subside, and she expressed her affections to the French teacher daily. The French teacher decided to inform Heather's parents and suggested that she might benefit from seeing a therapist. Heather recalls that her parents were not as upset by this as one might expect. On reflection, Heather suspects that her parents were relieved rather than upset. She imagines they thought Heather's affections toward her teacher were preventing her from having sex, contrary to what she might have done with someone her own age. Nevertheless, Heather's parents followed the French teacher's advice and found a therapist for her. Heather recalls the therapist as being "lousy." Rather than trying to help Heather, the therapist only seemed interested in mining her for information to relay to her parents. After three months, Heather had enough and refused to continue their sessions.

When Heather was eighteen, her French teacher kept his word and took her on a date. She recalls that "it was fabulous." However, he told her on the date, "I'm sorry, Heather, I don't date virgins." Startled, Heather was not sure how he knew she had not yet had sex. His words left an impact, and Heather remembers thinking she never again wanted someone to not date her because she was a virgin. Despite her disappointment, Heather remains fond of this teacher and still maintains contact with him twice a year.

Venturing Out Into the World

Heather remained studious for the duration of high school and set her sights on spending her first year of college abroad. Studying Spanish since she was seven, Heather developed a lifelong love for the language and for learning languages in general. With an eye toward practicing Spanish in a Spanish-speaking country, she arranged to attend her freshman year of college in Spain. However, Heather's life as she knew it was upended two weeks before her scheduled departure.

Heather's father had called a family meeting, which he had only previously done to tell the family someone had died. This time, he said something about love being like a plant and that the love he had for Heather's mother had died. The kids started crying and hugging their mother. Not quite comprehending what her father was saying, Heather demanded that he clarify: "What are you talking about? Just tell us what you're trying to say." He bluntly replied, "I'm leaving your mother. I'm now going to go and screw women." In the heat of the moment, Heather countered that she was "now going to go and screw men." She did not know then, but these words would stay with her. Shortly afterwards, Heather's father walked out of the house for good.

In the wake of her father's departure, Heather could either stay behind, giving up her long-anticipated year abroad to start college, or go ahead with her plans, knowing that her family was breaking apart at the same time. The decision was difficult. Urging Heather not to give up what she had so diligently accomplished, her mother essentially made the decision for her. Heather left for a year abroad, as planned. After a fantastic year in Spain, Heather took a break from school and pursued an opportunity to use her multilingual skills by working at the World Expo in Portugal for six months. While she was there, she met and befriended some Bolivians, including her next boyfriend.

Before long, her boyfriend invited Heather to Bolivia, which presented a chance to see more of the world that she could not resist. Especially when the "pretty boring" alternative was returning to the United States to study. Heather adored Bolivia. Charmed by the country and people, Heather had started imagining perhaps leaving behind her life in the United States and becoming Bolivian. Her mother, however, had other ideas and decided to intervene. Without telling Heather, her mother sent a retired family friend to bring her back to the United States. The family friend flew to Bolivia and arrived at the door of the family's home where Heather was staying, holding a ticket for her to fly home. At this point, Heather had enjoyed a wonderful year in Bolivia, but she also knew she wanted to resume school and finish her college degree. Also, she was touched that her mother would go to such lengths to bring her home, making her feel like the favorite child rather than just one of five children.

Back in the United States, Heather completed her college degree in Spanish and French translation. Her enduring desire to practice Spanish in Spanish-speaking countries next brought her to Cuba. One day at the beach, Heather spotted someone who reminded her of Luis Miguel, a Mexican singer she liked. She asked if he could guess who he reminded her of. After guessing correctly, he posed in Luis Miguel's style and then promptly serenaded her. Heather "just fell in love right there." However, while she was in Cuba, she received a job offer to teach English in Japan for a year. Heather's new boyfriend wanted her to stay in Cuba. Heather told him she would only stay if they got married, and to prepare for Japan, Heather went back to the United States for a month. When she returned to Cuba, her boyfriend surprised her with a marriage proposal and she accepted. The next day, he wanted to have sex with her. This would be Heather's first time and, at twenty-two years old, she felt "ready to take the plunge into being a wife and everything." They had sex, but they did not get married. Her boyfriend insisted she would have to give up the job in Japan if they were going to stay together. But Heather wanted to see Asia and earn some money to pay off her student loan, and she could not fathom how he did not understand the one-year teaching engagement would be the right move for her. They ended their relationship. Heather enjoyed a rewarding year teaching in Japan and then went back to the United States.

