I was going to write this post about Facebook.  And Privacy.  And Privacy's evil twin, Secrecy.  And how when we say Privacy, we often really mean Secrecy.  Because not only do well-intentioned but befuddled people confuse the two, but addicts and other evil-doers also (gasp!) use the sacred name of Privacy as a mask for the nasty, putrid character of Secrecy.

I was going to tell you to learn to recognize Secrecy. (It's the one with the goatee.  Oh, and also the one you've lied to someone about, explicitly or implicitly.)  And I was going to ask you to think carefully about whether you are really, really talking about nice, clean-shaven Privacy or if you are actually sporting evil facial hair and hiding from people for fear of being judged.  And that being worried about how it will look if people know that you are who you are is not Privacy, it's illness. And I was going to tell you to live well and without secrets.  And not be both so scared and so freaking judgmental.  And if you live with secrets anyway (you devious person!), then Deal With It if you are outed.  Because it's your fault for having them.

And as for Privacy online (or Secrecy online for that matter), I was going to inform you that it's an illusion.  Nothing on the Internet is really private; it's on millions of computers around the world, forever.  If it's truly private, don't put it out there or at least recognize the risks, because demanding Privacy online is the equivalent of yelling at people for walking into a public restroom while you're using it with all the doors wide open.  Good, honest, non-goatee wearing Privacy is what the confines of our own Real Life are about. (It's all the stuff I don't post on the Internet. Whatever that is.) *

And I was going to tell you all this as someone whose life and marriage has been marred by secrets, so that I can see the difference between Privacy and Secrecy in the big, ugly gash burned through the middle of my existence.  And as someone who has this secret blog with a secret identity.  And who litters the Internet with posts about whole bunches of stuff that, really, I'd rather people in my Real Life didn't know.  All of which makes me one of the World's Experts on Privacy, Secrecy and Stuff Not to Post on the Internet.

But as I was writing that post, being all opinionated and you'ing you about how to do stuff right, you whiny and incompetent Facebook users, I saw that all that stuff about you was (surprise!) really stuff about me.  And not just stuff about me, but putting all my worst fears and worst character defects right out there in your face.  I mean, really, that kind of bossy, judgmental, know-it-all-ism -- telling you about how you shouldn't be bossy or judgmental because it makes me have to deal with my uncomfortable feelings about Secrecy and Privacy and how they've gotten all mixed up in my life to the point where it makes me want to punch them both square in the nose -- that's me at my total worst.  And that is the very kind of secret I shouldn't post on the Internet.

"Is Tiger Woods a sex addict?"
"What do you think about Tiger?"
"Aren't you going to write about Tiger Woods?"

The questions have been peppering my inbox, but I've been avoiding the topic.

On the one hand, I love a good celebrity sex scandal, both because I can relate and because I see it as an opportunity to educate people about what sex addiction can look like. I remember when my husband disclosed his addiction, I realized that his words and actions bore an uncanny resemblance to Bill Clinton's (even down to the "oral sex is not sex" line).  And I was pissed, not at Bill Clinton or at my husband, but at the media.  Why were there all these stories about how Bill Clinton was a cad and a liar and a womanizer and a bad person and a bad husband and a man who believed he was "above the law" and absolutely none about how he was (in a way that was now glaringly obvious to me) a sex addict.  Why hadn't I heard of sex addiction before?  Why hadn't anyone told me that this was what it looked like?

But on the other hand, while some people are begging for a Tiger story, I know (from years of blogging experience) that other people are absolutely going to hate it.  It's going to send half the Internet into spams of delight and the other into paroxysms of rage if I use "Tiger Woods" and "sex addict" in the same post, and dealing with that kind of conflict is simply tiresome.  So I've been weighing whether or not writing about Tiger Woods was worth the drama of writing about Tiger Woods.

