Love Sick: A Woman's Journey Through Sexual Addiction

by Sue William Silverman

Book Overview

Describes one woman's journey from sexual abuse in childhood, through believing that sex is love, to a period of sexual addiction and self-destructive behavior, and finally to recovery with the help of a trusted therapist.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393019578
• ISBN13: 9780393019575
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 303 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A deeply thoughtful and memorable memoir

Sue Silverman is a professor at my college. She is as thoughtful and compassionate in person as in this book. A delightful read!

Courageous and Compassionate Memoir

Review of Love Sick: One Woman's Journey Through Sexual Addiction by Sue William Silverman (Norton, 2001) Memoir. ISBN: 0-393-01957-8 What is sexual addiction? How does one recover from this addiction? Sue William Silverman answers these questions in her heartbreaking and heartwarming autobiography. Even if a reader does not experience an addiction of any kind, no time is wasted while reading the book because the prose is so expertly crafted. In her first book Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, (University of Georgia Press, 1996) Sue William Silverman writes about the childhood sexual abuse she experienced. She had an incestuous father and a complicit mother. The tragedy of incest leaves any child feeling that she is unlovable, and the confusion that sex equals love. The incest was woven with the elements of secrecy, danger, and destruction. In Love Sick, Sue shows the reader how those elements became a blueprint for her relationships. As with any addiction, sexual addiction is a narrow one-dimensional drive serving only to feed itself. Sue was starved for real love as a child, so she uses unhealthy behaviors to search for love; she literally does not know better because she was not shown unconditional care. In college, she is caught in an affair with an emotionally unavailable married man, who has a son her own age. She also meets (for sex) a random obscene phone caller who is a stranger. Incest leaves the victim with instinct askew, so Sue literally believes that this strange caller was meant to meet her to show her how loveable she really is. Sue later marries Andrew, and confesses: "I first had sex with Andrew while married to someone else." Andrew is unable to comprehend Sue's turmoil except in terms of how it affects her role as his wife. He says, "I'm tired of shouldering all the responsibility. She could at least try to get a job teaching..." Sue's primary responsibility becomes recovery from childhood abuse and its ramifications. After trial and error therapy with ten counselors, Sue meets a therapist named Ted. He learns that Sue cannot will herself to stop seeing yet another married man, even while she is married to Andrew. Ted says, "Love doesn't result in sitting alone in motel rooms. Addiction results in sitting alone in motel rooms." Ted encourages Sue to enter a facility with a program for sex addicts. Sue learns that she is as much a predator (searching for love via sex) as she is a victim. She writes, "I am not your victim because you are not a predator any more than a bottle of scotch stalks an alcoholic." That sentence offers enlightening information regarding the vicious cycle of addictions. Sue offers the reader reasons to have compassion for those struggling with sexual addiction by giving us glimpses into the psyches of others in the facility. During the recovery program, Sue searches her soul for genuine feelings that are not in context with a man. As an author and advocate, I read this book twice: on

Silverman's writing takes you with her.

When I picked up this book, it was because I was curious about how something as common and ordinary as sex could be an addiciton. I assumed that only perverts and creepy old men were "sex addicts". Silverman brought her recovery as a female sex addict into focus in a way that can only be described as deeply intimate. I felt myself right by her side during each of the 28 days of her treatment (and chapters), crying when she was writing about her "addictwoman," her lonliness, and her search for "family." Her writing allows for a deep sense of understanding and familiarity with the part of her that has controlled her life. For anyone woman has ever even joked about being "addicted" to love, men, relationships or sex, this book will certainly move you.

The Truth

Sue William Silverman reveals herself so honestly, I can only admire her. It seems trite to say she is "courageous" but yet cannot think of a better word. (I don't think I'd be able to do it!) And she does it with so much insight that telling it all has a real purpose and is not self pity. She clearly has come through a lot and is to be commended for sharing her newfound insight with those of us who are too good at hiding the truth to get proper help! I spent some years living a sexually compulsive life and have found the path away from it to be long. At this point I can't even recognize myself, I've changed so much, but still found reading this book to be very healing and affirming, and that her insight helped clarify some issues that have come up for me, as I deal with the truth.

Powerful Pageturner

Sue William Silverman's Love Sick is a powerful pageturning tale told with clarity and dispassion, a marvelous achievement considering the subject. Though a personal story, it is of universal interest. It is, on the one hand, a blueprint for narrative nonfiction: perfectly structured and rendered without one wasted word. The book gives insight about all persons stuck for whatever reason in a cycle self-destruction. There is no moral here. The emotions you will have will be your own.