A Different Life

At twenty-four, Heather received an offer to work as a translator on cruise ships. Heather seized the opportunity to tour the world and ultimately visited eighty-five countries over her five years of working there. When she arrived on board, she found that the crew members were ninety percent male and usually worked for six to nine months at a time, staying on board without interruption. As a result, the opportunities for a woman who wanted to explore her sexuality were virtually unlimited. Heather encountered this environment having only slept with one person, her Cuban boyfriend. Due to the disappointment over that experience, Heather felt she "did not know what having sex was." Also, the memory of her words to her father when he left stuck in her mind. She recalls, "I started thinking that if I had sex with a whole bunch of guys, I'm going to be doing revenge against my father." Heather started acting on these thoughts and regularly had sex with crew members from all over the world, as well as passengers. She shares, "I loved it. I really looked forward to it. And I felt like, now this is having sex, never mind what I was doing with that Cuban guy." Looking back, Heather reflects that "sex addiction is like a drug, so I felt like every penis that was inside me was a hit of something. The small ones were a small hit of weed, whereas the bigger ones were like a bag of cocaine. […] I wanted to know […] who had the biggest, which country was the largest. I was doing like, a spreadsheet. I had it all written down and everything. It was like a game. Yeah, it was really fun at the time." As the cruise line frequently sent Heather to work on different ships, this pattern continued. Heather's sexual interests also expanded to include women. As a fan of professional wrestling, Heather became aware of her bisexuality when she watched a female wrestler come out in lingerie ("I couldn't believe how gorgeous she was."). On a beach a year later, at twenty-six, Heather decided to try out this desire and had sex with a woman for the first time.

During her time on the ships, Heather realized she had developed an addiction to sex. In particular, she remembers bumping into a man she did not recognize and complimenting him on his looks. He asked if she did not remember she had been with him the previous week. Heather could not remember. Her time on board had been a whirlwind of "work, have sex at night, go to the crew bar, get drunk, do it again, do it again, do it again." Heather decided she had a problem with sex addiction when, at twenty-seven years old, she got pregnant and did not know who the father was. The ship's doctor was understanding and non-judgmental with Heather. He frankly explained that her privileged position as an American translator on the ship would mean she could keep her job if she wanted to. However, she could not be pregnant and stay on board. If she wanted to stay, she would have to terminate her pregnancy. Heather relished her job and the travel it entailed, going to sleep at night and waking up in a new country in the morning. In addition to giving this life up, she would also be "the laughingstock" of her family, who would disapprove of her being unmarried and pregnant and not knowing who the father might be. Heather knew she did not want to have a child at that time: she was in the midst of her sexual addiction and "wanted to continue having sex with random dudes… and I saw this [pregnancy] as a pain." The ship's doctor arranged for Heather to discreetly have an abortion in Miami.

Turning Point

A year later, Heather began to feel there were no new crew members left that she wanted to have sex with and that she was losing her sense of identity. She shares, "I felt really dirty. I started feeling really gross for all the sexual things I had done." Around this time, Heather was in Bermuda, sitting on some rocks, looking out at the sea. With thoughts of self-loathing swirling in her mind, she wondered, "Why don't I just throw myself off these rocks?" Preparing to plunge to her death into the water below, she saw a bright light descend. The light, which Heather believes was an angel, spoke to her in several languages, urging her not to jump. This snapped Heather out of her suicidal reverie, and she climbed down from the rocks. Hearing that somebody wanted her to stay alive was enough. Heather knelt on the sand and cried, forgiving herself for having the abortion and for having a sex addiction. She decided she was going to change her life. To Heather, this was a moment of divine intervention.

To change course, Heather knew she could not continue to work on a cruise ship because it was the most triggering environment for her addiction. Instead, she needed to return to living on land. She moved back to Buffalo and, before long, she had turned thirty. Heather was aware of getting older and wanted to avoid any more unwelcome consequences from her addiction. Motivated to seek help, she started to search for a therapist that could address her sex addiction. First, Heather went to her primary care doctor for a recommendation. The doctor did not know of anyone locally. She suggested that Heather would probably need to go to New York City to find someone, which is what ended up happening. The first therapist that Heather found was more judgmental than helpful. Rather than exploring why Heather might be engaging in her sexual behaviors, the therapist focused more on reinforcing that she should not have been sleeping with that many men. Heather soon stopped seeing that therapist due to his unhelpful approach.

