The following is a transcript of a full-length podcast episode between Ross Rosenberg, M.Ed., LCPC, CADC, and Dr. Laurie Betito, a psychologist and sex therapist, where they discuss how sex plays out in a relationship between a Self-Love Deficient (SLD)/codependent and a pathological narcissist.
Listen to the full episode here.
Ross: Laurie, welcome!
Dr. Laurie: Ah, I’m so excited.
Ross: Before we begin, can you tell our listeners and viewers who you are and what you do?
Dr. Laurie: So, I'm a clinical psychologist with a specialty in sexual wellness. I’ve been working for over 30 years. In my local Montreal, Canada, I did a nightly radio program—of which you were a guest—for 22 years, over 5,000 episodes talking about sexuality. I wrote a book called The Sex Bible for People Over 50 and have a podcast called Passion with Dr. Laurie. I am the director of the Pornhub Sexual Wellness Center, which is a sex education site off Pornhub. So, directing people to real sexual information rather than getting their information through pornography only.
Ross: Maybe I should have asked you what you don't do!
Dr. Laurie: Yeah, I’m a busy gal. I have a clinical practice as well.
Ross: So, one of the things you and I have been emailing about is the connection between my Human Magnet Syndrome work and the discussion of sexuality. So, what do you think would be of the greatest interest to our listeners and viewers?
Dr. Laurie: So, when people come to me, they usually come to me because they have a sexual issue. The thing is, 90% of the time, it's a symptom of something else. And the first thing I look at is the relationship. What's going on in this couple's life, right? Sometimes, I'll have a woman coming in saying “I have a problem with desire and my husband thinks there's something seriously wrong with me, and he thinks I'm this and he thinks I'm that, and he's telling me I should go get help.”
And then, you know, in talking and exploring her and her connection to her partner and her relationships, it's not that difficult to see that this person might be in a codependent relationship or that her partner might be a narcissist. And so of course it's going to have an impact on one's desire for sex.
Let’s just say in this case, her husband puts a lot of demands on her to have a lot of sex, in terms of quantity and she feels quite pressured, does it anyway, and doesn't get anything out of it. She doesn't want to rock the boat, right?
Ross: Sounds codependent.
Dr. Laurie: She wants to know like, what's wrong with me? That I don't desire my husband and it's sometimes very hard. Then I look at her and say, “well, you feel abused. You feel criticized. You fight, over this, that, and the other. You feel pressured. You don't feel heard, you don't feel appreciated. You don't feel validated. How are you supposed to muster up these warm feelings so that you can open up to be sexual with your partner, right?
Ross: So, if your lover has a personality disorder—is a pathological narcissist, they have to dissociate...to somehow remove themselves emotionally from the act because they don't have the power to say no. They're afraid to say no because of their own codependent inner dialogue, or they're afraid of saying no because of the consequences.
Dr. Laurie: So, I knew this one woman. She said to me, “unless I was stoned out of my head, I couldn't have sex with my partner. Like, there is no way. Like, I'd have to think about something else.” There was no connection with the partner, but she knew that if she didn't have sex with him every third day, he was cranky and horrible.
So, if she wasn’t wasted, she couldn't do it. That’s one way of dissociating. But for women who don't numb themselves with agents or anything like that, over time they start to describe it as feeling assaulted. And even the slightest touch starts to feel like an assault. So, it's not just the act of sex, but any movement like a partner grabbing your butt while you're doing the dishes can feel like an assault. So, ultimately if you think about what consent is, right, consent is not submission, consent is given, and should be given enthusiastically, right?
And there's a distinction between submission, which is not consent. If I submit to your pressure and I say yes, out of pressure, that's not consent. So, those individuals often find themselves in that position where yes, they'll submit for the sake of keeping the peace, but what happens over time, is they feel like, they’re having non-consensual sex.
Ross: A lot of my clients describe that same type of scenario. When the narcissist has a sexual preference or desire that goes against the SLD/codependent’s comfort level, they submit out of fear, or out of a learned response that goes all the way back to their childhood.
And so the consent part is even murkier than we think because SLDs are not only terrified of not obliging due to punishments. Their whole life, going back to their childhood, if they did not consent to picking up the toothbrush, washing the laundry, driving the kids, or what are, there was always a punishment.
And so the concept of consent often is very blurry to my SLDs/codependent clients.
Dr. Laurie: Sure, because we do learn about consent as kids, right?
Ross: What we know about SLDs is that they’ve learned through either gaslighting or just basic conditioning that it's better to say yes because there are fewer punishments. At least they imagine that—whether it's true or not.
One day, I was in a session with a person who could not stop her attraction to horribly harmful narcissistic men. And she says, “but I'm OK. I have not been with a man for four years and I've never felt better. I think I got this Human Magnet Syndrome thing nipped in the bud.” And I asked her, “OK, so does that mean you don't have sex?” She said, “oh yeah, of course. Sex is, dangerous.”
And it hit me at that moment. This is a form of dissociation. And I came up with the term “Codependency Anorexia,” or “SLDD Anorexia.” For a person to control the Human-Magnet-Syndrome-compelled desire to find the person that most excites them, that is most attractive, that is most familiar and paradoxically safe—it's always the narcissist with a personality disorder.
And so, I came to understand the only form of control that they had was to dissociate their sexual self to “shut down” the sexual or intimate “machinery.”
Dr. Laurie: For a lot of the SLDs, they don't feel that pleasure is their right. And we're all humans; it is our God-given Right to have pleasure, each and every one of us. But they’ve often grown up with the belief that sex is for the other person, not for them. So, they are there to give sex and you can hear it in the language, you know, “I give him sex” or “it's about what my partner needs, not what I need.” They often will not even know what they need because they haven't taken the opportunity to explore their own bodies and their own pleasure.
It's very hard when you think you exist for others’ pleasure.
Ross: But the person who has SLDD Anorexia is very sexual, especially with narcissistic men. This is a person that knows that as soon as they move into what I call “chemistry” or what Dorothy Tennov calls a “limerence” moment, their soulmate turns into the cellmate. And because it's so difficult to stop someone's Self Love Deficit Disorder™, it was all she knew—to disconnect and cut off all sexuality.
Dr. Laurie: They don't trust themselves, right? The pattern has happened so many times that they just don't trust themselves anymore. They can admit, the passion is great at first, and they get drawn in and everything is amazing at the beginning, but it soon turns ugly.
Ross: I enjoy what I do and when I create this “aha” moment, even if that “aha” moment breaks a person down in tears, I feel like I'm doing something important.
Dr. Laurie: Yes, exactly. And it's important. That's how we grow.
Ross: And so, in those moments, we suggest, “well, you're not crazy” or I say, “whose thought is that?”
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