The Truth. Neil Strauss

her revenge afterward, whatever it may be.

      “Now let’s go back to your original premise. And let’s make it even stronger.”

      If true intimacy, then no outside intimacy.

      “Even that statement isn’t true. You seek intimacy with your parents, your siblings, and your friends. No matter how you look at it, what you’re telling us doesn’t add up.”

      She says nothing. I press on.

      “The other issue is that you’re telling us intimacy and sex are related like this …

      “But for men—and not just the guys here but every man I know—they’re like this …

      “So what are we supposed to do with all the rest of our sexual needs?”

      The guys are staring openmouthed now, big dopey grins on their faces—except for Charles, who’s looking at Joan imploringly. I must be interfering with his recovery again.

      “Here’s what I’m starting to think,” I press on. “People are under the logical fallacy that when their partner wants sex outside the relationship, it’s harmful to their intimacy together. We are all here because we don’t believe that’s true, but we do believe that lying and deceit harm intimacy. So instead of being retrained to accept a relationship on our partners’ terms, we could just as easily retrain them to accept the relationship on our terms.”

      Troy dares to applaud. Calvin pumps his fist into the air in solidarity.

      Joan doesn’t change her expression. She’s stone cold. “Cross out if intimacy, then no outside intimacy,” she instructs me. I do as she says. “Now cross out, if cooking, then no outside cooking.” I do that. “Now go back to your seat.” I do that too.

      She stares at the board. “I’m processing,” she says.

      The room is completely silent. It’s like a chess match. And everyone’s wondering if it’s checkmate.

      Finally, Joan turns to me. “You need to define intimacy.”

      “Would you like me to do that now?”

      “You can do that on your own time.”

      I’m disappointed, because I know the answer. I heard it recently in the patient lounge, where someone was quoting Pia Mellody, who’s the Patrick Carnes of codependency: Intimacy is sharing your reality with someone else and knowing you’re safe, and them being able to share their reality with you and also be safe.

      “The definition doesn’t have any bearing on what I’ve said, anyway,” I tell her.

      “I think you’re intellectualizing to be able to control the overall addiction,” she responds.

      That’s all she’s got: to tell me to stop using my brain? “That’s what dictators like Pol Pot and Hitler and Stalin say. They burn books and kill intellectuals so no one can question them.”

      The response comes out more confrontational than it’s meant to be. I’m not trying to rebel. All my relationships have been disasters and something clearly needs to change. “So help me,” I add, beseechingly. “I want to be wrong. I want to recover. But I need to reconcile this contradiction. What you’re teaching us needs to actually make sense to me.”

      “This is your addict fighting against recovery and not letting go,” she says sharply. She looks at the clock and rises to her feet. “You’re all late for dinner.”

      She walks to the desk and starts gathering papers, holding her head high as if she’s prevailed. Yet everyone, possibly even Charles, is aware that not only did she fail to defend her thesis, but quite possibly she couldn’t.

      “Neil,” her voice rings out as I’m leaving, loud enough for everyone to hear, “why don’t you present your timeline to the group tomorrow?”

      At dinner we all sit together, the red demons of the round table. We are bonded now in brotherhood, in celibacy, in shame, in sickness, in punishment, in victory, and by the fact that we’re all wearing signs that read MALES ONLY around our necks.

      Nearby I see the anorexics in their workout clothes; Carrie, the love addict; Dawn, the alcoholic; and Naomi, the female sex addict. And they are ghost-like to me, creatures in an alternate dimension I can’t communicate with.

      The mood at our all-male table is jubilant and conspiratorial. If the guys could carry me on their shoulders, they would. I am their white knight, their sacrificial lamb, their dick in shining latex. In the meantime, from my perspective, something has shifted. This whole notion of sex addiction is unraveling for me. And quite possibly for everyone else. I came here with such high expectations from Rick, but all rehab has done so far is make me even more ambivalent about relationships and monogamy.

      “You know, I’ve been thinking about how Joan made me add up all the money I spent,” Calvin says. In the outside world, he’s a day trader who writes about conspiracy theories online. “And most of it was worth it. I was with a porn star from Serbia once. She was a ten. Cost a thousand dollars—and she worked me over. It was the best experience of my life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” He pauses and reflects. “I’ve probably wasted more money on bad food.”

      “And bad dates,” adds Troy, the sex therapist. He tears open three bags of sugar substitute and pours them into his coffee substitute.

      “Okay, here’s my main question about this place,” I begin. “I think helping us understand our childhoods and heal our wounds—that will help our relationships. But I don’t know if I buy the idea that wanting to sleep with other people is an unhealthy response to that trauma. I mean, they told me when I checked in that if I masturbated, I was a sex addict.”

      “Let me tell you, Neil, just be glad you’re not in one of the sex addiction programs run by the church,” Adam says. “My wife made me go to one of those before I came here. They consider you a sex addict if you have premarital sex.”

      Troy flashes a big grin. “We’re guys. We like sex. Everywhere you turn, you’re shown pictures of gorgeous women who look like they want to cater to your every desire. And then what? If you think about sleeping with them, suddenly you’re sick and unhealthy?”

      Adam nods. “You know, I don’t think there are many guys who, if they were staying alone in a hotel and a beautiful woman wanted to have sex with them, would turn it down.”

      Suddenly Charles slaps the table, as if trying to snap us out of a trance. “This is your disease talking right now, guys. You can’t trust your thoughts. Your addiction will say anything so it can keep controlling you.”

      “How old’s your wife, Charles?” Troy asks.

      “She’s forty-eight.”

      “And do you find her attractive?”

      “I don’t know. She’s a beautiful person.”

      “So when’s the last time you had sex with her?”

      “Eight years ago. But I brought that on myself.”

      “Adam, what about you?” Troy asks.

      “Things were okay at first,” Adam says. “But when we had kids, everything changed. She just let herself go. We tried having date nights once a month, but all she’d do is worry about the kids. So we stopped doing that too. And”—he hesitates—“I’ll tell you honestly: I like sex that’s exciting, you know, and sometimes a little rough. And she just lies there like once every three months, and basically lets me have sex with her.”

      And