10.0 Sex (Sacred Energy Exchange)

Section 10.0 reframes sex as an embodied practice of presence, healing, and connection rather than performance or validation. It shows how anxiety and nervous system states shape desire, avoidance, and compulsion, and how sex can become either an escape or a path to real intimacy. By linking sexuality to breath, emotional safety, self awareness, and compassion, this section presents conscious intimacy as a powerful gateway to healing, trust, and lasting connection.

10.1 Introduction

When I began writing this section, I asked myself a fair question: who am I to write about sex? I am not a guru or a trained couples therapist. I am someone who has lived through this material, remained in therapy, continued studying, and spent years writing and reflecting, only recently beginning to apply these lessons in a meaningful way.

I grew up with poor relationship role models, so it was no surprise that even ten years into sobriety, my behavior in relationships mirrored exactly what I had learned. I used sex addictively well into sobriety, and it was not until around twenty-five years sober that I began to understand what was actually happening beneath the surface. I had been working on myself before that, but I was not working effectively.

The reason was simple. I had no real understanding of anxiety. I was trying to fix symptoms instead of addressing the cause. I spent years in the wrong kind of therapy, talking about surface-level issues and repeating familiar patterns, without ever seriously addressing the nervous system, my internal chemistry, or the role anxiety was playing in driving my behavior. That was the real problem, not just the addiction itself, but the underlying system that kept recreating it.

Eventually, I found my way into recovery groups in New York, specifically Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. I had reached an emotional breaking point in a relationship in the late 1990s, and the pain was intense enough that it forced me to seek help. Sitting in those rooms, I began to see my pattern with more clarity than I ever had before.

I was consistently drawn to women who were as damaged as I was, and often more so. From there, I would try to force an authentic emotional connection that simply was not available between us. When that connection failed to develop in a healthy way, I would use sex as a substitute, attempting to create a bond that had not been established through safety, trust, and emotional stability. When conflict inevitably surfaced, I would become obsessive. The anxiety would spike, the emotional pain would intensify, and I would lose any sense of balance or perspective.

This pattern repeated itself for years.

Those meetings were intense and, at times, difficult to sit through. Many of the people there had already found sobriety from substances, yet were now confronting another layer of destructive behavior that was just as consuming. I am not sharing this to shock or provoke, but because it is real, and because there are others living through these patterns without understanding what is driving them.

Around the year 2000, I was 36 years old. Looking back, I was doing fine on paper, but at the time it felt like everything was falling apart. My finances were unstable, and the relationships I was forming weren’t real. I was talking to women I wanted to be in love with, but I didn’t have that connection, and neither did they. Something was missing, and I could feel it.

I kept going. I dated a lot. I wasn’t sleeping around constantly, but I was trying to. I’ll be honest about that. Most of the time I couldn’t close the deal, and if I’m being even more honest, many of the women I wanted didn’t want me. Underneath all of it, I was just lonely. What I really wanted was a monogamous, stable, satisfying relationship, and I had no idea how to build one.

The problem started with where I was looking. I was fishing in nightlife, in social scenes built on surface-level connection. The pattern became obvious over time. The women I was drawn to were beautiful and broken, just like me.

At around twenty years sober, I entered another relationship that should have worked. She was appropriate, well-meaning, available. It still crashed. I remember the feeling clearly: obsession and pain. At the time, I didn’t call it anxiety. I didn’t even understand that word in a functional way. It just felt like something was wrong deep in my system, like pressure I couldn’t escape. So I went looking for answers.

I found myself in a bookstore, and a book practically jumped off the shelf: Don’t Call It Love by Patrick Carnes. I read it cover to cover that afternoon and felt relief. Finally, I thought, I found the problem.

Years later, I see it differently. It was a great book, and Carnes is an important voice, but it was still missing the deeper mechanism. It described behavior in detail while overlooking what was driving the behavior.

All of this addiction behavior is driven by anxiety.

Address anxiety directly, and you begin to see both the problem and the solution. It becomes obvious. Unregulated anxiety sits at the center of these patterns. That’s the engine. I didn’t fully understand that for another twenty years.

Twenty years.

After reading that book, I worked up the courage to get help and started attending SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous) in New York City. The name never sat right with me. If we were being honest, it should have been something like PSALTSRUATDB (People Sober A Long Time Still Running Untreated Anxiety, Trauma, Dopamine Behavior).

I’m joking, but not really.

