How has your crisis begun? A knock at the door from a child protection unit of the local police force? A phone call from a journalist to say that you are on the front page tomorrow? The party’s whip demanding to see you? However the crisis has begun there can be no doubt that you are living it every day now; it permeates everything you do because soon your greatest fear will be realised.
The world will see the hidden part of you and you will have to see it too. For many addicts, this is a fear far greater than losing jobs, marriages, prestige or wealth. It is the fear that the daydream will end and the addict will no longer be able to delude themselves about who and what they are.
Why use the term addiction to describe the scandals currently rocking Westminster? Because addiction is at the root cause of all the behaviour the public is rightfully angry at. Our government and opposition parties are full of men and, no doubt in some cases women, who suffer from sex addiction – and many are now facing the truth that unless they accept the reality of their condition it will destroy them. For many, the addiction will simply be seen as the actions of power hungry individuals who see themselves not only as law makers, but as exempt from the normal rules of behaviour that govern everyone else. No doubt this is true, but it only addresses half the question as to why this behaviour exists and is ignores its origins.
Why would a person who has been elected to parliament or who holds high office have any more need to feel empowered? Why would a movie mogul who has created films to astound and entertain millions need anything else to feel powerful? The answer in both cases is that there is no level of material or career success that can prevent the gnawing emptiness that exists inside them. If wealth and power made people feel stable and secure, there would be no rich addicts, and there would be a perfect correlation between poverty and addiction. The powerful abusive sex addict was a child once and it is in childhood that the answers inevitably lie. A person who is comfortable with and in full command of their agency in this world has no need to prove this by forcing themselves onto someone with less power. A person who is aware of their own worth and their own worthiness to love and be loved has no need to crave the ‘love’ and attention of others. Instead they are rewarded with inner contentment and the affection of those close to them just by being themselves, because that’s enough.
That our parliamentarians, presenters, actors and others contain so many damaged individuals should point at something deeper than the immediate scandal; something we’d all like to ignore in our race to shout, judge, point fingers and condemn. Our society has made these individuals for better or worse. Our society could be thought of as a factory for creating certain types of people with certain beliefs, views and behaviours. Without seeking to absolve the sex addict, our society has created individuals with such deep seated senses of their own worthlessness that losing themselves in the stupefaction of addiction often seems like a rational choice. After all, to the individual taught to hate and despise themselves every single day, finding a secret and abusive way to act out their own desire for power can be highly attractive.
It is often said that we get the leaders we deserve, and in this case it is unfortunately true. We live in a society that emotionally harms children on an industrial scale and which has sexualised almost every aspect of modern life in the interests of commercial gain. It is hardly surprising, therefore, when major scandals across public life about sexual behaviour emerge. The real question for everyone, MPs and the public should be ‘where do we go from here?’ As a society we need to acknowledge our combined and collective need for change, and vilification does very little to help achieve that end. Instead, a major societal conversation about what creates the needs for this behaviour in the first place should be held.
Paradoxically, even though you are caught in a moment of crisis, you are the best person to start it. What do you have to lose?
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