My Secret Life as a Sex Addict: How I Repaired The Damage

By Paulina Pantyleva

It was only the fourth day of the cruise and I was already on my seventh penis. 

I met Jack at the pizza station by the pool. I went there to binge on pizza, partly because pizza is delicious and partly to punish my bad behaviors with food. I just wanted to engorge myself with cheese, crust, and s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Platypus Publishing
• Release date: Apr 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798218199531

Book preview

Paulina Pantyleva

My Secret Life as a Sex Addict

How I Repaired the Damage

First published by Platypus Publishing 2023

Copyright © 2023 by Paulina Pantyleva

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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This book is dedicated to my husband, Richard, whom I love with all my heart. He suffered due to my sex addiction as well. Yet, he was able to distinguish me from the addiction itself and for that, I am eternally grateful.

Epigraph

Kintsugi Vase

When a ceramic bowl breaks into pieces, we often see it as garbage.

In Japanese art, potential beauty is seen in reconstructing the broken pieces. The pieces are held together with gold lacquer. The more repair that has been done, the more valuable the vase.

It is the imperfections that make it more beautiful.

That is my cover art.

That is me.

Contents

Foreword

I. DOES SEX ADDICTION REALLY EXIST?

1. Hard Earned Wisdom

2. Decades of Dysfunction

3. Am I The Only One?

4. This Is Just An Excuse To Cheat

5. What Is Sex Addiction?

6. It’s Not About The Sex

II. OVERDOSING ON SEX

7. Sex For Trade At A Young Age

8. My Great Escape

9. Like a Dog In Heat

10. For a Smart Person, I Did Really Dumb Things

11. Some Things Are Still Hard To Explain

12. Fucking for Survival

13. The Fun Factor is Long Gone

14. Forever in Search of Extremes

15. Are There Any Good Looking Swingers?

16. Toxic Triangles

17. Food/Fuck Flip Flop

18. Binge Eating is my Other Drug

19. It Was Hard To Be Married to Me

20. Working For Free

21. Prioritizing My Own Self-Destruction

22. Internet Makes Access Easy

23. My Mind Makes My Body Sick

24. I Broke

25. My Rock Bottom

III. MY RECOVERY

26. The Healing is Spiritual

27. The Problem Had Been in My Mind

28. Making Sense of the Nonsense

29. Embracing My Tormented Self

30. Reflections on My Father

31. Putting the Pieces Together

32. Repairing the Damage

Afterword

Foreword

By Dana Lee Chapman

When the world feels like it’s just too much to handle, humans will find all sorts of ways to escape the overwhelm. For my client Paulina, the author of this book, sex and food became the go-to ways to get through the harsh pressures, responsibilities and realities of life.

Sex can provide a sense of love, satisfaction, gratification, nourishment, connection and indulgence. So can food.

Food can fill an empty hole. So can sex.

Until they can’t.

My name is Dana Lee Chapman and although I am known as The Diet Recovery Coach who helps women heal from the collateral damage of diet culture, including food dysfunction and body image issues, the heart of what I do with my clients is repair the relationship they have with themselves, regardless of the affliction or addiction.

After nearly 30 years of working with women who have dysfunctional coping mechanisms, the number one thing that has made the greatest and most profound impact in their lives is their willingness to deconstruct and then reconstruct what it means to truly love themselves, making Paulina’s artwork you see on the cover an ideal and beautiful representation of this entire fragmented process.

Paulina and I met a few short months after one of the most painful events in her life which brought on binge eating episodes like never before.

The event is something she writes about in a later section of this book. It is a pivotal point in her own journey when she fell to the depths of what, she later learned, was required to turn her life around. The fact that she can even write about it in such an insightful and reflective manner is a testament to how far she has come on her path to recovering from both sex addiction and food addiction in such a short amount of time.

It took her roughly a year from decision day when we began our work together to when she completed the writing of this book. When you are *in it* and are experiencing excruciating emotional pain just wanting to be on the other side of the recovery already! it may seem like a year is a long time to take to turn things around.

However, a part of what made the transformation possible is the approach. I encouraged her to go slower than she’s ever been willing to go because if she paced herself, she would experience more effective and permanent change. Although she was anxious and rushed through our work in the beginning, she did see the value in switching gears and eventually gave this approach a shot.

Healing will take as long as it takes. While you can use a pivotal event as the catalyst to make a decisive change, the more gradual, introspective, and mindful you are after that commitment to yourself, the more accelerated and lasting the impact.

As Paulina discovered through our work together, it’s not about the FOOD and, that quickly translated to mean it must not be about the SEX either. As it turns out (spoiler alert), these are just the placeholders that symbolized her innermost beliefs regarding self-worth and her value in this world.

An unfortunate truth is that sex addiction in our society and our culture is far more acceptable and prevalent to discuss in regard to men than women. Paulina and I both agree that needs to change.

Because our work together helped Paulina uncover a deeper understanding as to why she did the things she did, she made a decision that none of it would go to waste. Sharing the real, raw truth