The meetings were held at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center on 13th Street. That part didn’t matter to me. What stood out was what was happening inside the rooms. Even in a recovery setting, people were still acting out. Men were cruising each other between shares. People talked openly about multiple partners, anonymous sex, high-risk encounters, stopping at massage parlors, compulsive pornography use, and living double lives.

The behaviors were extreme.

I remember sitting there thinking that I was once again trying to get help in a room full of people who were suffering deeply but not actually being treated at the root. It reminded me of being 15 years old in Los Angeles, trying to get sober in rooms full of severely broken adults. I was what they call a “high bottom.” Compared to others, my situation looked mild. I didn’t belong there yet, and I felt it. My story hadn’t gotten bad enough.

Now, twenty years later, I hit another bottom. This time it wasn’t drugs or alcohol. It was relationships. I wasn’t paying for sex. I wasn’t engaging in anonymous encounters, juggling multiple partners, or living in those extremes. That wasn’t my pattern.

My pattern was quieter, but just as destructive: obsession, attachment, emotional instability, and repeating the same relationship dynamic over and over again.

I eventually found a men’s group made up of guys with years of sobriety who were still struggling with love and sex. We talked about top-line and bottom-line behaviors. The group leader was brilliant in some ways and completely unhinged in others. I learned things there, but we were still missing the point.

We were talking about behavior, not anxiety.

Years of discussion, analysis, and self-examination went by, and we still weren’t addressing the core issue. Nobody was saying it clearly. The problem is the nervous system. The problem is chronic, unregulated anxiety.

There should be something like Anxiety Anonymous, a place that addresses the root instead of the branches.

Because here’s what I saw in myself and in almost everyone I’ve observed over the years. When my partner pulled away, my self-esteem collapsed. When she moved closer, I pulled back. When conflict entered, both of us retreated. Safety never stabilized, so intimacy never had a chance.

We were the same people, just reacting differently. Broken childhoods. Layers of trauma. Constant anxiety. Different expressions, same system.

I can’t prove that in a lab, but I’ve seen it enough times to say it plainly. Anxiety leads to conflict. Conflict destroys safety. Without safety, there is no intimacy.

Most people don’t need better communication strategies or more compatibility. They need to learn how to regulate their nervous system.

Imagine if that were the starting point. Imagine if therapy and recovery began there instead of circling behavior for years.

Instead, people stay stuck, trying to solve intimacy while carrying a level of internal pressure they don’t even have a name for.

That’s what I’m offering here. Not credentials. Not theory. Just hard-earned understanding.

This is not a book about sex addiction, and I am not interested in pathologizing sexuality. I am interested in clarity. There is an ideal expression of sex for each person, and at minimum it should involve consent, compassion, and the absence of harm. Within those boundaries, human sexuality is wide, complex, and deeply personal.

When sex exists inside a romantic relationship, it creates a depth of connection that does not exist in friendships or family bonds. It is intimate not just because of physical exposure, but because it reveals something deeper. We expose our relationship to pleasure, to vulnerability, to control, to surrender. Sex activates early programming stored in the nervous system, which is why people respond to it so differently. For some, it brings guilt or shame. For others, it brings safety, joy, or even a sense of transcendence.

What matters most is whether sex is compassionate. Compassionate sex does not exploit. It does not use another person as a tool for emotional regulation. It does not override consent, safety, or dignity. It is not driven by the need to escape discomfort, but by a willingness to connect.

I believe nature gave humans a wide range of sexual possibility so we could learn through experience. Some species mate once. Humans do not. That freedom carries responsibility. We are not just choosing experiences. We are choosing emotional consequences, patterns of attachment, and the direction of our nervous system.

Over time, I’ve come to see sex more clearly for what it is. You could reduce it to biology, or you could romanticize it, but neither view fully captures it. At its best, it is S.E.X. — a Sacred* Energy Exchange. Not in a mystical or performative sense, but in a very real, observable one. It is an exchange of attention, emotion, chemistry, and vulnerability that binds people more deeply than they often realize. When treated carelessly, it destabilizes. When approached with awareness, it connects.

I am in the relationship I am in now because it feels natural and regulating to me. I do not feel like I am missing anything. I have had enough experience, including failure, to recognize what fits my system and what does not. That does not make me complete. It makes me honest.

Sex is meant to be enjoyable. It is not only for reproduction. Pleasure is part of the design. Over time, many of us learn to temper desire, not through repression, but through understanding. When sex is no longer driven by compulsion, it becomes lighter, more playful, and more connected.

