Have you ever seen someone who looked very attractive to you only to meet them later and discover how unattractive they really were? This is something I’ve experienced far more times than I can count and stems much in part due to the number of years I was overly engaged in a sex and love addiction where the fantasy was always way better than the reality.
Living in fantasy is often a big part of a sex and love addiction and the illusion usually begins with an overt physical attraction. Once that’s established in a sex and love addict’s brain, the mind starts spinning a “wonderful” picture of who this person probably is in real life.
I used to do this all the time with many people I saw in public, especially those who ever made eye contact with me that I thought were really good-looking. As soon as my brain would acknowledge an incredible appeal to someone, I’d begin telling myself that they most likely enjoyed things like cuddling, romantic dates, holding hands, and were a person who lived by their heart with great sincerity and kindness.
Being more of a love addict than a sex-based one, these were the traits my fantasies would tend to create. But none of them ever panned out to be anything even close to that and I had a great reminder of this recently when I was at a local laundromat.
There, as I sat and waited for one of the washing machines to open up, was someone who I immediately thought was extremely pleasing to my eyes. As I sat there and stared a little too much, they made eye contact with me and smiled, which is definitely when the fantasy of a sex and love addict’s brain often begins.
As my brain proceeded to spin the same tale it did for several decades with plenty of others, I became curious to see if what I learned through my recovery work, that being the fantasy was way better than the reality, was also true in this case. So, some thirty minutes later, when I found myself outside wrapping up a phone call, I had my chance when this attractive person emerged and lit a cigarette nearby. It was then I decided to ask if they were from Florida, seeing that the plates on their vehicle were from there.
I somewhat regretted doing so afterward, only because I received a five-minute discourse from them that was filled with plenty of expletives about how Florida was the worst state ever and filled with nothing but slime and filth. I’m not sure I even heard a single positive thing out of this person’s mouth in the brief conversation I had with them. I also learned in that short period of time, that they had been married three times, lived alone in the mountains of North Carolina now, and mostly hated people in general.
I honestly felt like I needed to take a shower after speaking to this person, which was weird because that’s exactly how I used to feel when I slept regularly with people just like them in my past. Nevertheless, I was grateful to have had such a great reminder of how my addict brain can still spin a crazy fantasy of people I tend to find attractive that end with it never being even close to reality.
In today’s day and age, this fantasy-spinning is also something that seems to happen a lot on the Internet on many dating websites. People often get incredibly excited meeting someone online and feel as if they’ve met a match made in heaven, only to find out there too sometime later that the fantasy was better than the reality.
Thankfully, my recovery work from my addiction helped me to identify the traits that constantly led to this behavior both with those I met online and in person. I learned it generally starts with an extreme attraction to someone where I get completely lost in their looks and from there it was continuously downhill.
That’s why I thank God for my recovery every day now because it’s there I learned that it truly is an addict’s trait to create a fantasy that was always way better than the reality. And I think I’d rather remain in reality these days, as there I stand a far better chance in staying away from too many toxic situations that came come from most of those fantasies…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
