The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book about Relationships

by Neil Strauss

Maybe your dad is living a double life. Maybe your mom is. Maybe one of them is secretly gay or cross-dressing or having an affair or paying for hookers or going to strip clubs or watching Internet porn or just not in love. Maybe both are. Maybe it’s not your parents, but you or the person you love. But somewhere, there is a skeleton. And that skeleton has a penis. And it will fuck your life.

“That’s great,” I say again. I think about the prospect of marrying someone, of spending the rest of my life with her, of not being allowed to fuck anyone else, of her aging and losing interest in sex and me still not being able to fuck anyone else. And the next words just slip out of my mouth: “Are you happy?”

They say that when you meet someone and feel like it’s love at first sight, run in the other direction. All that’s happened is that your dysfunction has meshed with their dysfunction. Your wounded inner child has recognized their wounded inner child, both hoping to be healed by the same fire that burned them.

I try to push the night before out of my head. There is no evidence of it anywhere; I made sure of that. I showered. I checked the interior of the car. I inspected every item of my clothing for stray hairs. The only thing I can’t clean is my conscience. “Should I bring these shoes?” “It’s only five days. How many pairs do you need?” Sometimes I get annoyed by how long it takes her to get ready, the amount of clothing she needs to pack for even the shortest trips, the way her high heels prevent us from walking more than a few blocks when we go out.

“Thank you,” I tell her. “I love you.” At least I think I love her. But can you really love someone if you just fucked one of her friends in the parking lot of a church, and now six hours later you’re lying to her about it? My mind is so clouded with guilt, I don’t know anymore.

Maybe, then, the problem isn’t just me. Perhaps I’ve been trying to conform to an outdated and unnatural social norm that doesn’t truly meet—and has never met—the needs of both men and women equally.

If you’re interested in getting more out of this odyssey for yourself, notice the words and concepts that most excite or repel you. Each gut reaction tells a story. It is a story about who you are and what you believe. Because, all too often, the things that we’re the most resistant to are precisely what we need. And the things we’re most scared to let go of are exactly the ones we most need to relinquish.

You can’t fix most problems with rules, any more than you can with laws. They’re too inflexible. They break. Common sense is flexible.

JOY PAIN LOVE ANGER PASSION FEAR GUILT SHAME “This is called a check-in,” she says. “You’ll be required to check in four times a day and report which emotions you’re feeling. Which ones are you experiencing right now?”

“What’s the difference between guilt and shame?” I ask. “Guilt is just about your behavior. Shame is about who you are.”

“But my wife,” he’s saying, “she doesn’t take care of herself. She lies around the house all day and does nothing. I come home from work and she just sits there reading a magazine. I’ll ask if she wants to hear the five-minute version of my day and she’ll say, ‘No thanks.’ She doesn’t even have dinner ready for the kids.”

“But do you care or are you just doing a duty?”

hotel. “So if you were so happy with this other woman and so unhappy with your wife, why didn’t you just get divorced?” “It’s not that easy. I have a mature, established relationship with my wife. And we have children, and you have to think about them.”

Yet the consequences are rarely death, violence, or prison. The consequences are that other people will know about it, and they’ll have feelings and emotions about it that he can’t control.

Lying is about controlling someone else’s reality, hoping that what they don’t know won’t hurt you.

But Carrie aside, am I even a sex addict? I’m a fucking man. Men like to have sex.

But I ate the meat while I was in a relationship. And I lied to and hurt someone who loves me, or loved me—I’m not sure which anymore. I suppose that’s what addicts do: They want something so badly, they’re willing to hurt others to get it.

So let me get this straight: You love your girlfriend, but you went and had sex with someone else? Yes. And you knew that would hurt her, so you lied to her about it? Yes. Well, look on the bright side: If she finds out and breaks up with you, you’re not really in a relationship anyway. With all the lying, you’ve been in your own world the whole time.

Of course. If you’d committed to always telling her the truth in the first place, you would have thought twice before cheating on her. So start now, and maybe it’s not too late to include her in your relationship. I don’t think I can do it. It would hurt her too much. Well, was it worth it? Definitely not.