I do not judge people whose sexual lives look different from mine. I have seen too much to pretend that one model fits everyone. I have friends whose choices I would not make, who are content in their own way. Judgment does not create insight. Curiosity does. When you understand someone’s history, especially their early wounds, their behavior begins to make sense.

This brings us back to the root of everything discussed in this chapter.

When anxiety dominates the nervous system, free will shrinks. We do not choose as much as we think we do. We react. We repeat. We seek relief in whatever form is available. Regulation must come first. Only from a calmer, more stable state can we make conscious choices about sex, intimacy, and connection.

Sex is one piece of a much larger human system. It creates attachment, pleasure, bonding, conflict, heartbreak, and sometimes children. It reveals who we are, and just as importantly, what we have not yet resolved.

Treat it accordingly. Sex should bring more presence, not less. More connection, not confusion. More stability, not chaos. If it does not, then it is not the act that needs to be questioned first.

It is the state of the nervous system driving it. Because when anxiety is unregulated, even intimacy becomes another form of escape. And when the system is calm, even the simplest connection becomes enough.

That is the difference.

*By sacred, I mean something held deeply and carefully in the heart. I do not mean mystical, magical, or supernatural. I mean something treated with respect, intention, and care because of its emotional weight and lasting impact.

10.2 Human Touch Is More Important Than Sexual Pleasure

I have come to understand how important touch is in my relationships, to the point that I now see it as a responsibility. Not an obligation forced on anyone, but a conscious effort to understand how our partner experiences touch and to meet them there. This has nothing to do with sex alone or chasing orgasm. That is only one expression, and often not the most important one.

Touch is subtle. It is quiet. It is constant.

It is touching each other’s feet for a moment. A hand on the shoulder. A kiss on the back or the neck. Holding hands without a reason. A gentle stroke of the wrist. A quick, effortless massage that says, without words, “I enjoy touching you as much as you enjoy being touched.”

This is a language, and many of us do not speak it until we learn.

Love is not only expressed through words or grand gestures. The nervous system requires physical reassurance. Relationships are not only maintained through communication, they are regulated through contact. The relationship itself needs to be touched.

When touch disappears, we should not fight over it. We should ask, calmly and honestly. “My darling, I need more touch. Is there something you’re holding back? Are you distracted?”

If touch is missing for too long, something is off. It is rarely because neither person needs it. More often, it is a language that has been neglected, something that requires attention and maintenance like any other part of growth.

I have to take responsibility for how I show up. I need to touch my partner in ways that I know make them feel loved. I am not responsible for their nervous system, but I am part of it now, just as they are part of mine. That is what intimacy actually means.

When I am near my partner, I want to touch them. I am not avoiding it or rushing past it. If I were, they would feel it, and over time, it would be fair for them to ask, “What’s wrong?” That question is not insecurity. It is awareness.

Touch says something very simple and very powerful: no matter what we’ve been through, I am still here. I want to be close. I want to soften. I want to connect.

For me, touch communicates more truth than words ever could. Without it, the relationship starts to feel like a friendship, and the deeper layer of intimacy becomes blocked. The question then becomes unavoidable: are we letting each other in, or are we avoiding each other slowly over time?

We make excuses. We say we are too busy, too tired, too distracted. These are weak explanations for avoiding a primary human need.

That said, not everyone relates to touch the same way. Some people need more distance. Some people are disconnected from their partner and seeking fulfillment elsewhere. That is where honest communication and compromise define whether a relationship is healthy or not. And sometimes, despite effort, this part of a relationship does not improve. You cannot force someone to give touch in a meaningful way if they do not feel it. Obligation is not connection.

I know what I need now. I need to give touch, and I need to receive it. I am not a monk removed from human contact. I am what I would call a householder, someone living in the world, in relationship, with real needs.

Maybe if I lived in a cave, meditated for hours, fasted, and stripped away enough of my physical conditioning, those needs would fade. But that is not my life, and it is not the life most people are living.

There is a balance here.

Too much neediness signals dysregulation, anxiety that still needs to be worked through. But the absence of need entirely can signal the same problem in a different form. Either you are shut down, or you are in the wrong relationship.

Touch, when it is healthy, is not pressure. It is not demand. It is an ongoing, shared experience.

It is a daily doorway into the parasympathetic nervous system.

And if we understand that, we stop overlooking it.

We start using it.

Excerpts from my two volume book series, Relationships. You can read the entire series in draft form using this Google doc link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_qo4tfh4q2ANYx93FQftZII1vWYChPn1mQwQchNDS4k/edit?usp=sharing