Sexual promiscuity evokes an image of routinely sleeping around with multiple partners, and being okay with it. Sexual promiscuity makes light of emotional ties, making it easy to go from one to another. Sexual promiscuity involves getting high on new experiences while playing out fantasies that would be shameful or taboo in a committed relationship.
Sexual promiscuity is often an unconscious attempt to feel desired without having to work at it
Craig a 43-year-old pop-up-ethnic food restaurant owner loved people. He liked to entertain an audience, and had an eye for attractive women. Women hit on him, and he basked in it. Feeling special and wanted enlivened every dormant cell in his emotional life, hungry and gasping to be seen, loved, and valued. Sex happened instantly and was enjoyed by both, until the woman wanted more. Then Craig felt strangled and held to ransom. If he didn’t agree to make them an item such that he was monogamous, the woman might withhold sex, and he might lose out.
But if he found another sexual partner right away, so that there was no gap between the current and future one, he wouldn’t miss out. He could let go the woman who wanted more, and enjoy feeling wanted by the new woman, until she too wanted more. He didn’t have to work at proving himself or feel scared of being discarded – or empty in the gap between the two. New partners were waiting with their tongues hanging out!
Sexual promiscuity is an unconscious way of avoiding dependent relationships that echo those of childhood
Craig and his older sister were raised by an emotionally absent mother and a physically absent father. Craig tried to be the responsible person taking care of his mother and sister, especially when his father popped in now and again for a bit of sex with their mother, gave them hope that he cared and might stay, only to have him disappear after a few days – the pattern repeating endlessly, because their mother allowed it. When his father was around, it was as if Craig didn’t exist for his mother. He was pulled out and made a fuss of again when his father deserted their mother and she compensated with Craig.
This example of promiscuity albeit non sexual, left a deep impression on the young boy. Trying to be good and responsible to win love and value appeared to be a fools game. He lost every time, and became angry about his father getting away with being sexually promiscuous, his mother getting away with being emotionally promiscuous, and then finding that his aunts who stepped in when his mother was unstable, were also promiscuous in wanting him one minute and throwing him out the next, moving onto other kids.
But Craig was dependent on his parents, aunts, and older sister.
He needed his mother to make him feel loved, wanted, and special – almost prized because he attended to her sadness, depression and need for company; when she was bemoaning the millionth time his dad had used her and left. He needed his dad to claim his as his son, to recognize and fuss over him when he arrived on one of his jaunts; and he needed his aunts to give him food and shelter when his mother was unable to keep house and cook. He needed his sister to take care of mom when he couldn’t do it anymore.
All these dependent relationships trapped him into having to be good, responsible, and trying to prove his worth, because he wasn’t able to take care of himself – until he was old enough to make a life for himself.
Sexual promiscuity as an adult meant that he didn’t have to be a good boy and/or caretaker because he no longer needed women to put a roof over his head and food in his belly. The thrill of having his dad come by on rare occasions and make him feel special was more than met by using sexual promiscuity as compensation. He was elated by how much the women craved sex with him, often more than he could offer! Now he could be the one leaving the women, a way of identifying with his father in a powerful way.
Sexual promiscuity compensates for missing validation in work settings due to being dependent on the job for making a living
The same pattern emerged for Craig in the work setting. His longing to be seen as ‘the man,’ the one who the company could rely on to stay late, clean up other people’s messes, and add his own talents above and beyond made him a slave. Unconsciously his boss became his mother who he was trying to please and who would praise him, show him off and give him a promotion and raise. His boss was also his dad whom he wanted to make proud. But of course, none of this happened. If he wanted to kill himself trying to be the savior, the dumped on and the fall guy, why wouldn’t his boss treat him that way and not think anything of it?
Craig relived his fears at work – ‘I need the job, so I have to prove myself by being better than anyone else and by taking on any and everything I’m given – eating humble pie when they toss my ideas, only to later claim them as their own!’
Craig’s failure to seduce his boss into treating him like he was the magic without which the company would fail, was a repeat of his childhood experience, and because he needed the job, he found a way of compensating by being sexually promiscuous.
Sexual promiscuity served Craig in various ways:
1. He could pick up women and have sex without having to seduce them. No effort, no disappointment, no let down, just amazing gratification.
2. While having sex with these eager women he did an “f—k you” to them. He wasn’t relying on them for safety, shelter, food, or money. He could use and leave. He was really using these women as stand ins for his mother, aunts, and sister – saying ‘f—k you’ because you let me down.
3. Feeling masterful and a bit like his dad (who used and left his mother multiple time) made him feel strong, masculine, and powerful. Afterall, the women fell at his feet, just like his mother encouraged and participated in sex when his dad came around from time to time.
4. When he is wounded in work and feels cowed because he dare not stand up to his boss (who represents the parents he depends on), he can compensate by sleeping with any woman. The wound is lessened by the wanting and worshipping of the woman.
5. Sexual promiscuity allows Craig to walk away from the woman he is sleeping with as he has no commitments and doesn’t want to make any permanent deal. That’s an “f—k you” to his boss. He can’t walk away from his job, but he can leave a woman who he has only agreed to sleep with for one or more occasions. That’s how Craig uses sexual promiscuity to compensate for the lack of power and agency he experiences in his adult life.
Sexual promiscuity – costs and consequences
There are several real time consequences for Craig, despite the rewards he reaps by unconsciously giving a middle finger to his parents.
1. He is losing the chance to connect with a woman who can see him fully and get what he deserves, but missed out on.
2. His chance to have a family and settle down is reducing as he gets older. The part of him that wants a proper family life – unlike the one he had is knocking on his door and the rapping gets quite loud from time to time.
3. The good feelings of being wanted when he is sexually promiscuous are temporary, and he needs to replenish it at a rate which is exhausting. He lives like an addict, needing more and more to fill the void.
4. The women who end up wanting more and that won’t leave him alone with their neediness remind him of his mother and he is put in the same bind he found himself in as a child. Do I have to be a good boy and take care of her, or am I okay walking away, living with internal turmoil and risk being cast as a bad character?
Giving up sexual promiscuity by developing personal power and dignity
In order to have a more fulfilled existence Craig must be willing to work on letting go of trying to be the hero, rescuer, and savior of those in authority as if they and they alone are responsible for his survival.
Craig doesn’t have to depend on anyone and then say “f—k you” when they let him down, if he gets reparented in an appropriate therapeutic situation where he is accepted in every way, and loved no matter his naughty or testing out bits. He can learn the secrets and benefits of mature adult dependency that lasts and is mutually fulfilling.
Switching from hero role to self-manager role is the journey Craig needs to take, so that sexual promiscuity doesn’t have to be an addictive behavior that brings momentary relief. Real relationships with genuine stable connections will fill him up once he gets a taste of it in therapy. Then he can be his own master rather than a slave to his unresolved past.
Copyright, Jeanette Raymond, Ph.D. 2024
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