The question
I have an ex who remains a business partner and good friend. He's a friendly person and well-liked. He is also a 30-year member of AA and acknowledges he has an addictive and impulsive personality. In the past five years, he has gone out with two different women. One off-and-on for 3 1/2 years, and one off-and-on for two years. The difficulty is he keeps breaking up with one to be with the other and vice versa. He has split with each of them at least five times to be with the other. A month ago he retired and moved to a smaller town with one of the women, who also wanted to move there. They seemed to be having a great time and I thought all was well. It turns out he is constantly texting the other woman and this weekend he came to town to see her under the guise of visiting his daughters. Early on, I found it mildly amusing but now I am sick of it. He could be close to abandoning his lease and moving back to town to take up with the first one again. Is it attention seeking, ADHD, just impulsivity or is it an addiction? I have told him I don't want to hear about it any more and to see his AA sponsor. Aside from counselling do you have any ideas?
The answer
Fret not: I am the last advice columnist on earth ever to say to you or anyone "seek counselling."
Whenever an advice columnist says "seek counselling" I think: "The person did seek counselling! You! And you failed them as all other so-called counsellors no doubt will."
My other thought: once upon a time there were "philosophers." Self-proclaimed, also, doubtless, but nevertheless: Socrates, Epictetus – purveyors of wisdom, in their minds anyway, for better or worse.
Now we have "life coaches," counsellors and (no offence to me/others in my profession) advice columnists, all probably hanging on by an even thinner thread than you are, telling you: do this, do that. Beware!
Your question raises another question and that has to do with "sex addiction." I suppose, with a gun to my head, I would be forced to agree it's possible there's such a thing. David Duchovny – of a) X-Files b) Californication fame – was supposedly a "victim" of this dread affliction.
But personally, I feel highly skeptical about it.
I of course believe and understand and respect, if that's the way to put it, addiction in its many forms. I have known many people addicted to all kinds of things and it's serious and it's real and, of course, it's no joke. You can ruin your health and career and sanity and family and everything else you have going for you.
But everything in this life, despite what many might say, is not a "syndrome" or a case of some treatable affliction or addiction or disease or something ending with suffixes such as "–chosis" or "–pathy" or "–ism."
Some things are just moral choices. And this strikes me as one of those.
It's not clear to me you need get involved in your friend's wishy-washy back-and-forthing. But if you do want to (and, to be honest, in your shoes, I would, and I think it's the right choice, the strong choice, and if you do I think you'll be doing him a favour), I would sit him down and say:
"You're embarrassing yourself." Furthermore: "You are wasting at least one of these other people's time and that's a sin."
This has always been a big thing for me. At the age of 27, I lived with a woman in New York. I knew I had to leave her eventually – no sexual chemistry – but felt guilty and therefore dragged my heels.
Until I had what I felt was an important realization: "I'm wasting her time."
I told myself: "Use the counter-guilt of wasting her time as a springboard against the guilt of leaving."
So I left – rather abruptly, it must be said. But I could've wasted another 10 years of her life – so happened it was her child-bearing years – and she could've then pointed to me and said: "There goes the guy who ruined my life."
Basically, she's not sending me any thank-you cards, but I did her the favour of not wasting more of her time than I had to. She met some dude named Bob and they have two kids together – teenagers, by now, I suppose.
My point? Tell your friend to stop wasting one or both of these women's time, because it's just wrong: We only get so much time in this life. Figure out what he wants, stick with it and let whoever he's not interested in get on with her life.
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