The Truth. Neil Strauss

Jonas and Craig were over, but they can’t get it up anymore.

      What do you mean? What are you guys doing?

      We’re really horny. Want to come over?

      This is it: finally, a chance to lose my virginity. And I need to become a man before college.

      There’s only one problem.

      I can’t. I’m grounded.

      We’ll make it worth your while.

      How?

      We’ll give you—and here she whispers—a blow job.

      Together?

      If you want. We’ll do you so right if you do us right.

      God, I want to come over so much.

      I can’t believe they’re offering to have a threesome with me. This would be the Super Bowl of teenage sexual experiences. But I stayed out too late one night without calling my mom, so I got grounded for two months. I’ve spent most of my teenage life punished. The year before, my mom somehow found out that I’d gone to a rock concert I wasn’t allowed to attend, so she grounded me for six months.

      Hurry. Julia wants to have sex with you.

      Really?

      She wants you, Neil.

      Fuck, I want her too. But I don’t think I can today.

      Or any day for the next seven weeks.

      Why not?

      I told you. I’m grounded.

      Just sneak out.

      I can’t. I don’t have the keys to the house.

      You’re no fun.

      Wait.

      Let’s call Alex. Hey, do you have Alex’s number?

      Looking back on that phone call—the only time I ever got propositioned in high school or college—I don’t know why I never rebelled, why I never just went out anyway, why even at that age I put up with being constantly imprisoned. Senior year of high school, second semester, when you’ve already been accepted to college—that’s supposed to be the best time of your life. At least for teenagers who aren’t enmeshed.

      Lorraine tapes several sheets of butcher paper across the wall and asks me about my relatives as far back as my great-grandfather. As I speak, she maps my family tree, diagramming everything I know about each relative, from their birth order to tragedies in their lives to the power balance in their marriages. This is called a genogram. She’s looking for patterns. And she finds several.

      “I’ve been doing this a long time, and this is one of the most narcissistic mothers I’ve ever come across,” she tells me when we get to my parents and my relationship history. “She suffocated you, so you set up a wall with her that you kept in place through anger and sneaking around behind her back. And you’re still using that wall to keep from being suffocated by Ingrid.”

      Everything she says lands in my head like the sweep of a broom, knocking away cobwebs and uncovering lost brain cells, like the years of anger and regret I harbored over being grounded and missing out on my only high school sexual opportunity.

      “There’s one thing that’s been bothering me,” I tell Lorraine. “I can’t understand why I never stood up for myself against her strictness and just rebelled or ran away?”

      She looks at my genogram for a moment, then responds: “Because your example was your dad, and he never stood up for himself. And his father didn’t stand up to his mother either.”

      The rest of the guys nod in agreement as I wonder whether my grandfather had a secret sex life too. Probably. “And you’ll notice,” she continues, “that they didn’t model a healthy relationship for you. It’s no wonder you have fear when it comes to Ingrid. You don’t want to end up in a relationship like the one your parents have.”

      Growing up, I often wished my parents would have affairs. When my mother and I found photos of my father out with a woman we didn’t recognize, I was happy he’d apparently found some romance and excitement outside his desolate marriage. It’s no wonder cheating came so naturally to me. I’d given myself permission long before I’d ever had a girlfriend.

      Lorraine spends the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon doing everyone’s genograms. When she finishes, she tells us that before we start our chair work tomorrow, she wants to teach us about the relationship between the love addict and the love avoidant—or, as she prefers to put it, the codependent and the counterdependent.

      “If you think of intimacy as into me I see and I share that with you—that’s intimacy,” Lorraine begins.

      I’ve heard the word intimacy constantly here, spoken as if it’s the holy grail. And all these fun things—from sex to drugs to ambition to even dressing attractively, reading novels, or having intellectual thoughts—are supposed to be eliminated because they’re barriers to it.

      “Intimacy problems come from a lack of self-love,” she continues. “Someone who fears intimacy thinks, unconsciously, If you knew who I actually was, you’d leave me.”

      “I always think that!” Calvin says, raising his hand for a high five. It goes unslapped.

      “I’d classify all of you as intimacy avoidants,” she presses on. “The avoidant is very good at seducing, in the sense that he has an uncanny ability to find out what his partner needs and give it to her. Because he was usually enmeshed, he gets his worth and value from taking care of needy people.”

      “So are guys love avoidants and women love addicts?” Calvin asks.

      “No, I’ve seen both. What happens in either case is that we choose partners who are at our age of emotional development and maturity, and whose issues are complementary to ours. Your wives may think they sent you here because you’re sick and they’re normal, but I’ve never worked with a couple where one of them had it all together and the other was a screw-up. They’ve got just as many issues as you do. Proof of this is the fact that they’re still with you.”

      “Can I please get you on the phone with my wife to tell her that?” Adam asks.

      “This is exactly what I’m talking about,” Lorraine responds. “That’s the enmeshed child in you speaking. You should be in recovery for you, not for her. And that’s typical of your marriage as a whole. Because when a love avoidant and a love addict begin a relationship, a predictable pattern occurs: The avoidant gives and gives, sacrificing his own needs, but it’s never enough for the love addict. So the avoidant grows resentful and seeks an outlet outside of the relationship, but at the same time feels too guilty to stop taking care of the needy person.”

      “By outlet, you mean an affair?” Adam interrupts.

      “It can be,” Lorraine says. “But it can also be obsessive exercising or work or drugs or living on the edge or anything high-risk. He will also compartmentalize it because the secrecy helps kick that intensity up a notch. In the meantime, as the avoidant’s walls keep getting higher, the love addict uses denial to hold on to the fantasy and starts accepting unacceptable behavior.”

      As she speaks, I think of one of the most classic myths of our civilization: The Odyssey. Odysseus cheats rampantly on his voyage home from the Trojan War, even shacking up with a nymph for seven years, knowing full well that his wife, Penelope, is waiting for him. Meanwhile, Penelope stays pure for twenty years, even though she thinks he’s dead. Yet Odysseus is the hero of the tale and even slaughters all 108 of Penelope’s suitors for daring to court her. In here, they’d diagnose Odysseus as a love avoidant—off adventuring, warring, and intensity-seeking—and Penelope as a love addict, living in fantasy. This relationship is as old as time.