But as I was considering this question last night, it occurred to me that I wouldn't be wondering this at all if news had just broken that instead of having a dozen mistresses at points around the globe, Tiger Woods had a dozen different heroin dealers.  Would there be similar quibbling over what to call his behavior if, instead of risking his marriage and his family and his lucrative endorsements by spending time and money on tour having sex with porn stars and models and cocktail waitresses, he had risked them by spending time getting high on cocaine?  If there were rumors that he might give up touring because he was spending all his nights getting drunk when he was traveling rather than having affairs with other women, would the debate over addiction be the same?

Sex addiction is hard to recognize precisely because it's tied up in behavior that doesn't seem so clear cut.  It's harder to see where the line is drawn or should be drawn when it comes to something as basic to who we are as sex.  It's more complicated for us to discern someone's motivation for having an affair than smoking crack.  But regardless of what we think of Tiger's actions or speculate about his motivations, in the way the story has played out in the media, we can see a degree of unmanageability that addicts and their partners can all relate to: the desperate attempts to cover up, the car crash, the hemorrhaging of money.  As Mark said when we discussed it this morning, "All you have to do is take the news clippings and put them together to have a pretty good First Step."

I was one of only five people on the planet who didn't own a copy of Thriller, largely because I like to be contrary; it allows me to feel superior and rebel against alcoholic absolutism by being absolute in a different direction. But because I grew up in the 80's, I couldn't escape knowing every song on the album whether I owned it or not. (And then secretly singing them to myself when there was no one around to see me being anything less than contemptuous of their choices.)

When Michael Jackson's skin whitened and his nose became skeletal, when he was accused of child molestation and and sued for debt, when there were reports that he bought the Elephant Man's bones, when he nicknamed his son Blanket and built an amusement park in his back yard, when the tabloids dubbed him Wacko Jacko, I liked to tell people "I told you so. I always thought there was something wrong with him." As if that were really the reason I pretended to disdain him when he was at the height of his popularity and continued to mock him as his untreated mental illness* played out on a global stage.

But my relationship with Michael Jackson (as with so many people in and out of my life) has changed as my relationship to myself in recovery has changed. Instead of seeing him as someone to mock in order to feel clever and healthy, I started to see a someone who was aching enough inside to have visibly mutilated (or paid his plastic surgeons to mutilate) his body. I saw a talented man who lived imprisoned in his own deep pain, a man who self medicated through fantasy in many of the same ways I had myself. As I came to better understand my own love of Peter Pan and the fantasy of Disney and my own desire to escape into some fantasy childhood, I suspected I better understood his too. And I used to, in my own way, pray for him. I thought about how hard it must be for someone so insulated from the world by money and fame to finally reach a point low enough to break through denial and bring desperation for change, and I would hope that he would finally lose enough to get help.

When I learned of Michael Jackson's death, I felt the same sadness I felt at the death of my father-in-law: the grief that he died without ever finding relief, redemption or recovery (in its broadest sense) in this life. But I am grateful, as I see my own progress mirrored in my changing perceptions of him, that I can finally crank up "Thriller" and spin a bit in his honor.

With the story of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's week-long disappearance to visit his mistress in Argentina buzzing about, we're faced yet again with a barrage of images of a public figure tearfully apologizing for his infidelity, while his job hangs in jeopardy.* And in the wake of this story, the same discussions will repeat themselves that have echoed down from all the scandals past. Why did he do it? What does it say about our society? Should he keep his job? And, my perennial favorite, was he justified in cheating?

Yes, rest assured, people will whisper about the cause being his bitchy wife (she must be or he wouldn't have done it, right?) and someone, somewhere out there, will use this as an opportunity to bemoan our culture's moralistic attitude toward sex. It's a charge that is sometimes leveled at partners of sex addicts (at times by the addict or even by ourselves): that the problem with infidelity lies in our own uptight attitudes about sex and if we'd just lighten up and not get so upset about sex outside of marriage, everything would be fine. Which completely misses what every partner of a sex addict knows: the pain of infidelity doesn't have nearly as much to do with the sex as it does with being lied to.