Despite her desire to change, Heather was not yet free from her addiction. The personal ads section on Craigslist provided her with plentiful options. Within ten minutes of posting an ad, Heather would receive one hundred responses. Then she "would just pick the most good looking guy" and "have sex with them the first night." Although Heather knew there were risks involved, the meetings provided a gratifying jolt of adrenaline. On one occasion, though, Heather recalls, "I met somebody who was horrible to me, and he made me give him a never-ending blow job, which was hell on earth. It was horrible, yeah, because he just would not stop." She asked him if they could have sex instead, thinking that might be more enjoyable for her. He refused and told Heather she was going to give him pleasure until he told her not to. After an hour, he said it was not working for him and threw money at her. Remarkably, his behavior was an isolated incident for Heather. Heather's interest in women continued; however, while available male sex partners were never in short supply for her, female sex partners were more elusive. Accordingly, Heather generally had to pay female sex workers for those urges, unexpectedly creating a financial strain. She continued arranging these trysts and did not again seek professional help until she contracted chlamydia from someone. Getting a sexually transmitted disease raised a red flag for her, and Heather was determined to try therapy again.

Heather was able to find a new therapist on the internet who specialized in treating sex addiction. The therapist specifically specialized in treating gay men who had a sex addiction, but she hoped that his expertise would apply to her as well. Their sessions were remote, and from their first session together, Heather recalls the therapist being "calm, sweet, very caring, and understanding." And she started to feel better as he let her talk and cry. She discussed the collateral damage from her parents' divorce, feeling dirty inside, and her musings about why she was using sex to cope with life. Regarding possible treatment options, the therapist recommended that Heather refrain from attending a twelve-step type program because other people addicted to sex would be in the group. He thought Heather might be tempted to have sex with other group members, which Heather agrees she probably would have been prone to do. Instead, the therapist taught her other coping mechanisms. For example, to handle sexual urges, Heather learned from her therapist about self-stimulation and sex-toy alternatives. To this day, she remains grateful for the masturbation techniques the therapist taught her. Now, if she has a sexual urge, she says, "I can take care of myself." In addition to the techniques he introduced, Heather's therapist fortified her motivation to resist her sexual compulsions by reminding her of the numerous sexually transmitted diseases she might be exposed to. He also suggested participating in other activities and hobbies she enjoys. Perhaps most significantly, he encouraged her to see she was worth being loved for who she was as a person and not just her body.

During this time, Heather was obtaining her master's degree in Spanish translation. Her complete focus on school meant she "had no time to be screwing guys." But she always made time for therapy sessions because the therapist made her feel special and understood. He helped Heather considerably. All in all, she estimates they split their time evenly between exploring her feelings and discussing potential coping mechanisms. Four years after Heather started seeing the therapist, he tragically died in a motorcycle accident. She still misses him and reminisces, "He was the best."

The Struggle Continues

After completing her master's degree, Heather accepted a job in Indonesia as a high school English and Spanish teacher. Learning Indonesian while she was there, Heather enjoyed her time immensely. However, after two and a half years, she had to leave because of the COVID pandemic. Later, Heather started teaching at a university in Florida. Heather chose to move there because she does not know many people, to make it more difficult for her to find sex partners. When tempted, Heather has considered using an app such as Tinder, but concern that she might cross paths with one of her students on the app prevents Heather from trying it.

Heather has also started online therapy using a website called Headspace. The site offers resources related to meditation and mindfulness, in addition to a network of therapists. Although Heather would prefer to see her therapist in person, she likes that the therapist she is seeing has expertise in sex addiction. She has been seeing this therapist for six months and one useful suggestion from these sessions has been to try yoga. For Heather, yoga provides a calming way to release some physical energy without having sex.

In the six months prior to the interview, Heather had abstained from sex, describing herself as "involuntarily celibate." With respect to going this long without sex, she says, "That doesn't happen. I'm not used to it. I hate it." She misses having sex and believes that if the opportunity arose, she could do it once and get it out of her system for another six months. While Heather is aware of the possible slippery slope to her former addiction, she believes that the difficulty of discretely meeting partners without triggering her addiction helps her manage her actions. She isolates herself to avoid temptation and focuses on her work and future goals. Regarding her current frame of mind, Heather shares, "I feel like I finally, at this age, got my addiction under control… But it's hard, it's really hard not to relapse, very difficult."