Do you know what kind of people can’t control their behavior, even when they don’t enjoy that behavior anymore? Weak people? Addicts.

Rehab may be exactly what you need to cure your fear. What fear? That in a healthy monogamous relationship, you’re not enough for the person you’re with.

You don’t have time to think. If you ever want to be truly happy in this lifetime, you have to recognize that you’re using sex like a drug to fill a hole. And that hole is your self-esteem. Deep down, you feel unlovable. So you try to escape from that feeling by conquering new women.

Fill the hole and have sex when you’re whole, then see how that feels.

Nothing’s going to change until you take deliberate and committed action to change it.

It’s not just the pain of losing Ingrid, it’s the pain of knowing I’ve hurt her. In this life, we don’t meet many people who truly love us, who accept us for who we are, who put us before themselves. Maybe a parent or two if we’re lucky, perhaps a couple of previous partners. So what kind of person rewards someone’s love with lies, betrayal, and pain?

If you’re addicted to sex, you’re probably co-addicted to something else, like drugs or work or exercise, and this is because you’re afraid of intimacy and you’re afraid of your feelings.”

The first tears are sadness. The second are relief. And the third are the most dangerous of all: They are hope.

“Exactly. To survive painful beliefs and feelings, we often mask them with anger. That way, we don’t have to feel the shame behind it.”

I want to be a better person. I want to have a healthy relationship. I don’t want to cheat and lie and cause pain.

I can’t just blindly obey. It needs to make fucking sense to me.

“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.

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

“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.”

“We’re not here because we had sex. We’re here because we lied, because we wanted sex so badly that we violated our own moral values.”

“So maybe the answer to your male dilemma is that you sacrifice,” Adam replies. “You tough it out and stand beside your wife, for better or worse, as a choice that you’re led to by faith in your family and God.”

“The problem with therapy is that they try to normalize everyone and keep them in the middle of the road. But if you do that to a society, there’s no innovation. Nothing new is created.

“Fine stands for fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional,”

This creates wounded children, who are often depressed and indecisive, see themselves as flawed and less valuable than others, and feel they can’t face the world alone. In relationships, they tend to have what’s called anxious attachment. They may feel like they’re not enough for their partners; become so wrapped up in their relationships that they lose sight of their own needs and self-worth; and be emotionally intense, passive-aggressive, or in need of constant reassurance that they’re not being abandoned. Here, they call this type of person a love addict.

Though they may pursue a relationship thinking they want connection, once they’re in the reality of one, they often put up walls, feel superior, and use other distancing techniques to avoid intimacy. This is known as avoidant attachment—or, as they put it here, love avoidance. And most sex addicts, according to this theory, are love avoidants.

“Maybe that’s the female dilemma,” Troy cuts in. “She marries someone who’s giving her love and romance, but over time she gets taken for granted or turned into a maid or becomes a baby factory or gets cheated on. There’s not a single emotional need of hers that’s filled by her husband. Then he has the nerve to complain that she’s not sexual or attractive when he’s drained the life out of her.”

The sins of the parents are the destinies of their children. Unless the children wake up and do something about it.

She seems to love me unconditionally, but I fear that I love her conditionally.

And I wonder: Am I even capable of love? Have I ever truly loved anyone?

I can’t tell whether my tears are for the beauty of her love or the sadness of my incapacity to feel worthy of it.

I’ve met a lot of so-called experts. Most are just people with a little experience and a lot of confidence who’ve given themselves a title with which they can fool the suggestible and dim-witted.

Any time you overreact to something—by shutting down, losing your temper, sulking, feeling hopeless, freaking out, disassociating, or any of numerous other dysfunctional behaviors—it’s typically because an old wound has been triggered. And you’re regressing to the childhood or adolescent state that corresponds to that feeling.

So if you remain loyal to people who abuse and mistreat you, that’s called trauma bonding.

If you find chemical, mental, or technological ways to numb yourself and your feelings, that’s trauma blocking

“I feel weird saying this in front of everyone, but I masturbated. I just woke up in a certain condition and couldn’t help myself.”

“Believe, behave, become: Believe in you and Ingrid. Behave for Ingrid. Become a nuclear family.”