Ask nearly anyone in a relationship with a sex addict what the worst thing about active addiction is and they will almost universally tell you that it's not the sex, but the lying and the horrible breach of trust that comes with it.  Sure, the sex part of it matters; it's not like I would have fallen down on the bathroom floor sobbing and hugging the toilet in sickness if my husband had lied to me about his secret life helping poverty stricken orphans.  The lies hurt because they were about something as intimate and personal and hurtful as a breech of sexual trust. And yes, I wanted the sexual acting out gone, but I know wanted the lies gone still more.

When my husband disclosed his activities to me, I laid into him, "If you wanted to have sex with other people, why didn't you tell me? If you want an open marriage, I need to know that. Hiding your actions and covering things up and lying shows a total lack of respect for me. I didn't have what I needed to make an informed decision about this relationship. You didn't give me the option to decide for myself, like an adult, you decided for me based on what you wanted. If multiple partners is what you want, let's talk about it. If that's what you're going to do, then tell me. I can deal with the sex, but I can't deal with the lying and the hiding and the deception." (See, it was early in recovery, I still "youed" at him a lot then. Also I bargained and tried to control him. Please do not try this at home.)

And in my husband's most major relapse since starting recovery for sex addiction, it wasn't the details of his acting out that hurt me (I wasn't even interested in them), but the fact that he would lie about going to a 12 Step meeting (a sacred meeting) and then cover it up for a year before coming clean.  I know he's an addict, I knew chances were slim that he would enter recovery and go the rest of his life without another slip ever, but I didn't care what he had done with this other woman so much as I cared that he had deceived me about it.  Even knowing that lying goes with the territory in addiction, the lying undid me.

What are my attitudes toward and beliefs about sex and relationships? To be honest, I'm still working that out; they're ever changing as I grow. But I do know that I didn't (and couldn't) begin to explore them until my husband and I both started talking honestly and openly about our wants and needs, our hopes and fears, our goals and values.

A version of this post was originally published at The Second Road. Additional comments can be found there.

I attend a weekly 12 Step meeting for friends and family members of sex addicts, and part of our meeting script asks that group members refrain from mentioning specific company names or websites in their shares to avoid triggering others. Whenever I hear this part of the script, I always imagine that what's really meant is "please refrain from saying the word Craigslist."

While I've found Craigslist wonderfully useful for everything from finding writing jobs to getting rid of the kids' baby furniture, it has played a part in the addiction that has ravaged the lives of so many people Mark knows that (well before news of the so-called Craigslist Killer hit the stands) he refrained from visiting any part of the site for any reason in spite of never having used it to act out himself. (After all, if Facebook is dangerous to his recovery, a place like Craigslist would be lethal.) In fact, Mark has so many disturbing negative associations with the name alone that he does not even like to hear it.

Today, under pressure from law enforcement, Craigslist announced that it was doing away with its Erotic Services section and replacing it with an Adult Services section, which will be reviewed by Craigslist employees to ensure only postings from "legal adult service providers." While this may (depending on how well the ads are monitored and reviewed) curb prostitution, I have no doubt that, given its many perfectly legal ads for sex, Craigslist will have no problem retaining its dubious place of honor as an Internet hub for active sex addicts and a painful trigger for many addicts and spouses in recovery.

Photo credit: Photo by sheeshoo on Flickr

I generally stay away from posting about news, for several reasons:

1. This blog was designed for the purposes of gazing at my own lovely and fascinating navel. Why venture outside the bounds of my beautiful belly lint, unless news stories reflect on said belly lint?
2. There are two sides to every story, and I hesitate to chime in on matters I know only snippets of from news stories. (Unless they involve diagnosing celebrities I know next to nothing about with addictions or a history of abuse. That, my friends, is easy, and I do jump all over it.)
3. There are tons of bloggers out there who do a great job already of dissecting and parsing the news.
4. I ruminate like a big cow, chewing and chewing on ideas. By the time my mind is ready to spit out its nuggets of wisdom for you, the story is dead and gone. (See: Eliot Spitzer.)

But I've decided to blog about this story anyway. Just let me suck on this cud of mine for a few more hours. Ok?