Autoeroticism, the Internet, and Relationships (article)

Functionally, electronics have brought us a long way forward. On the one hand, we can now access information instantly and be connected to almost anywhere with the touch of a button. In the field of psychotherapy, with the aid of Skype we can teach, practice, and supervise without in-person contact. On the other hand, sites and devices such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, eBay, Amazon, Instant Messenger (IM), smartphones, iPods, etc. are contributing to more pervasive pathological obsessive compulsive dis-

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orders—addictions that alienate the user from important interpersonal relationships in the “real” space of home and work. All Internet addictions are damaging to couple/family relationships, but the most regressive seems to be the need of sexual arousal as a soothing mechanism and as a defense against depression, as well as a regulator of mood. Where the need for erotization—sexualization—of unmanageable feelings becomes a defense against the other, there are interpersonal consequences. This online addiction I have found to be most insidious and destructive for intimate relationships. Three examples illustrate this point.

L, a 47 year old married man with two children, is an intelligent and accomplished scientist. He loves his wife and his latency-aged children. Yet he feels empty, depressed, and dissatisfied. He readily admits his hypersexuality and his affinity for pornography since adolescence. Sex with his wife is insufficient since the advent of the Internet. Lately he has taken to photographing women’s body parts with his cell phone. He keeps his computer under his bed, so that when the urge to look and have sexual release arises, it is accessible. When his wife and children are around, he gets irritated.

Y, a 33 year old woman, had what she describes as a most devastating experience. After a disagreement with her husband she left her apartment to go to the supermarket, but in her upset state she realized when getting to her car that she had forgotten her keys. When she returned to her apartment she found her husband watching virtual pornography on the computer: “Can I stay with a man who has hurt me so deeply?”

R, a 37 year old woman, has been married for seven years and has a four year old daughter. She had become obsessed with finding evidence of her husband’s adultery. She considered her marriage a passionate one until a year ago when it became sexless. “What other reason could there be but that her husband was having an affair with another woman? Why does he spend so much time on his Blackberry locked up in the bathroom?” What she discovered was that he was engaged in sexual activity on the Internet. This led to her having a depressive episode and intense frigidity.

Autoeroticism is the earliest inducer in the development of

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obsessive-compulsive defenses. The obsessive-compulsive neurosis comes about when autoeroticism no longer functions as a soothing mechanism and develops into an obsession, a substitute for pleasure with others. Masturbation during latency is deferred and will return with puberty, at which time the availability of others in the external world induces and leads to the search for expressing it with others in reality.

Mature love can be seen as erotic desire, tenderness, a prominence of love over aggression, empathy for the other, and commitment to the other and the relationship. A mature relationship involves accepting the reality that satisfaction by others is not automatic. We must bear the depression caused by this realization. Satisfaction is a mutual action; we must accept that we also need to give something in order to get something. Sexual activity on the Internet is a way to ward off feelings of self-depletion and self-fragmentation as an attempt to maintain self-cohesiveness and self-esteem. The aim of the sexual activity, in the case of the online user’s sexuality, is for both immediate gratification and as a compensation for the suffering they perceive they have endured.

Computer technology facilitating sexuality at the push of a button at home, at work, or anywhere, fixates on the avoidance and interferes with conflict resolutions within intimate and all other important relationships.

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