Thank You and Good-Bye (from the Intimacy Anorexia Workbook by Dr. Doug Weiss)

The alcoholic picks up alcohol early in life and the alcohol becomes a friend.  It represents a place to go in order to feel safe and secure.  It may help him/her to be animated, take a risk, or have friends.  In the same way, intimacy anorexia has become my friend.  This massive protective entity, my anorexia, came along early in life to serve me and I began to trust this entity for many things in my emotional life.  This entity helped me survive but it cannot help me really live.

The following is a thank you letter to thank anorexia for all it has done for me over the years.


I would like to say "thank you" for facilitating a sexual addiction that lasted for about 10 years.  I couldn't have done it without you.  As you know, I grew up in a Christian home, and you helped me to keep the necessary distance from my family to prevent them from knowing anything about my "transgressions."

Obviously my nuclear family is not the only party that benefited from your existence.  There's also my church family, who could always look at me and believe that I could do no wrong thanks to you.  The church's opinion of me allowed me to serve in various positions that may not have been open to "sex addicts".

And then there's my wife.  You taught me things like how to stay busy all the time so I would have no time for her, how to distance myself with silence/anger, and how to find faults in my not-quite-perfect spouse.  There was also the active witholding of love, praise, and spirital openness that helped keep the connection with my wife to a minimum.  Without this connection, my wife was free to live her life comletely unaware of my addiction.

Finally, I would like to thank you for protecting my own heart.  If it weren't for you, my decision to break the heart of my lovely wife would have caused unimaginable pain for myself.  You instilled a coldness in me that allowed me to watch her emotional outbursts with only a slight discomfort.

Yes, we made a good team, you and I.  Me--and introvert by nature, and you--an empowering defense mechanism.  It was you who enabled this seemingly "chaste" preacher's kid to be incredibly promiscuous.  I have put thousands of naked or scantily clad women in front of me over the years, and you made it okay because everyone close to me was just as unaware of my actions as those sexy models.

However, all good things must come to an end.  Thanks to God, the sexy vixens are gone, and with them goes the need for your protection.  I'm now headed down a path of sexual health, a way you cannot go.

Don't worry.  There are millions of men in this day of unprecedented porn access who need your help.  I'm sure they'll be glad to have you.  We, however, are done.  This is a new chapter in my life, a chapter in which you are identified and eliminated like the cancer that you are.  May the generational curse in my family stop here so I never have to see you again.